Whanganui illustrator and author Desmond Bovey's book on Tongariro National Park has been snapped up by readers within days of publication. Photo / Bevan Conley
An encounter with a kārearea on the Te Araroa trail would be a fleeting moment of wonder for most nature lovers, but for Whanganui artist and illustrator Desmond Bovey, it inspired a book.
The encounter with New Zealand’s native falcon would eventually inspire his recently published book Tongariro National Park, an artist’s field guide.
“I fancifully imagined that the bird was there to keep an appointment with me,” he said.
“It almost seemed to say, ‘What took you so long?’”
The bird was perched on a post a few metres from where Bovey stood but, despite its initial stillness, it flew off while he fumbled with his camera strap.
Walking back to his car, Bovey quickly sketched the bird on an envelope using a biro.
It was enough for him to be able to recreate the scene which would be the first of 400 illustrations and graces the cover of his book, which sold out at its recent launch at Whanganui’s Space Studio & Gallery.
“The next print run is due to arrive in early November,” Bovey said.
“It can be pre-ordered from Paige’s Book Gallery or online on Potton & Burton’s website for readers outside Whanganui.”
He was pleasantly surprised by the enthusiastic attendance at the launch, which was the opening event on September 15 of the 2023 Festival Fringe programme of the Whanganui Literary Festival.
“All the advance copies sold and the reception was amazing,” Bovey said.
Whanganui author and former mayor Hamish McDouall launched the book, and editor Robbie Burton also spoke at the launch.
“Hamish spoke beautifully and so did Robbie. It helped me when I made my speech because I’m not often in crowds that size, and I felt a bit overwhelmed that they were there for my book.”
Although Bovey has been illustrating books for around 30 years. Tongariro National Park, an artist’s field guide is his first foray as a writer.
“I’m reasonably confident as an illustrator, having been paid to illustrate other people’s books over a long time,” he said.
“Writing the text was challenging, and it was good to have an editor who gave me great feedback, and in fact changed very little.”
Early reviews of the book have been positive, and John Daly-Peoples, who reviewed the book for the New Zealand Arts Review, described Bovey’s writing style as “detailed and informative”.
“While this is an artist’s exploration of the park’s plants, animals and landscapes, Bovey is also very knowledgeable about the flora and fauna,” he wrote.
Although the kārearea encounter happened more than a decade ago, Bovey said it planted the seed and the idea for a book had been steadily growing over many visits to Tongariro National Park. He began working on it in earnest around two years ago.
It has been part of his reassimilation into the area where he grew up after spending 30 years overseas, living mainly in France.
“I attended Wanganui Boys’ High [now Whanganui City College] and I studied art at school, but never went to art school.
“After leaving school at 16, I worked as a typesetter at the Whanganui Chronicle for a while.”
Bovey said he had always been confident in his ability to draw, and when he moved to France in 1982, he found work as an illustrator because of his ability to draw well and fast.
On his office wall is an early French commission he completed showing different fish species to illustrate a poster demonstrating the health of the country’s rivers and the prevalence of the different species.
He attended university and eventually became the art director of a communications agency in France.
Returning to Aotearoa in 2011, Bovey had been in the country for less than 24 hours and was driving down from Auckland when he stopped to take a walk and met the falcon.
He wrote about his feelings at the time in his foreword to the book.
“Like everyone who has lived away from their country of birth, I was aware of what I’d left behind, unsure of what I would find on my return. Thirty years in France had left me with a brain crowded with language and culture now largely useless.
“Over the next year, I returned to the park repeatedly, equipped with sketchbooks and pencils. I drew what I saw. The project grew almost organically.”
While his stack of sketchbooks was growing fatter, Bovey thought about the form his book should take; about the uniqueness of the environment and its flora and fauna.
“Nobody would call Tongariro National Park pretty, and I have tried to avoid representing it thus. I have also tried to avoid superlatives – grandiose, majestic, magnificent ... Tongariro is all these, but so are mountains and volcanoes all over the world.”
Bovey noticed he was using a very limited colour palette, and it occurred to him the “broody olives and ochres of upland vegetation, the stony greys of scree and lichen, the light-absorbing green of beech and the startling postcard blues of its lakes” are what give the environment its uniqueness.
“I knew that nobody is really interested in the overseas lives of returnees – the person you have evolved into, or the landscapes you left behind, the deciduous forests, the woodpeckers and squirrels of eastern France. I knew also, obscurely, that that was why I had come here, to Tongariro National Park.
“I was hunting for a landscape to love. I was looking for a way back in.”
Going by the response to his book so far, it seems Bovey has found a way back in. Not only to the landscapes of his birthplace, but also to the hearts and minds of the people who live here.
Bovey’s illustrations will be familiar to those who have studied the discovery trail at Rotokawau Virginia Lake or the trail guides at Bushy Park Tarapuruhi north of Whanganui.
His beautiful illustrations of the birdlife in both places assist visitors to recognise the species that live there.
Liz Wylie is a multimedia journalist for the Whanganui Chronicle. She joined the editorial team in 2014 and regularly covers stories from Whanganui and the wider region. She also writes features and profile stories.