London Girl Delighted By Back Country Life

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30342, 18 January 1964, Page 2

London Girl Delighted By Back Country Life

Clutching her precious 200-year-old French-made violin as she crossed the flooded Makaroa river on horseback, and watching a pack horse following with her luggage, English-born Miss Anna Saxon ended her 18 months as a correspondence school governess on a cattle station at the head of Lake Wanaka.

“I wouldn’t trust my violin to the packhorse, and no-one else wanted the responsibility of getting it across safely,” she said in Christchurch yesterday.

When the river was low Mount Albert Station, home of Mr and Mrs J. Quaife and their four young daughters, could be reached by truck or tractor, but during its sudden floods it could only be forded on horseback, if at all, she said.

The story behind the violin goes back to When she was six when she received her first lessons. She also learned to play the piano, and tried the ’cello, which she loves best of all. but her hands were too small to play one when she began her studies. She intended becoming a concert violinist, but decided instead to come to New Zealand, where her father was bom. However, she still loves playing, and brought her violin with her. On the station she was introduced to a host of new experiences—such as learning to drive a tractor and then how to ford the river on it, “which could be a bit horrific.” She loved station life. “It was wonderful . . . fantastically beautiful country. I didn’t want to leave i tat all.” One of the first things she had to get used to at Mount Albert was the manipulation of electrical equipment in the house, to keep a balanced load on the generator, which was driven by a stream from the mountain behind the house. "I was terrified of turning anything on when I first arrived,” she recalled. If too many lights were turned off at once the unused current would send the voltage above the safe level. Then she would have to dash to the kitchen to turn on some appliance to balance the load again. “But it soon became automatic to reach out and turn something off when you turned on the dishmaster.” Riding Horses Riding among the wild river valleys and flats of the station was a very different business to leisurely hacking in Windsor Great park or the New Forest, she found. She frequently helped drove cattle, and rode some 40 miles in a day on a cattle trek to a remote valley in

a former concert pianist, is now working with the Canadian Broadcasting Service; Caroline was a ballet dancer before her marriage to the first trumpet player of the London Philharmonic Orchestra; Jane, also a dancer, lived in Germany for two years but is now settled in the United States with her husband; and her brother, John, is a pilot who has travelled widely, including to New Zealand. “In fact we’ve done a lot of things between us,” Miss

“Jumboland” one section of the station, which altogether contains so much mountainous country and bushland that even the owners do not know exactly how big it is. Breaking in and schooling a horse for herself was another of her accomplishments, and she and her four pupils were often out riding together When lessons were done. She also learned to milk a cow. All the stock travelling to or from the station must cross either the Makarora or the Wilkin rivers. Persuading mobs of sheep and lambs to Cross these could be a freezing, frustrating business, she found. It could take up to three hours to get a mob over. “It could be really icy, in spite of a hot sun. The best clothes to wear were thick jodhpurs”—even though one frequently got soaked almost to the neck, pulling sheep across and “grabbing the lambs if they began floating off down the river.” The Correspondence School system in New Zealand was excellent said Miss Saxon, whose prior experience of teaching was limited to a few weeks assisting in a small preparatory school run by friends in England. “The teachers take such a personal interest in each child, writing individual letters, that you feel you know them, though you have never met them,” she said. The first time a visiting teacher from the school tried to visit the family he could not get across the river and the next time he had to ride a horse across. Miss Saxon was born in Pinner, a village now surrounded by London, and lived most of her life near London or the crowded seaside resort of Bournemouth. Music and travel seem to be well mixed in the blood of the Saxon family. Of Anna’s sisters, Bridget

Saxon said with a smile. “We used to have our own private concerts at home. Either Bridget or I would play, Jane and Caroline danced, and John has a very nice singing voice.” Writing is another of Anna’s interests. So far she has tried poetry, short stories and essays; now she would like to write a book about life on the station. Would she be returning to England? To visit her people, but not to live, said Anna. “At home you can hardly see England for the people—there’s far too many there for me. I want to settle here.”