Elizabeth the elephant seal stars in book

Thursday, 15 January 2015

An elephant seal that made the Avon River its home has been immortalised in print, almost 20 years after its death.

Elizabeth the elephant seal lived in the Avon and Heathcote rivers in Christchurch from the late-1970s until her death in 1985.

American author and long distance swimmer Lynne Cox has written a children's story about her, and now the Washington Post has named Elizabeth: Queen of the Seas, one of the best children's books of 2014.

Cox, 57, who lives in Southern California, said she was walking along the river in 1983 when a boy, Michael, and his sister, Maggie, asked if she was looking for Elizabeth.

Cox said she thought 'Elizabeth' must have been a swimmer, but they told it she was an elephant seal that lived in the river.

They told her about Elizabeth and how she often basked on the banks of the river and used to sunbathe on the road, causing cars to swerve around her.

'Other people started gathering and they all started telling me the story about how she swam in the river,' Cox said.

'They talked a lot about her.'

Cox loved the story and stored it in the back of her mind until six years ago when she turned it into a children's book.

It took five years for the book to be illustrated and it was published in the United States and New Zealand in May last year.

It might seem unusual for such an iconic Christchurch story to be told by someone who never lived in the city, but Cox said New Zealand had played a big part in her life.

In 1975, as a 17-year-old, she became the first woman to swim Cook Strait.

During the first five hours of the swim, she made no headway and was pushed backwards by the current. 

'It was one of the most difficult swims of my life. I was pushed backwards for five hours.'

Keen to come back to New Zealand, she devised a plan to swim across Lake Tekapo, Lake Pukaki and Lake Ohau near Aoraki Mt Cook and achieved that in 1983.

On that trip Cox visited Christchurch and heard about Elizabeth.

'I just thought she was so beloved,' she said.

'She was named after the Queen of England. The people of Christchurch were so proud of her.'

The water colour illustrations in the book look remarkably like Christchurch, even though illustrator, fellow American Brian Floca , has never visited the city.

Cox said Floca spent a lot of time researching the city and the story of Elizabeth. He had a photographer take some pictures of Christchurch, which he based some of his illustrations on.