Title Page
Map
Epigraph
Dedication
Introduction
Twenty-six Nephews and Nieces; Six Gigantic Pig Dogs; Three Old Husbands; and The Name We Dare Not Say.
Chapter I
School Inspectors, Handcuffs, and Butterfly Nets; Visiting the Auckland Sewage Ponds; How Freemans Bay Got Its Name; Eating Greasies, and Taking Up.
Chapter II
Rigging the Margery Daw; Loading Our Cannonballs and Gunpowder; Keeping Your Fillings Wet; and “Who’s Wicked Nancy?”
Chapter III
Not Wanting to be Recognised; Spotted by the Prime Minister; The Old Wooden Harbour Bridge and the Net; Eyes in the Back of Aunt Effie’s Head; Returning Masked to the Hauraki Gulf; and Crying Sad Words to the Sea.
Chapter IV
Flying Fish for Breakfast; the Red-Sailed Schooner; Sailing Over the Edge of the World; Maps; and a Gory Story of Pirates, Treasure, and Blood.
Chapter V
Aunt Effie Tells a Highly Unsuitable Story Just Before the Little Ones Go to Bed: “Wicked Nancy and the Island that Sank, Part One”.
Chapter VI
Aunt Effie Tells the Rest of Her Highly Unsuitable Story Just Before the Little Ones Go to Bed: “Wicked Nancy and the Island that Sank, Part Two”.
Chapter VII
Somebody Has a Nightmare; Aunt Effie Thinks She’s Been Poisoned; Captain Flash and His One-Woman Submarine; We Cover our Tracks; and We Smell the Ozone of the Thames.
Chapter VIII
Saturday Night in the Thames; Barrels of Rum; Lighting the Gas Lamps; Thames Mussels and Flatties; What We Saw in the Brian Boru; the Tattooed Man and the Fat Lady; and Counting the Rubbity-Dubs.
Chapter IX
Ghosting Up the Waihou River; the New Kopu Bridge; Cannibal Eels, Mr Firth and His Big Ideas; Getting a Bit on the Nose; the Okauia Springs; and “The Babes in the Woods”.
Chapter X
How Our Bones Went Soft and Bendy in the Hot Water; How We Beat the Scurvy with Spruce Beer; and How We Winched the Margery Daw Uphill and Kedged her Across the Flat Paddocks.
Chapter XI
Mr Firth’s Tower, the Model T Ford, and Banana Bob; “You Mustn’t Call Him that Name”; We Learn How to Strain Tea-leaves through a Moustache; and Alwyn Gives Cheek.
Chapter XII
Uncle Chris and His Magnificent Stanley Steamer; A Cowshed on Wheels; Getting Punished for Giving Cheek; and Swelling the Sawdust in Sausages.
Chapter XIII
Gypsy Day in the Waikato; The Night Uncle Chris’s Bull Ran Through Matamata; Eating Sausages in our Fingers; Drinking Tea Out of the Saucer; Why Mr Firth Built the Tower; Poor Alwyn.
Chapter XIV
Letting the Witches Out; the Sideshow Man and the Phantom Drummer; the Challenge; the Black Spot; Silly Old Bugaboo; Three Gigantic Gorillas; The Starting Gun; and 800 lb p.s.i.
Chapter XV
The Race to the Waterfall; the Phantom Drummer’s Dirty Tricks; Green Liquid Cow-Muck; Cheating and Letting Down Our Tyres; the Flax-Stick Raft, and the Booby-Trapped Bridge.
Chapter XVI
Driving Across the Stringers; More of the Phantom Drummer’s Dirty Tricks; A Bottle of Waipiro; the Runaway Wheel; a Daniel Come to Judgement; “Explain Yourselves!”
Chapter XVII
Aunt Effie Takes Off Her Corsets and Drinks Tea Out of Her Saucer; the Governor-General Gives a Holiday to the Hinuera School; Rustle of Spring; Down Lake Waikato; What We Saw in the Rangitoto Channel.
Chapter XVIII
Why One Tree Hill Sprang a Leak and Rangitoto Island Sank; How We Found Wicked Nancy’s Treasure, Thrashed Aunt Effie’s Three Old Husbands, and Learned About Tourists.
Chapter XIX
How the Prime Minister Gambled Away All Our Taxes; How Aunt Effie Rescued Her, Paid Her Debts, and Made a Profit; How the Prime Minister Learned Her Lesson and Gave Us a Ride in Her Zeppelin.
Chapter XX
Tears of Gratitude; Home on the Rotorua Express; the Rat Trap and the Bugaboo; Frittering Away the Treasure.
Daisy’s Third Glossary
The Deaf Old Author
Also by Jack Lasenby
Copyright