A River Rules My Life
- Kirsten Edwards
- Dec 15, 2022
- 4 min read
Updated: Nov 6
Author: Mona Anderson
From the inside front and back flaps:
"The river was my Rubicon. I had heard stories about the terrible Wilberforce: so many people had been drowned in it. I tried not to think about the time when I would have to cross it. But the road had come to an end at a corrugated iron shed. Somewhere beyond it, I knew we would find the station, Mount Algidus, a green, high-country oasis amid the snow and tussock..."
So Mona Anderson, newly married to the manager of Mount Algidus Station, came to her high-country home.
" Before I was married, I knew nothing about station life. I could have distinguished between a cow and a sheep, and I could sometimes tell a lamb chop from a pork chop, but that was the limit of my experience, and I was determined to keep my ignorance to myself."
This book is the story of Mona Anderson's twenty-three years in one of the most isolated sheep farms in New Zealand, a 100,000-acre station that occupies almost all the country between two great rivers and which runs from their junction back to the Main Divide of the Southern Alps. Almost at her front door, the Wilberforce River runs in carelessly braided, thigh-deep channels or as a treacherous, raging flood. When the river level is down the folk of Mount Algidus can reach or leave the station by crossing on horseback or heavy truck; when the river carries rain or thawed snow it fills the wide riverbed, destroys known fords, shifts its gravel banks and channels, and gives warning of danger or death to those who, in follow or of necessity, essay to cross. But although the river rules, this is not a book of death and danger. It is the story of an isolated little community of homestead folk, shepherds, cooks, and cowboys; of the good neighbours (the nearest are seven miles down and across the river) of the Rakaia Gorge; of the working year with the merino flock; and of the host of characters and experiences that have marked Mrs Anderson's years at Mount Algidus, and which are recorded with vivacity, honest and humour. This is the first women's book in the high country, which is a distinction in itself, but it is by no means merely a "woman's book". A river Rules My life has notable qualities in its observation and interpretation of back-station life, and Mrs Anderson writes with warm appreciation of the men and women who have shared her life at Mount Algidus, and whose comings and goings have been governed by the ice-cold Wilberforce River."
Though not written for children, I picked this up after falling in love with Anderson’s Home is the High Country: My Small Animal Friends. A quick search revealed her breakout memoir, A River Rules My Life, a New Zealand bestseller that turned her into a household name. One glance at a bookstore copy and I was hooked.
Mona arrives as a city bride at Morven Hills, a remote high-country station hemmed in by the unpredictable Wilberforce River. She learns sheep farming from the ground up; crossing raging torrents on horseback, cooking for shearers, and enduring isolation that makes once-a-year grocery trips feel like expeditions.
Anderson’s prose is as clear and bracing as mountain air. You’ll devour chapters: the terror of fording the Wilberforce, the rhythm of mustering with bay horses and teamsters, the endless baking for hungry hands. Characters leap off the page: gruff shepherds, loyal dogs, and Ron, her steadfast husband.
Spanning decades, the book charts a vanishing world:
1920s: Mail once a week, groceries once a year.
1960s: Tractors replace horses; a radio crackles with news; an airstrip lands supplies.
War, earthquake, blizzards, floods; hardship is constant, yet Mona’s lens is warm. She lingers on lambing seasons, station dances, the scent of manuka smoke, and yes, so much cooking.
The Book is a substantial work spanning over 200 pages, enriched with evocative black-and-white images throughout and featuring a helpful station layout map (best paired with Google Earth for added clarity). First published in 1963 and republished in 2017, it has sold over 100,000 copies, cementing its status as a true Kiwi classic readily found in libraries and second-hand shops.
I highly recommend this interview on RNZ by Harry Broad. It's only 5 minutes long.
Read more about who Mona Anderson is here.
Mona Anderson’s A River Rules My Life is essential New Zealand reading; a love letter to resilience, community, and the high country that captures a disappearing way of life with warmth and unflinching honesty. Recommended for older teens and adults, its length and vocabulary reward mature readers, while the occasional over-imbibing station hand is the only minor note of concern in an otherwise wholesome, captivating memoir.
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