A retired farmer, Lovat has experienced life on very different rural properties in the Te Anau Basin. As a child he and his brothers grew up amid the tussocks and sheep of a small pastoral run, The Gorge. During his early married life, he experienced farming in eastern Southland and at Mossburn until 1970 when he was one of the successful applicants of the ballot system for the government's new farm settlements in the Te Anau Basin. During this interview Lovat gives a personal account of the many changes he has seen in the district's farming practices brought about mainly by that farm development scheme which spanned about thirty years.