Lorenza Devcich outside the the woolshed, which is among a cluster of farm buildings listed as a place of special significance with Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga. Photo / RNZ, Sally Round
Lorenza Devcich outside the the woolshed, which is among a cluster of farm buildings listed as a place of special significance with Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga. Photo / RNZ, Sally Round
Old pack horse saddles slung over beams, a sack of ancient kauri gum, and a well-thumbed Ready Reckoner on the counter tell just one chapter of the Devcich Farm story.
The items are in the farm’s old trading post where, early last century, gum diggers and loggers came to buy stores for their camps up the Kauaeranga Valley on the Coromandel Peninsula.
There’s also an old blacksmith’s forge, a timber mill with sawpit and a winery complete with antique wine-making tools and a pungent aroma of sherry.
The Devcich family, originally from Dalmatia, now part of Croatia, farmed here last century.
Their legacy, the Devcich Farmstead, is listed as a place of special significance with Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga, for “reflecting significant developments in Dalmatian settlement in early twentieth-century New Zealand”.
The sheds, now clustered under a Croatian flag, also reveal their industriousness and range of skills.
Simun Devcich arrived in New Zealand from Podgora with his two brothers, Marion Anton and Nicola, just after the turn of the 20th century.
They worked their way up through gum digging and trading and into farming, buying the block, which was much bigger then, in 1915.
Simun had married another immigrant from Dalmatia, Matija Mercep, in 1913 and had five sons and two daughters.
He eventually took on the farm from his brothers, going from dairy to sheep farming, with his three eldest sons working alongside.
Commercial farming has stopped now, but Simun’s granddaughter, Lorenza Devcich, has restored the buildings and runs a menagerie of coloured sheep, llamas, Highland cattle, emus and assorted exotic birds on the land, which remains, with tourists often staying in the old homestead.
The old trading post at Devcich Farm, where loggers and gumdiggers could buy stores on credit. Photo / RNZ, Sally Round
“My grandfather and his two brothers, they came from Yugoslavia to escape the army,” she said.
“Even for years after, the young men would leave because as soon as they got of age … they would get thrown into the army.
“My grandfather had about 11 pack horses that he and his boys, my uncles and father, used to pack supplies right up into all the camps at the top end of the valley.
Lorenza Devcich feeding her llamas. Photo / RNZ, Sally Round
“When they’d first come here, a lot of [the gum diggers followed by loggers] had no money, so a lot of it was on credit.
“He also bought gum and sold it. So, they’d come back here with the gum, and that’s how he’d get paid.”
Dalmatian immigrants were among New Zealand’s wine-making pioneers, and the Devcich family produced wine on a small scale from the late 1920s, under their Golden Valley label.
A large chunk of kauri gum left over from the early days found in the old store at Devcich Farm. Photo / RNZ, Sally Round
Lorenza remembers helping her father Ivan in the wine shed, which still houses a wooden fermenting vat and other wine-making tools.
“And there’s probably the last standing bottle of sherry up there, still with some sherry in it. It hasn’t been touched,” she said.
“And maybe it could even be one of the ones that I bottled, because my job here was the dog’s body.”
Lorenza Devcich used to help her father in the wine shed. The barrels still retain a pungent aroma. Photo / RNZ, Sally Round
Lorenza still tended to the 80-year-old grape vines today, using “the worst talkback radio station” she can find to blare out and scare away the birds.
“The sherry and the wine were all made from grapes grown on the property,” she said.
Lorenza Devcich with grapevines thought to have been planted about 80 years ago. Photo / RNZ, Sally Round
“All the beautiful, big black Albany Surprise, I think it’s called, … is still there producing."
While the saw mill now stands quiet and the trading post has shut its doors, the farm courtyard is now home to a strutting peacock, brightly coloured pheasants and guinea fowl.
Lorenza Devcich keeps a menagerie of birds and animals on the remnants of the original Devcich farm. Photo / RNZ, Sally Round
Lorenza stores their feed in a shed once used to stable Simun’s beloved racehorses, an interest he took up in later life.
“They got fed all the lovely, cooked barley and everything.
“You’d go into the house, and you’d smell it cooking on the old coal range ... all the old farm horses, the pack horses and everything else, just lucky if they got thrown some hay.”
She has somewhat sad memories of Simun.
“He got kicked in the stomach by a racehorse and ruptured his stomach, and he survived that, but then not long after, he had a stroke.
