MACKENZIE COUNTRY.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18412, 19 June 1925, Page 10

MACKENZIE COUNTRY.

IN THE DAYS OP LONG AGO. (SPECIAL!.* WRITTEN FOB "THE PEES 3.") (By T. I>. Burnett, 11.P.) The men who originally acquired the Mackenzie Country runs from the Crown were not high-country sheep men; they •were not bred that way. The great majority were English public school men. Some of them had never even seen the runs taken up for them by friends. Tom and Fred Teschemakcr and their partner, Henry John Lo Cren, secured Haldou; Harry Ford and John Tucker Ford, and their partner, Dr. Fisher, settled on the Grampians; Hugh Fraser, son of Jock Frasor, took Black Forest and Ben Ohau. The Dalgety run and most of the Mackenzie plains were applied for by John H. ■ Sidebottom, manager for the Rhodeses at the Levels (applied for by him after his capture of Mackenzie, inside the portals of Mackenzie Pass, March, 1855) but never registered and no license was issued. Gray Hills was taken up by Gray Bros., and sold shortly after to John Hayhurst. Strieker and Hall were at Sawdon; Lee, Kennaway,. and Acton at Eollesby; Ebenezer Hay (after whom Mount Hay is named) at Lako Tekapo; his nephew, John, who managed for his uncle, took up on his own account 15,000 acres between the Tekapo and the Fork river. Mt. John wa"s named after him. The Purriells were at Richmond—Yorkshiremen, and therefore friends of the Sterickers, Halls, and Ostlers. The Halls were at the Mistake station, Sir John and Captain Tom Hall, halving long-strip runs' with a frontage on the Tasman Valley, and running back to Tekapo. Three of them were, applied for in 20,000-acre blocks. Joseph Beswick, another Yorkshireman, took up the country now known as Glenmore, but. formerly known as Castlehall. Mount Joseph is named after him. Jock Fraser had 15,000 acres partly in the Jollie Gorge and partly in the Tasman Valley. Andrew Burnett had all that wild country between, the Tasman and tho Jollie rivers. Andrew Paterson was at Irishman's creek. (There is.some doubt as to who took up Irishman's creek. My father thinks that it was ono, McIvor, who took it up for tho Frasers). Ostler was at Tho Wolds. Then below that portion of Tho Worlds originally taken up by McHutchison and Gladstone, John Hayhurst discovered that there were some 30,000 acres in the fork between the Tekapo and the Pukaki not applied for, and hence wo have Simon's Pass. Then in the fork between the Pukaki and the Ohau, we have Ben Ohau, taken up by Hugh Fraser. Naming of Ben Ohau. In passing, it is just.as.well, to remark that the name Ben Ohau is a glaring instance of how the Sassenach can murder a Gaelic place-name. When Hugh Fraser, a typical Highlander, arrived with his first mob of sheep for Ben Ohau, ho discovered on tho hills, at the back of the present homestead, | a pack of wild dogs, and promptly named tho run Beinn Achiu (spelt phonetically), which means "Mountain of the dog." On the downs stretching between the present Bhoboro homestead and Lake Pukaki, Olds Dark,' of Dark Bros., West countrymen from Bath, had his first homestead,' under an overhanging rock for a while, subsequently building a homestead at Star Hill, but eventually shifting everything up to Glentanner, where he had taken up twenty miles of frontage on the ITasman "Valley. The major portion of Bhoboro' Downs was taken up by Gladstone, a cousin of the great statesman, and Birch Hill was taken up by Eobert Campbell, of Otekaieke for his friend. George Hodgkinson. Hodgkinson did not occupy Birch Hill, but sold his interest in it to "Big Mick" (Nicolo Kadove). Probably the last piece of country of any size taken up in the Mackenzie was that selected by John McGregor in the forks of the Cass river, about the mid 'seventies; but all the country had been ! "rushed" and acquired between tho years 1856 and 18C0. The heads of the gorges, Lily bank, the Godley side of The Mistake, Mount Cook, Birch Hill, and Glen Lyon wero . 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. Braker prior to his entering the Lands and Survey- Department. Michael Studholme, of Waimate, was tho first to stock it with cattle, a number of which went wild. William Sibbald stocked it with sheep about 'O7, and later was known throughout the South Island as being the owner of 600 semi-wild horses running on Lilybank. "Absolutely Not Experience."

