We warmly invite you to the book launch of Overland to the Island: New Zealand to Skye with six kids in a homemade house-truck by Hannah Bulloch.
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, the family embarked on an extraordinary adventure around the world. 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.
5:30pm–7:00pm
Thursday 27 November 2025
University Book Shop Otago
378 Great King Street
Dunedin
All welcome! Kai and beverages provided
Please RSVP to publicity@otago.ac.nz
Click here for the Facebook event page