Hooks

We called Colin Bartrum 'Hooks' because he was a keen fisherman, but he liked and took an interest in all sports, playing cricket and golf.There is a lot I could write about this guy because he remains a good mate of mine and we did a lot together over the years.

Hooks never married and when he moved out of his parent's home, the old manse in Herbert, he bought a house in Hampden where I visited and checked that he being tidy and ate well. He never liked green vegetables but could eat the best part of a chicken at a sitting!

When I arrived at Herbert Forest, Colin was a Reg 130 Forest Hand One that classified him as a laborer with forest skills. I promoted him to Leading Hand putting him in charge of work gangs, something he did not altogether like, but he accepted the challenge of it.
So he became my right hand man and I found him to be the first to agree with my sense of sustainability - taking just enough fish, whitebait and preserving native flora and fauna. Mind, he was a sportsman [always fair, if hard] and he shot deer and pigs for sport with the advantage of the meat byproduct. I shot deer, pigs and hunter possums because it was my job. I have always liked animals but quickly learned in my forestry training that animals such as pigs, deer, chamois, thar, goats, rabbit, hares and possums were noxious animals and government policy was to exterminate them. This was because there were no indigenous mammals [save a small bat] in New Zealand. These introduced animals caused erosion on the mountains and decimated our indigenous plants. So whenever the opportunity arose, I would shoot, or otherwise kill these animals - I remember being accused of participating in blood sports. No, rather my duty because I was skilled to carry out that kind of work.

I enjoyed the competitiveness with Colin. We would lay a long line of cyanide to kill possums and then later go out to skin them. We did not share - whoever skinned the animal packed it and it was his to stretch and dry - then we would go together to sell them to old Fred Barklay of course to get the best price. This was in the back-blocks and we would go all day without food and drinking only from creeks or the river. By the end of the day the full pack became heavy!
Likewise marking trees; few that I have worked with have the same idea of tree selection as Colin did - well I guess I trained him to some extent, but there were times when discussion raged on.

He was a good chainman working with me when I carried out chain and compass surveys to plot land information on maps. The chainman ensured the line to be surveyed was clear and the chain was not compromised to give an untrue reading - this was for distance and we needed to be accurate! If the survey plotted onto the map did not close within two degrees, the survey needed to be remeasured and I did not like doing that. Colin helped me to be very accurate.



Above is a prismatic used to measure the angle between pegs. Mine was ex-army and accurate, forward bearing should be 180 degrees different from the reverse bearing (a check

The chain was not made of the chain links like the older ones, this was a thin steel band - the reader end [my end] with actual links marked on, the last chain if you like, and the rest the actual chain, which Colin called out.

The Abney Level was to check the slope because the all lineal measurements need to be brought to level to fit on to a map. There was a table to read off in the office. All had to be entered into a note book, starting at the rear with notes about topography and anything of interest along the way.

In his younger days, old Hooks uses to play cricket for the MCC! Actually Maheno Cricket Club, he was a good and keen cricketer and represented North Otago. He enticed me to fill in at a game at the Orari Domain, and unknown to me at the time, he told the others that I had played Brabham Shield cricket, but I got the message when I was facing the bowling. Me? I know how to hold a bat because there is a thin end and the bowler charged at me like the boar on the Toyota ad! Well I didn't have to see the ball to have it hit the bat and run off to the boundary! Anyway I was soon out and at the after-match raffles, Colin won a can of oysters. I managed to eat most of them on the drive back, but after we had dropped Ronnie off at Waimotu, I vomited them up! The taste wasn't as good the second time around!

Colin had a fi shing boat, the 'Ilene' and he had a slipway at Shag Point. Colin used to like me to drive the old girl [drive is not the word, but I'm no seaman] because of my experience as a surveyor, I could us landmarks as pointers and find the good fishing spots. She was a good little boat but sailing into the slipway was dangerous, as she was slower than the surf, with the danger of going sideways, so timing was critical. He would sit at the stern watching the sea and yell 'Giver her arseholes!' - full throttle!
I always felt safe out in the sea and maybe that is a dangerous thing, but one time I did sweat! Something huge passed under the boat, we never identified it, but we think it may have been a whale shark. It had the potential to tip us over.
We used to go go netting for flounders off the Hampden beach, sometimes catching elephant fish as well. I would hold the rope on the beach and Colin would row out [we would only do this when it was flat calm] dropping the drag net after him and then we would pull the net in. One day a dolphin was swimming in the bite of the net and I had visions of Colin being dragged out to sea! But no, Colin was unaware but the dolphin went straight through the net leaving a big hole! We had some good feeds in those days!
He replaced the boat in later years a larger more powerful one! We spent ages fixing it and cleaning the Volvo stern drive. It had a Zephyr Mk3 motor, so it was powerful. Well the day came to launch her at Moeraki and we puttered out on the axillary motor. In Moeraki harbor Colin fired up the motor! It all happened at once! The throttle was jammed full on! She was in gear and the steering didn't work! We were on course to cut David Higgins' boat in half. Colin tried the controls but on we roared, so I turned the key and it worked! We avoided David's boat because luckily the axillary motor started first pop and we were able to make a turn! We never put the boat back in the water!

