OHURAITI Written by Laurence Bunn

The original Ohuraiti farm property which my father took over in 1934 was thought to have been first established about 1910. It was purchased by Mr J. R. Russell of Wanganui in 1914 but he was probably in occupancy at the earlier date. It was purchased in a succession of blocks over a period up to about 1917. The final area including three leasehold blocks was about 6000 acres.

The property was not well laid out for farming and the leasehold blocks, because of their location, were a continual hindrance to proper farming development. The homestead and woolshed were at the southern end of the property with no road access. Lack of road access and difficulty of stock access into the homestead area from other parts of the farm proved to be an even bigger hindrance to progress than the presence of the leasehold blocks.

As a farming proposition Ohuraiti never really got off the ground even in Mr Russell's time. He used up a good deal of capital in development and improvement works for little financial return and the Depression of the Thirties spelt final doom to his enterprise. He was sold up in late 1933. Mr Russell had a succession of managers at Ohuraiti the first being Jack Cooper and the last "Inky" Morgan from Managpaurua.

The homestead area comprised:
a) The Managers house which we occupied.
b) Shepherds quarters with cook house and owner's quarters - all under one roof.
c) Shearer's quarters (for sleeping only)
d) Woolshed and yards.
e) Harness room.
f) Grass seed patakea
g) All other necessary outbuildings well appointed plus the sheep dip with a very good supply (4000 gallons) of tank water.

There was a river landing below the Managers house. Access to it was by a very muddy track. The Tawata Maori settlement and the school were across the river from the homestead.

We first moved to Ohuraiti at the end of November 1934. My father had had a farm in the Pohangina Valley which he had lost at the beginning of the Depression in 1931. He had worked at odd jobs around Fielding for the next three years and milked about a dozen cows. He also made a little money out of breeding ponies and had a little other stock which he sold to move to the King Country.

He had already been up this way earlier in 1934 looking at abandoned farms which were then available at a peppercorn rental in and around Matiere and Te Kuiti, but did not find anything suitable. On his return to Waiata, near Feilding, where we were living at the time, he learned from Mr Izard of Marshall Izard and Wilson of Wanganui, whom he knew, that Mr J R Russells former property at Ohuraiti was available. The proposition which Mr Izard made to him was sufficiently attractive from him to come up and have a look at the property and he decided that if he could raise the nominal capital he would accept. This he succeeded in doing (nobody knows how).

When we started off the only stock Dad had to put on the farm were the horses which Ron and Alan brought up with them from Waiata. Dad bought a couple of cows from a farmer at Kikakariki for a start and we added to them bit by bit to build up a small herd. What we boys did not learn until much later was that in the original proposition Dad was to have had some financial backing to enable him to buy sheep, but that his backer-to-be had cold feet at the last moment and pulled out.

At the time of the move I was working in the Post Office at Palmerston North and did not visit the farm until the following Easter when I was transferred to Auckland. Hence I do not remember much about the earliest days. My first impressions on visiting the farm were of the very heavy morning fogs which seemed to last until about 11am, the heavy rainfall, the isolation, the difficulties of access along the muddy, greasy track from the canoe landing opposite Chase's and the generally overgrown and run-down appearance of the property. However it was home.

I remember it took us a long time to build up an even moderately sized flock of sheep. I think we started off with a few old ewes which we obtained from Erni's.

Through a relation by marriage, Mr Rowan McKee, Dad raised enough money to buy about 700 ewes, late in 1935 or early in 1936. However Rowan stayed with us for only about a year and after he cashed in on his investment before leaving we were not much better off. Dad was keen to get some cattle to break down the heavy fern which covered much of the pasture. There were a lot of wild cattle in the bush in the Heao Valley. I remember about 1938 Ron and I had grandiose ideas of mustering some of them in from the Heao, but although they were there the ones we saw seemed to be mostly wild bulls of large size and aggressive temperament. I think we shot more than we mustered. We all carried rifles almost everywhere we went - wild pigs roamed the hills in large numbers and along with wild cattle were regarded as an important source of meat.

Access to the outside world at first was almost entirely by boat. Toma Ropata was the one who usually performed the duties of ferryman and we had good reason to be thankful for his efforts. He ferried the children over to school and back daily and the adults whenever required. I do not know whether he received any monetary reward for this service. He had two Maori canoes, one small one, the 'Cigar' which was easy to manage when he had only one passenger, but which seemed to be unstable. Toma described it as 'not a good horse', a sentiment in which his apprehensive passenger would be in full agreement. However I never heard of him tipping anybody into the river. Later we obtained a boat of our own which we moored at the Ohuraiti landing just below the house. This eliminated the long hike to and from the original canoe landing, although the rack up to the house especially in winter was a veritable bog.

Until the river boat service to Kirikau was abandoned in 1937 we used it for our fairly rare trips to Taumarunui. From Kirikau to Taumarunui Bill Uden ran a passenger service and Wally Hayes ran a goods and rural mail service by truck in those days, and when I came down from Auckland this was my means of transport.

Although there was a big woolshed at Ohuraiti the machines had been removed and for the first years we had to shear with blades. I think our first shearing was in the summer of 1936.

In those days we were really poverty-stricken but seemed to get by living off the land. Dad always had a good vegetable garden and orchard, wood was plentiful, (although access to it was difficult and labour effort in getting it home was high) pigs and cattle abounded in the bush, the odd rabbits were there for variety. There were eels to be caught in the river. At first we did not eat them because they were very muddy to taste. However Bill Pike, who was the Maori roadman between Kirikau and Saddlers Hill, showed Dad how to eliminate the muddy taste by cooking and bottling them in a mixture half vinegar and half water using the open jar method. They tasted just like tinned salmon, and were a welcome addition to our diet, although it was a laborious and rather messy business skinning, cleaning and cutting up the eels in preparation for cooking. Funnily enough we never got round to smoking eels although there was nothing to stop us.

In those years although the winters were long, cold, wet and depressing the summers really made up for them. We used to have long spells of fine hot weather after Christmas sometimes stretching into late April or May. We could get about without wading through mud everywhere and were able to visit our neighbours, and then our friends and relatives used to visit us from the outside world. Although Mother used to feel very lonely sometimes cooped up so long on our side of the river, she said that she could see the children running around at the school on the other side of the river. Generally there was also some other activity visible on the Tawata Flat so she did not feel completely isolated.
We did not farm the Ohura Block for the first two years, as this was rented out to Maraekowhai for grazing. Hence we did not have much cause to come up to the north end of the property. Generally speaking the fences all over the farm were only in fair condition and we had only one secure holding paddock. This was a major handicap to development, as Dad did not have the resources for doing much either to repair the existing fences or to erect new ones for further subdivision. Hence there was no real improvement in this respect until well after the War,

Typed by Lyn Neeson - Sep 2003 Return to Timeline