By Julia Indigo/@juliaindigo
My good friend Matthew Wright’s a new book: Convicts: New Zealand’s Hidden Criminal Past is now available!
I was not surprised to learn that NZ’s first Europeans were mostly (as the Kiwi say) ‘scuzzy’. Why should they have been different than the settlers of other far-flung places? If I recall correctly, going overseas to settle in ‘the colonies’ was a common thing for the criminal class in the past.
New Zealand is my Holy Grail of places to visit. I was close (Sydney) just this past year, but didn’t have the funds for the 2+ hour hop across the Tasman Sea to NZ. I love Matthew’s blog for many reasons – he’s a great writer, and his posts are varied and interesting… and lots of them are about New Zealand! Win!
Not to mention, he’s just a nice guy.
Thank you for your kind words! The weird thing is that a fair number of Kiwis don’t know about this particular part of their past – I was on radio the other day about it and the interviewer ended up recommending people get the book to hunt for names of their ancestors!
Sounds good to me! I guess if it’s not covered in history courses in school, then it obvi didn’t happen. (LOL)
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