Waituna Farmers United - the farmers' perspective - |
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Dairying and Wetlands can co-exist 13 July 2011:
Nearly 60 years ago this land was targeted for development by the then National Government led by Sid Holland.
In the late 1950's my husband was employed by Lands and Survey not only to muster cattle over this huge area but also to mark out main ditches to begin to improve drainage in the wider Lake Waituna area on what was then known as "the Government blocks."
That Government actively encouraged farmers to borrow funding through the then Marginal Lands Board so as land close by could be turned in to farm land.
My husbands parents and later ourselves took advantage of these loans, albeit slightly further back from the lake and developed what was the first new dairy farm in the area on a site that was once home to a saw mill. We and a neighbour even had to trim our own power poles in order to gain an electricity supply such was the remoteness of the area.
The Marginal Lands Board members paid annual visits to see if the money loaned was being spent in the areas they had loaned it for. No largesse of a lump sum loan!
Time passed and the "Government blocks" were sold off as sheep units. New families arrived and the area began to open up. The Waituna and Armstrong creeks were deepened. By the 70s land was under massive development .
The then Catchment Board (now Environment Southland) were scrupulous in their monitoring of these creeks in the area with regular water checks.
The drains laid out in the 50s and since added to serve an area which stretched far in land from the Lake and these drains do service to this day allowing drainage from long developed areas. Hundreds of thousands of clay tiles were laid. Incidentally back then small dairy factories wash down water(along with that from sheep dips) found its way to these drains and I guess eventually to the Lake.
One cause for great excitement almost annually was when the news got out "we're opening the Lake today" this procedure was controlled by farmers. Now it seems the affected land owners are no longer deemed to have this skill. "Someone" up north in the land of bureaucracy makes that decision not those who live close to and understand the Lake. I would suspect that the opening of the lake can still be foiled as it was then by Mother Nature and her ability to control man's efforts.
Surely and sometimes with amazing speed the land around the lake has changed.
The key word in my historical ramblings is marginal. Somewhere along the line the meaning of that word has been forgotten. With a little common sense and cooperation I am sure there can be the best of both worlds co-existing in the area. Dairying and Wetlands.
If blame is to be placed anywhere it is on a Government whose rampant development strategies all those years ago encouraged land development which was a little like George Du Mauriers curates egg good in some parts.
Alas not so good in others.
- ANNETTE GUNTHER, Wallacetown
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