HERITAGE

WAVES AND CURIOUS STARES

In the early colonial years, bullock power changed the landscape of Canterbury from abundant bush and swamp to agricultural pasture and town sections.

From 1855, Thomas Parkinson worked Rhodes’ Kaituna Estate. He was said to have driven the first bullock team on the Peninsula. Bullock teams ploughed and hauled logs, stone, bricks, and waggon-loads of Peninsula wool and grass seed to market.

As lorries and tractors replaced bullock teams, they remained essential on steep, isolated Peninsula farms.

Okains Bay farmer and museum founder, Murray Thacker, preferred bullock power to a tractor. Teams moved logs and equipment around his hillside farm and launched the family powerboat.

Murray was the last of a long line of Okains Bay ‘bullockies’, and he trained his young bullocks to respond to individual commands. With wide heads and horns, his Hereford bullocks were more suitable than the Friesians who would shake off the yoke.

Murray made the kōwhai and iron yokes and maintained the waggons, including the century-old family waggon that can be found at Okains Bay Museum.

From the 1960s to 1980s, Murray made several bullock-team trips from Okains Bay to feature in parades and demonstrations at regional agricultural shows. The 50-mile journey to the Canterbury A&P Show took up to eight days, the bullocks walking up to 10 miles at a time. The first leg was by truck to Puaha, Little River.

On one trip, after a week of shearing, son Luis rose at 5.30am to join the team for the second leg to a rest house at Price’s Valley. While Murray drove the leaders, Luis controlled the brake from behind the ‘polers’.

Murray’s other children joined him at different stages of the journey. On some trips, his wife Fred drove ahead with the hay for the bullocks, and the local baker dropped off rolls and buns. The team regularly drew waves and curious stares from passing motorists.

There was another overnight stop between Tai Tahu and Halswell and, lastly, at a property on Lincoln Road near the Showgrounds. The trip culminated with Murray leading the bullock team at the front of the parade through the city to Cathedral Square.