Dairy farms in N.Z.

Press, 29 July 1989, Page 22

Dairy farms in N.Z.

From Bush-Burn to Butter. By Eric Warr. Butterworths, 1989. 186 pp. Illustrations. $38.50.

(Reviewed by Eric Beardsley) If you think share-milking is something to do with insider trading, if you can’t recall those golden days when cows had names like Buttercup and Daisy and were milked by aching hand (RSI hadn’t even been dreamed of), or if you have never savoured a jet of warm milk fresh from a wellaimed teat in the milking shed, this rather curious publication is required reading. It will help you to appreciate the profound economic and social impact of the dairy industry in New Zealand, ever since Samuel Marsden imported some cows in 1814 to provide milk for the Anglican mission stations in the Bay of Islands. The book was a labour of love for Eric Warr, for nearly 30 years a senior lecturer in geography at Massey University, and the publisher is to be commended for publishing it, even a little incomplete, after the author’s death last year. But welcome though it may be, it is something of a literary curiosity—neither a full-blown history, nor a popular survey; too informal for a

thesis, yet unlikely to grace many coffee tables beyond the Waikato. The text, while informative, lacks lustre, though the difficulty of marrying a racy turn of phrase to the pulse of life in the cowshed is readily acknowledged. However, the wealth of photographs, many of considerable historical interest, enlivens and illuminates the story of the industrial development of dairying, from the burning of the bush (the source of the inelegant title) to the bulk collection of milk by tanker today as well as the lives of those who practised the art. Prudent school teachers really did let cow cocky kids sleep at their desks — casualties of early-morning milking. The book is sub-titled “A Journey in. Words and Pictures” and perhaps that best - sums it up. The journey is certainly worth making and one arrives at the end with a far better understanding and appreciation of the role of dairy farmers, past and present, and those facing an uncertain future. It is important that we gain such an understanding for the industry is one of the keys to the standard of living we enjoy. Without its earnings from milk, New Zealand would be a poor country indeed.