VALUABLE HORSES ESCAPE

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 106, 29 January 1938, Page 17

VALUABLE HORSES ESCAPE

Mr. T. H. Lowry’s Property WIDESPREAD DAMAGE BY FLOOD Dominion Special Service. Hastings, January 28. Valuable thoroughbred horses attached to Mr. T. H. Lowry's fjimous Okawa Stud narrowly escaped destruction by the flood waters of the Ohiwia Stream during the storm on Monday night. That the animals are alive, to-day is due to a decision by Mr. Lowry on Monday evening to remove tiie brood mares and foals and other live stock from the low-lying grazing paddocks to higher ground. Mr. Lowry said to-day that the weather on Monday evening indicated possible flood conditions, and he decided to remove the animals. As events turned out ho now has reason to congratulate himself on the decision as had the animals remained in the paddocks on the flat they would undoubtedly have been lost. The Ohiwia Stream, which runs through Mr. Lowry’s property, rose 10ft. in a single hour on Monday night, and the total rise was 18ft. Flood waters wrought destruction in paddocks of a total area of 100 acres, in which the thoroughbred horses grazed, and to-day the paddocks present a scene of desolation, being covered to a depth of several feet with silt and flood debris. All the fences are levelled and the damage to these paddocks will result in Mr. Lowry having to transfer his stud animals elsewhere until the paddocks are regrassed. The losses at Okawa are not confined to the grazing paddocks for stud horses. When lie looked out on Tuesday morning, said Mr. Lowry, the flood waters stretched for half a mile. About fifty trees in the plantation and on the flats poplars, which were half a century old, were uprooted, and in the young plantation three years old there remain only three trees out of 70. A big area of lucerne is-now buried under silt and sand, and about half a mile of fencing is buried under the debris. So seriously were the fences damaged, said Mr. Lowry, that it wgs now possible to ride about ten miles without opening a gate.

The famous Okawa homestead garden is a scene of ruin, and it will take years to restore it to its former beauty. The well-known cricket pitch in the grove on which Mr. Lowry’s sons received their training and on which many famous cricketers have played is now buried under two feet of silt