by Neville Peat
At some point in their exploration of the Head of Lake Wakatipu and Te Awa Whakatipu, a party of Waitaha moa-hunting people from southern New Zealand came across the inaka deposits. In addition to the Slip Stream source, similar stone was found in the lower Routeburn/Te Komama area. Stone from this latter source was subjected to an unusual firing process.
The Dart Bridge camp site is more than 400 years old, and appears to have been occupied for two periods, each about one hundred years long, the earlier period dating back as far as 700 or 800 years. It is hard to say when the Slip Stream deposit of inaka was discovered but the prospecting ability and stamina of these early travellers is beyond question. They were a rugged, determined people, and they returned to the coast with news of a momentous find in a valley that lay below the face of a giant they called Te Koroka, which can be seen from the Rees-Dart track.
Strictly protected as a Special Area today under national park regulations (entry with written permission only), Slip Stream contains a major strike of the inaka form of pounamu, which is managed for the benefit of local iwi. There’s a quarry under a crumbling cliff where people extracted portable pieces in the past, some of which were broken down by boulders dropped from a height. It appears the people here used backpacks of plaited flax to carry their precious stone out to the river-bank camp downstream on the Dart, and to other manufacturing sites. Raw pieces of it found naturally in the bed of a stream seemed to shimmer as if alive.
In 1971, a Southland Museum expedition investigating a report from a commercial deer hunter came upon a massive boulder of inaka, about four metres long and estimated at over twenty tonnes, in the flood plain of Slip Stream. This boulder moves — an impression gained by iwi groups visiting Slip Stream from time to time. If there has been a flood since their last visit, the streambed may have shifted, creating the illusion of a mobile boulder.
Pounamu in any form is a taonga or treasure, and ownership of it is now legally vested in the South Island iwi, Ngai Tahu. It embodies mana — prestige, authority, high status. Among the most beautiful of minerals, it is astonishingly tough. Yet it warms to the touch. It was fashioned into weapons, tools and ornaments of exceptional beauty without the aid of metal tools, and its association with Māori culture carries beyond the utilitarian into art and mythology. Its inaka form, renowned for the quality of its translucence, is the reason the coastal people of old marched a long way west. Worked objects made from it have turned up in archaeological sites as far away as Northland.
Going west, therefore, figured strongly and at times dramatically in the story of early Māori and European travel and settlement in the south. There is something about the concept of westward travel that holds a fascination for me. Maybe a lot of people subconsciously feel the same way. How deeply rooted is this fascination? For Europeans, could it derive from a very ancient memory of migration west from the Caucasus and other regions of West Asia towards the setting sun? Travelling across Otago from my home on the east coast, I can feel buoyed by the prospect of following the sun for half a day and thereby gaining a few more minutes’ extra daylight.
Early Māori trails took them all the way west to the sea coast; Pākehā followed the same trails but never developed them into motor roads. It wasn’t for the want of trying, however. The Otago Provincial Council had grand plans for a horse-and-coach road through the mountains to Martins Bay in the nineteenth century, and in the twentieth century the impetus for a motor road west came mainly from Head of the Lake farmer and former mining engineer, Tommy Thomson of Mount Earnslaw Station: father of Geoffrey Thomson.
Brink of extinction
‘They [the South Island kōkako] probably died out on the South Island about 1960, and only a few, if any, remain on Stewart Island.’
Barrie Heather and Hugh Robertson
The Field Guide to the Birds of New Zealand, 1996
For much of his life, Tommy Thomson has been a vocal proponent of a toll road west, following the Greenstone Valley and connecting to the Milford Sound highway near the Lower Hollyford Valley road intersection. There are cost and access issues. The road would have to cross national park land at the top end of the Greenstone. No stranger to roading development (he had a prominent role in the building of the Glenorchy-Queenstown road during his long role in local government, including sixteen years as the Lake County Council chairman), Tommy remains convinced of the value of a tolled Greenstone road, built on the other side of the river from the walking track to help separate trekkers and motorists. The new-fangled ideas of going west — a gondola up the Caples Valley and a road tunnel under the Humboldt Mountains — will not dissuade him. Why should it? Tommy turned ninety in 2007.
