From Roxburgh to Lawrence

Korero (AEWS), Volume 3, Issue 8, 21 May 1945, Page 3

From Roxburgh to Lawrence

Every seat in the bus running from Alexandra to Roxburgh was occupied. The low roof made standing uncomfortable, and I was glad when the driver, forgiving us for the wetting he received when he had to clamber to the roof of his bus in the pouring rain, unstrap the tarpaulin, and secure our two heavy, oily, army bicycles, suggested I could sit, on a box of blackberries, on the step below his seat. The narrow road (metalled with the fine gravel, first class for roadmaking, of which there are large deposits in the district) had the contortions, the precipitous rise and fall of a scenic railway. Down we would roar like a skier gathering speed for a jump ; then the bottomwould we get round the turn ? Yes. Breathe relief—up the next slope we would crawl, roaring louder, the driver changing even lower. Engine temperature was high, the water nearly boiling. The bus, we were told, was one of those which had been built in the United States especially for the Burma Road. When the order was ready to be filled, the Japanese had erected a " Road Closed ” notice, and some of the vehicles were brought to New Zealand, to Otago Central. They had not a bus, but a truck chassis. We jumped and bumped about in our seats and on our blackberryboxes. It was about as comfortable as a journey on a truck along the Burma Road. * This place is a paradise for small boys, some one said to us across the table. He was talking of Roxburgh and its chief

means of support, its orchards. He should have known : he was a small boy. Otago Central is important to New Zealand for its fruit ; and of the fruitgrowing. districts Roxburgh is the most extensive. There are in the neighbourhood of that small, clean, progressive town between seventy and eighty registered orchards, covering about 4,000 acres, and varying in size from 1 acre to 45 acres. To offset possible crop failure, which these days is caused mainly by unseasonable weather, many of the orchards are combined with sheep-runs : nearly thirty of the Roxburgh orchards have sheep country running from behind the blocks of trees into the hills. About 3,000 tons of fruit is produced each year. One jam-canning factory operates outside the town. Gold-miners were the first to plant fruit-trees. As soon as the rushes of the early days had steadied, the diggers, realizing their fortunes were not to be made in a day or a week, either returned to the trades and professions they had forsaken earlier with wild abandon or settled down to hard work, not giving up hope of a rich strike, but, until it came, content to make a living. From the hills they quarried stone to build houses, and round these dwellings they laid down gardens to provide food for thin times and work for the summer months when the rivers, swollen with melted snow, were often too high for panning. In some of the gardens fruittrees were planted. They flourished. More seedlings were obtained ; and as

the trees reached maturity more and more gold-seekers, dredgemasters, and hands, as well as diggers, began to give more time to orchard work. Difficulties were many. No system of marketing was in operation ; prices were unstable ; transport, by wagon over rough roads, was irregular, costly, and unsatisfactory ; few, if any, of the orchardists were experienced, their methods were primitive, and, for instance, the introduction (in second-hand packingcases) of codling-moth left growers bewildered and unable to combat the pest except by rooting out the affected trees. Early marketing schemes were unsuccessful, and a co-operative packing venture led only to trouble. In one direction alone was progress quickly and surely made. Irrigation laid the foundation of success. Typical of the larger orchards was the 45-acre property hardly more than an apricot stone’s throw from the outskirts of the town. We went to see it. Trees were first planted there more than sixty years ago by a man who is now an Old Identity, with a beard. His son is now in charge. He has lived more than forty years in Roxburgh ; he considers that, even without a beard, he is getting into the Old Identity class in his own right. The 7,000 trees on the property are made up of 500 cherry, 2,500 apricot, 500 plum, 2,000 peach, 1,000 apple and pear, and 300 nectarine ; each year, in a normal season, they produce about 30,000 cases of fruit. Six hundred sheep are run on a further 900 acres. In the early days this country was overrun with rabbits, which razed feed so close that the sheep were often without strength to stand up for shearing. Since then the pest has been poisoned out, and now more than twice the number of sheep can be —and fattened. “ They’re up among the Santa Rosas,” we were told. It took us some time to eat our way to the Santa Rosas. We heard the pickers through leafy trees five minutes before we could find them ; the sounds they made— buckets jangling, ladders creaking, whistle of “ Lay that Pistol Down, Babe ” —seemed to come from every direction. At last, in the track between the trees, was one of the wagons a converted model T Ford

