Long-time love of wildlife drives writer’s book ideas
Author and Taranaki Forest and Bird chairwoman Janet Hunt tells Helen Harvey about her love for creatures and the environment.
Janet Hunt caught an injured sparrow once. She sent it from Waiheke Island to Auckland on the ferry and paid for a taxi to take it to the Bird Rescue Centre on the North Shore.
‘‘I can’t believe I did that,’’ Hunt, 66, says laughing.
‘‘I was living on Waiheke and I was living down by one of the estuaries and walking a lot and constantly aware of the amazing world we live in.’’
Hunt, an award-winning author, grew up in Inglewood on a dairy farm at the base of Mt Taranaki.
‘‘Sometimes Dad would take us up into the bush and I would toddle along behind and imagine myself as a scout going through the bush.’’
She left Taranaki when she went to university, but returned to Inglewood in 2010 and for the last three years has been chairwoman of North Taranaki Forest and Bird.
Seven of her eight books have been about wildlife. But while Hunt was interested in geography and biology as a youngster, she had taken the wrong subjects at Inglewood High School to study them at university, so she did a degree in English Literature followed by teacher training.
By the late 1980s she was teaching in Auckland and decided she needed a change, so did a desktop publishing course for three months.
‘‘I was at the beginning of the whole computer thing and because I had been a teacher I ended up teaching at AUT - graphic design and computer technology.
‘‘When I was teaching night classes I was explaining to people this is a mouse, this is a keyboard, this is an escape key - people were so unused to technology at that point.’’
Back then AUT was still AIT and staff were upskilling to get university status, so Hunt did a masters degree in English Literature.
Her thesis was on Hone Tuwhare’s poetry.
‘‘I bought a collection of his poems, Deep River Talk, and I anticipated we would talk about that in the class, but we didn’t do it.’’
Afterwards Hunt had a dream that she wrote about Tuwhare. Then she did some research and discovered no one else had written about him.
‘‘So, he became my subject. My supervisor said ‘go and meet Hone’, so I went to Kaka Point, which is south of Dunedin on the coast.’’
That set off a train of events which ended up with her first book, which was all about the poet. ‘‘It did all right,’’ she says.
‘‘Nothing in New Zealand is a super bestseller.
‘‘It’s difficult. I do writing and I do graphic design, which is doing things like maps for people, diagrams, sometimes layout for books. The graphic design gives me more money, but when I’m working on a book I have to put that on hold a little bit, so I kind of lose traction in that area.’’
However, her second book - A Bird in the Hand: Keeping New Zealand Wildlife Safe - did really well.
It came about after Hunt had finished her Masters and was working at Random House publishers.
A book had been written about the zoo and the relationship between the animals and the keepers. ‘‘And they wanted one about the bush - creatures in the bush and the people who looked after them.
‘‘I was doing a little rave about bird rescue. I thought it was pretty cute, all those little birds being rescued, so they said do you want to do it? So, that is what set me off on the whole natural history kind of gig really.’’
The book became about endangered wildlife of New Zealand, she says.
’’It was a kids’ book and won the New Zealand Post Book of the Year award in 2004. It did incredibly well.’’
In 2008, her book Wetlands of New Zealand: A Bitter-Sweet Story
won the Environment Award and the Montana Medal for NonFiction at the Montana New Zealand Book Awards.
‘‘That’s the big one. That’s the absolute peak of my career.’’
Her latest book is called How to Mend a Kea.
It’s about Wildbase hospital, which is part of veterinarian complex at Massey University.
‘‘It is New Zealand’s only wildlife hospital. If any very rare birds get hurt or sick they get sent to the wildlife hospital. I spent a week watching what they were doing in the clinic. It’s not just birds, it could be tuatara - New Zealand wildlife.’’
The story, which includes a chapter titled How to Detox a Whio - it had lead poisoning - is aimed at children aged from eight to 12 years.
It’s called How To Mend a Kea because Hunt wanted to follow a bird from when it arrived in the hospital. But her kea doesn’t have a name.
‘‘We try not to - as a wildlife writer you have to try really hard not to humanise the creatures, not to make them into people with feathers. The hospital is same; they don’t give them names.’’
Instead the kea was known as patient number 78129. When he was captured his leg was on a right angle, Hunt said.
He was sent across Lake Manapouri on a ferry, driven to Te Anau, where he was assessed, before he went to Queenstown and was flown to Christchurch then Palmerston North.
The kea had reconstructive surgery on his leg and is now back home, presumably living happily ever after, she says.
‘‘Being a kea he was a troublesome patient. You know what their reputation is like. When I was there he was in this display room. They had to take him out because he started stripping the linings off the windows.’’
Once the book is launched on October 9, Hunt is contemplating retiring and spending time in her garden..
But then again she might try her hand at fiction - she writes the occasional short story and has a poem in the Ronald Hugh Morrison awards this year.
And she has an idea for another book - so retirement might have to wait.