Overland to the Island

Overland to the Island tells the lively and frequently jaw-dropping story of Alan and Joan MacLeod’s 1963 journey from Dunedin to the Isle of Skye in Scotland with their six children, aged five to fifteen. Alan MacLeod – a Dunedin farmer and former WWII artilleryman – whose grandparents emigrated from Skye to New Zealand in the 1860s, had decided it was time to reconnect the family with their clan ancestry and revisit old haunts from his days fighting in the Italian campaign. Travelling in a homemade house-truck called Holdfast – built by Alan using a Ford tractor engine, a city bus cab and the chassis of a WWII armoured scout car – the family embarked on an extraordinary adventure around the world. Apart from Alan, none of them had ever left New Zealand’s South Island. Wending overland through territories and cultures unfamiliar to most Westerners in 1963, the MacLeods’ expedition attracted much media attention, but the complete story has not been told until now. Written by their granddaughter Hannah Bulloch, Overland to the Island is both an engrossing tale about a trek through a 1960s world since reshaped by politics and technology, and the author’s quest to understand the emotional and personal impacts of this arduous undertaking. Drawing on family conversations, letters and diaries, Bulloch reflects on her grandfather’s motivations for such a risky adventure, her grandmother’s resilience under pressure, and the lifelong effects on the children. Illustrated, with maps, and beautifully written, Overland to the Island is the remarkable story of a bold, eccentric and somewhat ramshackle family pilgrimage, navigating everything from stressed family dynamics to life-threatening danger with a combination of fortitude, luck, naivety, Kiwi ingenuity, and – always – by making friends along the way.

Author Biography

Hannah Bulloch was named the 2017 Emerging Writer in Residence for the University Book Shop (Otago) and the Robert Lord Writers’ Cottage Trust, and was a 2018 Writer in Residence at the Robert Lord Writers’ Cottage. She holds a PhD in social anthropology and a master’s degree in creative writing, and works as a social anthropologist at the University of Otago. Overland to the Island is her first creative non-fiction book. Hannah lives in Otepoti Dunedin.