In the Wake of the Pioneers: Fiordland Museum Trust Oral History Project
Subject
Subject Source: Local sources
Found in 62 Collections and/or Records:
KING, Colin Maxwell interviewed by Morag Forrester
Record Group — Box 52
Identifier: H0558
Overview
As a young teenager, Colin left school to pursue his ambition to become a farmer. Starting out at Lynwood Station as a farmhand, he eventually worked on various large properties throughout the southern South Island; mustering, shearing, ploughing and learning first hand what farm work involved. By his mid-twenties, he was married with a young family and on his own small farm back home in Greenhills. The family moved to Castlerock and eventually to the Lillbum Valley where for more than...
Dates:
2005 - 2006
KIRKWOOD, Thomas Steadman (Tom) interviewed by Morag Forrester
Record Group — Box 52
Identifier: H0561
Overview
Forty years ago the Te Anau Basin underwent dramatic change as a result of some large government projects. The country's biggest farm development scheme had begun in the Te Anau Basin the previous decade, but its real effects on the landscape and community was not apparent until the 1960s and 1970s. As a farm manager and field officer for the Department of Lands & Survey during that time, Tom recalls what was involved in the development of the area he was appointed to oversee - the...
Dates:
2006
LINDSAY, Gloria Margaret interviewed by Morag Forrester
Record Group — Box 49
Identifier: H0538
Overview
Gloria has lived in Manapouri for nearly sixty years. One of only a handful of residents, she left Dunedin to join her husband, George Lindsay, who worked for several years as guide and launchmaster for Les Murrell's small tourism operation on Lake Manapouñ and Doubtful Sound. It was eventually taken over by Les Hutchins and became the starting point for the successful company, Fiordland Travel Ltd. In her interview Gloria tells of her early life in Dunedin and what it was like moving to...
Dates:
2004
LUTTRELL, Jack De Wilton interviewed by Morag Forrester
Record Group — Box 51
Identifier: H0552
Overview
One of the New Zealand team members seconded to Colonel Howard for the 1949 expedition was former government deer culler, Jack Luttrell. He had worked a couple of years earlier for the Wildlife Branch of the Department of Internal Affairs culling red deer in the Haast district of the West Coast. He also took part in a reconnaissance survey of Fiordland in 1948 in preparation for the Howard expedition. Now in his 70s, Mr Luttrell, has a clear memory of those earlier years hunting in much of what...
Dates:
2005
MACDONALD, Angus David interviewed by Morag Forrester
Record Group — Box 49
Identifier: H0540
Overview
In this interview David talks about his early life at The Plains Station at The Key and boarding at Waihi School and Christ's College. He then went on to work on the station. He describes the change in farm use from growing fescue to focussing on sheep and cattle. The Plains Station went on to be divided in 1969 into three runs for David and his two older brothers to farm. The section David took was called Davaar, which he continued to run until 2002, when he and his wife moved to a property at...
Dates:
2004
MATTHEWS, Anthony Phillip (Tony) interviewed by Morag Forrester
Record Group — Box 55
Identifier: H0584
Overview
The younger son of a Canterbury dairy farmer, it was Tony's boyhood ambition to run his own sheep farm. School holidays in the early 1960s were spent on an uncle's sheep farm in Northern Southland where he learnt the basic skills of stock management such as drenching, lambing and shearing. A decade later Tony returned to Southland with wife, Judy, when they moved to their own 500-acre sheep and beef farm on one of the newly developed farm settlement blocks in the Te Anau Basin. This recording,...
Dates:
2008
MATTHEWS, Judith Dorothy (Judy) interviewed by Morag Forrester
Record Group — Box 55
Identifier: H0583
Overview
Brought up on a farm in Canterbury in the 1950s and 60s, Judy was well-versed in the changing seasons of a rural lifestyle. So it was with some equanimity that not long after she married her farmer husband she was ready to leave the rolling midCanterbury plains for the more rigorous climate and terrain of Northern Southland followed by the remote, uncultivated soils of the Te Anau Basin. As new settlers of the Long Valley Block — part of the government's farm settlement scheme in the Basin — in...
Dates:
2008
McGHIE, James Spence (Jim) interviewed by Morag Forrester
Record Group — Box 47
Identifier: H0522
Overview
In this interview, Jim recounts his family history and his early life on the West Coast. He began his working life saw milling but his passion was hunting deer. Jim then became involved in the deer culling programme in Fiordland. After an accident involving his hunting dog Jim then worked on the Doubtful Sound track and ran a passenger boat service. He built a house in Manapouri before moving to Australia for 4 years where he continued with hunting. On his return to New Zealand he took up...
Dates:
2004
McKENZIE, John Harvey (Jack) interviewed by Morag Forrester
Record Group — Box 51
Identifier: H0549
Overview
Jack McKenzie is the author of an autobiography titled Mr Wapiti, published in 1992. In it he gives details about his family history and farm, Leithen Downs near Waikaka, where he has lived his eighty-two years. But as the book's title suggests, it is more concerned with his life-long interest in trophy hunting of both red deer and wapiti particularly in the Fiordland National Park. It also includes comment on his years as a member of the Fiordland National Park Board. This profile covers...
Dates:
2005
MEREDITH, Kathleen Joyce interviewed by Morag Forrester
Record Group — Box 48
Identifier: H0529
Overview
In this interview, Kathleen talks about her early life in the Hawkes Bay. In her early 20s Kathleen started work in the NZ Forestry Service in Napier and it was there that she met her husband Evan. It was on their honeymoon that Kathleen first visited Te Anau. As newly-weds Kathleen and Evan moved to Hokitika where Evan took up deer meat hunting. They set up a venison processing factory where Kathleen had a hands on role processing meat. In 1964 the couple bought a venison processing factory in...
Dates:
2004
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