Book Review: Kākāpō Keeper by Gay Buckingham

Published by One Tree Press

According to the publisher, Kākāpō Keeper is intended for children and young adult readers, but Gay Buckingham’s book about Richard Henry’s attempt to save the kākāpō from extinction during the 1890s will appeal to a much wider readership. Defying genre description, it is a novel based on real people, an illustrated story we all should know.

Written as fictionalised diary entries by one of Henry’s young assistants, 14-year-old Andrew Burt, the novel describes remote and rugged Fiordland where live the native, ground-dwelling, “fern-green, punga-brown, moss-russet, leaf-amber, rain-grey, sunlight-gold” birds predated by newly arrived killers: ferrets, stoats, weasels and rats.

But there is more to the book than Fiordland’s flora and fauna. The unpredictable weather, inspiring geography, isolation – and vicious sandflies – are all part of the story of a doggedly independent young man, Andrew, with a quick mind, acute sense of humour, endless energy and enthusiasm (and reluctance to tackle some tasks like gardening and guano gathering!) who comes to love the area. He faces challenges, is helped by a mentor, experiences crisis, finds truth and his own true self, then returns to his own society a wiser, more complete person.

Reference to contemporary events grounds the story in time and country.

The book incorporates historic and contemporary photos, pen and ink drawings in the style of a Victorian ‘naturalist’, and Andrew’s personal notebook of jottings, sketches, correspondence – and complaints.

A highly recommended read - Chris Carrell

Q1 Gay, you’ve been fascinated by Fiordland for decades. What lead you to write this story?
Fiordland’s a physically remote and mostly still-pristine area. Captain Cook stayed in Dusky Bay (as he named it) for more than six weeks on his second voyage, exploring, charting and naming much of the sound. It became the site of some of the earliest European ventures in Aotearoa. What’s not to fascinate! I would love all young New Zealanders to appreciate the place, its history and its wildlife!

Q2 Why did you use Richard Henry’s assistant as your point of view?
I wanted to write the story as an adventure, to make the reader aware of the danger and isolation Henry and his assistants faced and feel its immediacy. It seemed the best way to do that was write in the first person, as I could include aspirations and feelings from Andrew’s perspective. And of course, to the modern reader, a youthful, impatient protagonist is more relatable than an ageing, careful, Victorian naturalist.

Q3 What is it about Richard Henry that caught your attention?
Many years ago I read John and Susanne Hill’s splendidly sensitive biography, Richard Henry of Resolution Island, and ever since have nursed the image of a shy, diffident, gentle man, perhaps lacking some social skills, transferring the love he would like to have given a wife and family to all birds, but kākāpō and kiwi especially.

Q4 Some drawings make me grimace: the stoat, the weasel, the ferret, distinct and dreadful threats. How to recognize three different rat prints in the sand. And our favourite birds: kiwi, kākāpō, kākā, etc…What was the thinking behind your choices of illustration?
All members of the mustelid family are deadly and efficient killers, suspicious and clever, difficult to locate and kill, but recognition of their tracks and spoors can help eradication efforts. Many people don’t realise we have three different rat species in Aotearoa, so raising awareness of their habitat and habits can lead to identification and assist in the journey towards Predator Free New Zealand today.

Inclusion of birds – information, illustrations, photos –was mostly just an indulgent pleasure – ah yes! and it can help the reader in identification . . .

Q5 Why would a young man agree to live in a desolate place, with an unknown single-minded old man and dog, where food is damper, fish and penguin eggs, and rats eat your bootlaces – all for the sake of birds? It must have been for more than adventure?
We don’t know. However, those were the years of the first depression, so any paid employment may have seemed attractive. In real life Andrew’s father had been a ranger for the Otago Acclimatisation Society but died the year before Andrew went to Dusky Sound – perhaps the fatherless son was recommended.

Or did Henry appoint him? After all, Andrew’s wages were paid by Henry himself, out of his own salary. Andrew may not have suspected how isolated they would be, the privations caused by supplies being delivered only every three months, the harshness of the climate, the ferocity of the rats.

Alternatively, there may have been a degree of glamour in the thought of going to a exotic, faraway place for a celebrated cause. Andrew is called to adventure.

In reality, Henry had four different ‘apprentices’ of various aptitude and calibre. For the sake of clarity in the narrative, I rolled these into one.

Q6 The big question is, did they succeed?
In their own minds they would have regarded their work as a failure but the knowledge gained from Henry’s work and meticulous notes were crucial almost 100 years later when conservationists successfully saved the very last of the kākāpō species from imminent extinction.