Island on the Skyline - Great Barrier Island

Great Barrier, by far the largest of the islands of the Hauraki Gulf, lies only fifty-six miles from Auckland city. Endowed with a splendid variety of natrual beauty of coast and hinterland, and rich natrual resources in minerals, timber, farm-produce and fisheries, the Barrier has had a history remarkable to its fluctuating fortunes.

In pre-Pakeha days it witnessed Maori tribal feuds and massacres, and from the earliest Pakeha settlement its people have a hard and lonely life, eternally bedevilled by the difficulties of access to the mainland markets.

Mining, gumdigging, whaling, timbermilling - one by one the main industries flourished briefly then flickered out, farming being the staple livelihood and offering little prospect to the Barrier's children. By the opening of the 1970s the resident population had dwindled to a mere 300 or so.

But latterly easy air access, holiday development, and renewed mineral prospects are opening, swiftly, a much brighter era founded on its natrual wealth of wonderful natrual beauty.

- from the inside cover.

Published by A.H. & A.W. Reed Ltd, 1971.
Ex-library.
Fair secondhand condition. Library stamps and tape residue discolouration on the end-papers front and back. Surface damage front and back on cover.
Dust-jacket shelf worn, with tape marks on the top, front and back. Minor damage to the spine, otherwise intact.