John Thomson’s ‘Voyages and Wanderings’ begin in 1861 when at 17 he sets sail from Greenock, Scotland to start a new life on the other side of the world in Port Chalmers, New Zealand. From his adventures as a ‘new chum’ on the Otago goldfields to his philosophical discussions with Te Whiti-o-Rongomai at Parihaka he reports his experiences with insight and humanity. Then in 1877, along with the crew of the Bencleugh, he is shipwrecked on Macquarie Island. Before their rescue the men spend four winter months in the harsh sub-Antarctic environment where they must work together to ensure their survival or perish. We meet sailors, pirates, whalers, and sealers as John recounts the beauty and danger of life under sail as he journeys around the coast of New Zealand and across the world’s great oceans. In her introduction, Rosy Fenwicke, John's great-great-great niece introduces the reader to the history of Maori in the southern most part of New Zealand up until the arrival from Scotland of the early settlers in the mid-nineteenth century. The New Zealand Company negotiated the sale of what would become Dunedin, the Edinburgh of the South and the deed was signed by twenty five Ngai Tahu chiefs in 1844. Planned on Scottish principles of Presbyterianism, hard work and a focus on universal education, the settlers started arriving en masse in 1848. The Thomsons were one of the many Scottish families who sailed across oceans to make a new home for themselves and their descendents in Otago, New Zealand. This is their story too.