The story of New Zealand's remotest family originally told by its patriarch Robert Long in A Life on Gorge River is back on bookshelves this month in a more feminine form as A Wife on Gorge River.
Mr Long's wife Catherine Stewart hit the publicity trail this week to promote her first, and she insists, only book, which details the trials and triumphs of her family's life off the grid at Gorge River on the coast of South Westland. Their home is roughly halfway between Jackson Bay and Milford Sound and is a two-day, 50km hike from the nearest road.
During a brief stopover in Wanaka this week, Ms Stewart said she hoped her autobiographical account would enjoy the same success as the one written by her husband, which has sold more than 17,000 copies since its release in 2010.
"It was the easiest money I ever made," Mr Long (a.k.a.Beansprout) said.
When Ms Stewart was first approached last year by Mr Long's publisher, Random House, to pen her perspective of life at Gorge River, she was "pretty anti".
She refused to sign a contract committing herself to a deadline or accept an advance for the book until it was finished.
However, a "change of attitude" this year meant the process became "much more fun" and after hundreds of hours spent in front of her computer draining their isolated property's solar-powered batteries, she completed her book and a publishing deal was signed.
In her author's note, Ms Stewart said she would probably never have written the book if it was not for the success of her husband's version "but with so many people asking to hear my side of the story, and the amazing feedback we have had from everyone, it simply had to be done, like most of what I do around here".
The book details Ms Stewarts's early life in Australia before her 1987 meeting with Mr Long - who has lived at Gorge River for more than 30 years, managing the move into the West Coast wilderness, living far away from medical help, living largely off the land and sea, and raising their son Christan and daughter Robin. The children were home-schooled until their final year at secondary schoo,l when they attended Mount Aspiring College, in Wanaka.
The family's inventive ways of finding new uses for old items are also described, like their baby bouncer made from a pair of jeans, a piece of wood, rope and a bungy cord.
Ms Stewart said that despite the publication of her biographical book being her "first chance to earn money in 20 years", she would not write another one, and a third helping of the story would have to be authored by their children, or her husband.
"If I get offered an opportunity, I will," Mr Long said.
Although both children have now left the nest, the couple have no intention of giving up their secluded slice of paradise at Gorge River.
"I can go anywhere else in the world but that's where my mana comes out," Mr Long said.
"It becomes who you are," Ms Stewart agreed.
Mr Long will join his wife in promoting her book throughout New Zealand over the next 10 days, including appearances in Dunedin on September 24 and Wanaka on September 27.
