NZ - Hakataramea

For me, a highlight of the trip was staying at Hakataramea for 3 nights.

Hakataramea Downs is the farm where my father grew-up, and although none of the the family farm here any more, my parents still own the old farm-house and some of the old farm buildings which they use as a holiday house. The oldest part of the house was built around 1860, but the part you can see here was built in 1878.

Family group in front of the 'old stone house' - Rika's mum, Hannah, Rika, Dad and Mum.


The house is surrounded by a plantation of magnificent old trees, some dating back to this period. Looking north across the lawn from the old stone house.


Hakataramea is usually warm and dry in summer. It was warm enough to eat evening meals outside on a picnic table.


This is Mum with Hannah under the pine tree at the front of the old house.


Our family connection with this land does back to 1893 when my fathers maternal grandfather, Walter Hogg, was employed here as a shepherd. He eventually became head shepherd, got married to Janet Dawson McClymont Hannah in 1901, and in 1907 leased another farm further up the valley.



In 1925 my fathers paternal grandfather, 'Willy' Smith, sold his farm near Staveley and bought Hakataramea Downs. The family of 4 sons and 2 daughters lived in the stone house for a year until they could move into a new wooden they built a few hundred meters away.

Hannah and Rika's mum in front of the house.


Rika's mum with Hannah. The photo is looking north from the side of the old stone house.


Looking east from the same spot, across the lawn. This used to be the vegetable garden.


In 1937 Willy's youngest son Duncan married Walter Hogg's daughter Mary. They had a family of 6 children starting with my father. Duncan farmed at Haka Downs for the rest of his life, initially in partnership with his brothers, and his sons farmed here until 2000. During this time the old stone house was mainly used to house temporary accommodation for seasonal workers like shearing gangs.


Looking north again, this time from the back of the old stone house.


My parents keep about a dozen sheep to keep the grass down. They are quite tame and will come to my mother to be fed when she calls out "sheep!". In these shots you can see some of the original farm buildings, also dating back from the 1860s.


My mother calling the sheep to be fed. She gives them 'sheep nuts', which seem to be the ovine equivalent of Ferrero Rocher. The building in this video is the old 'cook-shop' which has a large kitchen including a bread-oven and a dining room for feeding large group of workers.


Looking south from the house to the old cook-shop. The land across the road is part of the farm, which is now farming deer rather than sheep. The horse is a pet of the family who are farming here now.


The same view looking south at dawn.




Looking east to the 'cottage' which was built in 1888. My grand-parents lived here from 1937-1957 and my father grew-up here as a child. The farm was not connected to mains electricity until 1957 so the cottage used to get its electricity from a small windmill called a 'wind charger' that was fixed to the top of one of the pine trees. Looking further up the road you can see the wool-shed where sheep were shorn for wool, and the Hunter Hills.


Another view looking east towards the wool-shed and the Hunter Hills. The hills are up to 1,500 m high.


This is the house that 'Willy' (my great-grandfather) built in 1926. My grand-parents lived here from 1957 and some of my earliest memories are of visiting them here in the early 1970s.


Apart from the plantation of trees around the house, the valley seems very open and empty. One of my favorite views is looking east and north from the edge of the trees to the Hunter Hills and up the valley. The air here is very dry and clear so the light is often very intense. The forms of the hills with changing shadows and colors can be very attractive.


This is a panorama from the same spot. Looking north up the valley, then east to the Hunter Hills then south to the trees around the old stone house. You can see how dry the area is. Although the valley seems empty, you can still see a lot of wildlife like herons, hawks, magpies, rabbits, and lizards.


Another panorama taken by the river from a few hundred meters up the valley. Looking north up-river then west, south down-river, and eventually north-east to the hills. This is a pretty small river for such a large valley.


Another group of farm-buildings is the old stables complex. This was an important part of the farming operation in the early days since horses were the main source of power and transport. Even after mechanization horses were used for traveling around the farm and mustering sheep until the 1950s (?).

The entrance to the stables looking west. The horses lived in the right side of the large building and the saddles were kept in the room on the left.


This is the stables complex from the south. A few years ago some of the roof of the sheds on the left partly blew-off. Then the weather got in and the stone walls began to gradually collapse. Last year Dad spent a lot of time and effort re-building the stone walls and the roof of the blacksmiths shop. Now it looks as good as it did 60 years ago!


The stables, looking south from the trees. This corner is the old black-smiths shop where they had a forge and made horse-shoes and other things from iron. You can see the stone-wall that Dad repaired and the 'new' iron where rebuilt the roof.


A panorama of the stables, looking west, north, east then south-west down the valley. Because the air is so dry, the buildings have remained pretty much as they were the day they stopped being used. In the north corner of the yard is an old wooden cart that has had a tree grow up through its wheels.


