Laurie Gough: Kite Strings of the Southern Cross

By BARBARA HARRIS

From a log cabin in the snowy depths of a Canadian winter, Laurie Gough recalls her paradise found on the Fijian island of Tavenui.

Jolted awake one night she becomes fearful - not of being in the woods on her own - but that time is stealing away memories of her globetrotting. She picks up a pen and the words spill on to the paper. Gough has an advantage in that she's been a journal junkie all her life, even as a kid keeping a diary.

As readers we can be glad she spooked herself into action, because this marked the beginning of Kite Strings of the Southern Cross. (The title, by the way, comes from her first, disappointed sighting of the cross that to her looks more like a kite.)

These are mainly impressions of her 18 months in the South Pacific and Asia, although Gough does manage to sneak in a race through America with a souvenir-collecting, pot-bellied, stumpy biker, and a tale of magic carpets in Morocco.

Her youth screams out from the pages in the best possible way. She was in her early 20s when she lived in Tavenui - trusting, unashamedly greedy to touch, taste and smell everything. It makes for a great page-turner.

She takes us to Tavenui before Fiji had TV, before the dark clouds of political coups gathered.

Gough is a visual writer - the image of the "Giant Aunts" floating like starfish on the water is one I shall never forget. At times she seems wiser than her years: " ... he sang his wife to sleep every night for 55 years, then counted stars out the window. These things he won't do again because he's been cut loose from the world of people and fish, coconuts and radios. I wonder who will count the stars with him gone."

She pops over to New Zealand and spends three months here. It's always fascinating to see how others see us, and for Gough it's a love/hate relationship.

Her seemingly effortless writing - she doesn't get bogged down with too many facts - will no doubt make her a new star in the Southern Cross.

* Touring New Zealand by car? Driving Scenic New Zealand by Dave Chowdhury (Craig Potton Publishing, $29.95) is a spiral-bound, 144-page book with colour road maps.

It's a combination of driving guidebook and road atlas that offers a practical guide to touring the country.

Bantam Books

$26.95