27 minute read
Lumsden
FURROWS THROUGH HISTORY
WORDS: MATT PHILP • IMAGERY: MIKE HEYDON
Families who have farmed their land continuously for more than 100 years are recognised and celebrated through a unique awards programme – the New Zealand Century Farm and Station Awards
The bank manager has just visited when Heritage New Zealand magazine calls Craig and Hannah Drummond at Cromel Valley Station. That’s life on a family farm – as is hard slog and the dictates of fickle weather. A tractor engine is running in the background and Craig says he can’t talk for long.
“I’m chasing my tail today – I’ve got trucks putting crop in and it’s about to rain.”
Over the course of 105 years, four generations of Drummonds have dealt with the highs and lows of working this patch of earth at Five Rivers, near Lumsden, Southland.
The ‘originals’, Peter and Selina, moved from Canterbury, disregarding warnings that the place would break them. The previous owners’ tenure had ended in a mortgagee sale after rabbits decimated the place.
During the Drummonds’ early years on what was then known as ‘Five Rivers Run’, rabbits continued to ravage the property: after one poisoning operation in the 1930s, 7800 were counted, followed by another massive kill two weeks later.
The second generation had to deal with World War I, with Peter and Selina’s son Harrison showing excellent foresight by buying in more than 50,000 litres of fuel to keep the Lanz Bulldog tractors moving and the farm progressing.
That theme of heavy machinery and ongoing development runs like a straight furrow through the farm’s history. Riverbeds were reclaimed, roads built and manukacovered land transformed.
In the 1960s Craig’s father Wallace imported a DUTRA tractor from Hungary and with his brother Ivan established Drummond Industries, designing a cattle head bail that’s still used on some farms today. Craig has inherited the love of machinery, as well as the passion for continuous improvement of what is now a 1416-hectare sheep and beef farm (with a little dairy grazing over the winter).
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“We’ve done a lot of development, cleared scrub and turned it into productive paddocks,” he says, adding that every generation has done what they feel is necessary to add value.
“It’s about keeping it in the family while doing what we think is best to move it forward.”
Does he feel any pressure from all that history? “There’s certainly pressure not to be the one who stuffs it up!” he laughs.
When he’s gone, Hannah offers her take.
“He’s very proud of it, and passionate about retaining the home block – as long as it doesn’t break us,” she says. “I struggle to get him off the farm – he works all day and every day – because for him it’s not a job, it’s his life and his passion.”
Soon after they met, Craig invited her to pay a visit, muttering something about his parents living in a “big old place”.
The first thing she saw was the Category 1 Five Rivers Station homestead, the oldest lived-in brick home in Southland and Otago and, with 16 rooms, among the largest (the homestead and its associated buildings date to the 1860s, when Five Rivers was established as Southland’s first inland pastoral station).
“I was blown away to realise how old the place was and how much work had been put into it by Wallace,” she says.
It was Wallace who brought her up to speed on the farm’s past.
“He told me all the stories,” she says, citing one tale about Harrison rigging up a tripwire gun to scare deer from foraging in the homestead’s vege patch and, by a fluke, killing a huge stag.
That family lore is now part of her, but the farm’s a different matter.
“Even though I’ve married Craig and had his children, to me the farm still belongs to my husband and our children. I feel a sense of pride, but if something were to happen, I’d be looking after it for the children.”
Will there be a fifth generation farming Cromel Valley Station? Too early to say.
“But I’d love it if they wanted to have a turn,” she says. “So many family farms have been gobbled up by corporate farming, and I think it’s such an honour to still have it in our family and to be able to pass it on if that’s what our children want.”
For now though, says Craig, “It’s our turn to carry it.”
1 Hannah, Craig, Briar and Luke Drummond on the woolshed board.
2 Craig surveys the window glass in which an inscription was made by the station’s third manager using his wife’s diamond ring. It reads:
“H Hill, March 1st 1864”.
3 The old wool table is still used today.
4 Hannah, Craig and Briar in the sheepyards.
5 Craig, family dog Beau,
Briar, Luke and Hannah in front of the historic station homestead.
