Investment In Staff Quarters

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30983, 12 February 1966, Page 9

Investment In Staff Quarters

Few back country stations can have better facilities for their employees than the Lands and Survey Department’s Molesworth station. At both the station homestead and 38 miles away at Bush Gully, the old back camp of St. Helens station, the department has spent about £3OOO to provide comfortable quarters for the station hands. A feature of the Molesworth accommodation is a lounge big enough to accommodate a National Roads Board party of 30 or 40 visitors. To furnish the room with linoleum cost £6OO alone and it has a number of hard top tables and matching chairs and easy chairs and sofas. The modern kitchen replaces an old corrugated iron cookhouse, of which in 1904 the musterers were complaining that it was hot in the summer and cold in the winter. A stream has been piped under the kitchen and carries away drainage from the kitchen sink. At both Bush Gully and Molesworth there are one man huts. Some of the huts at Molesworth have linoleum on the floor and the furniture includes a bed, a desk or dresser and stools, an easy chair and a wardrobe. And there are plans for a recreation room and washhouse. Up to 15 may use these facilities in the spring. The permanent station staff comprises 12, including the manager, six stoekmen, a cowboy, a clerk, carpenter, truck driver and a man at the Hamner farm.

These are the type of facilities that should be developed, according to the station manager, Mr M. M. Chisholm, but they do not mean that the

station is without labour problems.

Similarly a lot of effort has been directed in recent years to the upgrading of cattle handling facilities. The yards at Bush Gully have almost been rebuilt at a cost also of about £3OOO. These and the yards at Tarndale, which have also been reconstructed, are both considered to be able to handle mobs of up to 6000 head of cattle. A lot of thought has gone into the planning of the Bush Gully yards built out of sawn treated larch rails from Hanmer and with gates made out of bluegum. Work began there two winters ago and is now at an advanced stage. An internal race is a feature of the yards and facilitates the movement of cattle without having to take them out of the yards at any stage. The job has been one done entirely by station staff and Mr Chisholm himself has been responsible for the manufacture of hinge straps, gudgeons and pins for the gates. For the biggest gates the straps are 3ft long and 3in by 5-Bths in, the gudgeons IJin by 3in and the pins Ilin. At Tarndale yards where the old yards with willow posts and manuka rails have been replaced 5000 cattle have been drafted in 12 hours. There are also first rate yards at Molesworth homestead and on the farm near Hanmer.

On their way to Addington for sale cattle from the station will use new holding paddocks near Culverden. Here an area of 14 acres of Crown leasehold has been strongly fenced into three holding paddocks for cattle and one horse paddock. A well has been sunk and water will be pumped to 750 gallon concrete water troughs in the paddocks. It is also planned to eventually have shelter belts on either side of the area.