Journeys into the Mystery

'I was dissatisfied with the history of New Zealand we were taught at school... I always felt short-changed. I couldn't understand why the Maori accounts were not an accepted part of the past, part of a truth that revealed a deeper history.'
Thus speaks Gary Cook, who has made many intriguing journeys into this land, its sacred places and its hidden past.
Open to all that might unfold, he writes, 'My journey into our past has taken me into the land in ways that have surprised me. I have touched the stone and the waters and in turn been touched by them. I have traced the outline of ancient carved symbols with the tips of my fingers and been moved. I have been taken beyond the story to the spirit that is of this land, of its past, of its many peoples of yesteryear, and now... Thus do the ancestors speak and thus are they honoured when we stand still and listen.'

This is not a hard-edged history. But it does cut deep, for it walks the margins where the truth so often abides.