Norman Gibson and his lover Roy Ayling, farmed together at Kaimiro, up Mt Taranaki from Inglewood, New Zealand.

Roy Ayling, the elder man, had told me how he had seen the younger Norman Gibson while at the war, poised for a dive when they were swimming, and loved his beautiful body. When they came back he had left his accountancy business in Auckland and put his money into this farm with his friend. In those days homosexuality wasn't mentioned, and I am sure there was none in a physical sense between these two men. Brought up as we were on the story of David and Jonathan, whose love 'exceeded the love of women', the relationship between them was perfectly natural and even admirable to us and our parents.

From: Toss Woollaston, Sage Tea, Collins, Auckland, 1980, p. 187

They lived as nudists and had a circle of nudist friends, including Rewi Alley and his partner Jack Stevens, who subsistence-farmed at Moeawatea, 30 km up the Whenuakura valley from Waverley, from 1920 to 1927, when Alley went to China.

Roy left Norman in 1931 and both married, though they stayed in touch. Norman's daughter became lesbian activist Miriam Saphira. In her biography of her father, A Man's Man - which includes a series of nude "physique" photographs of him - she is convinced their relationship was physical.

Source: written by Hugh Young © 1995-2002 Queer History New Zealand