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Waimakariri Heritage

Vanessa Croft, Australian-born historical fiction writer of "Where In All The World", who is now proud to call Waimakariri home, 2025

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Description"Hello, I am Vanessa Croft.
Woman, daughter, sister, aunt. Mother, wife, friend, manager. Like most people I wear a variety of hats, literal and metaphorical, and many of them simultaneously. Most days is a kaleidoscope of switching hats!
The most fundamental of them is being a human, I suppose, a hat I wear subconsciously. We all do. Sometimes differences between us are the reminder we need that being a human is our foremost equalizing identity.
I moved with my husband to Waimakariri in 2005, from Queensland. We are both Australian, but New Zealand felt like a natural fit and we have never once regretted it. Waimakariri – quiet as it was then – allowed a lifestyle we could never have accessed in Australia, either financially or geographically. Our home is an idyll, and it is a rare privilege to own a small slice of this beautiful Eden.
We bought an historic homestead which is a constant source of humble pride and inspiration. My latest hat is that of fiction author, and although I’ve always been a writer, it took my life in Waimakariri to turn that dream into a published reality.
The original owners of our property - who turned the century there - don’t haunt us, and yet they’re never far away. I see the handiwork of the matriarch everywhere. She made me reflect on what life must have been like in North Canterbury so long ago, when the property grew prize-winning shires and a white rose garden. Acres of barley and oats, wool and wheat. Who knows how many pink-cheeked, barefooted kids played under the big, old oak. From that idle wondering came several historical novels, and a layman passion for researching Canterbury’s colonial past. This country wants to grow things, even curiosity. Even stories.
The homestead was always meant to be a legacy, and now it is again. Waimakariri is a place that my kids know as home, and are proud to call it that. It will be here for them always, their undiscovered roads may ever lead back here – a little slice of heaven." Vanessa Croft
CreatorShelley Topp, photo journalistTypeImageDate2025KeywordsHumans of WaimakaririHistoryWriterWaimakaririUse RestrictionsCreative Commons Attribution - Noncommercial 4.0 International LicenseGeolocationnot specifiedMenuPeople | ArtsPeople | Culture & Community

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CollectionHumans of Waimakariri People of the WaimakaririPersonVanessa CroftPlacenot specifiedEventnot specifiedOrganisationnot specified

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Vanessa Croft, Australian-born historical fiction writer of "Where In All The World", who is now proud to call Waimakariri home, 2025

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WaimakaririHeritage

Waimakariri Heritage

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Vanessa Croft, Australian-born historical fiction writer of "Where In All The World", who is now proud to call Waimakariri home, 2025

Waimakariri
Heritage