Every few decades the Hakataramea valley experiences a massive storm and some of the old trees get blown down. So Dad spends a lot of time chopping up these fallen trees for firewood, and also planting new ones. Here are some of the trees my father planted near the stables about 20 years ago.



Relaxing on the lawn with Hannah.

NZ - Mt Cook / Aoraki

After Staveley we drove down through the South Canterbury towns Geraldine and Fairlie and then to Dad's house in Hakataramea via the Burke's Pass and the Hakataramea Pass. The Hakataramea Pass road isn't marked on some maps but it was surprisingly busy in places.



This is my mother, Rika's mum and my father from the Hakataramea Pass looking west across the McKenzie basin towards the Southern Alps. You can see the outline of Mt Cook/Aoraki which is 75km away, behind Rika's Mum.


Another view of Mt Cook / Aoranki from the Haklataramea pass (7x zoom)


The next day made a day-trip to the Mt Cook National park. So we drove back over the Hakataramea Pass, through Tekapo and past Lake Pukaki to the Mt Cook township. This is Mt Cook/Aoraki from the road alongside Lake Pukaki. ' Aoraki' is the Maori name for Mt Cook and it means '"Cloud Piercer", presumably because it could often be seen poking up above the clouds.


This is a professional image the same view on a different day with better weather.


Unfortunately it was grey and overcast for much of the day so we didn't see the mountains at their best. But we did get some blue sky and eventually had get a clear view of Mt Cook and Aoraki.


We had a nice picnic lunch at the camping area at Mt Cook township, and then walked a short distance up the path up the Hooker valley. This is looking east back down the valley.


Looking west to Mt Sefton (3,157m) and its glaciers. The hill in the foreground is a moraine, a pile of rocks pushed in front of the Hooker glacier which has since retreated.


It is difficult to get a sense of the scale of the mountain and the valley. From time to time we could hear the rumble of avalanches and rock slides from different parts of the mountains. Rika's Mum spotted one avalanche high up on the glacier on Mt Sefton but we didn't hear it until several seconds later.


Looking north from Mt cook village (762m) to Mt Cook /Aoraki (3,754m). The mountain is still about 15km away.


Mt Cook and Mt Sefton from the 'Hermitage' Hotel in Mt Cook Village.


On the way back to Hakataramea we stopped in Tekapo. This is Tekapo's famous 'church of the good shepherd'. It was built in 1935 to pray for more tourists.


This is 'Taramea' or Speargrass at Mt Cook. 'Hakataramea' is a version of the old Maori name which meant 'valley of the speargrass'.

NZ - Staveley

We returned from the West Coast via Arthurs Pass and traveled south along the foothills of the Southern Alps a short distance to the Staveley / Mt Somers area.

This is Mt Somers, which is an extinct volcano.


The first stop was to visit the old Mt Somers schoolhouse where Frances and Don Stanton have created a wonderful garden, and also sympathetically renovated the school as a home and cottage accommodation.



By one of those 'small world' coincidences, the Stanton's are the parents of one of my colleagues from work, and my parents had already visited their garden and met them. Unfortunately Don was away on business but it was nice to meet Frances. This is Frances and Mum in front of the old schoolhouse.


Family group in the garden.


I was very impressed by the skill and hard-work which had obviously gone into creating both the garden and the decoration of the house. The overall effect was really lovely.


The next stop was the 'Birchlands' homestead a few minutes up the road at Staveley where we stayed the night. You could say that this is the 'ancestral home' of my fathers family. This farm is where my grandfathers grandfather, William Tayler Smith met Hannah Graham around 1867 after returning from the West Coast gold-fields. They married, bought land and eventually set-up their sons on farms in this area.



Birchlands has a dramatic setting on the Canterbury plains near Mt Somers and the foothills of the Southern Alps. The hills behind Mt Somers were the location used for 'Edoras' in the 'Lord of the Rings' films. This is the view from the gate at Birchlands early in the morning.



The current house was built by William and Hannah in 1902. But William never lived in it. Before it was finished he disappeared from the ship 'Zealandia' while on a trip to Auckland to buy horses. It is presumed that he was robbed of his money and thrown overboard.



Birchlands has been beautifully restored by Lorna and Alan Dent who now run a homestay business, providing accommodation to tourists. Lorna is also a descendant of William and Hannah so a distant relative of my father.



Alan is a retired sheep-farmer, and he was able to demonstrate how to round up sheep with his sheepdog. Actually Alan's sheep-dog is also retired so he was a bit out of practice - he isn't suppose to bark that much.



This is Rika's mum feeding the sheep.





The next day we visited the old Staveley school which my relatives had attended. It is now a small museum, and we could see relatives like my great-grandfather in various old school and sporting photos.



