Jill Brasell

I enjoy reading the My Story series especially when they have a New Zealand theme and this book was no exception. This is a story of a family divided whereby Mum wishes to break free and find herself by living an alternative lifestyle, while the dad wants to live the New Zealand dream of a house and picket fence whereby you work 9 - 5 and your home is your haven. The mother, Celia decides that she cannot cope with the drudgery of day to day routine and decides to join a group of like minded friends to live communally. This is a time in New Zealand when manufacturing was at its peak and women were joining the workforce to supplement family incomes. This brought about a shift from male dominated decision making to woman aiming to have more say, thus causing a lot of conflict in some homes and a breakdown in family life. In the 1970s the NZ Labour government, under Norman Kirk, established a fund to allow the establishment of ohu, a commune-based farming co-operative, these communes were scattered throughout NZ and were often unproductive land or Maori land that was not being worked. Celia (the mother now known as Sky) and her friends applied for an ohu and were successful in getting one which they aptly named Aquarius. Being an older reader I was able to have my own historical flashbacks to the naming of the ohu and found my self singing and laughing along as I was reading. 'When the moon is in the 7th house and Jupiter aligns with Mars, peace will guide our planets and love will steer the stars, this is the dawning of the age of Aquarius'. It is important to understand that the world was just fighting back about the Vietnam War and it was a time of 'Make Love not War' and the nation was in a 'Peace' mode. My dad thought my older sister (15) had gone mad as she tie dyed her clothes, painted a climbing flower on her shirts and leg, a daisy on her face and began wearing a tie around her head; these trends are portrayed in this book and tells of 11 year old Starshine (previously known as Estelle) is whisked off by her mother against her wishes to live in the Aquarius ohu. Commune living is very different - it definitely has its bad points but there are good points too, and Starshine comes to love many aspects of her new life. Then her father comes to claim her back. She runs away from her father's home and returns to Aquarius and this begins a custody tug-of-war with her mother. Eventually the ohu members seek differing paths and Celia returns to her husband and they aim to reconcile past differences. What I liked about this book was that it guided me to research ohu and find out about them, how some fazed out, some went on to become extreme cults and how others went onto become community gardens back in town areas.… (mere)