CELEBRATING RURAL LONGEVITY
Established in 2005, the New Zealand Century Farm and Station Awards honour families who have farmed their land for more than 100 years. So far, more than 500 families have been recognised, with a further 40 to be welcomed into the club at a formal dinner in May in Lawrence, Otago.
The little town in the Clutha District has hosted the annual event since 2006, after Lawrence local Russell Brown and a small voluntary team initiated the awards as a way of capturing and preserving an important aspect of New Zealand’s agricultural rural history. Eligible families submit narratives of the farms’ histories along with supporting photographs and documents, all of which are archived at the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington.
Initially, recipients were mostly from Otago and Southland, but there’s now a fairly even split between the South and North Islands. In May, however, all roads lead to Lawrence, where local businesses, clubs and residents have embraced the weekendlong event.
In 2021 Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga signed on as a principal sponsor of the New Zealand Century Farm and Station Awards, known locally as ‘Century Farms’. It’s a good fit: many of the farms involved are home to buildings and other features recognised on the New Zealand Heritage List/Rārangi Kōrero.
“This partnership is a fantastic way for us to engage with rural heritage and support the important work of Century Farms,” says Sheila Watson, Director Southern Region at Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga.
“Like Century Farms, Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga values the stories associated with people and places that bring the history of New Zealand alive. In a country as young as ours, to have a continuous association with a place for more than a century is really something special.”
Lovells Flat, Otago (1915)
On any farm that’s been worked by the same family for a century, it’s more than anecdotes and faded photographs that get passed down from generation to generation; a bone-deep understanding of the property is also transmitted.
For the Clark family, who have farmed at Lovells Flat near Balclutha for 107 years, flooding is a big part of that institutional knowledge. Should a non-Clark ever take over, says Lyn Clark, “there would be a lot they’d have to find out the hard way”.
Lyn’s husband Bryce is the fourth generation to work this piece of land since 1915, after taking over from his late father Norman. But various branches of the family have been farming in the district since the 1860s, and the Clark name is well known.
“There’s a stoic quality that has come through the generations, as well as a caring about community,” says Lyn. “You can pick it in the family: ‘Oh, you’re such a Clark!’”
They live surrounded by family heritage, and with relics of a wider history.
The farmhouse, for instance, which they share with their children Sam, Thomas and Lucy, was built by Bryce’s grandfather, Kinder, in 1929.
There’s a landmark early settler’s sod cottage on the property, and the original Lovells Flat store, built in 1867, is located between two of their paddocks.
Bryce has inherited paddock names from his ancestors that carry particular meanings, and some of the landforms and features at Lovells Flat refer to historic characters. The Cockburn block, for example, was named after a railway worker who leased it from Bryce’s great-grandfather, Jasper.
The family members have become educated on the finer historic details by Bryce’s first cousin, Vanessa Clark, whose father, John, worked the place in partnership with Bryce’s dad, Norman, in the 1970s, before the brothers split the farm down the railway line.
As part of her Master of Archaeological Practice at the University of Otago, Vanessa has just completed a heritage assessment of the sod cottage. She’s also mapped the lost buildings and infrastructure of the village that once existed at Lovells Flat: a school, a blacksmith’s shop, railway houses, goods sheds, a community hall – all long gone.
Recently the whole family took a long and heritageattuned walk around the property, Vanessa filling them in on historical detail. Towards the south, Bryce found some pottery shards protruding from a bank, which Vanessa’s research suggested was evidence of a house owned by pioneering landowner Allan Marshall, whose property was later purchased by the Clarks and whose name lives on in the area as ‘Allandale’.
“There are remnants of those original settlers in the landscape too. You can see fruit trees from orchards; daffodils and other flowers that pop up,” she says.
In one sense, the way Bryce is farming Lovells Flat is turning the clock back on that landscape. His father and uncle broke in a heap of swamp ground.
Conversely, Bryce, in partnership with the Department of Conservation Te Papa Atawhai, has planted the riparian zone either side of the farm creek heavily in natives. Birdlife is returning and the creek is in robust health.
“I feel a sense of responsibility to look after this land,” he says. “They broke it in, and now we just keep improving it and farming it as best we can.”
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1 Sam Clark, Molly the Labrador and
Thomas Clark.
2 Lyn and Bryce
Clark in front of
Lovells Flat’s early sod cottage.
