More on the Bluff station
The management of the Bluff station presented a very special challenge. Once Jim Chaffey had bought land to form a large station on the north of the Clarence as far as the Bluff station there was radio contact twice daily between the homestead at Kekerengu and the staff working inland.

The airstrip transforms life at the Bluff
An airstrip was built at the Bluff in about 1947. That airstrip is 60 metres (200 ft) above the river, 550 metres (1800 ft) above sea level. Air transport transformed life at the Bluff and people and supplies could then be delivered in thirty five minutes, instead of a two day journey by horseback.

Transport by mule cost £100 per ton. When freighting by air began it cost £30.

Rabbit control by air drops
Air drops of poisoned carrots and oats made rabbit control easier and more effective. First the rabbits were fed good carrots, then poisoned carrots, and in the mid fifties the estimate was that 50 tons of carrots would kill 150,000 rabbits. The pilot would take off from Kekerengu at 4.00 a.m., reach the Bluff by 4.20, work for eight hours and return the same day. During this drop the ewes are mustered and taken to the front of the station to be clear of the poisoned area.

A doctor flown in, a patient not flown out
The value of air transport was realised yet again in 1945 when the head shepherd developed pneumonia. A staff member rode the ninety six kms (sixty miles) to Kekerengu. Jim Chaffey rode to Kaikoura, some 40 km (25 miles) to fetch penicillin, but then at 4 a.m. he received word that the shepherd had become more seriously ill. A doctor was flown in from Kaikoura in a Tiger Moth. There was no landing strip, so a site had to be rapidly cleared. The doctor stayed three days and was flown out. The shepherd was to fly out too to be checked out in hospital, but he refused, believing that he could recover better in the environment that he knew.

What of the sheep?
Crutching was done at the Bluff. When the annual supplies were taken to the station the pack train of eighteen mules returned with packets of wool of a manageable size. Later wool was packed in small bales of 45 kg (100 lb) and the plane was able to carry four or five per flight.

Musterers and packhorses at the Bluff station

For shearing the 14,000 sheep were mustered and once they had been brought down from the tops they were held in a fenced area, and then driven as one mob for six days over the 96 km (60 mile) journey. Six shepherds with their dogs accompanied them and had to carry everything needed for six days. Very few sheep were lost, though some went travel blind with the dust on the way. They certainly lost condition. On arrival at Kekerengu they were shorn and dipped and then began the long journey back. The property changed from sheep to cattle in 1964, but is now moving back into sheep.

For this station the horses and dogs are of paramount importance. As Jim Chaffey put it, they are labour units on the farm. On the Bluff station they bred their own.

The Bluff today
The Nimmo family now own the Bluff station and live there. It is now called the Muzzle, and consists of the most remote third of the original Bluff Station. Now the sheep are shorn at The Muzzle. If the river allows, Muzzle wool is trucked out through the Clarence Reserve to the Inland Kaikoura Road. The same happens with the cattle. The Nimmos fly out and in. The road from Kekerengu to Muzzle Station is private.

Feeding the family, the staff and the musterers
The mothers of families in these remote farms had to be excellent organisers. With the main supplies coming in only once a year and the neighbours miles away there was no popping round to the corner shop or into the neighbour's house for anything that was forgotten. They had to make their own bread and their own butter with cream from the house cow.

The meat was mutton from killing a sheep on the farm. On Glen Alton the women didn't kill the sheep, but they cut up the meat. Half would be eaten, and the other half pickled. They did this by boiling it to remove the fat and then preserving it in brine. Visitors who wanted to bring a treat for the family were wonderfully popular if they brought shop bread or sausages.

The women had to provide all the meals for the shearers and the musterers, sometimes feeding twenty extra men. All meals had to be on time. The day for the musterers began at 3 a.m.

The Bluff homestead was not the only one without power. Lighting in the homes in the valley was by kerosene lamps. The women well remember the regular job of filling lamps and trimming the wicks. Cooking was on a black stove, cleaned every Friday and heated with manuka wood. Electricity became available in 1960.

Every Saturday one of them rode out along the south bank to collect the mail and buy some bread. After crossing the slip they tethered the horse and drove the old Citroen which had replaced the Ford for the rest of the way.

Social life
This community had to create a social life or travel for it. On the station there were annual rounders matches between the neighbours, games of cricket and gymkanas. The family from Waiautoa would regularly join in these gatherings. On one occasion Archdeacon Haggitt conducted a service on the verandah and the neighbours arrived for this in gigs, on horseback and in cars.

The young people rode out to dances at Clarence Bridge, held during the war to raise funds for the Red Cross and the Lady Galway Guild.

One night the girls went to a formal dance in Blenheim. They danced until late and when they returned they found the truck at the inland side of the Miller Stream was frozen, so they tucked up their finery and walked in the cold, and then were on time for a day's work on the farm.

Coping with emergencies
The father's accident
In 1920 on Boxing Day Joe Todhunter was bringing to the farm a visitor, Guy Pascoe, a Christchurch lawyer. He met another carriage and in endeavouring to pass went over the bank. He was taken to Waipapa, a station further down the river, with his leg broken in several places. Guy Pascoe was also carried there and was thought to be dead.

When she received the news Mrs Todhunter scooped up all the medicines she could find, including sal volatile, and rode to Waipapa. With her sal volatile Guy Pascoe regained consciousness and lived another twenty years.

Joe was taken to the main road with the stretcher held on the car by men standing on each side on the running board. He was in hospital for some time during which time his wife coped with the children and farm duties. Janet's memories of her father are all of a man with a limp.

The mother's illness and death
During the war Mrs Todhunter became ill with cancer. She stayed at home as long as possible but was finally carried out on a stretcher to go to hospital in Christchurch. It was typical of the indomitable spirit of these women that all the way, despite the pain, she joked with those who were carrying her.

House fire
When the Todhunter family returned to Glen Alton after the war they moved from the original homestead to Harkaway, three miles over the hill, near the woolshed and across the big slip. Here there was a shepherd's cottage and the woolshed. They extended the cottage and moved.

Harkaway House - burnt down 1947

In 1947 the house was destroyed by fire and the family lost almost everything. Ann had grabbed a saucepan from the blaze and as the flames died down she filled it with water from the nearby creek and boiled the water on the embers of the house so that everyone could have a cup of tea.

The family had not sorted their mother's possessions and all were lost except that three of the diamonds from her five diamond ring were found in the ashes.

This resilient family set about having the house rebuilt, a smallish house as this was the time of building restrictions.

Life for the women of the Clarence in the sixties and seventies
The women of more recent years live a very different life, mainly because of the electricity supply and air transport. They have supplies brought in regularly by air, and so are freed from many of the responsibilities carried by their mothers and grandmothers. With the modern electrical appliances household jobs are less time-consuming. Shearers bring their own lunch and leave the farm at the end of the day.

Farms are now run with minimal staff. Many of the women have gained computer skills and taken over a lot of the clerical work for the farm. They also join in the outside work.

As they are no longer occupied mainly with domestic duties and care of the family many expect more recognition for their part in the work of the farm. They don't want to be known only as farmers' wives. They want to be recognised as farmers and treated as equals with their male husbands or partners. Sometimes they are partners in the farm. Sometimes they run their own enterprises like Anna Inkersell who is a farmer in her own right, breeding beef cattle on a farm on the edge of Kaikoura. They believe that they are now treated as equal to the men by business people who want to speak to the farmer.

Both women and men farming in the remote areas have a lifestyle almost unbelievably different from that of those who farmed there before electric power brought modern conveniences and the aeroplane bought them closer to the outside world.