Gathering up her voluminous skirts, luggage and teenage ward Matilda, Louisa Snelson stepped into a Māori canoe on the Manawatū River. It was 1871, and she was about to become the first known European woman to travel into the dense bush of the upper Manawatū-Whanganui region. This was a wilderness located on the lower edge of New Zealand's North Island.
Louisa is the 3x great aunt of Becky
