'Gasteiger's beautifully composed pictures are given extra perspective with Fearnley's part history lesson, part personal recollection and part social documentary.'
Opinion
Exactly halfway between the equator and the South Pole is an area of the world marked by vast oceans and the strong winds of the "Roaring Forties".
Just two tiny tracts of land bisect this imaginary line of 45 degrees south: the remote uninhabited plains and mountains of Argentina and
Chile and the similar, but more hospitable South Canterbury, Central Otago and Fiordland of New Zealand's South Island.
This book is a view through the lens of Austrian-born photographer Arno Gasteiger, with supporting essays by novelist Laurence Fearnley, taking the journey east to west along the 45th parallel.
From the pebble-dashed shores of the South Pacific along the mouth of the Waitaki River where whitebait fisherman wade, we travel inland to the rolling hills of South Canterbury sheep country.
The journey continues into the historic gold fields, the golden granary basket giving way to the new gold of the Central Otago vineyards in the foothills of the Southern Alps. We cross the southern extreme of the mountains, descending through rainforest and into the fiords that break through into the Tasman Sea.
