South Island Shingle Heap

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 757, 22 January 1954, Page 14

South Island Shingle Heap

by

SUNDOWNER

JANUARY 3

| N observant visitor from Essex asked me the other day where all'the sheep are that produce the Canterbury lambs. It was the middle of the day and the sheep were, of course, under the trees. Next day he asked me the same question in the Mackenzie Country, and I could not say this time that he would find the answer under the trees. When we came to Centra] Otago he had given up asking questions. The Island, he could see, was a continuing and. dismal joke with fences here and

there to prevent the farmer from losing

his morale. It was not necessary to ask any longer why two out of three of the inhabitants had escaped¢to the North Island. The question was: How had this depressing heap of shingle ever supported life at all? | I am, of course, on the side of the _questioners’ wherever they come from: as long as they remain questioners. When they start "telling" me I can be as ridiculous in. my resistance to facts as they are in speaking without them. I travelled once from Mt. Cook to Timaru with an A.D.C. to a GovernorGeneral. No one was ever more anxious to please or more successful in raising my hackles. He. knew the history of Canterbury, the needs of Canterbury,

the blunders of Canterbury, the possibilities when it changed its ways-and he gave them to me all the way to Washdyke. When we stopped for a cup of. tea at Tekapo the farmer-owner of the car took me aside and begged me "to shut that silly blighter’s mouth before I pull his nose." What the "silly blighter" was saying was a re-hash in irritating English of a series of articles I had myself written in days when smartness was sweeter to me than truth. But the man’ from Essex was not smart.’He was not arrogant or affected or loud. He was a modest traveller in a strange country in which the stones cry out if the traveller doesn’t. In 200 miles he did not see 200 sheep, and when we camped among the rocks that surround Alexandra it amazed him to notice that the rocks were fenced in. It amazes everyone who sees them for the first time and has eyes to see them properly. But to see them as. they are it’ is necessary to forget a good deal and imegine a good deal. I am writing this note at daybreak at the foot of Conroy’s Gully, and the rocks sare now populated. Without having to change my position I can see seven sheep moving across the face above me and nibbling as they move. When the sun gets up they will not be there. They will have. settled down under over-hanging rocks,’ retreated into shadowed hollows, crept into pockets of cool shade. It .will go

on everywhere as far as I can see, two or three sheep on one face, half a dozen an another, and all happier and healthier than the shapeless bags of»mutton on the plains stuffing themselves with wet grass and worms, A sheep is a goat as surely as a dog is a wolf, and I neyer see jone fenced. into a small paddock with hundreds of others" without feeling a twinge of shame. om ae

JANUARY 5

Pal wa 7 [F I were a sheep I would like to live in Central Otago. Would I like to live somewhere else if I were a cow? No. But I would like my line té be cast in the pleasant places. From Lindis Pass to Rae’s Junction I did not see one cow that was not fat and -contentéd. But f° did not see a cow on the hills. I saw them in small paddocks of clover: over

their fetlocks in grass, beside poplars and

willows; tethered in the corners of orchards; chewing the cud on the banks of rivers. Cowsaccept ¢onfinement more cheerfully’ than sheep; especially cows in milk. It is sufficient for them if they have water and grass and 20 square feet of flatness on which to he and fruminate. But sheep like to wander. They like to climb hills’ and clamber round rocks and jump down banks. They like nibbles better than

stuffed mouthfuls: bark and roots and leaves as well as succulent grass. I would not like to be a cow on the west side of the river in the Clyde-Cromwell gorge. Perhaps, if I had grown up in Essex, I would not like to be a human being at either end of the gorge. My friend could not see, and I could not point out, what kept those two towns going. They clearly were going, but it was not easy to see where the power came from. It was easy enough to see what started them originally. But gold has ceased to flow. The sluice boxes are dry, the stampers are silent, the dredge buckets. are empty. Without them what builds new houses in Cromwell, opens new shops, renovates and paints old ‘houses? Wool does some of it, fruit some, trans: port some. Until. five or six years ago_ rabbits did some-paying with their skins for a fraction of the plunder they had taken with their. teeth. But rabbits are no longer trade. Wool and fruit are once-a-year. (and in Cromwell. narrowly limited) crops. Transport is profitable only when other industries are thriving. You can't carry men and goods they are there to be carried and reap some benefit .from. being moved. Yet Cromwell is doing more than hoisting itself with its bootlaces. It is staying | up when it pulls itself up, like a truck | with its own jack.-I can’t see the how | or the why, . : ; « (To be continued) "ee. |