Tough Country

Tall tales of bushmen, bulldozers and back-country blokes

'It was the mid-1970s and I was about eight, I thought it was completely normal for your old man to pull out a high-powered deer-hunting rifle and fire it through the kitchen door from the breakfast table...'

In the 1970s and 80s, Barry Bellamy was a fair old bushman, traversing the back-country from Hawke's Bay to the far north in a blue ex-airforce Land Rover. His son Mike would join him as he took up work, wherever he could get it....