Farm and station Frozen meat story has deviated from facts

Press, 28 November 1980, Page 14

Farm and station Frozen meat story has deviated from facts

It is not uncommon, with the passage of time, for history to become a mixture of facts and fiction — for the true story to become somewhat blurred.

Some of the myths associated with the early history of the frozen meat industry 7 in New Zealand are recalled by Mr A. C. Loach, historian for Waitaki NZ Refrigerating Ltd, and field officer for the

Historic Places Trust for the Canterbury region. At the same time he records recently meeting a person who has supplied him with some interesting information pertaining to the early days of the industry and some quite historic photographs. In a little over two years time there will be the centenary of the de-

partyre of the first shipment of frozen meat from New Zealand on the sailing ship Dunedin from Port Chalmers. Earlier in the year an article appeared on these pages reporting that the Meat Board and the Historic Places Trust would mark the occasion by establishing, a public park on part of the Totara estate, just south of Oamaru, where sheep and lambs were killed for the first shipment of frozen meat, which left this country for Britain on February 15, 1882. Mr Loach takes up the story. Essentially that article was a plea for historical accuracy, he says — an attempt to dispel some of the myths which plague the story of the early days of the frozen meat industry. . , Research into the history of the New Zealand Refrigerating Company brought to light many errors, omissions, and contradictions in the export meat story, which latter-day writers had done little to correct. Typical of this was a 3000-word “history’’ of the meat trade read by Thomas Brydone at the Australasian Stock Conference held at Parliament Buildings in Wellington on October 27, 1892, and as recorded in the New Zealand Year Book of 1893. In that preamble it. was stated that Brydone conducted the first trial shipment. Neither there nor in the "history” was any mention made of the work of William Soltau Davidson, general manager of the New Zealand and Australian Land Company who, over a period of two and a half years, organised that successful, shipment and then did so much to resolve the chaos on the London market, where no storage facilities existed and .. exporters were at the mercy of unscrupulous traders. Rather surprising was also Bryddhe’s; .statement that: the . ship Mataura loaded in Auckland- and that her shipment did not turn , out so well as the Dunedin's. The facts, as recorded in the minutes of the New Zealand Refrigerating Company which loaded the ship for the New Zealand Shipping Company, tvere that the Mataura began loading in Dunedin before jthe result

of the Dunedin shipment was known, that Brydone arranged the insurance on the cargo and that his Land Company was allocated space for 1000 carcases, which were supplied from Totara. This second New Zealand ship-

ment was hailed in London as equal to that of the Dunedin. Then there was the story in Critchell and Raymond’s “A History of the Frozen Meat Trade” (1912) that a portion of the cargo of the Dunedin consisted of wethers and lambs sent by John Grigg from his farm at Longbeach (in Mid-Canterbu-ry); that he chartered the Mataura to carry his own fat stock from the farm and that the meat was all condemned when it arrived in London. In fact Grigg never chartered the ship but did consign in the cargo from Dunedin 496 overfat ewes, some as heavy as 1501 b. All were unsaleable in London. Of course,. Grigg did not ship on the Dunedin nor was he the founder of Canterbury’s first freezing works, as had been claimed, said Mr Loach. Now to digress a little. Some 10 years ago two gran d-daughters of Edward Jerningham Wakefield came down from Auckland and were taken to Sumner to view a stone house known as the Wakefield House, because it was supposed to have been built and lived in by their grandfather. Later, however, a 10minute search in the Lands and Deeds Registry revealed that the house was built by a surgeon, who took up 100 acres in Sumner in 1851.

But not al! is gloom! In spite of intensive research in such places as Alexander Turnbull Library 7 and the National Museum in Wellington and the Hocken Library and the Early Settlers’ Museum in Dunedin, no photographs

could be found of early Totara farm buildings and ,the slaughtering complex, from which came the sheep and lambs for the pioneer shipment on the Dunedin. Then occurredone of

those things which keep frustrated researchers in the game, says Mr Loach. Sheila, daughter of John Macpherson (the manager of Totara when killing for the first shipment was done) came to ’light with photographs taken by her brother, Stewart, prior to the Great War of 1914-18;

Sheila and another brother, William (Bill), well remember that killing continued after the turn of

the century and that raw offal was still being thrown to the pigs. In a recent letter Bill wrote: “Imagine pigs wallowing in blood and guts near slaughterhouses today.” From newspaper

clippings which Sheila has kept, it. was learned that boys employed when the first shipments were made found that pigs thrived on raw offal but also became vicious making the feeding of them between killings, a dangerous job for a boy, who. to the pigs, was only flesh.

Five butchers were expected to kill 250 sheep per day. The carcases were hung in a cooling shed overnight; then loaded on to drays at 4 o’clock in the morning and conveyed to the railway for transport to Port Chalmers, 70 miles distant. And what of John Macpherson? He was bom in Perthshire, Scotland, in 1850. For six years prior to coming to New Zealand he served under a civil engineer at the Cambrian Slate Quarries in North Wales, where he acted as clerk and assistant manager. On leaving he was the recipient of a wallet of £25 and an illuminated address, which contains the names of 128 subscribers with subscriptions ranging from sixpence to ten shillings and sixpence.

John arrived in Lyttelton on June 6, 1876, under engagement to the New Zealand and Australian Land Company. He found work on the 21,400 acre

Pareor.i estate and in the following March accepted the offer of a job as clerk-surveyor on the 153,000 acre Levels estate near Timaru. This offer of £125 per year and found was made by William Soltau Davidson, who had come to the Levels II years earlier as a 19-year-old cadet and was now about to return to headquarters in Edinburgh to become general manager of the Land Company, which controlled about 550.000 acres in New Zealand alone.

In 1879 John Macpherson was appointed manager of the Totara and Ardgowan estates, the combined acreage of which was 20,000. At Totara he was, of course, associated' with the first shipment of frozen meat.

In his thirty-ninth year in 1889 John married 25-year-old Jane (Jeannie) Trotter, of Southland. Of their 10 children only Sheila, of Christchurch, and Bill, of Wanaka (now in their eighties) survive. When the Totara estate was broken up John bought the homestead block of 475 acres in January, 1920, but held it for only 15 months before selling.

He died in Oamaru on October 5. 1934.