Farming, meanwhile, has met a road-block at the Head of the Lake. It has gone as far west as it will ever get. Nature stands in its way — a mountain bulwark, a wet climate, sodden soils. I’d like to meet some of these frontier farmers. No doubt there are characters among them.
CHAPTER 6
Blades and Traps
I am prepared to travel a long way west to see blade shearing, and do just that, at the invitation of Temple Peak Station’s Mark Hasselman, on a crisp day in the middle of October. I admit to being a sucker for blade shearing. I like the concept, the simplicity of it, and the quiet, composed atmosphere, although, truth to tell, most of my experience of farming has been gleaned from television’s Country Calendar documentaries.
Last time I saw a blade-shearing gang in action was on a sheep run called The Redan in the Strath Taieri near Middlemarch. The Lark was part of that scene, a smooth mover on the boards. I was taken by his flowing movement as he separated the fleece from the Romney ewes. His shears, on the long blow, were like scissors scything through paper — ‘whisk-whisk, whisk-whisk’ — and he spoke to the sheep as he carefully handled them.
After over four hours’ driving non-stop, I reach Temple Peak Station, a short distance up the Rees Valley, about 11 o’clock in the morning. In a shearing day, this is roughly midway between smoko and lunch. Mark, known to his mates as ‘Huss’, told me over the phone there were 2,000 sheep to shear over three days — 1,000 wethers, 900 hoggets and a gang of rams, all merinos.
Outside the woolshed there are cars and utes parked at odd angles and a couple of farm dogs on chains, with chewed bones at their feet. The light from a powerful spring sun is embellished as it bounces off the new snow wrapping the upper half of the adjacent ranges, above the dark-green belt of beech forest. It is a bonny day. The mountains have never looked better. From inside the shed, which is a lot larger and newer than The Redan’s one hundred-year-old wooden one, comes a steady beat. A portable stereo is pouring out music, dance strength. I enter, anticipating dim conditions typical of a woolshed. But the aluminium lining on the ceiling is reflecting a good amount of light, certainly enough for me to quickly take in the scene: eight shearers, in a line, their feet clad in moccasins, three female shed hands continuously on the move and Mark, who is at the end of the wool-handling line, classing the fleeces as they fall on his table.
‘G’day,’ he says, his lanolin-shiny hands feeling the next fleece and swinging it in the direction of a bale. ‘Not a great place for conversation.’ He’s referring to the black ghetto-blaster at the far end of the shed.
‘Yeah,’ I return, voice raised, ‘I thought blades were quiet.’
I can’t hear them whisking at all. But the steady movement of the shearers’ arms and hands I do remember well. Except that a few shearers are supported around the midriff by a padded stretchy harness they call a bungy, suspended from the rafters. As they lean into their work, the bungy, rather than their back muscles, takes some of the load.
‘Hoggets today,’ says Mark. ‘Should get through the lot.’
One of the bungy shearers, in blue singlet and jeans with a knee torn out, looks familiar. He has roughly the build and ginger complexion of the Lark, with receding hairline. But he is not the Lark. He has a droopy moustache and a string of tattoos down both arms, featu
ring birds. An eagle is prominent, in braking flight, talons extended, and a swift is swooping. Or is it a swallow? He has good control of the sheep, which are being fleeced for the first time in their lives. As he despatches the shorn one and collects another from the pen, he shuffles with a stoop characteristic of a shearer who has been around many a shed — a back more stiff than sore and not worth straightening.
Mark points out the shearing gang boss, Ronny Hill, from Balclutha, and I go over to him to ask if it would be okay to take some photos. ‘No problem.’
