I Built a House

Sometime in 1967 I bought an area of land just on the south side of the Herbert Hill. It was in two blocks, one on each side of Breakneck Road (though the cadastral map says it is Middle Ridge Road). I bought the land because I was interested in raising animals, mainly beef-breed cattle. It never entered my head that I could make money from it and actually you don't make much out of a small block of land.

The top block was 8 acres and across the road was 14. I remember it was 1967 as decimal currency came in then and my lawyer, Margaret MacKay could not get her head around the purchase price because she was more used to pounds.

Some people advised me against farming cattle because of the drought. It was the tail end of a five year dry spell and our local MP Alan Dick had sourced funds to try seeding clouds with CO2 ice in an effort to make it rain. Well it did! At the end of the drought!
Freddy Robertson had farmed cattle - Jerseys. He had a show bull and treated it as a pet, often seen giving it hugs and kind treatment. He didn't believe the adage that Jersey bulls could not be trusted, so he did - and it killed him!
Eddy Thourghgood farmed dairy cows and sold cream to the butter factory, I think in Waitati.
So I didn't see the problem in raising beef.

The property was not actually on the market, but had been abandoned because of tragedy. Don Blakebourgh had built a sailboat with his kids and took it to the Waianakarua River mouth on its maiden sail. Three of their children were drowned.
Margaret MacKay was his lawyer too and when I went to him - in the signal box at the railway where he worked - he was pleased for me to take the place off his hands.

There was a cottage on the property and it was in a dilapidated state. It had no value to me, and I largely ignored it until Mags came along and I chased her until she caught me!
The old cottage was going to be our home and I needed to refurbish it, but a builder's quote made me rethink. It was going to be a huge cost.

So there were three very big Rimu trees close to the road on Diamond Hill and they would be burnt during our land preparation fire. So I felled them and hauled them with the D6. Bert Bennett was going to saw them into timber for me, and Bob Yates arrived in the GMC logging truck to load the logs. The Hiab could not lift them, so we used the D6 to dig a pit and backed the truck into it, then, using the D6, rolled the logs on.

Bert Bennett and Bob Yates are characters of other stories.

The sawmill had not been updated in those days, so my mate Keith Gibson, used the breaking down bench to cut flitches that the breast bench could handle. They produced some very nice timber for me - 6 x2, 4 x2, and 6 x1 (inches as we weren't quite into metrics yet).
Mel the builder was going to work with me for a week, then I was to carry on by myself. I actually hadn't built a house, but poverty is a magnificent teacher.

While the timber was drying, I tore down the old part of the cottage. Albert helped me when he had the time - I used to help him too. There was not much salvageable and the renovation became a rebuild!
But the cottage was very old! The studs and top & bottom plates were 4 x 4 Totara held together with dowel, rather than nails. There were newspapers lining the walls and they were old Otago Witness! Sarking on the walls was Kahikatea - riddled with borer. And scrim slackly held the wallpaper in place.

Well I learned about building and bought the window frames from Smiths City Market in Christchurch. Albert helped me fit those and I did the glazing myself. A mate did the wiring and another did the plumbing. I had intended to use the 6 x1 timber for weather boarding, but the expense of dressing (planing) put me off, so I nailed them on a 45 degree angle covering 50% and then covered it with tar (building) paper and netting, then roughcast the outer wall. Lex Kennedy taught me about roughcasting.

By the time we were married, we had a kitchen, bedroom and bathroom. The rest I completed at night after work - that's how I did the first part as well. I usually worked to 9:00 pm.

One of my cows was sold so Lex could make a nice fireplace in our lounge. Just to point out that all was not plain sailing, I lost three cows moving them from the Hill Block to the River Block. They were on the railway line when the express (steam train) came roaring around the corner. It killed the three outright!
I rang an Oamaru butcher to see if he would take 'farm killed beef' and he said he would. So with a system of blocks and rope and my tuck, I hoisted the the carcasses into a tree where I skinned and butchered them. The smell of the meat was not too good in my truck, but I took it into my butcher.
One look and he said, 'This meat has not been bled properly - bruised meat does not bleed well!'
He pointed out that if the beast was not bled properly, the meat can be toxic.
So I rang the Rabbit Board who had a lot of dogs - they would not pay for the dog tucker, so I donated it to them. Those dogs did not know what a feast they had!

So I learned little techniques that have stuck with me over the years, ways of doing things - that may not be the way trained people do it but more importantly, not to be daunted about anything! Perhaps I did it the hard way, without the proper gear, but I got it done!