Chapter 4 - The Accident
On Saturday, 26 October, Griff said, “We’ll work on the Western hill today. You do the discing,” Fred. Take the bay filly we started to break in last week. You’d better have Jane as your lead horse. She’s deaf, I know, but her one idea is to pull and there’ll be no chance of the young‘un jibbing. Whichever others you can catch will do to complete the team.”
The young horse stood quietly enough to be harnessed but not when they started. A loose piece of the front bar of the machine rattled and clanged, so they tied it with a length of rope. The team settled down after that, but the slope they were working on was rather steep and Fred was driving carefully. Suddenly there was a loud crack, and he was flung violently forward as the seat collapsed. The filly jumped, Jane pulled and the man was dragged a couple of chains before he could bring the horses to a halt. One leg was caught in the disc, the other tangled in the ropes on the opposite side of the machine. Holding the reins as firmly as he could, he managed to reach his pocket knife and cut the rope that held his foot and roll out of the way of the disc just as the others working in the field came running to help. There was a deep cut into the bone just below the knee, but though the veins and artery were exposed they did not seem to be cut and there was little bleeding. Carefully he was carried back to the house and the doctor sent for. Most of the dirt was removed from the place where the flesh had been and five stitches put in.
“The greatest danger now is likely to be infection from the dirt,” said the doctor.
“Man is a small thing with four horses and a disc machine on top of him, but microbes are smaller still,” the injured man joked.
On Monday the doctor came again in his car, bringing Aunt Rose ready to take Fred back to Hawera. In spite of the pain, Fred enjoyed the new experience of riding in a motorcar, comfortable even though they went 40 miles an hour on some parts of the road. At once Fred decided he would have a motor car just as soon as his farm showed sufficient profit. “His farm? Experience Account” might show “Inspect seats of machinery carefully,” but ‘Expense`account’ would show “Doctor’s bill. No wages.”
Fred was very depressed. About eight days after the accident he made himself a pair of crutches, and the doctor told him he could dress the wound himself. It nearly made him vomit. “Come home,” his mother wrote urgently, but he could not go without his boots or some money. In the teeth of a southerly gale with occasional storms of bitterly cold rain and hail, Olive drove into town with the things he needed. It would take her four hours each way and the young man was indeed grateful. They had sent some clothes in earlier in the week with one of the neighbours but they did not turn up till he was back at work nearly two months later.
On 15th December, Fred returned to Meremere. The wound had ceased to discharge, but the space in the leg below the knee never filled up and skin was always tender there. The doctor’s bill was £5/17/6d; over a month’s wages, but he was glad it wasn’t more. Still determined to own his own farm, he looked forward to working with the sheep during the next few months. First, though, there were turnips and mangles to be sown and fenced, and ensilage to be made. These paddocks were some distance from the homestead and lunch consisted of bread and butter and cold water. “Its hot enough to fry an egg on a shovel”, Fred commented , and it would make the bread go down much easier if we took a billy and boiled it up at mid-day.” Mr. Williams had never thought of it.
One morning Griff woke him at 5am to muster sheep for the buyers. The stove was out. Grab yourself some bread and butter,” said Griff as he went out to catch a horse. They were back in the yards by 11 o’clock, but the buyers had arrived and they had to go straight on drafting the mob. They then reached the homestead for breakfast at mid-day.
“This is one reason why people don’t want to go farming,” Fred thought. “But there is no need for it. We could easily have lit the fire and made some breakfast and if the horses had been left in a small paddock near the house, we would not have been any later. Time spent teaching a horse to be caught is never wasted either,” he reflected. On Christmas Eve Fred went to Hawera. “The shearers won’t be here till Saturday,” Mr. Williams said, “so you can come back after tea on Boxing Day.” The days were very hot indeed and Fred enjoyed a rest and a game of croquet in the cool of the evening, but when he returned to Meremere at 9 o’clock on the 26th he found everyone in a flap. The shearers had worked on Christmas Day at the previous shed. Six shearers had put through 1,000 sheep and now they were to arrive at Williams shed in the morning. Friday and Saturday were busy days. The best man’s tally was 153 on Saturday, but it was a short day for the shearers as they’d cut out the shed by afternoon smoko time. Fred was working as fleeco and after the shearers had finished the wool had to be pressed and the bales sewn up; 16 bales. Mr. Williams was offered 9d. per lb. for the wool, an increase of one and a half pence on last year’s price. By 4 a.m. on Sunday, Griff, Fred and Alf were on their way to the back section about 15 miles away with 700 shorn sheep. Most of the way was along bridle tracks, up and down ridges and across gullies, climbing all the time, as the run-off rose to 1,800 ft. above sea level. It was very late when they reached the whare and after a few hours rest, started to muster the block. With about 1,300 reluctant sheep, including 250 ewes and lambs, they started on the long trek home. By about 8 o’clock at night the sheep refused to go any farther, and the boys were glad to have tea with an old bachelor who lived near. When the first promise of morning touched the sky, at about 3 a.m., they were on their way again. Before night fall they had reached the home yards, but it was pouring with rain and they arrived home looking and feeling like drowned and starving rats. The shearers had not turned up after all, so the shepherds started on the job themselves, Fred did 18, finding he got on better with the machines than he had with the blades earlier in the season. The shearers arrived that night and cut out the ewes and lambs by 5 o’clock when down came the rain again. It was the following day Tuesday before they completed the task and the shearing was finished for the year.
