The Little Bantam

The tree nursery business has always had its ups and down, and in our case, we relied on the farming community, which in turn has its ups and downs. Farmers were moving away from trimmed gorse hedges and establishing post and wire fences which helped mitigate escapee gorse plants, but reduced available shelter for livestock. In particular sheep, especially during lambing. So we produced many species to provide shelter, to encourage better grass growth and to provide fodder for bees

During one of these downturns I was on my own managing the container yard. So called because all the plants were grown in some form of container, as against open grown, which were in a paddock situation and sold bare rooted. The rest of the workers were at the other nursery, thirty kilometres away, were forest trees were grown because that part of the business was booming. One day, the owner came to me to ask if I would look after Natalie, in other words take her under my wing.

I knew Natalie’s story, she had come home from primary school to find her mother dead on the floor! She had suffered a brain aneurism. So Natalie’s father had carried on as best he could by sending her and her siblings off to a boarding secondary school in the city when they were old enough. Natalie didn’t quite hack the boarding school and wanted out as soon as she could, so her dad approached the nursery owner.

Natalie’s father dropped her off, and although I knew him, we shook hands formally when he brought her in to meet me. He was a staid, professional man, not easy to joke with. Natalie strode like a little bantam hen behind him, as if she owned the place and she shook my hand with the confidence. A short, slim girl, not long past sixteen, with short, blonde hair, a complexion to match and a voice with a rasp of someone who had smoked for her entire life! She was a non-smoker.

She didn’t say much at first, listening to my instructions and complying with them. We were pricking out Eucalyptus seedlings at the time, and I suggested to her that gentle was the ideal. I could hear her ripping the taproots as she pulled the seedlings from the trays! Within a week you can tell if the seedlings are going to strike, and her’s were better than mine! Anyone who has had much to do with plants knows about ‘green fingers’. Well, I’ve found that some nursery workers have them, others don’t. Natalie did, and she could be rough as guts with plants, yet they thrived! Her cuttings also struck very well. Mind you, I didn’t dare have her showing new recruits her techniques!

We had these big shade-frames that we put out over newly pricked out seedlings. They were made of one inch galvanised pipe five metres by three, with shade cloth stretched over. They were awkward to lift and quite heavy. Natalie, tiny as she was, never baulked, if I could do it, she could do it! She was fiercely determined and fiercely independent and actually a treasure to work with. Her father and I tried to encourage her to do an apprenticeship but she said that she hated school and didn’t want to study again – ever. But she was bright! Maybe because of her home environment, I don’t know, but at smoko and lunchtime, while I was on the phone, she read. Not girly stuff! History and biology were among her interests and she read the newspaper and would chat away with me on topics that interested her. 

Just about every morning when Natalie’s father parked his car beside my office to drop her off, there was an argument going on! I could hear plainly enough.  Sometime she would come into my office red-faced, other times she would mutter about her ‘old-fashioned father’. I didn’t offer an opinion, sometimes it’s better not to. However, one day there was a particularly heated exchange outside! Natalie came into my office with fire engine red hair and cheeks to match!

‘You’re a father,’ she stormed, ‘you wouldn’t growl if one of your sons dyed his hair – would you?’

‘Of course not.’ I lied with my tongue firmly in my cheek.

Once the heat had gone out of the argument and we were talking sagely, I suggested that her blonde hair was attractive and that her father will always struggle with change. She countered that she felt the need to experiment. I agreed that it was her that it was her right, but the fire engine red was not the way to go for the first time. She agreed that it didn’t turn out quite the colour she expected and she agreed to try some less gaudy colours. Her dad gradually moderated at that.

From time to time Natalie and I had company in the prop-shed, and as time went on, business again picked up so we took on a young fellow who the Labour Department had sent out during the lifting season at the other nursery. We turned out to be a good team and produced some nice plants. And it is fair to say that a few tricks were played to keep the day’s activities flowing.

The day Natalie turned twenty, I used spray paint to write, ‘Toot, Natalie is 20 today!’ and nailed it high on the fence where northbound traffic could plainly see it. All day she asked, almost frustrated, what the tooting was going on about! Just before day’s end, I took her to show her. Her ear-bashing was good-humoured. About that time it was obvious she had a boyfriend in tow, because each weekend she was off to the city! Our suspicions were further aroused because she never wore a watch so on Friday afternoons, she kept asking what the time was – like every five minutes! So eventually we nagged her into telling us the young fellow’s name. ‘Wayne Kerr.’ She told us straight faced. Of course we fellows had a bit of a snigger, but it took us a long time to realise she had fooled us in good and proper!

Not long after, she took a job nannying in outback Australia, paternal argument may have been a motivating factor, but she was there for her father when he needed company! Natalie and I made a pact that in five years’ time we would meet in Sydney and we did. We met at the bottom of the Sydney Tower and like a bantam hen, she strutted around the complex as if l she owned it! It was her shout up in the restaurant!

She is happily married now, with kids of her own – I hope they’re little bantams!

