Watercolour print connects past and present

Environmental lawyer Sally Gepp enjoys a unique connection to her favourite artwork. Not only does she relate to the print depicting the explorer Thomas Brunner, as a fan of New Zealand history, but Sally lives in the house Brunner once called home. She shares the story with Matt Lawrey.

Sally’s favourite artwork is a print of a watercolour by William Fox that hangs in the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington. Titled In the Aglionby or Matukituki Valley, looking into the Otapawa, the original was painted by Fox during an expedition from Nelson to the West Coast and back in 1846. The campsite scene shows Kehu attempting to catch a weka as Brunner and Heaphy relax in an open makeshift hut.

“I love it for its visual imagery, its beautiful colours and the incredible history that it shows, and because of our little connection to that history,” Sally says. “I find the colours so immersive and peaceful. I love the drabness of it. There’s something really calm. I think that’s the joy of being the external observer. If you were physically there, it would feel wet and cold and probably itchy, and your feet would probably hurt. As an external observer, I get to be drawn into it. It’s a scene I would like to be able to visit but also not have to sleep in that little hut.”

Fox was an amateur artist who also made a name for himself as an explorer and journalist before going on to become a Member of Parliament and then Prime Minister.

Sally thinks she first saw the image in the book Thomas Brunner: His Life and Great Journeys. “I’d already heard of Brunner as an amazing explorer, and then we bought this house in 2016 and found out that not only did Brunner live here, but he likely died here too.”

Sally believes Brunner lived at the house, which was built in the late 1830s, between 1866 and his death in 1874. She says the house would have been a lot smaller when he owned it.

“The oldest part of the house is earth, dung, and straw, and you can see under the house where the earth was dug out. The floor joists are simply trees that have been cut in half - they’ve still got their bark on.”

Around the same time that Sally and her partner, Charles, bought the house, she was considering working for herself as a barrister. Drawn to the image of Brunner, Kehu, and Heaphy, she obtained permission from the National Library to use it as part of her new practice’s website. Then her brother-in-law surprised Sally with the gift of the print.

Asked if she considers herself an explorer, Sally laughs. Then says: “I like to know new places and especially places with tangible history that you can experience.”

Sally says one of the family’s biggest adventures to date has been walking part of the Camino de Santiago trail from Porto in Portugal to Santiago de Compostela in Spain last year. “That was a 15-day walk that all four of us did, and it was just such an amazing experience.”

Sally and her parents moved to New Zealand from the UK when she was eight. They stayed with her grandparents in Oamaru until her father, the late builder and developer Mike Gepp, bought an old fishing boat and converted it for them to live in. The family then motored up the island to the Marlborough Sounds, where they spent a couple of months before moving to Nelson, where Sally started school.

“I went to Auckland Point, then Enner Glynn, then Nayland Primary in the space of one year because wherever my dad was building, that’s where I would go to school. Then we settled in a place on Nayland Rd and I went to Broadgreen Intermediate, then Nayland College,” she says.

Sally spent a year in Chile as an exchange student and studied law and science for six years at Otago University, which also included an exchange to the University of British Columbia in Canada. She met Charles while she was working as a lawyer in Wellington, and after a few years, they headed to the UK for three years where Sally continued her legal career and the couple had their first child.

“We came back with a little baby. I had always wanted to come back to Nelson. I just love it and I always have. I can’t really put my finger on it. I hate transport; I like being able to get around as much as possible without having to drive a car. I wanted to be somewhere small enough to be able to walk and bike most of the time, and I just think it’s such a beautiful place.”

Earlier this year, Sally learnt, via a text on a Sunday from the Attorney General Judith Collins, that she had been made a King’s Counsel. It’s believed to be the first time a Nelson lawyer has been made a KC. The honour follows an impressive career to date, which has included fighting to stop the Ruataniwha dam, working to preserve Waikoropupū Springs, and securing the consents for New Zealand King Salmon’s offshore salmon farm.

Sally considers it a great privilege to work in a field that she deeply cares about. “It has real meaning to me. It really matters and it’s really interesting.”