Title: Open country muster : people and places out of town, a fifth selection /
Authors: Henderson, James H.
Publisher: A. H. & A. W. Reed,
Year: 1974
Subjects: Country life New Zealand
Abstract: Few radio programmes have so avid a following that they generate a book reproducing their content, yet this is not the first but the fifth collection of material culled by Jim Henderson from his ever popular NZBC programme, "Open Country". The four preceding books have had to be reprinted, such is the demand for them. So here we have Open Country Muster, following Open Country (1965), Return to Open Country (1967), Open Country Calling (1969), and Our Open Country (1971). As before, the variety of topics is astonishing: to name only a few of them, there's snowraking for starving sheep; Chinese goldminers; horses galore; swaggers and schoolteachers; giant kauris and pesky bantam fowls; a moonshine whisky-still; the Tarawera disaster; life in a Forest Service lookout - and in a lighthouse; rural bakeries and cheese factories. To cut it short - a vivid lively tapestry woven from the strong bright threads of New Zealand country life. Smell the woodsmoke, hear the birds sing - and the gossips gossip! The flavour is authentic. Few if any of the contributors would claim to be professional writers. For the most part they are countrymen and countrywomen who listened to "Open Country" at 1pm every Sunday of the year, and decided to offer Mr Henderson their own remembrances. The result is clear, colourful writing, devoid of artifice or affectation; it's friendly talk, open-country talk, talk for a winter fireside or for the shady side of the woolshed on a summer's day... Jim Henderson, the "onlie begetter" of the radio programme, brings his own inimitable touch to the arrangement of this, the fifth and maybe the very best, of his Open Country series. -- Dust Jacket.