Overview In this interview Jean describes her early life in Waipukurau, meeting her husband Harold and moving to Manapouri Station. She talks about home life on the farm and raising a family. Jean was involved in setting up the first school at Mararoa. She goes on to describe life in the district, the people and social activities, the arrival of electric power, and farming. Harold and Jean moved to Te Anau in 1974 and she concludes the interview talking about the changes she has witnessed and the...

Overview 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...

Overview In this interview Joe talks about his early life in Otago, Waikouaiti and then Dunedin. On leaving school Joe took up shearing. Joe then recounts his experiences of WWII in some detail. Joe served in the air force and was prisoner of war from 1943 to the end of the war, after his plane was shot down in Egypt. On his return Joe married and took on a lease for Elmwood Station at The Key. Initially Jo grew fescue, which was exported to the US, and made more money than sheep. Joe goes on to...

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...

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...

Overview Win is among the few remaining people who grew up in the Te Anau Basin when it was still considered remote and inaccessible with land covered in tussock and scrub that was only useful for grazing stock. As the youngest child of Henry F. Blatch, runholder of Lynwood Station (originally gazetted as the Te Anau Lake Run 301B) between 1906 and 1951, Win recalls a childhood of walks and picnics in the Basin as well as some of the events that dramatically changed the lives of her immediate family and...