chassis drawn by Daisy, a seventeen-year-old draught very fond of fruit. She is the mother of a ten-year-old daughter, Daisy. Daughter Daisy, in her turn, is the mother of a four-year-old son, Daisy. Five pickers, chattering like a flock of birds and working with incredible speed, were filling their tins with the plums. One tree at a time is picked ; it takes only minutes to strip it, then on to the next. Plums, apples, and peaches were all ripening and ready for picking. Usually there would be apricots, too, but a late frost last year had ruined the crop throughout Otago Central ; at this orchard not one good apricot had been picked from the 2,500 trees. Between the avenues of trees (which are planted 18 ft. apart, “ Should be 24 ft.,” says the boss) are irrigation channels, the water used in the ripening period improving the size and the colour of the fruit, reducing withering, and helping to form the buds for the next year’s fruit. From overhead and roundabout was the jingle-j angle of the bird-scarers — two old chaffcutters, one driven by water, the other by electricity, have been geared down, and every minute and a half they give a tug to the network of jangling tins, the resulting racket terrifying the birds so much that they eat for only one minute of every minute and a half. In addition, about 3,000 gun-cartridges are used a year. Blackbirds and starlings do the most damage, but sparrows, which once left the fruit alone entirely, are developing a taste that grows stronger every season. Cherries are the fruit to suffer the most. Seedlings in the early days of orchards were imported from Australia. An apricot named Early Red was renamed Roxburgh Red when it was introduced to Otago Central. Since then there have been many inquiries from Australia for this “ new New Zealand variety.” We left the Santa Rosas, which the boss described as wonderful dessert plums but shy croppers, for the Red Gravenstein, always the first cooking apples to be ready. Accustomed to the manoeuvre, Daisy and Daisy turned their vehicles in the narrow lane without a hand having to touch their reins. They know their

job. The older Daisy stops for a second to snatch an apple, misses, so contents herself with a mouthful of tree. Every night in the picking season she is given a feed of reject fruit— “ and once,” the boss said, “ she wandered into the pack-ing-shed in the lunch hour and ate fifteen cases of extra-fancy dessert peaches.” Picking is from early in November to the end of April, with January and February the busiest months. In spite of seasonal busyness and the urgent need to pick and to pack fruit as it becomes ready, the orchard is run to factory routine. No overtime is worked, the men finish in the packing-shed sharp at five o’clock —with the work finished. No one knows this better than the older Daisy : she’s a quiet biddable old horse generally, but it’s an impossibility to make her do another trip from the shed into the orchard after four o’clock ; she knows as well as the boss that by that hour if work is to finish on time picking for the day should be complete. She just won’t go. And as soon as the last load is brought in, without word from or a beg-

pardon to any one, she trundles herself, her cart, and her daughter round to the stable. One thousand cases of fruit a day can be handled in the packing-shed ; with twenty packers 1,000 cases can be handled in four hours. The grader, powered by an electric motor, grades to eight (adjustable) sizes, reduces work to a minimum. Packing is by hand, a job only for the expert if the fruit is to arrive at the market in good condition. When picking is ended, when the trees are barebranched, there is pruning, top-dressing, replanting, and spraying to be done — work in a large orchard is by no means seasonal. A peach-tree needs about four years to reach full bearing, and plums and apricots a year or more longer. Trees will fruit for as long as forty years, but usually crops begin to decrease after twenty-five years ; best practice is to get about fifteen years’ heavy cropping from a tree and then replant. “ It’s all for the best, but don’t talk to me about marketing regulations,” said the boss. Here is on§ of the paragraphs

from the regulations about apples : “ Apples of these grades (Extra Fancy, Fancy, and Good) shall be mature, sound, smooth, clean, well-formed, carefully hand-picked from tree, properly wrapped, true to name, free from disease, visible bitter pit, skin puncture, or skin broken at the stem, and other defects which cause fruit to decay or which are likely to make the fruit unattractive to the consumer. Individual apples of either grade shall carry not less than the percentage of colour and not more than the percentage of blemish and unnatural russet indicated on the appended list.” For instance, Extra Fancy grade must have no more than one sting or bite, and Fancy and Good no more than two stings or bites. “No,” the boss answered, “we have no frost-fighting equipment ; it will be one of the first things I’ll have to do something about after the war.” Several of the orchards in the district have fire-pots to fight the frost, and it was on these properties only that apricot crops were saved last season. Prices higher than ever before rewarded the enterprise of those orchardists who had the equipment. But it’s not only enterprise : there are two sides of the matter to be considered. Each tree has to be surrounded by five fire-pots, each holding one gallon and a half of oil fuel ; and in one night it is not unusual for the pots to be filled three

times. Pots and the fuel are costly ; and, especially important these days, large gangs of men have to be available to tend the pots. Sometimes the pots have to be lighted many times in one season. Fumes from the oil fuel are foul ; buildings and animals suffer ; and once in Roxburgh an invalid woman sleeping on a sun-porch nearly suffocated and had to be rushed to hospital in the middle of the night. Recently a hospital in the United States surrounded by orchards had to spend /400 cleaning from its buildings the filth caused by fumes from firepots ; the authorities sued the fruitgrowers, but it was ruled that the orchardists were doing no more than their livelihood demanded, and judgment was given for the defendants. If smokeless oil could be used this method of frost-fighting would be much more successful. Some orchards overseas have installed systems of central heating, with piping led beneath the trees from a main furnace, but high cost is the great disadvantage. Better methods of frost-fighting, pre-cooling at the orchard so that fruit will reach the market in better condition, and carriage of fruit by aeroplane to the main centres, especially in the North Island, are some of the things the boss hopeswill come soon after the war. Light rain started to roll into the dust. Picking finished at once ; the men came, buckets jangling, to hurry with the