 

F Troop

Back in the eighties there was a female contract planting gang working in Kianagaroa Forest. But first, let’s get one thing straight. We used to call our work crews ‘gangs’. No connotations, nothing to do with Hell’s Angels, Mongrel Mob or any other oddball group you might know of. To us a gang was just a group of workers, and I see no reason to call them anything else. Ok then, this female contract gang was the first in New Zealand and they could plant more trees in a day that any of the male gangs. I’m told it was all to do with female hips and bending over! Anyway that particular gang was called ‘F Troop’ because there was a TV programme of the same name at the time. Forestry wit!

When it comes to modernity, it has been said that the South Island is a little slower than the North, but eventually they started a women’s gang at another forest. It was during a time of high unemployment. Whoa, there’s something else to put right here: Governments used government department as a sponge to soak up the unemployed. Most of the time, those government departments did not have real work for the so called, unemployed, and more importantly, did not have the supervisory capacity. Any wonder the government departments were shown to be inefficient. So anyway, that other forest, their F Troop turned out to be a disaster.

The women sent out by the Labour Depart were world-wise and selected for their bulk. Even ‘bulk’ had a different connotation then: these were big, strong women. The work they were given was pruning, using ladders to climb trees and on steep country. Their supervisor was a young, small fellow, intimidated by his larger gang members. It takes a while to fitten up to climbing ladders all day, without having to climb up and down steep hillsides! So these women soon twigged that leaving their ladders down in the gully and ‘encouraging’ the young supervisor to nip down to retrieve them, gave the girls a bit of a rest! Now you see… The job selection by the boss as well as the supervisor he appointed is questionable, but the agenda might have been that the women would find it all too tough and quit. Is this an example of why females face difficulties in the workplace?

We needed four extra people for our pruning gangs, and where possible I preferred to keep the Labour Department out of the picture. They usually had people they wanted off their books. Instead I put an advertisement in the paper. By now we were calling ourselves ‘an equal-opportunities employer’ and the District Ranger had whispered in my ear that at least some females should be selected. In the back of my mind, I recalled the other forest’s experience, nevertheless from the twenty odd CV’s sent in, I selected ten to be interviewed of them there were four females.

Be aware that forestry work is physical, dirty and somewhat dangerous. Forestry workers are no angels with a pecking order evolved from no nonsense, hard bosses. Well, all that’s pretty much an urban myth, because in our case, due to a stable workforce from a stable community, we were no rougher or tougher than any other group of workers. But outsiders didn’t know that.

The CV thing was something that had to be gone through, but these were young people had little or no work experience, so the bullet points were really a reflection of what they did at school. While that is well and good, school pupils will act in a certain way in front of a teacher and differently among their peers. They will act totally different when immersed into a group of older people. Forestry work is constant and physical with little change day in, day out. We weren’t looking for Einsteins.

When you go for an interview, it is a good idea to be thoughtful about your appearance, and I have to say the young guys did not think bout of theirs. Yes, I know they were applying for forestry work. I interviewed the candidates in alphabetical order and I have to say that the guys did not impress overmuch. One of the girls, (I’m not being disparaging with the term) was a local girl and I had pretty much pre-selected her anyway. The other three were Wilsons! Wouldn’t that confuse the pay clerk, Albert? None were related and we already had another Wilson on the payroll! Anyway, these three girls were dressed up to the nines and looked pretty, which put doubts in my mind about their suitability. They all assured me that they enjoyed physical work and that they weren’t delicate. I still had my doubts.

I figured that one girl on her own might have assimilating into the gang because there would realistically be some favouritism towards her. So taking the bull by the horns, I employed the three Wilsons as well! Now, you have to be physically fit for forestry work and not everyone wants to go through the pain of it, so with these four girls, I made the same rules as for the guys. After three weeks we would have a meeting. If they did not like us, or if we did not like them, we could part company with no ill feeling. They agreed to the terms.

Of course there were some adjustments to be made here and there and we already had a couple of eighteen year old guys on the payroll so obviously they wanted to show their prowess. But that settled down after a certain amount of dust had settled. There were no toilets on the hill, so we had to make rules about that, and it was a simple matter of sorting the gangs out so the girls fitted in. Just the same those four had a good attitude.

Within a month, these girls were climbing trees (without ladders) to eighteen feet and pruning their way down and they planted trees during the season. Their output was at least the same as the men. They took part in all the activities including fire drills and burn-offs. The only thing they wanted to negotiate was that we had a logging crew operating in the forest and I had one of them helping with log scaling – measuring logs. My idea was to give each girl a month at a time on the easier job. They came to me because they found a month off the more physical work took away their fitness so they preferred one to be permanently on log scaling. They elected the person.

It all turned out very well and I had no regrets employing female workers. They worked with us for four years but the end came when the government of the day decided it had no place owning forests so we were all made redundant! I see two of them from time to time, both are grandmothers and both work in retail sales – have been for years! Nobody knows where one of them ended up but the other, also a grandmother, cares for the elderly.