It’s not possible to converse with a shearer. Talking expends energy, defeats concentration. All these people around you: but during a two-hour burst on the boards, you live in a lonely shell occupied only by you and a procession of sheep. In an eight-hour day, on hoggets, you hope to get through about 150.
The women rousies, meanwhile, collect the fleece as it falls free and carry it to a table where they spread it and check it for imperfections — greasy bits, manuka seeds, hay and other embedded objects. They trim out the neck wool. Mark’s job is to check the wool for fibre diameter and class it for quality, strength, colour and length.
‘Merino hogget wool — finest of all,’ he says, trying to compete with a rafter-rattling Jennifer Lopez pop song.
‘What’s it worth?’
‘A bit under ten bucks a kilo these days. It hit twenty-five dollars in the heyday. That’s nothing more than a memory now.’
Central Otago’s dry rangelands have a reputation for top-value fine wool, and Mark confirms that merino farming on the Rees Valley hill country is affected by the rainfall.
He says the wetter the area, the lighter the fleece, and rainfall increases ‘an inch a mile’ the closer you get to the Main Divide. All in all, the lower prices for wool, the rainfall gradient and soil conditions make the Temple Peak property a tricky place in which to turn a profit.
At the lunch break, I approach Ronny, the shearing boss. He is tucking into a steaming plateful of beef stew, mashed potatoes and mixed vegies, prepared by Lulu, the gang’s well-regarded cook. It’s the kind of fuel you’d expect shearers to require midway through the day. After all, as an Otago University physical education study concluded some years ago, shearers expend the energy of joggers, and for eight hours a day. I ask Ronnie about the music. He shrugs the rounded shoulders of a body that spends most of its working day stooping, and says: ‘It’s a running argument. The shed hands like their own compilations, all modern stuff. You’ve got to keep them happy. The older shearers prefer a radio station but we can’t always get that in the high country. We do a deal. Pop music flat out for an hour then we switch to radio for the next hour if we can get it, and alternate like that through the day.’
Ronny forks a few more mouthfuls thoughtfully. ‘Shed hands have a lot more say than in the past. We value them.’
‘And the guy in the blue singlet?’
‘That’s Jim — Jim Bool. Been around a fair while.’
I catch up with Jim in the sun outside the shed. He’s from Timaru. His shearing career spans thirty years. He’s shorn sheep all over the South Island high country with blades and machine shears, and he’s a fan of the shearers’ bungy, which was introduced a few years ago.
‘A great idea,’ he says. ‘Takes thirty pounds’ load off. Feels like you’re floating. Over in Western Australia, a bungy’s compulsory. That’s because shearers there can sue for back injuries.’
‘And the tattoos?’ I ask, getting personal.
‘That was Sydney for you. I was young, yeah, just seventeen. Cost a dollar fifty each back then.’
His boss, Ronny, has also been shearing for thirty years, from the age of sixteen. He followed his father into shearing. The season for blades is not as long as it once was. Gangs used to be busy from June to December; now they work from June to October, and the number of sheep has fallen from 120,000 to 80,000. Still, properties like Temple Peak and Rees Valley Stations stick to blade shearing and not just because they like the practice; the blades leave a protective layer of wool on the sheep that serves them well in a cold snap.
‘Blades are holding their own,’ says Ronny.
After Temple Peak, the gang has an appointment at the Rees Valley Station woolshed farther up the valley. A few more days’ work there.
Lunch break is a time for checking the edge and action on the shears. Each shearer sharpens his own gear on a portable bench grinder and adds finishing touches with an oilstone. On average, the blades will need to be honed every couple of hours and quickly touched up for every sheep if need be. The grip and action are also important. Repetitive strain injury seems on the cards but no one is complaining today as far as I can tell.
As a piece of technology, blade shears rank among the oldest of metal tools. They have opposing blades like scissors but instead of being hinged at the centre, their hinge is at the back of the handle. The design is as old as the hills. Well, almost. It is said to date from the Iron Age, when iron smelting and forging was developed, over 2,000 years ago. Remarkably, the technology survives, although blade shears are really only used in a serious commercial way today in New Zealand and South Africa. There’s not much blade shearing going on in England or Australia on the scale you see in the South Island high country. But Sheffield, England, a steel capital, is still manufacturing blade shears and that is where the New Zealand gangs source replacements.
