The Carillon Light Show, Wellington, 25 April 2016
My thanks to Graeme and Heather Heald, and David Hunt, for trusting me with information about their personal lives. I was impressed and moved by what they told me – much of which I cannot relate in this public forum.
I am visiting dairy farmers Graeme and Heather Heald, and David Hunt, on Anzac weekend. Another still and unusually warm day for late April. Graeme tells me in the course of our conversation around the typical family-farm kitchen table that 1952 – just before he was born – was the best ever dairy payout. This year is probably the worst. He and David Hunt are the only two remaining third-generation farmers descended from the returned soldiers who won land in the Otawhao District ballot in June 1916. Graeme’s grandfather Jack was in fact the first World War I veteran to settle on Crown Land. So three years after my grandparents established their tenuous hold on the edge of this block, there was an influx of men who were all faced with the same stark acreages, bound tight with totara stumps – no power, no water, no housing. Where would you start! My grandfather Arthur, a Boer War veteran, had purchased his land privately in 1913.
Graeme’s great uncle Gilbert was killed at Shrapnel Gully, Gallipoli. Heather shows me a sampler she has made from remnant squares of a military issue blanket, a flour bag (the plastic bag of yesteryear), and a copy of Gilbert’s photo printed on silk (see inset). Graeme’s father Bruce fought in Egypt and Italy in World War II.
Our conversation ranges forwards and backwards over the years since then. Being around the same age as my cousins and me, we have common memories of how it was in the 60s, before the tectonic changes in farming and families. We talk about what has been lost and gained.
The standard family was four children, featured in the same composition black and while family photo on every sideboard… washing day Monday, roast lamb Sunday, baking on Saturday, home-sewn waisted cotton frocks, the Gay Gordons and Brylcreem, Dexter Dutton and Dr Paul on the radio, plastic hair curlers, and a lot of blue eye shadow if you could get away with it. One beer, one life-style.
Milk came from knowable herds of about 60 cows – industrial size by turn of the century hand-milking standards – and was separated on the farm. Farmers fattened pigs on the whey. Cream was siphoned off the top and put in big steel containers which were set out on wooden stands by the road. Imagine doing that now! The cans were collected daily in a rattly old truck and taken to the butter factory in Norsewood. Prior to WWII, the milk had only a short journey to the Otawhao cheese factory. There was only one kind of cheese, too.
Making hay was a social activity, and very hard work. Neighbours helped each other out. Convoys of lavishly buttered scones and barley water were delivered to the paddocks. A woman was judged by her scones. Farms were smaller, families less far apart, and there were always plenty of other kids within play range. Their bedrooms had candlewick bedspreads and were decorated with ribbons from the A&P Show where they paraded their pet lambs and calves. The rectangular hay bales were a pleasure to look at unlike the plastic wrapped ones you see today. One plastic bag can spoil an entire landscape.
Life is not all scones and barley water now, that’s for sure. Graeme and Heather talk with frank good sense and sensitivity about the current situation, and life in general. Graeme is quiet and uncomplaining by nature – refuses to complain about anything in fact. I cannot get him to acknowledge the obvious pain he is feeling in his hips. He is animated when he talks about the inspiration and satisfaction he has had from being a Scout Leader. I expect it was mutual. If only all our children could learn what these men and women have to teach.
Graeme and David Hunt, who I am about to meet, are the same age and spent many hours together on the long bus journey to school in Dannevirke. They have known each other all their lives. David also gave many years to Scouts. Now the Hunts and Healds, as they are collectively known, are both facing a very serious crisis with the third year of rock bottom milk prices. It is of such deep concern, say the Healds, that noone really wants to talk about it. Words are unnecessary. I can feel it and see it in their self-controlled smiles. Not just a lifetime’s work, but three lifetimes’ work and a family legacy from two World Wars are in suspense.
Graeme and Heather’s son Pete is in business with them also. This adds another dimension to the financial stress as they are “so aware of the pressures on him and his family, of his loyalty and horrendous hours of work”.
Graeme and Heather Heald
To those affected, it can hardly be of any comfort that the dairy downturn is compensated for nationally by a flood of Chinese tourists and 10,000 Amway salesmen. Is this another tap the Chinese can turn on and off, rendering expensive new infrastructure like milking sheds and hotels redundant? Are we living too close to the dragon’s breath, we wonder?
David Hunt and his family now live separately from their farm in a beautiful new house of rare architectural merit, evidence of better times. “I can close the office door,” says David, “and not be surrounded by the cause of my anxieties.” He wants to be among people and points out that in Europe, people clustered together in villages and walked to work in the fields. Before we start our conversation, he shows me the framed map of the Otawhao District balloted land, distributed to his grandfather Bill Hunt, and Jack Heald. Not many stayed very long.
