My next newsletter subscriber story is in part inspired by a true story that I read many years ago. A man emigrated from England to New Zealand, and then sent for his wife and children to join him. However, when his wife arrived in Dunedin, New Zealand, her husband was not there to meet the ship.

The place he had settled was 120 or more miles away, through rough country trails, in Southland. Our intrepid wife was not defeated, however. She purchased a wheelbarrow, loaded her luggage and the younger children into it, and set off.

History records that she joined him on the farm he was carving out of the wilderness, went on to have more children, and lived to a ripe old age, matriarch of a clan of children, grandchildren and greatgrandchildren.

The enduring memory I have of her, though, is of the woman who did not allow a small matter of four (or was it five) children and 120 miles to stop her, but simply looked for a solution and put it into action. They were tough women, those pioneers.

Maggie’s wheelbarrow tells the story not of a pioneer but of another type of woman, equally tough–a soldier’s wife who followed the drum with her husband. When my Maggie arrives in Southhampton with two children and a long way to go, she buys a wheelbarrow. I hope my subscribers enjoy her story as much as I enjoyed the original.