Colin trained as beekeeper with Stan Davidson and his own farther, old Stan Bartrum used to keep bees as well. When Colin found out that I was interested in bees, we each bought a couple of hives and built up our population. As w ell we set p a couple of hives on the Forest HQ site and supplied honey to the workers.
There is a lot to know about bees and bee keeping and we were generally successful. The regulations were not as strict as today, although each hive had to be registered and inspected.
One evening we decided to shift six of out hives to the other side of the river. We loaded them on a trailer when we though all the bees had come home, then Colin driving his Landrover, slowly drove through the paddock. Every beekeeper's nightmare - the hives all tipped over! we had taken out protective gear off and it was not an option to cover ourselves outside! The cab of a short wheel-base Landrover is not ideal for a couple of guys to put on overalls.
Once outside, the bees hit us en mass ! In the end we managed sort things out as best we could and the hives survived.

One of Colin's tricks was to catch a handful of drone, they have no sting, and frighten people with them - usually asking someone to hold a hand out and he would put them in there! He delighted in the reaction.

German wasps are a constant danger to beehives, because they rob honey and kill bees, so Colin and I would kill any wasp nests we alerted to or found. The bes t method was to fill a beer bottle with petrol and push the neck of the bottle into the exit hole of the nest. Some people light the petrol, but it is dangerous and there is no need to. The fumes do the job.
There was a huge nest just by the bridge in an old tree stump and it was proving difficult to get on top of. One day we filled some Indian Knapsack Pumps [for fighting fires] with petrol, donned our protective gear and started the fight. It was a hot day, which caused the petrol to evaporate more quickly - a good thing or bad, I don't know - but the wasps were active and attacked us. We had cut a line to the stump as far as we could without being savaged [we were not suited up for that job] and we found that there were several exit holes in the nest. Once we reached the nest, we took turns spraying the attacking wasps with the petrol while the other poked the nozzle down each hole to give it a dose. Killing wasps does nothing in the end, you have to kill the queen. When all the pumps w ere empty. We made our retreat and a few days later we could tell we had won the battle. Never the war though - queens hibernate and set up nest the following spring.

I took him Thar shooting at Mt Cook, well we stayed in the Fred Stream hut and climbed the mount ains behind. We slept on the floor and Colin complained that rats crawled all over us and were playing football with an empty tin on the floor. I heard nothing, but the next night, I found that he was right, there were a lot of rate in the hut! He slept in the car, but I felt safe enough.
One morning as we set off, there was a car parked in a pull off area and we could see the car was in motion. As we became closer, we could see a pink pair pf women's knickers on the steering wheel. I had to physically pull Colin away, because he wanted to creep beside the car and let off a shot of his rifle at what he called, 'the gravy stroke'! We left them to it.
We did climb the slopes of Mt Cook, seep and through snow, and on the leading ridge this Swiss guy came bouncing down, from rock to rock! We were amazed because we had used a deal of energy getting to where we did! The Thar were quite safe, we never fired a shot!

We made two trips to Stewart Island, the first time flying across in the Domini sea plane. We took my dog Wally, coated in baby powder so he didn't stink out the other passengers. One woman took a liking to him and I was nervous that he was going to vomit in her lap! I managed to distract him enough.
We had blue cod and crayfish there, staying at Chew Tobacco Bay. The area lacked fresh water and we suspected Wally of licking our plates clean because we had not washed them!

The next time we took Spencer King with us [one of our work mates] he took a bottle (several?] of rum - Colin and I did not drink very much - and old Spencer would have a toddy or two each evening after the day's hunt - never offering us a swig. When there was about an inch left in the bottle, Colin and I drank it and replaced it with cold tea. Spencer did not notice it in his first toddy, and the second he looked quizzical when he poured the rest, we gave the game away by rolling on the floor in laughter!

It's a quieter life now for us all!