Top cadet lands unlikely prize

The collective photographic genius of families and friends at work as Smedley cadets have their last day in the sun for the year at last week's graduation ceremony in the training farm's woolshed. Photo/Duncan Brown

IF THE paddocks of farm training could be classified as fields of opportunity, then top Smedley cadet Daley Watson-Krawitz could be said to have come from the left of any one of them.

And that was just the rigorous selection process, when he was selected as one of the 11 for the intake of 2012, a left-field choice direct from Southwood Boys Grammar, in Ringwood, not too far from the heart of Melbourne.

There hadn't been a farm in sight, the Aussie accent mightn't have helped, and anyone scouting for the near all-Smedley colts team keeping alive the Onga-Tiko rugby club might have wondered about a teenager more familiar with Australian Rules Football than rugby union.

Behind this mask, however, was a young man who had returned "home" to New Zealand, where he was born, to work on uncle Rob Dalzell's farm near Nuhaka, every summer holidays he could in the last eight years.

"I just loved it," he said this week from the farm in Northern Hawke's Bay, where he's working before picking up his scholarship and heading to Lincoln University in Canterbury for the first year of study towards a degree in agriculture.

It was his uncle who first suggested a farm cadetship, asking: "Have you thought about what you're going to be doing?"

Having lived in Australia since he moved with his parents when he was 4, he'd never heard of Smedley, the farm station near Tikokino gifted almost a century ago for the practical training of young people for careers on the land.

"I was told it took a bit of lobbying," he said of his selection there, so he wasn't going to let anyone down.

He adapted to the culture of Smedley, which includes both rising to each challenge when pressured, and pushing others to achieve just the same.

"It's one of the best groundings you could have going into agriculture," he said. "I couldn't thank the whole team enough. They're all top men."

The teamwork included playing for Onga-Tiko, but he had a competitive streak which showed in other pursuits.

He and fellow student Stanley Robinson, from Morrinsville, won a National Farm Fieldays pairs fencing competition at Mystery Creek, near Hamilton, and in October he won the Hawke's Bay Show's sheepdog trial novice trophy. He's also shorn a sheep for the first time, but even with a couple of courses behind him, he's not so sure about whether he might flash the handpiece at next month's Wairoa Show.

"I wasn't great," he said. "But I can get the wool off alright."