I got there a little early and found not just a stunningly designed restaurant but several large homeware stores with an incredible range of goods and amazing vegetable gardens. They hadn’t told me about this when I phoned!
“Oh, Dot started that by growing and drying flowers when farming wasn’t too good in the 1980s,” Neil, Dot’s husband, said.
I knew there must be more to the story and have finally found it in Dot – Queen of Riverstone Castle (Random House RRP: $39.99).
From her upbringing on a Northland dairy farm as one of five daughters to her OE in the United States and Europe in the late 1960s, to marrying Neil, then a Northland dairy farmer, and their shift south to the Waitaki Valley in 1983, this is a revealing account of growing up and dairying in New Zealand. It’s a story that’s simply told, as if Dot has offered you a cup of tea and plate of her scones (the recipe is in the book), smothered with her rhubarb and ginger jam, and is telling it to you herself.
But it is Dot’s story, and if you want to know how the family went from milking 450 cows on river stones with border dyke irrigation to more than 4000 cows today, maybe Neil will have to write a book himself. Instead, Dot tells of growing vegetables for her son and daughter-in-law’s restaurant, building chook houses and the problems with pet goats. There’s also a chapter on her and Neil’s many overseas travels to Africa, China, Europe, Australia and the US.
And then there’s the castle. Yes, she’s building a castle to live in at Riverstone, on an island, and it will have dungeons and secret passageways and turrets. The grandchildren will be able to kayak in the lake.
A believer of dreaming big and working hard to make those dreams happen, Dot is an inspiration. Dot – Queen of Riverstone Castle is not just an engaging read, but testament to a life philosophy and the joys of family, good food, cows, gardening and travel for which she deserves our thanks.
