Yeah! She’s dry alright! I went up with the son-in-law a couple of months back in the Aero Club’s Cessna. He’d just recently got his pilot’s license. Wanted to show off a bit. We went on a tour out over the plains. It was so brown even then that it’d make ya cry. I’m told that it’s a lot worse now! Just dust some of it. Cockies down to the last of what should be winter feed–drying cows off–selling stock. I had a couple of really bad years on the farm myself but I don’t think they were anywhere near as bad as this one. I’m glad that I’m retired and out of it. After the wife took off, my daughter and son-in-law insisted that I was getting a little bit past living on my own,that I should sell up and move into town with them. When I suggested that maybe I should stick it out and advertise for a housekeeper. Something in the line of ‘mid-20s, 36:24:36’. My daughter was not amused. Her mother’s defection has continued to eat at her and she didn’t see it as anything to joke about. She worshipped her mother. She couldn’t see that it was just my way of putting on a brave face. No man likes to be cuckolded. And I still miss her too. In a number of places we saw the ground-hugging smoke that signals an underground peat fire. It’s all peat down below–ya know– the whole area was once a vast swamp, hundreds of square miles of it, and every really hot summer we get these deep-down fires. This year they reckon it’s the earliest ever. They seem to just start themselves and there’s nothing ya can do to put them out. Keep burning until the winter rain comes. I know that you’re not from around here but, I tell ya, apart from times like the present, its some of the country’s best dairy land, if not the best, and that’s entirely thanks to our drainage network. Everyone moans like hell about the Drainage Board levies as if they’re some sort of cruel imposition, another scheme to cripple the poor old farmer, and yet if it
wasn’t for the Drainage Board the whole area would be back into swamp in a very few years.I used to moan meself when I was farming. So I got meself elected to the board. I was going to change things. How little I knew. The drainage of the plains will always be a problem. The strip of land along the coast is considerably higher than the flats and we have just the one tidal river breaching it as an outlet and the fall toward the river from most areas has always been very slight indeed. That is why our major drains are of a size that would make it possible for two canal boats to pass each other except that, because of flood gates and a multitude of low bridges, navigation is not now possible. But for a long time they were the only means of access. Even today, after nearly a hundred years, roads in the area are a continuing expense. Another big moan of course. The land remains, and always will, somewhat fluid. It supports buildings of reasonable weight but tarseal just doesn’t last. The biggest problem for the board is that the land has continued to settle gradually wiping out what little fall there was and the settling is not even. Quite a few areas now have to be pumped. However, for all it’s faults, the plains grows a super crop of grass albeit with heavy dressings of lime. Ooh! And another grizzle is about the large amount of good land that has been lost to the canals–not surprising when every farmer considers himself to be an expert on drains–but it’s necessary. Really, I can’t understand people. The canals and their secondary drains are an amazing piece of engineering considering the available tools of their time, they’re local history, the basis of the whole area’s prosperity, and yet everyone seems to just take them for granted. I’d love to write a book on them but there are problems. All of the Board’s early records
were lost to the fire of 1929. That’s the problem with wooden buildings. The local Historical Society has very little information and only half-a-dozen photographs of the work in progress. The surveying began in 1908, set in motion one can only assume by the government of the day, and the engineer was a George MacFadden. We don’t know the names of any of his surveyors or other assistants thanks to the fire. There should be a bronze plaque for them in a prominent place or at the very least one for George MacFadden. And it begs the questions. How did they establish levels in head-high flax and scrub in an otherwise nearly featureless swamp? How did they design a system that successfully drained such a large area with so little fall? Even with today’s giant leap in technology, it would still be creditable. Technology or not, from antiquity we have been blessed with some great engineers and great surveyors. Some very smart blokes. I mean, Roman aqueduct engineers could drive a tunnel through a hill from opposite sides and meet in the middle. Easy enough now with global positioning and laser guidance. But how did they do it? Back in 307 BC, Egyptian surveyors could advise the king of the