Bill Hunt was in the Wellington Mounted Rifles, and fought at Chunuk Bair, having first served in the desert. Before being sent to Gallipoli as reinforcements, they had to shoot their horses so the enemy couldn’t use them. He was “batman” for a senior officer, and was despatched back home after being wounded. David’s father George took over the farm and David, the only son of an only son, bought the land from him. A little pressure there, no doubt. David says he was one of the lucky generation. Although the farm had to be earned, it was possible to do so, and to expand through hard work and natural equity growth. At the moment, they are “burning” that equity on the bonfire. They are by no means alone.
When a farmer David knew took his own life a few years back, he was completely floored, and decided to make public his own illness. “I could not say silent.” Just prior to this suicide, David had had the same thoughts. He was disabled for about a year by severe depression, triggered by economic pressures. He describes the panic attacks he had as the most terrifying experience he can possibly imagine. He says he is much more afraid of losing his mind than his money. The media picked up on his public statement and he quickly became the John Kirwan of the farming community, giving many interviews about the poor mental health services and support in the country. The farmer whose suicide so shocked him, simply could not wait for an appointment with his doctor. (See interview links below) David now understands what his own father George went through and realises that he also suffered from depression, and that he has inherited his susceptibility.
I ask him how serious this downturn is compared to all those previous…”very! …though for stress nothing beats a bad drought, which is a 10/10. This is 8-9/10 by comparison.” David talks about the isolation he has felt, the lack of understanding and sympathy for mental illness, and the frustration, if not anger, he feels at New Zealanders not understanding farming. He takes the blame directed at farmers over water pollution, climate change, and animal welfare, very personally.
David is suspicious about the recent television expose of the treatment of bobby calves and talks me through the proposed strict regulations and existing minimum standards. He concedes that there will always be a small number of farmers who are in breach and get away with it. There are agreed industry standards, soon to be enshrined in law, about the handling of bobby calves from farm to freezing works. They should be at least four days old and fed within four hours of collection – they are not to be picked up from the farm-gate, and must be deemed fit for the journey. The Ministry for Primary Industries is currently fast-tracking these agreements into law. There is a further proposal that the maximum transport time be 8 hours. Calves put down on the farm may only be despatched with a gun or preferably a more precise retractable bolt gun. Bludgeoning, or blunt force trauma, is no longer acceptable. David keeps these arms under strict control, though you don’t need a licence to use the bolt gun – only he and authorised, experienced staff are allowed to use them.
I ask him if he loves his land. Silly question. I think we are both going to be in tears soon. Moving quickly on.
I ask him about climate change and we agree to disagree. He comments, however, that for the last decade there has been no autumn – no autumn rains. Out of the window, looking west towards the Ruahines, the paddocks are bleached straw, grazed by strikingly black cattle. The golden foothills brighten by contrast with the dark ranges as the light falls.
Just as I am leaving, David’s wife Gladys arrives home from her day job as a clothing retail owner/manager. Women working off-farm has been a very big change in rural New Zealand. She tells me that she once nursed my grandfather in Dannevirke Hospital, just before he died.
I head back down the highway, against the city holiday traffic hurtling blind through the countryside, the looming headlights confounding my sense of direction.
What would the country be like without families like the Healds and the Hunts, I wonder.
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God Knows
And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year: “Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.” And he replied: “Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.” So I went forth, and finding the Hand of God, trod gladly into the night. And He led me towards the hills and the breaking of day in the lone East.
So heart be still: What need our little life Our human life to know, If God hath comprehension? In all the dizzy strife Of things both high and low, God hideth His intention.
God knows. His will Is best. The stretch of years Which wind ahead, so dim To our imperfect vision, Are clear to God. Our fears Are premature; In Him, All time hath full provision.
Then rest: until God moves to lift the veil From our impatient eyes, When, as the sweeter features Of Life’s stern face we hail, Fair beyond all surmise God’s thought around His creatures Our mind shall fill.[2]
A poem by Minnie Louise Haskins (1875-1957), published in 1908. It was read by King George VI in his 1939 Christmas broadcast to the British Empire. A framed copy hung on the wall of my grandparents’ farmhouse kitchen. No doubt they heard him recite it as from a great distance, through the white noise on the old farm radio.
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The Sacrifice – remembering Gilbert
by Heather Heald
Gilbert is my husband’s great uncle, shot in the head in Shrapnel Gully, 27.6.1915.
A worn photo of Gilbert and his dog-tag number were transferred to silk, edges burnt representing the devastation of war. It is simply stitched into a grey woollen blanket, representing the Red Cross. A blood drop shape of red stitching represents the loss of lives and blue seed stitching is for the grief of loved ones. Backed with a flour bag, there was little wasted then, the crown on the flour bag represents colonial loyalty, snowdrops on the flour bag are naturalised in the cemetery in New Zealand where Gilbert is remembered.
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David Hunt talks to the media about his illness to help others in the same situation
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10868177
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/rural/277073/rural-mental-health-crisis-predicted
