MACKENZIE COUNTRY

Timaru Herald, Volume XCVIII, 19 June 1925, Page 12

MACKENZIE COUNTRY

IN THE DAYS OF LONG AGO (By Mr. T. D. Burnett, M.P.)

The men who originally acquired the Mackenzie Country runs iroin tile Crown were not high country sheep men; they wore not Dred that way. The majority were Enghsli public schoo men, somo of wiiom nau never even seen tne runs t-uiien up ior ’Uioin ny friends. Tom ami Jfreu Icsclicinakor and their partner, Henry Jolm Be Cren secured Haidon: .Harry Ford and John Tucker Eord and tncir partner Hr. I'lsnor the Grampians; Hugh .Eraser, son of jock Eraser, .Black horest, and ben Uha-u'. T'nei .valgety and most ot tlio Mackenzie Elams were applied for bv John Ei. Sidebottom, Manager for the Rhodes’s at the Levels (applied for nv him alter his capture of juackcnzie inside the portals of the Mackenzie I ass, March, 1885), but was never registered and no license was issued, uiays Hills was taken up. by Gray Bros, and sold shortly after to John Hayhurst. Stericker and Hall were at bawdon; JiCe, Kennaway, and Acton at ItoJlesbv. Ebenezer Hay, (alter whom Mt Hay is named) at Lake Tekapo, and ins nephew Jonn, who mauageu xoi ms uncle but took up on his own account IgUOl) acres between the Tekapo and the Eork river, and after wiiom Mt John is named. J ho Burnells were at Riclimond, lorkshucmen and therefore friends of the btcnckcis, Hu 11s and Ostlers. The Halls wore at the Mistake station, Sir John and Captain Tom Hall, having long strip runs with a frontage on tne Tasman V alley and running Rack to I’ckapo. Three ot them applied for 20,000 aero blocks. Joseph fceswick, another I'orkshueman, took up the country now known as Glenmore, but formerly known as CastleJiall, after whom ML Joseph is named, Jock Eraser had To,ooo acres, partiv fronting ;n the Joilie Gorge anu partlv in tha Tasman Valley. Andrew' Burnett had all that wild country between the Tasman and the Jolhe rivers. Andrew Paterson w r as at Irishman Creek (there is somo doubt as to who took up Irishman Creek. My father thinks that it was one Mclver, who took it for the Erasers). Ustler was at tlio Wolds. Then below that portion of the Wolds originally taken up by McHutchison and Gladstone, John Havhurst discovered that there wms some* 30,0000 acres in the fork between the Tekapo and the i'ukala not applied for, and hence wo have Simons Bass. Then in the fork between the Pukaki and the Ohau we have Ben Ohau. taken up by Hugh Eraser. In passing, lb is just as well to remark'that the name Ben Ohau is a glaring instance of how t-lio Sassenach can murder a Gaelic place name. When Hugh Eraser, a typical Highlander, arrived w'ith his first mob of sheep foi Ben Ohau he discovered on the lull at the back of the present Homestead, a pack of wild dogs and promptly named the run Bcinn Achiu (spelt _ phonetically) ■which, means “Mountain of I. he Dog.” On the Downs stretching botween the present Ithoboro Homestead and Lake Pukaki, Old Dark of Dark Bros.. West Countrymen from Bath, had his first homestead, under an overhanging rock for a while, subsequently building a homcsteac. at Star Hill, but eventually shifting everything up to Glen tanner w'hero he had taken up 20 miles of frontage on the Tasman Valley. The major portion of Rhoboro Downs was taken up by Gladstone, a cousin of tlio Great btatesman. Birch Hill was taken up by Robert Campbell of : Otokaicke for his friend George Hodgkinson. Hodgkmson did not occupy- Birch Hill, but s'old his interest in it to “Big Mick” (iNicolo Kadove.) Probably the, last piece of country of any size taken up in the Mackenzie was that taken by John McGregor in the Forks of the Cass Itiver about the mid seventies; but all the country had been “rusiietl’' and acquired between the years 1856 and 1860. The heads of the gorges. Lilybank. the Godlcy side of The Mistake, Mount Cook, Birch Hill and Glen Lyon were all taken up in the early sixties. I cannot get any information as to who actually took up Lilybank. It may have been John H. Baker prior to his entering the Lands and Survey Department. Michael Studholme. of Waimato, was the first to stock it with cattle, a number of which went wild. William Sibbakl stocked it with sheen about 67, and later was known throughout tho South Island as being the owner of 600 semi wild horses running on Lilybank. So here we have a group of men, the great majority of whom had absolutely no experience of high country, facing a mountainous region subject to very severe falls of snow. There was practically no surplus stocksm those days to be obtained from the front country of South Canterbury and most of the sheep for stocking the Mackenzie came from the Nelson Province (that had been settled in the early forties), North Canterbury and the Ashburton Plains. Tlio Frasers, Darks and Patersons “overlanded ’ from Nelson thousands of sheep. Sawdon was stocked from George Hall’s station in tho Ashburton Forks, and as scab was rife from one end of the country to the other, the few stock inspectors and the police had their work cut out in seeing that the dipping regulations were carried out Up to the early sixties, there were no shepherds in the true sense of the word. The mustering was put through and sheep work, such as it was, carried on by run-away sailors and bullock drivers Lambing was allowed all the year round; scab was rampant, and it was thought a fine thing to dodge the dipping regulations. Hie early runhoideis knew so little about Native feed conditions that tlicv really vhought their country was understocked unless tho coarse tussock was topped: being ignorant of tho fact that it is the amount of fine feed between the tussocks that determines tho carrying capacity of a property. There were no fences: tho country was all open and in. mnnv cases in the"absence of rivers and sizeable creeks entailed incessant patrolling by men on foot. Tho modern young shepherd would stand airliast if ho was asked to do tlio tramping that his forebearers of seventy years- oF, took casually as part of the day's work. Some squatters, notably Harry Ford of the Grampians, attempted tho Australian system of yarding the flocks at night'and shepherding them through the day; but the experiment did not last long. I suspect that those old time squatters understood their bullock teams and riding horses better and took more pride in them than they did in running and understanding their flocks. Mos! of them drove their own bullock teams, and thor was keen rivalry as to who had the best turn out and the finest pair of leaders in their station bullock ienm and dray. Edward Starickcr has fold me that he has seen sc; nnmv as eird-t bullock foams camped nl; night at Old Sawdon station ; each driven bv its srpialtor owner and 'every otic loaded with station wool hound for T'imoru. You may be sure they nmdo a. night of it. In passing, it is worthy of j vote that W. E. Gladstone’s cousin was the only one to use the more humane oaken bullock bows in place of the iron ones -universally used. I understand that these hows are still in use in Devonshire! where Glad.--true came from. Tt is curious to scan photos of these old-time squatters and station hands, and examine the fashions of those simple vs when the hair was worn lone, falling to tho shoulders, a full heard sweeping the chest, a cahhawo tree hat, a Crimean shirt, wit 1 ' white moleskin trow-or- tucked into AVellin--'-ton hor-hs <"• hi ark k-atl or let-o-ing.". the whole fi’-v'shod off bv tho wearing of o broad silk sash round the waist. Witli-

