Downstream from Nowhere

A5 210mm x 148.5mm
146 pages
ISBN: 978-0-473-75661-1
Published August 2025

In the two centuries since the first Pākehā set foot in what would go on to be known as the Messines Valley, it has seen its fair share of history. Music festivals. Failed settlements. Paranormal phenomena. As the stolen land passes through the hands of church and state and capital, each left its mark. Downstram from Nowhere follows this course through the eyes of the valley's least reputable visitors.

"A self-described staunchly serious history, Downstream From Nowhere brutally skewers the ongoing Pākehā myths of taming and civilising an empty and savage land. The Messines area is a stand-in for every pocket of this whenua brutalised by colonisation. And it's really, really funny."

Jared Wiremu Kane
(Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Manu, Ngāti Toro, Te Māhurehure)
2025 Verb Wellington Writer in Residence, Katherine Mansfield House & Garden

“Downstream from Nowhere continues a new lineage of bracing and complex Aotearoa literary satire. Crawford sends us running straight into a tornado of intergenerational colonial mindsets, jingoistic historicism, and pop-cultural epochs, with a goat’s head in one hand and a kebab in the other. Probably the best thing to come out of Timaru since Phar Lap.”

Jordan Hamel
Everyone is Everyone Except You

"He was raised in Timaru, and now he is raising eyebrows"

Profile of Johnny in the Timaru Courier