Jeanette Aplin

I found it by chance in the dictionary. ‘Islomania: an obsessive enthusiasm or partiality for islands’. 

I liked that. Perhaps I’m one, I thought – an ‘islomaniac’! Of my adult life I’ve spent six years on Stephens Island, three on Dog Island, and thirty-two on D’Urville Island: more than 40 years on three islands which have shaped my life and attitudes, and probably my looks as well.  

However, I was born in Motueka 1943. My primary schooling took place there and my secondary (undistinguished) at Nelson Girls’. I haven’t traveled far. But, if the world’s resources were not finite, and if I were magically given one thousand years, I’d spend them visiting other small rugged islands – Pitcairn, Skellig Michael, the Shiants, South Georgia. Could I include Madagascar?

Instead, here on ‘our’ island, I read about these others, tingling at their mystery and romance. And, because I love to write and bring back faces from the past, I have written about my own experience of islands so that other people, so inclined, can get that tingly feeling too. 

My books so far: The Lighthouse Keepers Wife (2001), The Lighthouse Children’s Mother (2007), and The Price of Bacon (2011). They can be ordered directly from the publisher, Cape Catley Ltd, or from Page & Blackmore Booksellers of Nelson.

   

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