Annandale Shed Built After Slip

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31161, 10 September 1966, Page 9

Annandale Shed Built After Slip

The big red Annandale shearing shed at Pigeon Bay where this week’s course for learner shearers was held, has stood the passage of time well. It has had little done to it in 80 years since it was built, and the manager for the Annandale estate, Mr J. S. Danks, says that it works very well.

Mr T. A. McKellar, of Knoekindale, Pigeon Bay, who is a great grandson of the late Ebenzer Hay, a pioneer settler in the bay, recalled this week that the shed was built in 1886 after a catastrophic landslide had struck the bay and pushed into the sea the homestead, woolshed and all buildings and possessions of his forebears. The homestead built by his great grandfather stood where the old cheese factory now stands.

Mr McKellar said that the landslide occurred in August, 1886, after a month of rain. His grandfather had realised that something like this might happen and when there was a roar after breakfast one morning, he called out to the women to run for

their lives. Fortunately, no lives were lost. So with shearing time almost at hand came the need to build a new shed. What impressed him was that this shed should have been erected in only three or four months after the disaster, he said. A lot of the timber for it was pit sawn and Mr McKellar said that as far as he knew it was still standing on the original totara piles.

A scar, now partly covered over, high up in the hills behind Pigeon Bay is the scene of the slip and Mr McKellar said this week that there was a hole there big enough to put the Annandale shearing shed in.

lii 1843 Ebenezer Hay and his family settled in Pigeon Bay in 1843. He and his wife arrived in Wellington in 1838 and after searching for properties all over the Wairarapa they eventually built themselves a little ship, with the aid of Captain Sinclair, and in 1842 sailed as far south as Port Chalmers reconnoitring the land. Pigeon Bay was selected as the site for settlement and the Hays came to the bay in the following year and for a time the Sinclairs and the Hays shared the same temporary residence —each family occupying one end.

Annandale once covered about 7500 acres. Today the Annandale estate property is of 2812 acres. The Glenralloch property of Mr J. B. Hay includes former Annandale country, and in his Knockindale property Mr McKellar has 500 acres of what was Annandale.

Annandale gets its name from the place of that name in Ayrshire, Scotland, where Ebenezer Hay came from.

Annandale estate today runs from sea .level to almost 2000 ft. It carries about 1750 Romney breeding ewes, 2050 ewe hoggets and some 120 wether hoggets and rams, 400 to 500 adult steers and 110 dairy stock, including herd replacements. About 1000 of the ewe hoggets are bred oh the place and the others are bought in. All of the steers are bought in. Two-tooth ewes from the

property are well-known at the Little River fair, where this year some 1220 were sold sheep are available for shearing. These courses are sponThe 50 to 60-cow herd of grade Friesians has averaged more than 4001 b of butterfat in the last three or four years.

The Annandale homestead today is unoccupied. It was initially built by the Hays as an hotel and after the disastrous landslide became the homestead.