Chapter 14 - More Stumps

The ‘war to end all wars’ dragged on. The injury to Fred’s leg made the military authorities reject him without further consideration, but Sam grew old enough and marched away, head high for the great adventure. How he was missed at ‘Okoropong’! Sometimes they were able to get a boy to help for a few months, but reluctantly Fred had to admit that he needed his wife’s assistance in the shed. It was still the hill paddocks that grew most of the grass the cows ate, but the herd ran on the peat country too. Their trampling feet consolidated the soft soil and more was blown away by the destructive winds. The roots of the great kauri trees stood above the ground now, looking like malevolent spiders or weird insects from Mars. Some of them covered more area than a good sized house. 

“You know,” Fred remarked one afternoon as they paused to look down over the farm from the cowshed, “there must have been a terrible holocaust here once. That magnificent kauri forest was growing in a wide belt from here to Orini when suddenly the huge trees were snapped off just above ground level. They are lying in rows like big nine pins. There are more logs than grass.”  “ Probably when the mountains in the centre of the island blew themselves to bits in 120 AD. They call the pumice sand we get from Sainsbury’s pit ‘Taupo ash” Esther mused, “but the peat swamps must have started to grow almost immediately because there is sometimes green leaves on the trees that come to the surface before we burn them. The cows dodge around the stumps when I’m trying to bring them home and I can’t find them. Often only a little puff of dust tells me where a cow or two are hidden.”  “Those kauri logs will keep us poor,” muttered Fred gloomily. “There seems to be more and more of them, in spite of the hours we spend pulling them out. The only consolation is that we don’t need to buy posts. The poet says, “Hard work never killed a man” but he didn’t have to move kauri stumps”.

In his position on the Drainage board, Fred was reluctantly coming to the conclusion that even a farmer could not do exactly as he liked. Some had to be made to cooperate because what one made did made a difference to others. During the dry summers, water was scarce on the farms. Windmills, the only way most had to fill their troughs, would stand sullen and still; or the pipe line would break in the unstable ground, so the farmers broke down the banks of the drains to let the stock drink. Then the cleaning contractors complained, or the broken bank would allow the floodwaters to flow into a neighbour’s property a few months later. At the meeting of Feb 1917, the Freshfield Drainage Board resolved that ratepayers must obtain consent before making watering places. A few days after the meeting Fred went down to see what progress had been made in the cleaning contract. “There’s something in this drain,” said William Hall. “Come and see. It looks like a part of the trunk of a very big tree, but the bark is not like any tree that grows near here. And see, there are even some leaves. I don’t recognize them at all.” Fred Williamson sighed. “It’s a kauri tree. There was a great forest here hundreds of years ago when suddenly some catastrophe occurred and the trees were all destroyed.” “It looks as fresh as if it had just fallen,” observed Mr. Hall, “but there’s about one and a half metres of peat over it.  “Yes” said Fred, “The first year I was on my farm a fire swept through all my peat swamp. It burned the ti trees and the top layer of peat, so we sowed grass seed and thought we were going to have a perfect farm. In the summer all the young grass died where the logs were under the surface. Now they are above ground and most of them are at least 26 metres long. There are the roots too.” “If it’s 26 metres long, I can’t dig round the end of it,” said Mr. Hall and his mate Mr. JJ Connelly added, “It doesn’t look as if we will be able to dig under it either.” “No,” replied Fred, “some of the trunks are two and a half or 3 metres through. Most of the trees seem to have been about 800 years old. Just think, that tree was probably growing when Julius Caesar conquered Britain.” But Mr. Hall wasn’t very interested. “What will we do?” he asked. Fred said, “Get a crosscut saw and cut it as low as you can on each side. Then use gelly and blow the centre piece away. Only put it in properly or you’ll blow the side of the drain out.” 

Mr Hall protested, “We tended 2/9d per chain for cleaning the drain. We haven’t the equipment for removing logs like that.” So Fred Williamson helped them do it. But as the peat consolidated, many more buried logs obstructed the drains and the Drainage Boards provided the gelignite to remove them. 

At last the war ended. Sam came home, a little older but still happy and enthusiastic. A telephone service was considered. It required practically every dwelling in the scattered area to be connected before they could reach the number the Post Office had decreed was the absolute minimum. Fred was one of those who rode around to each home at the beginning of 1919 to collect the £1 deposit. By Feb 20th the last man signed up and work started. Because Okoropong was away from the main road, they had to put in their own poles. A small worry. The phones were connected on Aug 29th 1919. Throughout New Zealand the service was for a party line; four or five homes on a line each with their own Morse code call (as more and more people wanted telephones this number was increased till there was often as many as 8 or 10 on one line). The telephone was the most significant factor in removing the burden of loneliness from the hearts of the country women of the time and to alleviate the ever present dread of an accident or sudden illness with no hope of getting aid. On ‘Okoropong’ the milking herd had increased to 70 and there was a flock of sheep too. Bought as store lambs and sold as two tooth ewes, they helped to consolidate the peat while often adding significantly to the exchequer. Leaving the farm before sun-up Fred was usually able to have a mob yarded in good time. He was delighted to sell one line for 28/10d in January 1919, but the price offered the following week didn’t satisfy him at all so he drove them home again in the pouring rain. After years of ‘cutting his garment to fit the cloth’ and doing without, there was at last a little money. As he had decided at the very beginning, there was no reason why country houses should not possess the amenities available in town and in Nov 1919 a flush toilet was installed; the first in the district. There weren’t many even in Hamilton at that time. In 1922 the Hamilton Borough Council was urged to endeavor to improve the sewerage system because of the increase of diphtheria cases throughout New Zealand but it was several years before much was done in the town and many more still before most farmers considered a flush toilet desirable or necessary.