Beverley Forrester - The Farm at Black Hills

Robert and Louisa Forrester

Luckily, the range is on gas, so I can still boil the kettle. I make myself a cuppa and take it out to the conservatory, where I sink into a comfy chair.

The daylights going. A curious thing happens at this time of day, when the sun settles towards the mountaintops in the west. Over there to the east, the hills darken from the dun colour of tussock to black. Theyre still in full sunlight, but they turn quite black. It might be the low-growing matagouri scrub. It might be the shadows cast by tussock, or rocks protruding from the steep hillsides. Theres one school of thought that says this is why they called them the Black Hills way back then. The name stuck.

I stretch my back and roll my shoulders. Its been a while since Ive done so much wood-chopping, and its been a bit of a shock to the system.

From where I sit, beyond the driveway and in the gap between the rounded hillsides, I can see the old homestead that the Perrott family lived in nearly 150 years ago. They wouldnt have been strangers to sore shoulders and the odd blister from the axe-handle, and nor would Robert and Louisa Forrester, who were living down there in the cottage when Sarah Agnes was born in 1892. By then, Robert and Louisa already had six children. Everything they did from farming the farm to brewing a cup of tea would have been hard work.

FROM HERE, I LOOK NORTHWEST, straight to where the hot, dry wind comes from more often than not. The backbone of the island rears above the plains in the direction of Hanmer Springs, 60-odd kilometres distant, and the peaks are lightly dusted with snow. Its a view you never get tired of staring at.

The willows down by the duck pond are beginning to get their new leaves, and the first blush of green is showing in my lucerne paddock down by the road. The paddocks on the plains beyond are green at the moment, too, but in a month the first tinge of brown will creep in, and from there its just a question of how dry and brown it will get.

To my right are the Black Hills. The 2,000-acre property that was once named for them has passed to another generation, but I kept the Black Hills name for the block Im farming, which used to be the Black Hills hogget block. My land 250 acres mostly lies behind me, stretching four kilometres back in the direction of Waikari (population: 800). Beyond the Black Hills, its about 35 kilometres as the magpie flies out to Pegasus Bay, over the coastal hills. Waipara is 20 kilometres to the southeast through Weka Pass, and beyond it is Amberley and the main drag south to Christchurch. Hawarden is just over the ridge to the west. Sitting here, Im pretty much right in the heart of what was once the largest sheep run in New Zealand, before it began to be broken up in the 1890s. Im in the heart of the Hurunui District. I married into the district, into the story of Black Hills, and into the Forrester name. But my own family started out in New Zealand just down the road from here at Longbeach, near Ashburton, and moved up to Cheviot, so you could say I was closing the circle when I came to the Hurunui. Funny how it all works out.