3 Bryce, Sam (11),
Thomas (9) and
Lyn Clark on the farm, with Ruby the Labrador.
HOME and AWAY
WORDS: CAITLIN SYKES, PETER DRURY IMAGERY: PETER DRURY A modest backcountry hut in Canterbury provides its visitors with not only respite from the elements but also a feeling of stepping into the past
Built of timber, mud and horsehair, the Stanley Vale Hut has been providing shelter to Canterbury backcountry dwellers for more than a century.
Last summer, one of those was Waikato-based Heritage New Zealand magazine contributor Peter Drury, who spent a night in the two-room Department of Conservation Te Papa Atawhai hut – a late19th-century hut associated with the Stanley Vale homestead – during a tramping trip.
“We were away for 10 days and started out in the Lewis Pass area but got rained out,” he explains. “In search of a drier climate, we went further east to the St James Conservation Area, where we spent three days.
“We walked along the Fowlers Pass track to Stanley Vale Hut, where these photos were taken. After staying the night there, we continued up to Lake Guyon, before walking back the way we came and on to Hanmer Springs.”
The hut is located near the site of the Stanley Vale homestead, which is marked by a pile of stones. However, its origins and use aren’t well understood, according to a conservation plan prepared by Chris Cochran for the building.
“It is possible that the hut was built at the time of the amalgamation of Stanley Vale into the St James Station as a shepherd’s or musterer’s hut; this was circa 1892. A hut would certainly have been needed at this time, unless the homestead itself was in good condition and could have been used for such purposes,” notes the plan.
Peter travels to the South Island each summer for tramping, with his next trip planned for the Nelson Lakes, and ski tours there in winter. He’s also a regular tramper in Tongariro National Park and a day walker closer to home around Pirongia and Coromandel.
“I just have a real enjoyment of getting into the mountains. I love being out there.”
When we first saw the hut, it was a very welcome sight. There was this very brooding sky with storm clouds brewing, but we made it to the hut just before it absolutely hosed down. The sound of the rain on the tin roof was quite deafening. We managed to stay dry – so the hut did its job – and the next morning we emerged to a lovely day.
Although we had the hut to ourselves, we initially thought there might have been someone living there. The interior has all these bits and pieces around the place, which give it a cosy, welcoming feeling. And you definitely felt like you were stepping into the past, into an historic place. We had been camping in tents up on Lewis Pass at the tops, so it was quite nice to have a mattress to sleep on. Any night on a mattress rather than on an inflatable camp mat is a good night’s sleep. I’d love to have more camera gear with me on these trips – I really miss having a long lens at times for some of the birds that I see – but when you’re going tramping for 10 days you have to be careful about how much you carry. About 15 kilograms is as much as I want.
After our night in the hut, we walked to Lake Guyon. It’s a beautiful lake surrounded by mountains, so it was a lovely destination. We carry a trout rod and were looking forward to some fresh trout from the lake, but unfortunately the trout weren’t co-operative so we had to settle for freeze-dried food again.
SIGN OF WORDS: LYDIA MONIN THE TIMES
Dublin’s commemorative plaques shine a light on the stories of the people associated with some of its most iconic buildings
1 Anyone can get one – as long as you’ve been dead for 20 years or it’s been 100 years since your birth and you’ve done something truly outstanding for Dublin. In different colours, shapes and styles, they appear on buildings all over Ireland’s capital – a profusion of plaques commemorating the great and the good who lived at one time in the city’s most iconic buildings. There’s one on the former home of Patrick Kavanagh, around the corner from Raglan Road, the setting for his well-known poem about unrequited love. Across the canal is Joseph Plunkett’s childhood home. He’d grow up to become one of the leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising and die by firing squad. A great 19th-century Dublin medic, Dr Samuel Little Hardy, once scurried in and out of his house alongside Merrion Park. On the other side of the park a life-sized statue of Oscar Wilde reclines in a children’s playground, gazing at the building in which he grew up across the street.
Among the collection of old plaques is a sprinkling of shiny new discs. Three white castles against a flash of bright blue – the symbol and colour
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of Dublin – sit underneath bold black text in Irish and English. A select few – the 1916 plaques – are green for Ireland instead of blue. The nation is commemorating the ‘Decade of Centenaries’, a programme of events from 2012 to 2023 that recognises its bloody road to independence through uprisings, wars and division. Dublin City Council established its Commemorations & Naming Committee to cope with demand.
