The back of beyond
“My baby kept me busy, and I sewed, knitted, read, and kept the tins full …”
‘Road not recommended,” read the sign. It wasn’t bloody joking. Beyond its plain, wry warning was a narrow, unrelenting snake of a road, a thing of gravel and grief that wound for 32 long kilometres through Skippers Canyon above Otago’s Upper Shotover River.
In spring, there would be washouts and landslips. In winter,
