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  • Published: 20 September 2013
  • ISBN: 9781775534570
  • Imprint: RHNZ Adult ebooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 276

The Wharf at Waterfall Bay



The inspiring and entertaining story of a determined young woman alone, who overcame the isolation of her family farm to build a flourishing business.

The inspiring and entertaining story of a determined young woman alone, who overcame the isolation of her family farm to build a flourishing business.

When Lisa Harper returned to her family’s farm at the head of remote Mahau Sound, in the Marlborough Sounds, after years overseas working as a scientist, she showed all the pluck and entrepreneurial streak of the earlier generations of women in her family.

The isolation wasn’t going to deter her from starting a new business. After all, her grandmother and mother were made of stern stuff, coping with running stock, keeping an orchard, securing a commercial fishing quota, making cheese, operating a guest house, home-schooling children and only getting to ‘town’ on a treacherous road every six weeks.

Eight years later Lisa was an award winning traditional cheesemaker and a Nuffield Fellowship winner when she had to make a major decision to wrench herself from Mahau Sound Bay to secure her future.

The Wharf at Waterfall Bay is a story of enterprise and determination, of a young woman determined to fulfill her dream.

  • Published: 20 September 2013
  • ISBN: 9781775534570
  • Imprint: RHNZ Adult ebooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 276

About the author

Lisa Harper

Lisa Harper, author of the memoir The Wharf at Waterfall Bay, is an award-winning businesswoman and cheesemaker. Lisa’s life-threatening respiratory illness led the family to relocate to a remote farm on the Marlborough Sounds when she was a little girl. After obtaining a Bachelor of Science (Honours) degree in Botany from Victoria University of Wellington, she completed at PhD at Lincoln University, under Professor Alison Stewart, director of the Bio-Protection Research Centre at Lincoln, after which she worked for two years in biosecurity in the United Kingdom and Europe. On returning to the remote family farm on the Marlborough Sounds, in 2003, she established a business making locally-influenced heritage cheeses, under the brand Sherrington Grange. In 2011 Lisa won the Rural Women New Zealand ‘Enterprising Rural Women’ award, and the following year was awarded a prestigious Nuffield Fellowship to study overseas.

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