Dougal Rillstone

Dougal Rillstone was mesmerised by the beauty of moving water while growing up beside the Mataura River. His writing on fly-fishing and the outdoors has been published in Australia, the USA and New Zealand. His book, Upstream On The Mataura, is, in part, a chronicle of his 240-kilometre walk beside the river from the coast to its source, high in the Eyre Mountains.
  • Young man in The Clutha

    Young man in The Clutha

    The heart can never grasp these unbearable early departures. —Jim Harrison, Complete Poems. The Clutha River ran misty blue in the hot summer of early 1969. Within a couple of decades the great river would be stilled by the dam at Clyde, but in early ’69 it charged through the gorge like a wild animal—seething,…

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  • Fishing in the Styx

    Fishing in the Styx

    In memory of Brian Turner. Around four in the afternoon, one day in early December, I rest on a bank of the Taieri River, a kilometre or two upstream of the bridge on Loganburn Ford Road. I feel a light breeze on my face and hear it rustle the tall grasses on this otherwise calm…

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  • Fishing with the poet

    Fishing with the poet

    Writer and fisher Dougal Rillstone takes to the Mataura River with the acclaimed New Zealand poet Kevin Ireland. THE POET TRAVELS FROM DEVONPORT TO THE FAR SOUTH OF NEW ZEALAND A COUPLE OF TIMES A YEAR, TO FLY-FISH FOR TROUT AND CATCH UP WITH OLD FRIENDS. He says he is in his eighty-eighth year, but…

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