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Neville Peat is fascinated by wild and remote environments, dynamic landscapes and unique fauna and flora. He has explored much of New Zealand and the South Pacific, from the far-flung tropical atolls of Tokelau, to the snow and ice of the Ross Dependency, Antarctica.
Each year Neville is contracted to be the study leader for American educational tours of New Zealand in the expedition ship, Clipper Odyssey.
Neville is the author of more than 30 books: his writing career spans a quarter of a century. For his series of photographic souvenir books on Dunedin, as well as for his work in the environmental field, he was awarded the inaugural Dunedin Citizen of the Year title in 1994.
Through his words and photographs, and at times in collaboration with other authors and illustrators, he has tried to convey something of the essence of New Zealand: its nature, its geography, its ability to astound and inspire. Most of his books have a Southern New Zealand focus; natural history and geography are major themes. Neville’s many titles include guidebooks, biography and books with nature conservation and environmental concerns. He has won a number of awards and fellowships – the most recent being the Creative New Zealand Michael King Writers’ Fellowship, awarded in 2007.
He is author of the bestselling biography Hurricane Tim: The Story of Sir Tim Wallis. Neville’s version for younger readers, Winging It: The Adventures of Tim Wallis, was published in June 2006 and was a finalist in the 2007 NZ Post Book Awards for Children & Young Adults. An Otago Regional Councillor for nine years (1998-2007), with the last three years in the role of deputy chairperson, Neville is a fifth-generation descendant of Scottish pioneers in Otago. He lives at Broad Bay, Otago Peninsula, with his wife, Mary, and their daughter, Sophora. The family home is fittingly near populations of royal albatross, yellow-eyed penguin, New Zealand (Hooker’s) sea lion and New Zealand fur seal, about which Neville has written many times.