At last they could go for the long promised weekend on Mt. Egmont. Early on Sunday morning a party of eight young people set off from the homestead in two double buggies. It was a long drive; forty miles; and a very hot one too, with the summer roads as dusty as they had been muddy a few months before. All were glad to arrive at the Mountain House, to unharness the horses and have some tea. They had the Mountain House to themselves though 700 people stayed there during December. The Government supplied bunks, mattresses and pillows and crockery and pots and pans for the cost of 1/- a night. The guests brought their own food and cut the firewood, being careful to leave enough for the next visitors.
On Monday morning the young folk were up early, and with the boys carrying the lunch, set out to climb the mountain. Through bush they tramped, the trees gradually getting smaller and smaller till they were only shrubs, then rank grass and some moss up to the scoria and at last the snow. But the higher they climbed the colder the atmosphere and the wind rose too. Soon the girls had had enough, but the three men kept on, sure they could reach the top. They made steps in the ice with an axe, but the wind became so strong and cold that they were forced to turn back. It wasn’t so easy coming down either as the steps they had made on the way up had frozen and were very slippery indeed. They found it difficult to cut steps below them and were rather glad to find themselves off the ice at last and back on the moss fields. Although still cold, it was a pleasant walk down to the Mountain House again and the welcome tea that one of the girls had stayed to prepare. They had a happy evening, with singing around the piano and laughter and fun. On Tuesday morning they all explored the falls and the beauty spots nearby, hitching the horses in straight after lunch. It was 9 o’clock when they reached Meremere again, having stopped for an hour at tea time to freshen up the horses and inspect a “race shed” which the young farmers were keen to see.
Early in the New Year, Fred had written to a couple of agents about farms he thought might suit. He took a week end off to go to New Plymouth to see a likely one. It proved too expensive and hard to work, but he called to see Mr. Newton King at Stratford and was driven to a farm he liked very much. It was 18 miles from Stratford, 396 acres carrying 50 cows and 400 sheep. There were about 120 acres that could be ploughed and 33 acres in bush. This year the near-by factory was not working so they had a home separation unit and cream was sent to Stratford by rail at the cost of a half penny. The factory was paying eleven and a half pence, so it seemed a good proposition. The farm was to cost £11 an acre, and a deposit of £400 was required. That would leave only £410 to meet the stocking and working expenses for the first year. He began to wonder if the question of money was going to loom even larger than he had expected.
But the “experience account” was not only full of ideas of what could be done and what not to do. There were moments of pure delight. The sunlight of early morning touching the hill tops with shining gold as the whole world seemed to tingle with the joy of life; looking over a field he had ploughed and disced and harrowed and seeing the promise of harvest – “This I have never done.” More than ever he was sure there was a corner of New Zealand waiting to become productive under his touch.
But best of all, young brother Sam wanted to come farming with him. The two brothers got on well together, and Fred knew that life would be much more fun when Sam was there. His happy nature would lighten the difficult days if they come, and would certainly ease the long hours of hard work which he was sure definitely would come.
“I’ll stay till the grass seed is harvested”, Fred told Griff but when they went to look it was not quite ready to cut so Fred and Alf were sent with a mob of sheep to the run-off. The track was much dryer than it had been at shearing time, and they made good progress. They had been told to shear any stragglers they could find, “and cut ragwort.” The ragwort had spread much more rapidly than Griff realized, and it took them four days. They had eaten all the bread they had taken with them by the second night, and the only cooking utensils in the whare were a small billy and a camp oven. The porridge was lumpy and stew burned.
“Good meals can be cooked in a camp oven,” Fred told Alf, “but it takes years of experience. Anyway, I’m going to have a proper stove in my house. They loaded the pack horses with the straggler’s wool and Fred wondered if this item in his “expense account” would be needed. He did not want to take his Esther too far into the backblocks. Surely he could find a farm where he would not need to use pack horses for wool or household chores.
On March 8th, 1913 they had completed threshing the rye grass from the field where Fred had first proudly driven a four horse team to turn fertile soil “black side up”. There were 40 full sacks of rye grass seed worth 28/- a sack; a splendid yield as this was a second crop and enough seed had been left so that it would not need re-sowing.
“Now I’m off to look for my own farm,” said Fred.