Heartland - French Pass

I’ve done everything. Put the power lines across in ’75, and I’ve done the mail run. I took on everything. Had a big family, I took on everything to make a bob.

– Local Pat Aston on living on a remote island with a big family

The Heartland programme won the 1994 New Zealand Film and Television Award for Best Factual Series. Perhaps because we didn't make it up. We let people speak for themselves.

– Presenter Gary McCormick, on page 204 of the Heartland tie-in book (1994)

...living in the country you've got to be a bit of everything . . . typical of women in the country — strong, independent, versatile women.

– Local nurse Judy Sonneland tries on signwriting, early in this documentary

I bet you don't even know where French Pass is. I can't say that I did myself until quite recently. Here we are . . . it's the gap at the top of the South Island before you hit D'Urville Island.

– Presenter Gary McCormick figures out where he's heading, at the start of the show

...it's a fearsome bit of water if you don't treat it with respect.

– Local Ray Clemens on Jacob's Hole (aka Jacob's Pool) the French Pass whirlpool, early in this show

The first European to discover the pass was a Frenchman, Admiral d'Urville. He actually came to grief here because he tried to come through at the wrong tide, and ended up on the rocks on the other side. He described the exercise in his journal as travelling through a "seething sheet of water."

– Presenter Gary McCormick on French explorer Jules Dumont d'Urville, early in this show

The road to French Pass is one of the more legendary — or notorious, depending on your point of view — roads in the top of the south . . . The district was one of the last places in New Zealand to be opened up by road.

– Nelson Mail writer Geoff Collett, 16 June 2009