With an eye on the afternoon’s shearing, Mark eats his lunch in a hurry. He has work to do during the break. More hoggets need to be driven into the woolshed from the adjacent yards. He has a couple of dogs to help him plus an unusual contrivance — a red electric fence standard that has a white plastic supermarket bag attached to the end. More effective at moving the sheep than the dogs, it makes a crisp swishing noise as he waves it.
‘Merinos have minds of their own,’ he says after the sheep are in the shed. ‘If they don’t want to do something they won’t do it. Give them a lead, though, and they’re great followers. See over there, I had some decoy sheep penned at the back of the shed. Plus this plastic bag.’
We talk a bit, leaning on the woolshed gates. It’s that kind of day, and the new lot of hoggets have gone into the shed faster than Mark thought. He’s got ten minutes before the blades start up again.
Mark bought Temple Peak Station — 8,000 hectares, all of it pastoral lease — in May 1979. He was twenty-four years old and fairly new to the Head of the Lake. On his first night on the place, with the rain beating on the roof, he crawled into his sleeping bag and wondered what he’d done.
A generation on, he and his wife, Amanda, are still there. They farm conservatively, don’t overstock. They try to keep the tussock grasslands healthy. Their property is sandwiched between the larger stations of Rees Valley and Wyuna, Glenorchy’s backdrop. It spans the Richardson Mountains, with the eponymous peak, 2,000 metres high, roughly in the centre of the property. The farm’s back country extends about sixteen kilometres, from the homestead paddocks in the Rees Valley to a slice of the Shotover catchment.
Mark says he hasn’t bought any standard superphosphate fertiliser for ten years. He applies only fine lime and modest amounts of a product called reactive rock phosphate, and the farm is producing as much wool and meat as in the past. But the tenure review process is a different matter. It is highly unsettling, and could easily upset the sustainable relationship the Hasselmans have with their pastoral leasehold land. Mark rather wishes tenure review would go away. Although it’s a voluntary process, there is snarling uncertainty for high-country runholders who do not engage with it.
‘Writing’s on the wall,’ says Mark. ‘If you don’t do a deal under tenure review, the rents will get you.’
And why wouldn’t they want to do a deal? They like Temple Peak Station the way it is. They like protecting its natural values to the extent they can as farmers, through covenants if necessary for the pieces that are especially valuable. They don’t want to see a cluster of flash houses on some newly designat
ed ‘rural lifestyle’ land next door. Dilemma.
We turn to surer subjects now, Mark and I. Shearing, for one. The blades appeal to Mark’s low-tech approach to life. Output per shearer is less than for a gang of machine shearers but costs work out to be more or less the same, and he thinks the sheep are better off having the extra wool on their backs. For all he knows, they might even emerge less stressed after blade shearing than if they were shorn by machines. Forty per cent of the Temple Peak clip is sold direct to the Icebreaker clothing people, who produce designer garments for outdoor pursuits.
What I especially like about Mark is his tolerance of natural hazards. That includes falcons window-shopping around his free-range chickens. He accepts them as part of the natural balance. In other areas, farmers are known to shoot falcons for preying on their hens. On a visit to England he was introduced to the ancient sport of falconry and wondered about the possibilities of using the New Zealand falcon back home. But he is having second thoughts. ‘Could be worse than a team of dogs to work,’ he says.
Although the remote and mountainous location of Temple Peak could have something to do with it, Mark belies the image of a modern farmer surrounded by every mod-con communication tool going. He doesn’t carry a cellphone and doesn’t own a television — ‘… never seen anything on TV I wanted to look at’. Computers are a novelty to him. He was introduced to them in 2006. His favourite website is the Victoria University of Wellington weather site,
