Mona on Harper Road, looking across the Wilberforce River to Mount Algidus Station. The back of the image has the note ‘typical kea country’.

Macmillan Brown Library–Te Puna Rakahau o Macmillan Brown

View across Mount Algidus Station to the Rakaia River and Mount Arrowsmith.

Macmillan Brown Library–Te Puna Rakahau o Macmillan Brown

Mona Anderson signing copies of her last book, Both Sides of the River, in 1981. Mona published nine books, as well as many articles.

Courtesy of Mona Anderson's family

He aroha ki te ika whenuaLove of the high country

Mona Anderson (1909–2004) first ventured into high-country living when she married Ron Anderson in 1940. He was manager of the 40,000-hectare Mount Algidus station, an isolated farm bound by three great rivers and the mountains in the Selwyn District’s far west.

Mona immersed herself in the world of this wild environment. She had always loved storytelling and writing, and station life was rich in both incidents and characters that she turned into articles for newspapers and magazines and talks on radio.

Her unique view of this world was already popular by the time her first book, A River Rules My Life, was published in 1963. Its 7500 copies sold out in three days, and her career as a best-selling author was launched.

On display

Remington Vertical Adder–22, 1908

On loan from Glentunnel Museum

Typed sheet from Mona Anderson

Selwyn District Libraries

Crossing the Wilberforce

When Mona married Ron Anderson in 1940, Mount Algidus Station could be reached only by crossing the Wilberforce River on horseback or by horse-drawn vehicle. Mona and Ron lived together at Mount Algidus for 33 years.

I first crossed the Wilberforce in a teamster’s dray – first a mile-wide traverse of the river bed and then another six miles to the homestead. No one – bless them all – thought it undignified that the new Missus should arrive so cold and cramped that she had to be lifted from her perch on top of the piano and thawed out in the cookhouse.

Mona Anderson, 'Christmas in the High Country', N.Z. Family Doctor magazine

Mona and Ron Anderson on their wedding day, 1940.

Courtesy of Mona Anderson's family

Later life

Mona was made an MBE for services to literature in 1980 and continued to publish into her early seventies. She lived most of her life in the Selwyn District, settling with Ron in Darfield after leaving Mount Algidus. She eventually moved to Kaikohe in 2001 to live with her niece and died there in 2004, at the age of 95.

Mona had asked for her ashes be scattered on Ryton Station (formerly Lake Coleridge Station), near Mount Algidus. [She] decided she did not want her ashes scattered on Mount Algidus itself; she had crossed the Wilberforce River for the last time in 1974, and did not wish to cross it again.

Tim Shoebridge. 'Anderson, Amy Mona', Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, first published in 2018. Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand

Mona Tarling was born in 1909 and grew up in South Malvern. Her father, William, worked as a potter and he and his brother James built the brick gate posts that still stand at the Glentunnel Library. Here she is with her brother Ted in the 1910s.

Courtesy of Mona Anderson's family