Historic reminder

Press, 15 February 1982, Page 50

Historic reminder

Totara Estate Centennial Park has been developed to remind New Zealanders of the importance of Totara and the frozen meat trade. It has cost almost $150,000 to restore the surroundings to original condition. The New Zealand Historic Places Trust has been given the responsibility of restoring the park, and today, the chairman of the Meat Board, Mr Adam Begg, will officially hand over the park to the Trust. Site work started at Totara in October, 1980. Among the buildings which have been restored are the cookhouse, the men’s quarters and the meat house, where the carcases were cooled before being taken to Dunedin by train. Conditions in the slaughterhouse were vastly different to today’s modern abbatoir. There was no hot running water — just two cold water taps. Raw offal was fed to the 200 pigs in the yards outside

the slaughterhouse. They drank the blood as it trickled out through a gutter in the slaughterhouse floor to the trough outside. The operations at Totara were described in detail by the “North Otago Times” “Six butchers with attendant satellites are engaged in the sanguinary part of the business, and 240 carcases are despatched to Dunedin every morning by the first train. The sheep destined for the morrow’s slaughter are on the previous day drafted into a yard, where they have to remain fasting for 24 hours so as to be in the proper condition for killing. At four o’clock every morning work begins; when the number killed on the previous day, after hanging to cool for 24 hours, are packed in meat vans fitted for the purpose with hanging apparatus, ventilators, and an ice chest in the centre of each; and five vans, each containing 50 to 60 sheep, are taken

on their destination by the morning train. “Immediately after being killed, the carcases are hung up in a meat house constructed for the purpose, with one wall and the floor constructed of narrow boards placed an inch or so apart, so as to admit of a free draught and current of fresh air. This shed is fitted up to hang 250 sheep, each carcase being allowed a space of fifteen inches square, which allows the cool air a free passage around them. "While hanging there, the carcases are all carefully cleansed, and all superfluous fat, etc., that may remain in them after passing through the butcher’s hands carefully removed. The mutton is of an excellent quality — for the most part crossbred and the carcases average from 85 to 901 b. Several have been sent weighing over 1401 b, and about 30 or 40 will be shipped, as specimens of fat sheep, turning the scale al 2001b5.”