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The Tail End of the Donkey: A Kiwi Summer Memory

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A whimsical storybook illustration of three girls riding a donkey on a New Zealand farm at sunset. The youngest girl is sitting on the back facing the wrong way and holding the donkey's tail.
NZ Farm Nostalgia — Girls Riding a Donkey

At first glance, this illustration looks like a charming storybook scene — three girls on a donkey ride at sunset, golden light on the hills, native New Zealand cabbage trees (Cordyline australis) standing tall. But for me, it's a direct window into my mother's childhood.

A True Story from Grandad's Farm

Mum and her older sister used to spend their summer Christmas holidays at their grandfather's farm in rural New Zealand. It was the classic Kiwi upbringing — long days outside, freedom to roam, and warm summer evenings.

A neighbor's girl down the road owned a donkey, and naturally, Mum and her sister wanted to ride it. They would pile onto its back for trips down the farm tracks. But there was a distinct pecking order — and my mother, being the youngest of the trio, was always allocated the "tail end."

As the image captures, while the older girls got to face forward and steer, Mum was made to sit right on the donkey's rump, facing entirely the wrong direction. Her job was simply to hold on tight and not slide off as they trotted along.

Holding On Tight

That look of concentration and slight apprehension on the face of the littlest girl at the back? That's Mum just trying to stay on. And in a way, it feels like a small metaphor for how she lived — facing whatever direction life put her in, holding on tight, and getting through.

I hope you enjoy how NZ Farm Nostalgia captures the specific geography of a New Zealand farm at sunset, but even more, how it preserves a funny, very human family story that might otherwise be forgotten — a tribute to those endless summer days at Grandad's.

Available at Redbubble

The image is available in my Redbubble shop in both vertical and horizontal formats to suit different products. If you're looking for something that would make a great companion for a lazy New Zealand summer holiday, this would be the perfect NZ farm life jigsaw puzzle.

👉 NZ Farm Nostalgia Jigsaw Puzzle

View all my work on Redbubble by searching @kornkobart.

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Samoan Youth

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This young man was preparing with his friends for his moment of fame on the stage at the Samoan Village at the Polynesian dance festival called Pasifika in Auckland in March this year. Samoan Youth Canon EOS 20D 1/30sec at f/20 ISO 200 Canon 70-300mm lens at 300mm More photographs from the same Pasifika Festival day can be found in my new post, Faces of Pasifika 2007 — A Day at Auckland's Pacific Festival .
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Faces of Pasifika 2007 — A Day at Auckland's Pacific Festival

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The 15th anniversary Pasifika Festival poster — a collage of the Pacific cultures the festival celebrates. On Saturday 10 March 2007, I spent the day at the Pasifika Festival at Western Springs Park in Auckland. It was the festival's 15th year — an annual celebration of Pacific Island cultures that has been part of Auckland's calendar since 1993, and which typically draws crowds of well over 100,000 across the day. Nine Pacific villages are traditionally represented — Samoa, Tonga, the Cook Islands, Niue, Fiji, Tuvalu, Tokelau, Kiribati and Tahiti — with music, dance, food, arts, and craft from each community sharing the same park for the day. I usually visit New Zealand earlier in February, but in 2007 I was there in March and it was the first — and, to date, only — time I've been able to attend Pasifika. I hope to make it back one of these years. But I came away from that single visit with the str...
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The Watchman and Virgin River — Painterly Winter Landscape

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The Watchman and Virgin River, Zion National Park — Painterly Winter Landscape — © John Corney The Watchman is one of Zion National Park's most recognizable formations — the peak that rises up just past the south entrance, often photographed reflected in or framed by the Virgin River as it winds through the valley floor. I photographed this view on the same January 2006 trip as the other winter Zion piece in this collection, with the river running low and the cottonwoods and willows along the bank stripped bare for the season. I worked this one up with AI assistance into a full painterly interpretation, the same way I've approached the rest of this Zion series — directing the process the way a film director works with a cinematographer, choosing what to carry forward from the original photograph and what to push harder. Here that meant leaning into the warmth of the low winter light against the cool snow on the upper ridgeline, and letting th...
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