Around 40 plaques have been approved so far, and most private owners have been happy to have plaques erected on their buildings, says Brendan Teeling, the council’s deputy city librarian and one of the officials who assess applications.
There was a problem with a plaque that was to go up on one of the council’s own properties. Thomas Bryan, one of the ‘Forgotten 10’ (a group of IRA members executed during the Irish War of Independence), lived in a Georgian building that is now the Tenement Museum.
The Commemorations & Naming Committee agreed to a plaque, but it was later opposed by the council’s senior executive architectural conservation officer, its heritage officer, and Brendan.
They were all concerned that a plaque might trigger a deluge of applications because a large number of historical figures are associated with the house. They claimed multiple plaques could detract from the heritage character of a building that had undergone extensive conservation work.
Committee members argued that a plaque to Bryan would enhance the heritage value of the museum and that other applications could be denied if they weren’t appropriate.
There’s no shortage of plaque candidates from Ireland’s most tumultuous decade, which included the 1913 Lockout, World War I, the 1916 Easter Rising, the Irish War of Independence and the Irish Civil War. But Brendan wants to see a broader range of people recognised.
“Overall we would like to see diversity: more plaques to women, plaques not just to do with the Decade of Centenaries or the revolutionary period.”
In 2018 the country’s president, Michael D Higgins, unveiled a plaque on Dublin Castle commemorating Irish suffragette Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington. In 1912 Skeffington and seven other women were arrested and jailed for smashing the windows of the then Government buildings.
A more recent plaque commemorates the 1845 visit to Dublin by Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave who became an anti-slavery campaigner. He spoke at the old Quaker Meeting House, now the Irish Film Institute.
Back in 1947 George Bernard Shaw was very much alive when he received a letter from a local bin man. Patrick O’Reilly had raised enough money to erect a plaque on the house where the playwright had been born and suggested the words: “He gave his services to his country, unlimited, unstinted and without price”.
“Dear Pat,” Shaw wrote. “Your inscription is a blazing lie. I left Dublin before I was twenty and I have devoted the remainder of my life to Labour and International Socialism and for all you know I may be hanged yet.” Shaw preferred: “Bernard Shaw, Author of many plays was born in this house, 26 July 1856,” and that inscription can still be seen today.
Unlike the ad-hoc schemes of the past, Brendan sees the council’s programme as more similar to the London blue plaques scheme, the world’s oldest.
In the House of Commons in 1863, British MP William Ewart asked whether “it may be practicable to have inscribed on those houses in London which have been inhabited by celebrated persons, the names of such persons”.
Four years later the Royal Society of Arts erected London’s first two plaques, commemorating Lord
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1 A plaque erected on the former Dublin home of physician and obstetrician Samuel
Little Hardy in 2016.
2 A plaque commemorating republican and labour activist
Constance Markievicz on the house in Rathmines, Dublin, where she once lived.
3 Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington smashed windows at Dublin Castle in the campaign for women’s suffrage.
IMAGERY: PADDY
CAHILL
1 Byron’s birthplace and the residence of Napoleon III. Today there are more than 900 plaques in London and many countries around the world run similar schemes.
A New Zealand architectural designer living in Britain was so inspired by the London scheme that he set out to replicate it after he returned to New Zealand in 2015 and became the deputy chair of Historic Places Mid Canterbury.
In Nigel Gilkison’s scheme, a plaque honours a building rather than a person who lived in it. And it’s the ‘second tier’ of listed heritage buildings (either with Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga or with a local council) that he’s most interested in.
“Category 1 buildings are well known and may already have plaques. It’s the ones that are one step down that the public probably don’t realise are listed. They may not even know the stories behind them,” he says.
Non-listed buildings can still be considered for plaques, says Nigel, especially if it helps to get them listed.
“They’re quite big and bold, these plaques, and purposefully so – they shout, ‘This is a heritage building and it’s of value to the community!’”
The big discs come with a big price tag. The $1500 cost has to be covered by local fundraising, the building’s owner or a combination of both. Then the local heritage group has to grapple with the all-important inscription – in no more than 40 words.
