NZ History

The surveyor Robert Park arrived in New Zealand in 1839. He became a notable figure in New Zealand's public life and has an important place in the history of surveying in New Zealand and a place in the history of New Zealand art. He also fathered three families. In Mungo Park's Trunk, Nola Easdale teases apart the complexities of Robert Park's personal life and traces the histories of his children and their children in turn. In the course of doing so she also solves the puzzle of how a trunk that once belonged to the great Scottish West African explorer, Mungo Park, ended up in the possession of a Maori family in Petone, New Zealand. This is a fascinating history of a complex family that casts revealing light on many curious aspects of New Zealand's 19th and 20th century history.