Many of us were in our mid-20s with all the idealism, naivety, beauty and nonsense that those years can deliver.

The world was in a turmoil, and we had woken up to environmental damage, the threat of nuclear war, the isolation of nuclear families, and the soul-lessness of the shopping basket. And we suspected that our parents might have a few things to answer for.

Some of us were becoming parents ourselves, and we were determined to give our own children — those precious pieces of the future — the promise of a new start or even the start of a new Age.

Ours would be an alternative lifestyle, trying to raise ourselves above our contradictions by the willpower of our best intentions and better choices. Some of us drifted into the late waves of a global hippie and counter-culture movement ... and at times were just the local franchise, caught up in its unconscious waters.

But if you looked closer, you might have noticed that we were on a learning journey. We were also exploring something uniquely our own, born of our place and the mountain we lived under, and the relationships we were forging with one another.

The FOXGLOVE newsletter was a connecting tissue to those relationships. It was produced every 3 months, from Spring 1978 to the Winter of 1986. It became a snapshot of a community ... of who we were, and who we wished to become.

Welcome to the early 1980s, and to the many alternative visions of how to survive and make a life and a living here in Taranaki. Enjoy!