Hawarden Ewe Fair marks 125-year run

LAWRIE O’Carroll remembers droving sheep from Waitohi Downs to his first Hawarden Ewe Fair in 1982, the year he scored the top price of the day at $17.50. His father, JJ (John) O’Carroll, had purchased nearby Waitohi Downs in 1947 and sold sheep at the annual fair for 34 years.

“This is my 42nd year so that’s 76 consecutive years in total,” O’Carroll said.

But the name goes much further back in the country village that sits beneath the Hurunui Hills in North Canterbury.

“My great grandfather, also John, came to Hawarden in 1883 and built the first general store that still stands today,” Lawrie said.

“He was the first JP in the district, the first postmaster and installed the first public telephone in Hawarden.

“Later he started buying farms, including Waitohi Downs in 1889, and where I still farm now.”

When the saleyard company was formed in 1898, John O’Carroll became a founding director and despite early farm records showing he sold sheep in the sale in 1915, it is believed he sold at the saleyards much earlier, including at the first sale in January 1899.

The saleyards were built to cater for all classes of stock, taking in sheep, cattle, pigs, horses and poultry, but sheep were the mainstay of farming in a district widely known for the Corriedale breed.

In the early days all the farmers drove their stock to the saleyards and the drafting was done onsite.

There was always keen competition to see who could get into the yards first to use the drafting race and it was a common sight to see farmers holding their mob on the road waiting their turn.

“I remember as a schoolkid in the 1950s at the Hawarden school, walking down to the main gates and watching the sheep being driven down the road before the sale and sheep from different properties lined up along the road waiting to get into the yards to be drafted,” Lawrie said.

Monthly stock sales were held at the Hawarden saleyards for decades, with stock transported by train to butchers in Christchurch.

O’Carroll said many other Canterbury saleyards were owned by stock companies that eventually sold them off, but Hawarden is fortunate to be one of just a handful remaining.

“Ours have been owned by shareholders, with no one shareholder owning more than 30 shares so that has helped us retain our yards.”

At 85 years of age John Sidey still lives in the district, the family farm now into the fifth generation.

He has lost count of the number of sales he has attended at Hawarden. His great grandfather, James Little, was a founding director of the saleyards company.

“Droving sheep to the sale are my first recollections as a young man. There would be 20 mobs coming down the road from different farms, hopefully not getting boxed up.”

Over his time the bulk of the sheep yarded for sale were Corriedales with the Sidey name synonymous with the founding of the breed in the Hurunui district.

“A huge amount of these went to Mid Canterbury, it’s all changed now though. Lower wool prices and higher fertility has led to the crossbred market we see today.

“I would say 20-30 years ago the standard of sheep here was probably the highest quality-wise standard in the country.

“Nowadays we see a mixture of breeds not comparable with the quality of earlier times,” Sidey said.

Despite the many changes over the years, Sidey is confident the saleyards complex has a lot left in it yet.

“These yards in the foreseeable future will last; 125 years is significant but I’m pretty confident it will see another 25 years – I just might not be around to see it.”

With a reputation for always being a hot and dusty sale day, the 125th sale did not disappoint.

But a temperature climbing over 30degC and the dust rising from the yards failed to deter the crowds that flocked to celebrate the milestone celebration.

Among those joining the 125th celebration sale was Hurunui’s Mayor Marie Black, a fourthgeneration district resident and the daughter and wife of dryland sheep farmers.

Black congratulated the intergenerational commitment from many farming families.

“With the changes of land use and shifting trends for the use of productive land, our community should be proud that it has retained this iconic annual event.

“Now attracting stock well outside the district boundary, this certainly is a significant feature on the rural calendar,” Black said.

Farmer and former Hurunui mayor Winton Dalley acknowledged the Hawarden combined churches who have a long tradition, dating back to 1930, of catering for the annual ewe fair, as they did for the 125th sale.

He highlighted key changes in what he described as a “long and colourful history”.

With the early runs being stocked with Merinos, the breed tended to dominate the early sales, along with halfbreds.

By the early 1900s Corriedales, which were developed in the Hawarden district from around 1882 as a dual-purpose sheep (meat and wool) and for which the Hawarden Ewe Fair became well known, gradually took over and totally dominated the annual sales up until recently.

The move away from Merinos was driven by the development and growth of the export meat industry after the successful shipment of frozen meat to England in 1882, making dualpurpose sheep and the use of terminal sires much more profitable.

For many years the Corriedale excelled in this role in North Canterbury and drier districts of New Zealand.

With the decline in wool prices from the 1980s the move towards crossbreds and composite meat breeds occurred, resulting in a wider range of breeds at Hawarden these days.

A relatively small yarding of 12,000 sheep were penned for the 125th sale. The yardings have been up to 25,000 over the years. Dalley said with little documented history, the Hawarden Museum welcomes any saleyard memorabilia people may have to add to the records.