And then to 'Alford Forest' cemetery to visit the graves of Hannah Graham and her children.


This is a memorial to WT Smith on the cemetery gates. My great-aunt use to say that the blood-red colour leaking from the letters was a sign that he had been murdered.

NZ - West Coast

After a couple of days in Christchurch we took the 'Tranzalpine' train through the Southern Alps to the west coast of the South Island. This can be a very scenic route but as the weather was overcast we didn't see it at its best.

This photo was taken in the dry east-coast side of the mountains.




The west coast is a special place. It is much wetter than the east coast and consequently mainly covered by sub-tropical rain-forest. It also has a rugged coastline battered by westerly winds. The next day we drove up the coast from Greymouth to the nature reserve at Punakaiki and had a picnic lunch. We were lucky to have beautiful dry weather.








This is the coast just north of Punakaiki.




Hannah with Mum at our picnic. (Hannah is asking Mum where the plates and cutlery are).




This is Hannah entertaining my Dad with her Winston Churchill impression at our motel in Greymouth. The 'cigar' is actually a hard wheat biscuit for ther to chew to help with the discomfort of teething. One of many helpful suggestions from my Mum.


The west cost is now the most sparsely populated part of New Zealand with only 40,000 people in its biggest town Greymouth. But 140 years ago it was the scene of a gold rush and some of our ancestors worked in these goldfields. This is Kumara c.1880s with the town fitting in among piles of tailings from the diggings, and the hills being stripped of wood.


Most of the goldrush towns were long ago been reclaimed by the bush. But some of the buildings and equipment has been preserved and brought together in a heritage park called 'Shantytown'.



I was very interested to see the watchmakers, tailors, tinsmiths workshops, and the sawmill because some of our relatives had worked in these trades after they arrived in NZ in the 1800s. In particular John Hannah (my grandfather's grandfather's brother) was a watchmaker in the town of Kumara a few miles south of Shantytown. Newspaper reports suggest he was a member of the town volunteer fire brigade, so it was great to see the old fire station and old manual fire-engines.


Shantytown also has a functioning steam railway and we could take a ride for a short-distance into the bush.


This is a 'Weka' which is a native flightless bird that used to be very common in the bush.


After 2 days on the coast we drove back east across the Southern Alps through Arthur's Pass National Park. We had another beautiful day and could appreciate the mountain valleys and native bush. Along the way we visited Kumara and had morning tea at its one remaining shop.



This is the view from the Otira highway on the west coast looking east up the Otira valley towards the Main Divide.




This is the view from further up the Otira Valley just below Arthur's Pass.

NZ - Christchurch

Well, we have just returned from 2 weeks holiday in New Zealand with Hannah, Rika's mum. and my parents. We did so much it will take some time to update the blog for it all.

First stop was Christchurch to visit Rachel, John and their children, William, Sophie and Claire. This is William holding Hannah with Claire, Rachel and Sophie in the background.



Sophie holding Hannah


Hannah, Rachel and William


On our first full day in Christchurch we had unusually heavy rain. So we visited the Canterbury Museum. It is especially good on maori and early settler history. This photo shows a reconstruction of early Maori hunting a moa, a large native flightless bird that is now extinct.



By an amazing coincidence, one of the early-settler exhibits included a copy of an newspaper advertisement from 1853 of our ancestor William Graham of Brenchley Farm, Lyttleton. WG was a turner who came out from London in 1851 with his wife and children, one of whom was our ancestor Hannah Graham.



This is my Mum with our Hannah at the Museum cafe.


On the second day we had glorious weather so we went for a drive with Rachel's family around the Port Hills. This is Dad with Hannah looking out south-west across the Canterbury Plains to the Southern Alps .



This is Rika's mum and Rachel.


Me, Dad, Hannah and William.


This is the view from the Port Hills looking north towards Lyttleton Harbour and the town of Lylttleton in the middle left.


Looking east from the same spot. The ring of hills you can see in these 2 photos is the rim of an old volcano. Lyttleton Harbour in the middle is the centre of the old crater.





The photo below is from later the same day. It looks south from Lyttleton towards the crater rim where the above 2 photos and video were taken. This spot is actually Brenchley Farm where William Graham lived 155 years ago. As you can see WG had a terrific view, although of course in those days it would have been all black-and-white. While we were in Lyttleton we had a picnic of the local delecacy 'fush n chups' in a park where a local pipe band was giving a display. Its strange to see men in woolen kilts playing pipes in the baking NZ sun.



After driving around the port hills we visited the Ferrymead heritage park, where Johns father has been helping out as a volunteer. Ferrymead has a collection of historic houses and also various collections of old technology including a working steam railway. We were able to ride the train a short distance.



They also have a working tram-line. This is everyone riding an old tram. I think this one used to be used in my home-town in Dunedin.