Waimiha farmer Lew Pickens keeps old bush skills and bullock team history alive

The Pickens family gathered around Lew in the woolshed. Photo / RNZ, Sally Round

By Sally Round of RNZ

When Lew Pickens was 18, he had calluses on his hands like a 50-year-old, and he was proud of them.

Now 83, he looks back happily on his days clearing bush and planting paddocks by hand north of Whangārei, hunting and driving bullocks in his spare time.

“I think of myself as much as a bushman or a hunter as I do a farmer, really.

“Those bush skills allowed me to catch eels, catch goats.

“I can suss nature out pretty good.”

Pickens sits on a chair by the camp oven in the corner of the woolshed, showing how bushmen cooked in the old days.

The walking stick he holds, made of supple and strong tanekaha, is twisted at the top.

He knotted it while it was still a sapling in the bush.

“I can remember Dad tying one and saying to me, if you do that and pick that stick up when you’re an old man, you’ll have a walking stick.”

Around him on the walls, tables, and shelves are old tools, photos, hunting paraphernalia and other reminders of life in the bush.

Lew Pickens says camp ovens fed logging gangs in the bush in the old days. Photo / RNZ, Sally Round

“This is mainly bush gear, old farm gear, my grandfather’s old forge here, horse collars, nine-foot kauri drag up there, and old chainsaws.”

The woolshed on the Waimiha property run by his cattle farmer son Craig no longer rings to the sound of shearing blades.

It’s mainly a place for Pickens and his family to enjoy old traditions and pass them on.

Lew Pickens carved the design on his walking stick. Photo / RNZ, Sally Round

“It’s stuff that I’ve been around my whole life,” Craig said.

“I’ve kicked my toes on it in the shed. I’ve shifted it.

“Don’t know how many times I’ve played with stuff, and now you see it all out.

“It’s been a part of my life.”

Julie Pickens with one of her grandchildren, surrounded by Lew's memorabilia. Photo / RNZ, Sally Round

The elder Pickens lights a fire on the camp oven to show how bush tucker was cooked up in the old days when gangs of men would haul out native timber using bullock teams and send them on rafts down to Auckland.

“Until probably about 1900 most, a lot of people just had camp ovens.

“What’s here is a typical old bush camp chimney.

“It would have been wider in the bush camp.”

View of the Pickens farm, Waimiha in King Country. Photo / RNZ, Sally Round

With his stick, he points out bullock horns on the wall, polished and mounted.

“Up to 1900, there would have been hundreds of teams around about, especially up north with the kauri.

“And that’s a set of horns, a good set of horns, off one of Dad’s bullocks.”

Several sets of bullock horns are among the memorabilia. Photo / RNZ, Sally Round

Pickens has plenty of stories to tell.

The family would like them recorded as they are aware the old ways might be forgotten, such as the trick of putting a bell around a bullock when it was put out to feed at night, with animal fat placed in its ear.

“A cunning old bullock, he’d know, and he’d rest his bell in the punga, and so didn’t make any sound, but the old bullockie was a bit cunning.

Traps are spread over the farm. Wild pigs can be a pest, digging up pasture and eating lambs. Photo / RNZ, Sally Round

“He put a bit of animal fat in one ear, and with the daylight coming, the flies started floating around.

“He’d start shaking his head.”

The bell would tinkle, and the bullockies would hitch up the cattle beasts for another day’s work in the bush.

Craig Pickens and Julie Tanneau outside the woolshed. Photo / RNZ, Sally Round

Pickens would make good money as a younger man hunting eels and goats, and he was less of a farmer than a developer of the land, he said.

Much of the work was done by hand.

“I love developing country, putting fences up, putting them into grass, cutting bush, and yeah, that was my strength.

“Those days, you sowed your seed by hand.

Lew's walking stick has a loop in the top, formed naturally after being tied while still a sapling. Photo / RNZ, Sally Round

“You made a sowing bag, around your stomach, and carried your bags up the hill.”

Pickens is less mobile these days, struck by diabetes, but he treats it like any other challenge he’s faced in the bush.

“I’ve been able to put up with that no sweat, really.”

- RNZ