packing for the Sunday night fruit train. We left the orchard. Roxburgh, we agreed, was a paradise —and not only for small boys. * The hotel at which we stayed in Roxburgh was called the Commercial. Possibly it once had a more romantic name, because, although it might not have given service in the times of the gold rushes, it must have been built before the end of the coaching days ; the entrance to its yard is under a portal built high enough for the old-time coaches to pass beneath. In the town several of the buildings, most of them built of blocks of stone quarried from the neighbourhood, have similar portals. Many are the stories told of the coaches, the drivers, and their passengers. Stories of drivers with such names as Cabbage Tree Ned. Of the coach horses stopping one night from habit outside a changing station with the driver unconscious with cold, his hair and beard frozen stiff—he continued his journey next morning. Of the common practice of a coach and four zigzagging downhill between rocks and boulders, the driver with his foot hard on the brake, the passengers helping to keep the coach in control by straining on a long rope trailing behind. Of a passenger who woke late one freezing morning to find the water in the glass in

which he had left his artificial teeth for the night had frozen solid ; the coach was waiting to leave, there was no time for a thaw, the passenger had to rush out to his seat with his teeth still frozen in the glass. And, more unpleasant, stories of bolting horses, capsizes, and accidents. * In May, 1861, Gabriel Read, near what is now the town of Lawrence, first found gold in large quantities. To commemorate the discovery a pick and shovel has been erected on the site of Read’s first claim. A few yards away a mountain stream runs fresh (and, these days, clean) over rocks and boulders. A narrow, dusty road flickers through broom and gorse in bloom, the ground to the sides is boggy ; Scotch thistles and yellowcentred daisies brightly colour the green rushes. High hills rise behind. The sound of a sheep-dog yapping comes on the wind. Where once were thousands of men and frenzied activity is now deserted and desolate. Originally level ground, a little farther on from the site of the first claim, has been scooped by man into a deep valley, the two sides of which are estimated to be 1,000 ft. high. To the left of the road leading to this gulch were once a hotel, a post-office, many offices and buildings, and a school with an attendance of three

hundred children. Nothing remains standing. Now only five families live in the whole valley. Water-pipes, old huts and shelters, timber, rusted equipment, and machinery lie abandoned over the gulch. We climbed through the window-frame of an old three-roomed house perched on a hillock of shingle. On the charred wall was a 1910 calendar. Heaped over the sunken floor were gum boots, shovels, forks, a weighing-scale, a saw, bottles (methylated spirits and whiskey), spanners, soap, nails, pans, and tangled balls of twine. Trousers, muddy and rotting, hung from rusting nails. In one corner was a large old-fashioned iron safe,the door locked. This old house was evidently the field office of a mining company, for on a bench was a thick log-book in which were recorded, in neat, faded, back-hand writing, the day-to-day activities and the work done (or, it seemed, often not done) from 1896 to 1925. The first entry, on January 2, 1896, read “men still keeping up holiday, anyhow watter short.” Hours of work, progress made, and weather conditions were always faithfully noted. Typical entries were “watter went off at 9 o’clock— frost ” ; “ now a flow of watter, men woorking on races ” ; “ races frozen, started ellevattion.” Charley, evidently one of the employees, must have given a lot of trouble ; right through the years are such entries, often made, as “ Charley not at woork ” ; “ haven’t seen Charley for a week ; “Charley arrived drunk, went away quick ”; “ Charley still not at woork.” *

According to the copy we saw of. the by-laws of Lawrence, inhabitants and vistors are prohibited, among other things, from entering or being in the town with “ . . . any sword, dirk, or dagger, discharging any firearm or letting off fireworks unless actually in pursuit of any felon or offender.” There is to be no throwing or discharging of any stone ” ; and a person ‘‘rolling any cask, beating any carpet, flying any kite, using any bows and arrows, or playing at any game to the annoyance of or danger to any person in a public place ” will surely be fined. How it has been possible for so many windows to have been broken in the town without infringing these bylaws is a mystery. Most of the towns of Otago Central sprang up almost overnight with the goldrushes. Most of them also progressed in other ways when the mining days came to an end. Lawrence is different. Gabriel Read, with his famous discovery, started, among other things, a boom that resulted in the building of a large town in short time. It seems to a visitor that it must have been the only building ever to have been done in that town. Shops, offices, and houses once occupied are now empty; walls gape, floors and foundations have sunk, windows are without glass, and chimneys are at all angles— but they still stand, they have not been pulled down. One Sunday morning we were in the main street for an hour without seeing one person or one vehicle. Several of the shops and offices still in use have weeds sprouting from the roofs and over the doorsteps and entrances ; they lean uncomfortably against each other at all

angles. Many of the houses in the residential area are more modern and in good condition, with neat well-kept gardens, but the main street is dismal and depressing. As we walked down the footpath that Sunday morning we heard a gramophone playing the Broadway Melody of 1926. In many ways Lawrence is even further behind the times.