area that a canal across the Isthmus of Corinth would not be practicable because there were permanent differences in the sea level on either side –the water would rush through continuously at speed–and yet their main measuring tools were ropes. In fact they were known as “rope stretchers”. And about 200 BC the Greek Philosopher and Mathematician Eratosthenes was able to calculate the circumference of the earth from the difference in the sun’s noontime angle at Syene and at Alexandria and the distance between them. And he wasn’t too far out. The servant HOGGING THE CONVERSATION. Page 4 who accuratyely paced the considerable distance between these cities is likewise amazing. Eristosthenes also calculated the tilt of the earth. How? The mind boggles. I’ve always been interest in history but in the last few years, since I moved into town and had more time on my hands, I’ve become interested in local history as well and joined the Historical Society. Their photographs show that the major canals were dug by drag- lines, there seems to have been two of them, but they were not like any that we have seen. They were the sort of steam behemoths that we would expect for that time and much too heavy for swamp land. They’re shown sitting on shallow barges along with the crew’s living quarters. Apparently the barges were held back by anchors of some type while digging and then, when the canal had been dug ahead to maximum reach, the anchors were released and the bucket used to pull barge and dragline forward to be anchored again. A monotonous job–I don’t think I could stand it–and one assumes that they worked all the daylight hours. They had a small steam tender to bring up supplies and changes of men. The canals themselves were, of course, the only means of access. The tender itself appears in only one rather fuzzy photograph and it is hard to judge but it seems to be bi-directional with a screw at each end in the manner of the old Auckland ferries. Do you remember the steam ferries? The screws can’t be seen but the shape of the boat is a dead giveaway. Later when the auxiliary drains began to be dug–and this was by hand and summer work only and going on for years–the various work crews were dropped off and picked up at the nearest navigable point. And it did take years. Even after the First Would War, when some of the land was ballotted to returning servicemen, there were still large areas uncleared and a great deal
more still too wet to clear. My grandfather was one of those lucky servicemen. My father followed him. I followed my father. Perhaps that is why it was so hard leaving our land. Or one of the reasons,anyway. I’ve only got the one daughter and no sons. My daughter is a school principle, a bit of an egghead, with not the least interest in farming. The same goes for the son-in-law. One advantage those draining the swamp had over us today is that they had no Resource Management Act to contend with, ecology was a word unknown, no complaints procedure to let every Tom, Dick, and Harriet put their oar in. If some taniwha in the swamp was going to get upset and feel dispossessed then that was just too bad. There were no vaguely rumoured burial grounds or former settlements to require the delay of an archaeological survey and dig or if there were such, nobody was particularly interested anyway. And, of course, nobody worried about the wild fowl or considered that wetlands might have some use. This was progress, everything we did then was progress, and nothing was allowed to stand in the way of king progress. We never think of conservation until we’re fighting the weevils for the last crumbs. And talking of burial grounds, there is a local legend,and I tend to think it’s more than a legend, that one dragline did dig up a body. It was said to be in a surprising state of preservation. Although, perhaps not so surprising since bodies have been found preserved by swamps for thousands of years. The strong acidity and the lack of oxygen inhibit bacterial action. It could be too that the tannins from dead vegetation act as a preservative. Anyway, according to the legend, even though the passing of time had treated the body benignly, the dragline bucket had not. Work was stopped until the engineer came up later in HOGGING THE CONVERSATION. Page 6
the day on the tender. At his suggestion, the body parts were quietly re-interred with no word to the police, no word to the coroner, no word to anyone in fact, not even an official word of prayer although several of the men apparently took their hats off and mumbled their own. The body represented an unwanted interruption that had cost half a day’s work. I told you that I went up with the son-in-law, didn’t I. Well, when I came down it was to hear that someone I know had come across the wife and her boyfriend. The last five years have dealt rather kindly with them. They look pretty much the same as when I buried them. B-L-A-H-D-Y—PEAT! Anyway—what have they got you in for?