A qualified engineer with a gift for storytelling, Mrs Wrigglesworth has built a reputation for bringing New Zealand’s industrial and structural heritage to life through her writing.
Her first two books explored the history of engineering in Whanganui and Dunedin.
The third and newest in the series turns its focus to the wider Otago region, including the Clutha district.
Local highlights in Take Me With You 3 include the Balclutha Bridge, Milton wool mill, Benhar Pottery works, Nugget Point lighthouse, Tuapeka Mouth punt, and Inch Clutha’s historic chicory kiln.
Flat, fertile land and access to Balclutha’s railway line made Inch Clutha ideal for chicory, a relative of dandelion.
About five tonnes of ground green chicory root was required for a single tonne of the kiln-dried product, used for medicinal purposes, flavouring and as a coffee substitute.
It was first grown on the Balclutha river island by the Baird family in the 1870s for Gregg’s coffee factory in Dunedin, which moved its chicory roasting operation to the Inch Clutha farm in 1882.
One of the country’s earliest reinforced concrete structures, the kiln closed in 1956 and is the New Zealand’s last surviving example.
Mrs Wrigglesworth said her career as a writer began when engineering firms asked her to create material about projects including the Transmission Gully motorway the layman could understand and enjoy.
"The impetus was about getting ordinary people to understand how things work and what is in their landscape that they walk past every day and they don’t realise," Mrs Wrigglesworth said.