The first New Zealand blue plaque was unveiled in 2017 to mark the centenary of a railway footbridge in Ashburton. Once the scheme was backed by the national
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body Historic Places Aotearoa, it spread further around Canterbury and into Otago.
Christchurch, still reeling from the loss of many historic buildings during and after the earthquakes, got its first blue plaque in early 2021, on a former printing shop within the historic Duncan’s Buildings on High Street.
“The heritage buildings that are left are much more valued, particularly by the owners who have restored them and strengthened them,” says Nigel.
He enjoys the feel-good factor in the creation of a plaque. It’s not the typical heritage story that makes the news because two parties are locked in a bitter fight over an impending demolition.
“We get really good feedback from everyone because this is adding to the heritage story and it’s educational.”
Close to Oscar Wilde’s childhood home in Dublin is the National Maternity Hospital, so big that it takes up a whole block. Near the archway over the front door is an old circular brown plaque put up by the now defunct Dublin Tourism that reads: “John Robert Godley. Founder of Province of Canterbury, N.Z. Born at this site in 1814.”
And now, half a world away – in the same part of New Zealand for which Godley will always be remembered – a fledgling blue plaque scheme is growing. Nigel would like the scheme to extend nationwide eventually.
“My hope is that within about 25 years there will be a good quantum of plaques around the country. At that stage it might become the statutory default for heritage plaques, but that’s something that will grow organically.”
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1 Ashburton Mayor Neil Brown (right) and Ashburton Licensing Trust
Board Chair Chris Robertson unveiling the Bank of New South Wales plaque on the current Speight’s Ale House. IMAGE: NIGEL GILKISON
2 The Hakatere Station plaque on Ashburton Gorge Road.
IMAGE: ASHBURTON DISTRICT COUNCIL
3 The 1895 Sexton’s Building in Ashburton Cemetery received a blue plaque in 2020. IMAGE: NIGEL GILKISON
4 A Dublin Tourism plaque on Oscar Wilde’s former home in the centre of Dublin.
5 6 The founder of Canterbury Province, John Robert Godley, was born at the site on which Dublin’s National Maternity Hospital was later built.
IMAGERY: LYDIA MONIN
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WORDS: MARIANNE TREMAINE
Challenging environments
Venturing into some unconventional and uncomfortable spaces
Sometimes life presents you with events or situations so different from your own everyday experiences that you have to learn as you go. Each book in this column shows examples of those unexpected challenges.
For example, in John McCrystal’s accurately titled Worse Things Happen at Sea: Tales of Nautical Mishap, Misery and Mystery from New Zealand and Around the World (Bateman Books, $34.99), the stories are both gripping and calculated to make you feel, by comparison, far more positive about any trifling issues throughout your day.
The effectiveness of John’s writing comes from its clarity and the interesting details he provides that show readers how many factors combined to cause maritime disasters. Whether it’s a captain’s desire to show off, combined with the dangers of a rocky coast, the cause is seldom due to one thing.
John shows us how a mix of events and human weaknesses came together as causal factors in the marine disasters he writes about. An interesting, refreshing, cautionary and even therapeutic read.
A book that presents a very different environment, but one that also supplies stories of mishap, misery and mystery, is Activism, Feminism, Politics and Parliament. Written by Margaret Wilson (Bridget Williams Books, $39.99), it covers her own experience of politics as a Labour Party president and minister in the Helen Clark-led government of 1999–2008, with responsibilities as demanding as Attorney-General and Speaker of the House.
This book has been written with the utmost clarity. Margaret shows us her thought processes, the different sides of arguments, and the everyday surprises and disappointments that are part of political life. She is very clear about how taxing the Speaker’s role can be, and her courage and determination are impressive. Nevertheless, this book may be an antidote for anyone who fancies a life in politics; unless you are as brave and principled as Margaret, you may end up feeling you have achieved very little and possibly somewhat disappointed in yourself.
An environment that is challenging in a completely different way is featured in A Bunk for the Night: A Guide to New Zealand’s Best Backcountry Huts, by Shaun Barnett, Rob Brown and Geoff Spearpoint (potton & burton, $49.99). Most trampers have had the experience of arriving at a hut that is far from idyllic, whether it’s because of mess, resident rats or a lack of cooking facilities. This book saves readers from these types of experience by enabling them to plan their trips around staying at some of the more luxurious huts sited on some of New Zealand’s most attractive walks. This would be a thoughtful gift for any of your tramping friends.
