AN INTERESTING FIGURE

Southland Times, Issue 21849, 28 October 1932, Page 3

AN INTERESTING FIGURE

LINK WITH THE EARLY DAYS.

Mr John Macpherson of Oamaru who with Mrs Macpherson has been the guest of Mr and Mrs J. D. Trotter, at Woodlands for the past few days, in conversation with a Times reporter, related some interesting reminiscences of the early days. He was born in Perthshire and, as a surveyor, travelled over Scotland and had several years’ experience in Wales. Soon after nis arrival in New Zealand, he was appointed manager of “Totara” and Ardgowan,” then two of the estates owned by the Australian and New Zealand Land Company. Totara comprised 16,000 acres including that peculiar soil of volcanic origin around that locality which is some of the finest land in Otago. In the early days it was the usual thing to have 2000 acres and over in crop annually and this gave permanent employment to hundreds of men and horse teams. A dozen binders in one paddock was a common sight. Many a successful farmer to-day owes his success to the start he had on contract work on one or other of the company’s extensive properties. Totara was the experimental station of the company of any new thing. Whether it was new grass, new crop, or new machine, it was given to Mr Macpherson to try it. For instance, the first steam tractor was tried at Totara and when the sheep-shearing machines were first introduced, the demonstration at the woolshed aroused great interest, for in those days the worth of a sheep was the worth of its wool, as mutton was of little value. Birth of Frozen Meat Industry.

The experiment which resulted in the greatest revolution in the primary industry in this country was conducted in 1887 under Mr Macpherson’s supervision. This was when he made the selection and supervised the slaughtering of the pioneer shipment of frozen mutton from the colony. This year, 1932 is the jubilee of the frozen meat trade with Great Britain. Fifty years ago, on May 24, New Zealand’s first shipment of frozen meat arrived in London Docks by the sailing ship, Dunedin, after a passage from Port Chalmers of 98 days. In 1881 the Land Company, through its office in Edinburgh, entered into an agreement with the Albion shipping Company of Glasgow to charter the Dunedin to make the now historic trial shipment. There was no such thing as a freezer on land, so the ship was fitted with a Bell-Colman freezer. After the first batch of 2000 carcasses of pigs and sheep had been sent from Totara and successfully frozen, an accident caused the crankshaft of the freezer to break and this necessitated the sale of this mutton and pork locally. A new shaft was manufactured at Port Chalmers and a fresh start was soon made.

The ship cleared Otago Heads on February 15 and reported off the Lizard on the 18th and docked in the London docks on May 24, 1882. The fact that the shipment arrived in good condition in London and was a great success, reflects credit on Mr Macpherson for his part of the work, for the carcasses all had to be railed from Totara to Port Chalmers before being frozen, a distance of about 70 miles. The London Times, in an article on the arrival of the Dunedin, stated that the safe carriage of the fresh meat from the colonies to be a “prodigious fact.” Captain John Whitson was in charge of the Dunedin on this trip. The Land Company was awarded a bonus of £5OO from the New Zealand Government for the safe carriage of the first shipment of meat to the Old Country. The Dunedin was chartered by the company for nine other voyages, making ten consecutive trips in all. In 1889, on her last trip, this stout little sailing ship which not only made history but helped to found a great industry, died “in harness,” for since leaving port no trace of her was ever found.

On Totara to-day on an eminence opposite the well-known homestead there stands a cairn erected to the memory of Thomas Brydone who was superintendent of the Land Company which really founded the meat and the dairy industry of this country for the advent of the freezing chamber aboard ship soon led to the start of the export of dairy produce to England, and Brydone did much to help this also. As time went on Totara, as with the other large holding, was gradually broken up, and Mr Macpherson secured the homestead block when. the company eventually sold up. It is worthy of note that Mr Macpherson was more than a spectator in the breaking up of the large estates, for while he managed “Ardgowan” for the Land Company, the Government, under the premiership of the late John Ballance, and the advice of the Minister of Lands, the late Sir John Mackenzie took it as the first compulsory seizure and compelled the company to open it up for closer settlement.

Totara remained for years a large estate and became famous not only for the wheat, oat and potato crops which were exported to Sydney and Melbourne in great quantities in the early days, but also for the stock raised there. The Polled Angus cattle, the purebred flocks of Border and English Leicesters and Lincoln became wellknown as did the horses, for Totara is not far removed from “Elderslie,” the nursery of the thoroughbred in New Zealand. Mr Macpherson’s early experience among slate quarries in Wales was of use after in New Zealand when around Totara the Oamaru stone was quarried, the best of this well-known building stone coming from nearby. Although well up in years and now living in retirement, Mr Macpherson still shows keen interest in the land. He states that his visits to Southland, especially his more recent ones, have impressed him as to the wonderful progress this part of the Dominion has made and he is convinced that from a farming point of view Southland has a very bright future. “Your Royal Show of two years ago,” he said, “was an eye-opener to the rest of Nev/ Zealand and one of the best agricultural shows I have ever attended and at present the country down here looks a picture.”