The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND SATURDAY, OCTOBER 5, 1929 THE SHEEP HOLDS ITS OWN

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 786, 5 October 1929, Page 10

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND SATURDAY, OCTOBER 5, 1929 THE SHEEP HOLDS ITS OWN

THE stability of the dairying industry has an importance all its own in the Auckland Province, hut sheepfarming as a factor in the general prosperity cannot be overlooked. There has been a great transition in the past twenty or thirty years. Tracts of land originally opened up as sheep country have become firstclass dairying country. Yet wherever, on the fringes of the great dairying districts, the plains and undulations mount into hills, there the sheep retains its importance in the pastoral scheme. Butter and cheese may for obvious reasons have appeared to dominate the picture, but from the breezy slopes of Te Paki station in the north down to the hill country south of Waikato Mouth, where, about Marokopa, the wool is still shipped by the old method of surf boats tendering a coastal vessel off shore, the sheep still dwells in supremacy, unconsciously the monarch of rural hopes and aspirations. The factors that influence the wool markets are often deeply concealed in political and economic struggles overseas. The successful operation of Continental woollen mills has in the immediate past provided competition of a most beneficial character to the New Zealand grower, hut the growing use of artificial silk has at the same time produced a threat that wool growers cannot afford to ignore. It is heartening to see that authorities who have made a deep study of the position consider wool has every chance of meeting this competition. Furthermore, it is considered that Japanese and Continental competition with Bradford promises for the coming season stable prices that will assure the grower of a satisfactory return. These anticipations are important in view of the increase in the number of sheep in the Dominion. Even in the Auckland Province, with a pre-eminent interest in dairying, the flocks have grown in size. Not only is more land being brought in, and existing properties improved remarkably, by the use of top-dressing, but even on dairy farms men are finding that small flocks can be profitably grazed. With these their interest is primarily t&fe fat lamb trade, hut the return from the clip is an important factor. Thus many holdings cut from the great stations of last century, and dedicated in the immediate past exclusively to dairying, are now once more carrying sheep. The passion for large holdings did not touch Auckland as it touched Marlborough, Hawke’s Bay, the Wairarapa and Canterbury. Here the Maoris remained too long in occupation of their lands, and fought the intrusion of the white man too belligerently ■ to encourage the methods practised elsewhere. Yet. a few individuals and a few companies made courageous efforts to develop large estates, some of them, no doubt, deliberately modelled on the big properties of the South. The processes by which these estates were formed and then reduced are of particular interest in view of the present Government’s proposals to attack large pastoral areas. Whatever the enthusiasm and diligence the Government of today brings to its task, it will not find a similar range of large properties to buy and subdivide. Its chief difficulty will be to decide which properties can be more efficiently worked on a smaller scale. The Liberal Government of the ’nineties was conspicuously successful in placing more settlers on the land, but some of the properties it took over were gladly sold by their owners. The compulsion exerted was in many eases not the pressure of the Lands Department, hut the pressure of a crushing mortgage and a series of disastrous seasons. The first purchase, an estate in Otago, did not show much evidence of Ministerial acumen, but the famous Cheviot deal restored the Government’s confidence in its policy. After that the Seddon Government went merrily on its way, and in ten years had acquired and subdivided nearly 700,000 acres of land. This total included some huge North Canterbury and Marlborough properties. It did not embrace the number subdivided by their owners as soon as they could find a market, or sold by the Assets Realisation Board in the process of disentangling the complicated pastoral investments of the Bank of New Zealand. Possibly the Assets Realisation Board should be credited with the subdivision of properties which now carry some of Auckland’s finest dairy farms. The Matamata estate, opened up by that enterprising Auckland pioneer, Mr. J. C. Firth, practically ruined its owner and fell into the hands of the Assets Realisation Board along with Locherbie, the estate whose subdivision “made” Morrinsville, Fencourt, Patarere, Lichfield, and Richmond Downs. These stations were historic in their way. Matamata run had fortified towers to guard against attacks by Maoris, and Locherbie pioneered the shearing machine in the North Island. Thus, buried in the past, there is a pastoral splendour of a kind. Today the borders of the half-forgotten stations embrace hundreds of dairy farms that have built prosperity for a countryside. But in odd corners sheep still graze, and beyond the lowlands men still watch the trend of wool prices, for there Auckland retains its ancient interest in the fleece that is sometimes golden.