‘No tourist potential’ in Molesworth station

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32566, 27 March 1971, Page 6

‘No tourist potential’ in Molesworth station

Opening Molesworth station to limited safari trips might be a good way of persuading people there is no reason to go there, according to Dr Lucy B. Moore.

Dr Moore was addressing the Canterbury branch of the New Zealand Federation of University Women. Attached to the botany division of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research at Lincoln, she has made regular trips to Molesworth since 1944, undertaking resarch to reclaim the formerly rabbitinfested denuded countryside. For several summers trips have been running through the back of the half million acre station. Recently a trip through the middle, for two months of the year, has been allowed.

“This very limited access is probably a good thing,” said Dr Moore, in reply to questions. “Because it has been so hard to get at, there is a myth surrounding Molesworth. When we first started going there 20 years ago, people in Blenheim would talk as if we had gone to the moon. Little to see “These trips will show people it’s just a long, tedious, unspectacular drive,” she said. “There is very little to see.”

Because of the distances, and lack of services, it was certainly not a suitable trip for individual tourists. The area seemed too vast for horseback trips, particularly as there was little overnight accommodation. Dr Moore traced the history of the station. First exploration had taken place in 1850. By 1860 it was recognised as “reasonable pastoral area.” Cattle were introduced, then sheep, and then rabbits.

Tussock was burnt off, the sheep and the rabbits ate the short growth, and the grass gradually became poorer and disappeared from the ridges and higher places. The station was eventually forfeited to the Government, and in - the 1940 s an interdepartmental committee decided the sheep must be taken off, burning stopped, and the rabbits, deer, goats, and pigs eliminated. Work was begun on finding trees, grasses, and clovers which would return the high country to its original state of “reasonable pasture land.” Dr Moore was “one of a team of two” sent to carry out the work. Experimental areas were

meticulously recorded and photographs, which Dr Moore showed at the meeting, provide an accurate picture of progress. “It is very slow,” she said. “Regrowth of the vegetation takes many years.” The team had a 14-acre area fenced off, and there they sowed and planted, counted and recorded in their search for the "miracle plant.” “In 1956 white clover was sown from the air, and this began the up-grading of the place,” said Dr Moore. “By 1970 our 14 acres still showed some scab weed (the hallmark of the rabbit), but now there are bands of red clover, and cocksfoot—that’s the mircale plant Clover has considerable advantages, of course, because it’s readily available, and available in quantities needed for an area this size.”

In parts, tussock and clover were gradually taking over rrom the scab weed, she said.

After “a real struggle” trees were now established, providing a ready source of firewood. The deer population seemed under control, and rabbits were being kept down although this still cost about $30,000 a year. Because the wild pigs fed mainly on the rabbits, they had almost disappeared. But some new problems were arising. Without the livestock to eat it, briar was flourishing in parts and there were other weeds which could prove equally worrying. “But in all progress is a very real miracle I couldn’t imagine could have happened. We must try to see nothing is done to lose what has been so slowly gained.” Dr Moore warned against the introduction of sheep “They eat close, and wouk eat die place up. The healing is so slow—one. fire, plague of rabbits, and we are

back where we started. It akes a long time to hold the dopes, get something growing again, and then use the slopes only gradually,” she said.