Review: Bushline - A memoir
In his deeply personal memoir Bushline, Robbie Burton reflects on his early life, his adventures in the outdoors and how this interest has been interwoven into his career at the helm of Potton & Burton, one of New Zealand’s largest independent publishers.
“Mine was an accidental genesis.” Robbie Burton starts his memoir with these words to describe his conception. But they equally aptly describe how he became a publisher and how the man behind so many of New Zealand’s iconic landscape and nature books came to publish his own story.
Bushline – a memoir is a series of rich, gentle recollections that begin with a sunny Nelson childhood, despite the early death of his father. A growing passion for the outdoors, and for skiing and tramping, gave the diffident flute-playing college student’s life a focus. Friendships and a sense of adventure in his late teens and early twenties took him into the South Island mountains, culminating in a three-month traverse of the Southern Alps, from Milford Sound to St. Arnaud.
Involvement with the nascent conservation movement and the Native Forest Action Council came next. His was a behind-the-scenes presence, made possible because “I … found an old portable typewriter and started hammering away, tea towel over my hands, until I was a passable touch-typist.” An out-of-the blue suggestion that he write a tramping guide to New Zealand’s national parks was a confidence booster for the university drop-out, that showed him that he had the discipline to see a project through to completion.
Next came a seven-year stint as a community art worker that lasted until 1990 when friend and fellow adventurer ‘Craig Potton asked me to lunch.’ The conservationist and photographer wanted Burton to manage a fledgling publishing company after ‘frustration with an unreliable publisher and impatience with a lack of attention to detail’ (the cover photo of Potton’s first major book was printed upside-down) led to him deciding he would prefer to publish his own books.
Burton describes the accidental genesis of what would become a more than 30-year career in the book industry as a ‘step into the void,’ but ‘in the rich tradition of New Zealand DIY … I began the slow arduous process of teaching myself to become a publisher.’ He has had an unusually hands-on involvement with the book production process, from selecting images through to layout and quality control – and he has also had to come to grips with being in business and managing a company.
During time, Craig Potton Publishing - now Potton and Burton - has won many awards while Burton has developed ongoing relationships with a growing A-list of contributors, leading outdoors photographers and writers who appreciate his ethos of good design and keeping beautiful books in print for as long as possible, the latter contrasting with the more usual publishing strategy that gives most books a short commercial shelf life.
Burton writes of himself that, ‘I have always known, with unequivocal certainty, that my story lies here in Aotearoa.’ The same is true of his publishing business: he produces primarily non-fiction books about New Zealand for the Kiwi market. ‘I know first-hand how fragile and precious the New Zealand publishing ecosystem is. … Playing a small part in … giving space for New Zealand voices to flourish has been a privilege.’
In Bushline, Burton pays tribute to some of those with whom he has collaborated, stressing that collaboration has been a key work ethos and one that has led to rich friendships. And full disclosure here, I am name-checked as my own natural history books have found a comfortable place on the Potton and Burton book shelf.
Another writer whose works might seem a less conventional fit is investigative journalist Nicky Hager and his ‘potent, usually red-hot subject matter.’ Burton writes that publishing Hager’s ‘risky’ books is about ‘speaking truth to power.’
Just as the growing Potton and Burton catalogue spans many subjects, including poems and even the occasional recipe book, Bushline covers a lot of ground with ease. It is a memoir that shares with other Potton and Burton books a strong sense of belonging and of place; as Burton eloquently puts it ‘my sense of who I am and the culture from which I come is completely shaped by the bedrock of place.’
Much of it is very personal, including a later-in-life love story and fatherhood, to philosophical reflections on being in the outdoors and on his mother’s death. This intimacy is not surprising – when Burton began writing it was for himself and his family. Its publication for a wider audience is ultimately as fortuitous as his career.
Reviewed by Alison Ballance