; So h«e 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 stock in those days to. be obtained from the j front country of South Canterbury, and most of the sheep for stocking the Mackenzie came from the Nelson province (which had been settled in the early 'forties), North Canterbury and the Ashburton plains. The Frasers, Darks, an'd Patersohs "overlanded" from Nek son thousands of sheep. • Sawdon was stocked from Georgo Hall's station in the Ashburton Forks, and as scab was rife from one end of the country to the other, the Sew stock inspectors and police had their work cut out in seeing that the dipping regulations were carried out. Old-Time Mustering. TJp to the early 'sixties there were no shepherds in the true sense of the word. The mustering was put through and sheep work, suck, as it was, carried on by runaway sailors and bullockdrivers. Lambing was allowed all the year round; scab was rampant, and it was thought a fine thing to dodge the dipping regulations. The early runholdere knew so little about native feed conditions that they really thought their country was understocked unless the coarse tussock was "topped"; being ignorant of the fact that it is the amount of fine feed between the tussocks that determines the carrying capacity of a property. There were no fences; the country was all open, and in many cases, in the absence of rivers and sizeable creeks, entailed incessant patrolling by men on foot. The modern young shepherd would stand aghast if he was asked to do the tramping that his forebears of seventy years ago took casually as part of the day's work.

Some squatters, notably Harry Fjrd, of the Grampians, attempted the Australian system of yarding th 9 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 •with them than they did in tflie running and understandig of their flocks. Most of them drove their', own bullock teams, and there was keen

rivalry as to who had the best turn-out, and the finest pair of leaders in their station bullock team or dray. The Bullock Teams. Edward Stericker has told me that he has seen as many as eight bullock teams camped at night at old Sawdon Station, each driven by its squatterowner, and every one loaded with station wool bound for Timaru. You may be sure they made a night of it. In passing, it is worthy of noto that W. E. Gladstone's cousin was the only one to us'o the more humane oaken bullock bows in place of tho iron ones universally used. I understand that these bows are still in use in Devonshire, where Gladstone came from. It is curious to scan photographs of these old-time squatters and station hands, and to examine the fashions of thoso simple days, when the hair was worn long, falling to the shoulders, a full beard sweeping the chest, a cab- ! bage tree hat, a Crimean shirt, with ' white moleskin trousers tucked into Wellington boots, or black leather leggings, tho whole finished off by the wearing of a broad silk sash around tho waist. Without any, authority for saying so, I suspect that there was a strong trace of the Mexican in this make-up, coming from tho Californian gold rushes of '49, taken by thoso diggers in tho 'so's to the Australian goklfields, and from there to Gabriel ; 3 Gully rush of '6l. The Ideal Sheep-man. It will be- readily understood that here in the Mackenzie Country in the early 'sixties, in common with all the rest of the mountainous sheep country of the South Island, was a tremendous field for men who by birth, breeding,and occupation had the instinct and experience for handling sheep in high country, so that in the 'sixties, when the vanguards of the 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 tho hill shepherd par exeellenco is the man who has been reared on the Borders, among the Cheviot hills, among tho hills of Dumfriesshire, and the soft, low-lying hills of Perthshire. But if you gratt such instinct and sheep tradition from such men on to a wild. mountaineer of the Highlands then you have a perfect man for a high country. When the clan system in the High lands was broken up after Culloden, and feudalism was swept away for over, immense tracts of country wera thrown open as sheep runs, and these were promptly taken up by SouthCountry sheep-men, who invariably took the best of their shepherds with them. For years these men .and. their offspring were looked upon with suspicion, ajid even hatred; they wero considered interlopers, specially in the 'districts where wholesalo clearances .of the natives had taken place. They eventually blended with the native population, and imparted the instinct of sheep management, while they took from tho native the instinct of mountain craft. , Now, it is a noteworthy fact that the shcep>man who has "made good" in the mountains of tj<e 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 homo. The Predominating Scots. Be that as it may,, tho hour .had struck in the early 'sixties for the coming of the trained shepherd, and" the Highland sheep-man and shepherd held unchallenged sway in the Mackenzie, until 1895, when the Colonial began to come into his own. Not v that they were all successes; some of them were "duds"; some were Jazy,. and somo were shepherds only in name; but it is safe to- say that the majority of them ■ "made good," and served the peculiar needs of the period in a .very rough country, most of it then isolated, and with, very few comforts, such as wo moderns are used to. It is safe to say that three-fifths of the mountain population of Canterbury and Otago of that period could claim Gaelic as their mother tongue. Wholo musterjng camps were Highland born, while there was a small minority 'of Lowlandcrs. On the other hand, the Englishman was the bullock-driver and horse-breaker, and he and the.lrishman manned the shearing boards. The Irishman, too, was a champion of clearing the way; none could approach lum 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; knocked system into the management of flocks;-regu-lated the lambing time to the only nat ural time —the spring; began to dosomething to awaken a conscience as to the dangers of. over-stocking; something towards wintering his flock on his safest country; and started to grow more wool from his sheep.