DISTRICT VALUER

Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 April 1938, Page 8

DISTRICT VALUER

MR E. P. FOWLER RETIRING A NOTABLE RECORD. INTIMATE KNOWLEDGE OF WAIRARAPA. After having been district land valuer for the Wairarapa continuously since 1911, Mr E. P. Fowler will retire on superannuation at the end of this month. Probably no man in the district has such a profound knowledge of Wairarapa lands as Mr Fowler and his impending retirement will be a great loss to the community. Since he started work fifty-one years ago Mr Fowler has led a particularly active life and his capabilities as a valuer are known throughout the Dominion. Many people will join in wishing him well during the years of his retirement. On leaving school at Lawrence in 1888, Mr Fowler joined the firm of Messrs Arbuckle, Robertson and Co., Ltd., stock and station agents, and remained with them until 1893, when he took up farming in the Tuapeka district until 1900, when he followed mining pursuits in Central Otago, Marlborough and the West Coast. He joined the Valuation Department in 1905, worked in the Southland district for about two years and was then transferred to Masterton, where he arrived in September, 1907. In 1910 he was appointed district valuer for the King Country, being stationed at Taihape, but his stay there was only a brief one, as in June, 1911, he returned to Masterton to take up the position of district land valuer here, a post he has filled ever since. Many important tasks have been undertaken by Mr Fowler in his official capacity in this district. Besides his ordinary duties, he has carried out special valuation work, notably, at the request of the owners, the subdivision of several big estates for family purposes, a task that has probably never been undertaken by any other district valuer in the Dominion. Mr Fowler was a member of the Deteriorated Lands Commission which investigated about 1926 the position of certain lands in the hinterland of the North Island. In 1928 he was appointed as a member of the Wairarapa District Rural Intermediate Credit Board and latterly a member of the Wairarapa Mortgage Rehabilitation Committee, set up by the present Government to make final adjustments in the district. For the past twelve months Mr Fowler has been busy with this work. He also classified the whole of the Lower Valley lands for the South Wairarapa River Board, a task he carried out entirely unassisted, and was a member of a committee which investigated larger holdings offered to the Government of the day under a settlement scheme.

It is a striking tribute to the excellence of Mr Fowler’s work when it is remembered that there has been little alteration in the values of district properties since 1920. Except in a few cases, the valuations made in 1920 still stand and settlers and local bodies appear to be satisfied wtih them. No alterations were made in the Wairarapa in 1921, for instance, when the rest of New Zealand was reducing valuations wholesale.

Expressing his complete confidence in the Wairarapa district generally, Mr Fowler, in passing, made some reference to the position of former bush farms in the northern area of the district, .Eketahuna and Pahiatua counties especially, where there was some tendency for the land to go back. This, he considered, was due to the fact that the farmers, who had been breeding for the fat lamb trade, had pushed their lands too hard, especially hill country. This land had lost the benefit resulting from the clearing of the bush and had reached that stage which for slightly different farming methods if they wanted to retain the pastures. Under more modern farming methods, however, he was convinced that this class of land would come back again. When Mr Fowler carried out his first valuation in the Akitio County in 1908 there was only one metalled road in the whole county —that to Pongaroa. Elsewhere the mud on the so-called roads reached to a horse’s belly. The Te Wharau Road at that time was accessible to horses only and was very heavy going at that. The King Country, from Mangaweka northwards. at the time he was stationed there, was roadless, there being nothing more than tracks or apologies for tracks through the greater portion of the area.