Places that are ordinary and mundane can often feel magical and mysterious after dark as they take on completely different characters. In After Dark: Walking into the Nights of Aotearoa (potton & burton, $39.99), Annette Lees explores the different stages and the distinctive character of the nocturnal world. She is almost poetic in her ability to characterise the qualities of the time from dusk to dawn. She reminds us of the kinds of things that seem possible when we look at the stars, feel the night’s breath and hear its sounds.
The History of a Riot, by Jared Davidson (BWB Texts, $14.99), gives a surprising insight into a class conflict that took place in 1840s New Zealand. The surprise is caused by the strange but persistent conviction that this country boasted a classless society, while Jared points out that Edward Gibbon Wakefield’s
plan for colonisation actually featured a “class-based colony of land-owning settlers (those with capital) and hard-working labourers” (page 7). The notion behind the plan was that labourers would be able to work their way up the class ladder over time.
However, in 1843 Nelson’s emigrant labourers and their wives were not willing to endure the hardship of their circumstances while they waited for future progress. They rebelled against their poor working conditions with petitions, strikes and violence.
Because it is centred on a story of class conflict, this small but powerful book completely destroys the pastel-tinted and genteel settler history of New Zealand described in so many other books, instead exposing clear, factual information about participants and events. Jared depicts the labourers and their wives as real people seeking fairness and a future rather than exploitation, terrible working conditions and a lack of even basic sustenance.
Reawakened: Traditional Navigators of Te Moananui-a-Kiwa, by Jeff Evans (Massey University Press, $39.99), explores a challenging environment of another kind. This environment is one in which the participants have chosen to put themselves into situations of danger and uncertainty by journeying across the Pacific using traditional navigation methods, rather than modern seafaring equipment.
This book details the experiences of 10 people as they navigate their small crafts, and gives readers insights into the challenges and responsibilities they face. Each navigator uses only the moon, sun and stars and the swell of the sea to obtain the information they need.
Learning to become a navigator is a complex process of attaching yourself to a skilled, experienced navigator and learning by example.
As a navigator you have a responsibility to teach others, as there is always the concern that the ability to navigate by the stars may be lost, and with that loss the closeness to one’s forebears and the understanding of ancestral values and where you have come from might vanish.
As Jeff explains, “Many of the individuals interviewed for this book have experienced what could be described as a spiritual awakening while voyaging at sea. For some it is as if their ancestors are at their side protecting them during their journey, while for others it is a sense that their ancestors are guiding them as they make critical navigational decisions” (page 108).
As with the other books featured in this column, this book takes you to a place in which you feel the excitement and the dangers of each environment described and wonder how you might have responded in each situation.
Similarly, it is interesting to gain insights into the experiences of New Zealanders during times of war.
Voices of World War ll: New Zealanders Share Their Stories, by Renée Hollis (Exisle Publishing, $69.99), gathers photos and words showing how New Zealanders living just before and during the war faced those times.
The inside front and back covers of the book provide useful lists of events from 1939 to 1947, with brief descriptions of each. The narrative includes information on various aspects of life during the war through quotations, descriptions of wartime sport, newspaper reports, accounts from prisoners of war, memories of entertainment offered by the Kiwi Concert Party, and accounts of the lives of women at home.
This book makes it easy to dip into different aspects of the war by offering a wide choice of material while leaving you to your own reflections.
GIVEAWAY
We have one copy of A Bunk for the Night: A Guide to New Zealand’s Best Backcountry Huts to give away. To enter the draw, send your name and address on the back of an envelope to Book Giveaways, Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga, PO Box 2629, Wellington 6140, before 30 March 2022. The winner of last issue’s book giveaway (The Takapuna Tram) was Grant Gillon, Auckland.
Books are chosen for review in Heritage New Zealand magazine at the discretion of the Books Editor. Due to the volume of books received, we cannot guarantee the timing of any reviews that appear and we are unable to return any copies submitted for review. Ngā mihi.