You might hear all the theories and believe what you will about females in the workplace. All I can relate is what I saw; young women working hard in what was perceived as a male environment. Out of their overalls they were as feminine as any mother, wife or daughter.

Adding to the Landbank

The planting on the Diamond Hill block was about complete and there was only another year’s worth of plantable ground left and the situation worried me. I had seen some forests that had been planted up, so they were mothballed, waiting on an appropriate time harvest the trees. My worry was for my workers most of who had families and property, probably mortgages too, so they would suffer if they were put off.

I knew old Bert Fraser who owned a four thousand acre block of land bounded by the south branch of the Waianakarua River. It was second class farmland with a good covering of gorse. I had been on the block from the Razorback Road end several times mainly to help Mick haul out deer and pigs, also to help Nobby muster some cattle he had grazing up there. I also knew that Bert could be cantankerous old sod and it was wise to be on his good side!

One evening I decided to go down to see him and maybe talk him into selling. Now old Bert was a bachelor, or that was the story, but from time to time he had ‘housekeepers’ staying and the rumour was, ah well, never mind that, I was hoping he didn’t have company. The road finished at Bert’s house and he was always wary of ‘uninvited guests’. He must have heard me coming up the road because he was standing in the middle of his driveway with a shotgun bent over his arm. He just nodded when he saw it was me.

‘Gidday Bert,’ I said casually, ‘I’ve come for a bit of a yarn.’

‘Better come in then.’ He waved me inside.

The place smelled of dog, because there were two lying under the table, one stayed asleep and the other opened one eye and promptly closed it again. We sat at the table which was covered with newspaper. He only bought Saturday’s paper and after he read it he used it as a tablecloth, each day taking the top layer off, so he always had a clean tablecloth. From a cabinet he brought out a bottle of gin and two foggy glasses. Both were generous.

‘What are we going to talk about?’ he asked.

I waffled on and he waffled back for an hour or so and we were making good progress on lowering the level in the gin bottle, firewater thar stuff! Finally I told him why I wanted the yarn. His response was favourable and suggested we have and inspection the next day, he reminded me that there was no vehicle access, saying he would ride old Cassius and asked if I could borrow a motorbike or a horse. I borrowed one of Bill’s horses, a big white bugger.

Bert showed me the cleaner ridges and didn’t hide the fact that there was a lot of dense gorse. He also showed considerable areas of indigenous Manuka/Kanuka scrubland and indigenous bush. He showed the two trig sites neatly hewn out of the hard, sandstone. He explained that the main road through to Central Otago was proposed to go up the main ridge and across the south branch of the river. He told me about and showed the location of the packhorse track that Moeraki Station used to pack supplies over to Shag Valley Station which is situated on the modern road to Central Otago. I knew about the packhorsing because one of my old-codger-workers, Gib, had been one of the packers back in the twenties. It took them all day to get over to Shag Valley, but it was quicker than going around the road in those days.

Back at Bert’s house, I told him that the formalities were that he would have to write to our Dunedin office and offer the land at whatever price he had in mind. He asked me what I thought it was worth and while I didn’t want to be involved in pricing the place, he genuinely wanted some guidance. To be honest, I didn’t have a clue and told him so, but I knew of another, small block that sold for twelve dollars an acre, so I reckoned about ten would be fair for Bert. He agreed and added thirty five cents, to make it look good!

News came back fairly quickly that my bosses had turned down the offer, didn’t require the land on account of the gorse and the cost of land preparation! To my mind the gorse is why farming was not economical on the land and forestry was a better option. They had not even set foot on the land, and it was the opinion of Jerry the office clerk that the land was not worth buying! He came up regularly on the pay-run. Management’s attitude, he told me, was that our small forest was a Cinderella forest and they indeed planned to mothball it.

I was disappointed with the decision and contemplated buying and farming it myself. But the cost of livestock at the time was double the price of the land and I was unlikely to be able to raise that sort of money. Instead I conferred with my old mate, Allan-the-member-of-parliament. I was simply truthful that my workers would soon be out of a job and the township would slowly die.

Within six weeks, we were the owners of a new bock of land, a land bank of perhaps ten years! As far as my bosses were concerned, I was not very high in the popularity stakes and poor old (and uncaring) Allan-the-member-of-parliament was apparently below me! We both had broad shoulders and wide smiles though! They had the pip with me for a number of years, leaving me and a young university graduate to plan out the roading pattern, the compartments and species. We had the D6 Dozer and the budgets I prepared went through, so we all simply got on with the job of creating a forest. Maybe they were cautious that I had Allan-the-member-of-parliament on my side, but gradually they came around and our relationship became smooth.

As time went on, further blocks of land became available and were added to the land bank, through my bosses’ efforts, not mine! Four more uneconomical farms were bought up, and my role changed from roading, land preparation and silviculture to starting off the harvesting phase on the older block. It is pleasing to see now the southern foothills of the Kakanui Range clothed in sustainable forest, well-managed at that!