out any authority for saying so, I suspect that there was a strong trace of tho Mexican in this makeup, coming from tho Californian gold rushes of '46, taken by those diggers in tho fifties to tho Australian gold fields, and from tlierei to tho Gabriel’s Gully rush of ’6l. It would be readily understood that hero in the Mackenzie Country in the early sixties, in common with all tho rest of tho mountainous sheep country of the. South island, w.is a tremendous field for men whom by birth, breeding and occupation, had the instinct and . experience for handling sheep in high country, so that in tho sixties when the vanguard of tho invasion of Highland and Lowland shepherds first began, the squatters hailed their advent as a Heaven-sent blessing. May I here say that I consider that tlio hill shepherd par excellence, is tho man who has been reared on the Borders among tho Cheviot Hills or among tho hills of Dumfrieshire, or the soft low lying hills of Perthshire. But if you graft such instinct and sheep tradition irom sucli men on to the wild mountaineers of tho Highlands, then you havo a very perfect man for high country. When the clan system in tho Highlands was broken up after Culloden and feudalism was swept away for ever, immense tracts of country wore thrown open as sheep runs which were promptly taken up by South Country sheep men, who invariably took tho best or their shepherds with them. For years these- men and their offspring were looked upon with suspicion and even hatred, they were considered interlopers especially in the district where wholesale clearances of the natives had taken place. They eventually blended with tlio native population and imparted tho instinct or sheep management while they took from tho native the instinct of mountain craft. Now it is a noteworthy fact that tho sheep man who has made good in the mountains of tho South Island invariably has a strong dash of Lowland blood in him, or as a native Highlander, was brought up in a Lowland shepherd’s home. Bo that as it may, tho hour had struck in tlio early sixties for the coming of the trained shepherd, and the Highland sheep man and shepherd held unchallenged sway in the Mackenzie until 1595, when tlio colonial began to come into his own. Not that they wero all successes; some, of them were duds, some were lazy and some were shepherds only in name; but it is safe to say that the majority of them made good, and served the peculiar needs of thei period in a very rough country, most of it badly isolated, and with very few comforts such as wo moderns aro used to.

It is safe to say that threo fifths of the mountain population of _ Canterbury and Otago of that period could claim Gaelic as their mother tongue; whole mastering camps wero Highland born, while there was a small minority of Lowlanders. On tho other hand the Englishman was the bullock driver and horse breaker, and ';o and the Irishman also manned the shearing boards. The Irishman, too, was a champion at clearing a way; none could approach him at road-making, and that in the days when an earth scoop was considered a new fangled notion. So the trained shepherd cleaned up the country of scab; knoekei system into the management of flocks; regulated the lambing time to the only natural time —thei spring, began to do something to awaken a conscience as to the dangers of over stocking; something towards wintering his cheep on his safest country, and started to cut more wool from his sheep.