AS OTHERS SEE US'

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32274, 17 April 1970, Page 7

AS OTHERS SEE US'

I had been tailing lambs with the boss and the five musterers. It was a back-country station of 30,000 acres near Lake Sumner. We had finished for the day and were sitting outside their hut in the late afternoon sun.

I was walloping away at their beer -.and they were having no mercy on my cigarettes. The 30 sheep dogs that they had with them were tied up underneath every bit of shade in a rough circle about us—they scratched their fleas and slept and stretched. It was all very peaceful and the beer tasted even better ! than Newcastle Amber Ale. Then—“ What about your'Mr Wilson?” said Ray. “He’s a charming character, isn’t he? We supply your country with half the lamb you eat: we did the same during the war at very little profit for New Zealand—we sent over the 2nd New. Zealand Division, which won the war in the desert for you—and what does Mr Wilson do? Into the Common Market with you, and no more east of Suez. Charming.” New Zealanders have a refreshing lack of respect for politicians—their own General Election campaign was in full swing at the time, and we had noticed this characteristic before. They put them on about the same level as waiters and male dancers. But I was | unprepared for the classic i display of their skill at picturesque description that I followed. With Ray, there : were six of them—one never spoke at all, so that left five. When one paused for breath, another took up the tale.

The prose was as purple as the sky around the setting sun—nothing about the Prime Minister or his

policies went without pungent commept They didn’t even notice when I helped us all to another .round of their been but their fingers reached automatically for my cigarettes. I eventually managed to steer the conversation back to sheep, comparing breeds

and prices, lambing percentages and diseases, dogs and fencing costs, and all the hundreds of points of common ground that it is so easy to find even between my farm on the coast of Northumberland and their station 2000 feet up in the South Island of New Zealand. But the message was there, and was to re-echo wherever we went during .our stay—what was to be the relationship between the two countries in the Seventies?

Before 1 produce any views on that question, I must say something about the farming that we saw-

and naturally I must start with sheep. We arrived in Christchurch at the beginning of November in a drought It is uncanny how often this seems to happen to travellers—from Blackpool to Benghazi, just as one arrives, some meteorological record is being broken around one’s suffering body; it’s always the wettest, the dustiest the foggiest—and, so seldom, the best

But even the drought—the worst for 100 years in some parts—only served to emphasise the excellence of New Zealand’s climate. An Australian drought of this proportion would have meant seeing the land dotted with the rotting carcases of sheep and cattle, with the occasional flesheating bird perched on a rib-cage or horn and the station - owner wondering whether to shoot himself or emigrate to New Zealand—and choosing death before dishonour. But in the South Island things were different.

There were drought sales for selling ewes—but there was a reasonable trade for the seller. Lambs had to be slaughtered down to 18 to 201 b deadweight. But demand for them was strong. Cattle could be moved to other grazing, and there was hay to be bought—both at a high price.

I am not saying that things were not thoroughly unpleasant for those affected—they were: but the effect was fairly local, and I could not help thinking that if this was the worst that the climate could produce in 100 years, it was at least bearable. (To be continued.)

The author of this article is Mr Charles A. F. BakerCresswell, who farms 670 acres at Spindlestone in Northumberland. England. In November and December last year, with his wife, he made a tour of New Zealand, on which he wrote articles for the "New Zealand News." which is published by the "Tweedale Press." This is the first of a series, of excerpts from an agricultural supplement of the "Tweedale Press."