Don Mouat scrub ploughing with a D4 2T in 1948.
Bill Mouats’ recently released book Gold Under The Mānuka is a farming story like no other.
Had his parents not kept their diaries, cheque stubs, receipts, deposit slips and old letters, as well as the many photographs taken by his father, and had his mother not meticulously stored them in old shoe boxes over several decades, Bill may have never written this amazing compilation of his family’s pioneering history.
Mangaorapa Station is nestled 12km west of the coastal town of Pōrangahau, southern Hawke’s Bay, and until 2005 had been the home of three decades of Mouats.
Back in 1946, when purchased by Bill’s namesake, grandfather Billy, father Don and his uncle, Max, this land was considered harsh and unproductive, unsaleable and near worthless.
Even the government thought it was unsuitable for returning WWII soldiers.
While a lot of locals looked at Billy, Don and Max as just truck drivers who had very little farming knowledge, they had the determination to show the doubters that with hard work and a vision, they could achieve something great with the land they had purchased, and that is exactly what they did.
The property was relatively flat, had ample water sources and grew healthy mānuka and kānuka.
Knowing there was a lot of hard work ahead, they set about developing it straight away.
One of the first jobs that had to be dealt with when they took over was eradicating the plague of rabbits.
“Over 60,000 rabbits were eradicated in the first two years”, Bill said.
In 1947, armed with courage, bulldozers and two custom-designed ploughs, manufactured by W Clough & Sons from Shannon, they started crushing and ploughing in the dense mānuka.
The two ploughs could cover five acres a day, with each plough needing a man to ride on board, adjusting the depth land wheel as the mānuka was buried underground.
It took 11 years to plough in all that mānuka, and the land value jumped from £5 to £10 an acre to £30 an acre.
They turned that unproductive land into rich and fertile soil that could grow almost anything.
Their vision had started to turn into reality.
In 1953, their hard work enabled them to purchase the neighbouring Mangaorapa Top Block, and in 1958, the author’s father, Don, took sole ownership of the 4792-acre property.
He was inspirational in developing world-class infrastructure at the station, including roads, bridges, and buildings.
This, in turn, helped revolutionise many farming practices across the country.
In 1979, it was time for the next generation of Mouats to make their mark, and Bill and his brother Bryan took ownership of the station.
Both brothers had been instilled with the same values and vision as their forebears.
They expanded and consolidated when necessary, taking on some large-scale projects along the way.
They knew the importance of water, and their projects included water storage dams, water reticulation systems, as well as adding reserve feed silage pits.
They were movers and shakers in the farming world, changing their stock regime by moving to free lambing and high-fertility ewes.
Come the late 1990s, they increased their Friesian bull beef numbers for the export market.
With each generation becoming more proactive and less reactive, Mangaorapa became one of New Zealand’s most productive and progressive cropping, sheep, and cattle stations, later expanding into viticulture.
Bill’s parents knew one day that their eldest son would write this book.
They would have been so proud to see all 264 pages of it, with over 200 photos, a hardcover, with a touch of gold foil representing the quality of the station and the people who farmed it.
A book worthy of an inspirational family who knew that with hard work, courage, having a vision and thinking big, they could let results speak for themselves.
This book will not only rouse the interest of farmers, machinery lovers, and historians, it is a read that will inspire all of us.
“Writing the Mangaorapa story will always remain one of the most rewarding experiences of my life,” Bill said.