Wanganui local Barrie Shaw visits his late uncle Cecil Shaw's whare on the Ahuahu Valley Rd, where he spent a lot of his boyhood. Photo/Stuart Munro
The emotion is close to the surface when Barrie Shaw talks about his boyhood memories of his uncle Cecil Shaw's upper Ahuahu Valley farm.
The farm has changed owners 15 times since the late Cecil Shaw sold, and it's what successive owners have done to the farm since then that has his nephew shaking his head in disbelief.
Mr Shaw owned the upper Ahuahu Valley farm for about 30 years and died on June 2, 1985, aged 86.
A kahikatea, which Mr Shaw said was likely to be 1000-1500 years old, was cut down by the first of the new owners on the day he signed the papers.
"The ink would not have dried on the paper," Mr Shaw laments as he fondly remembers the tree that his uncle loved.
Mr Shaw first went to his uncle Cecil's farm in December, 1946.
"Cecil had bought 2800 acres of bush scrub with its wild pigs, goats, grass and fern off the All Black Brownlie brothers [Maurice, Cyril and Laurence]."
"That first trip seemed to take several hours in his old Model A Ford - the dogs on the back with a big box of supplies, us in the cab."
The 14-year-old and his uncle arrived at a three-roomed whare with its open fire and corrugated iron tank at the back door.
There was no power in those days.
"We unloaded the gear and tucker from town and my uncle said, 'I will show you kids how easy it is to catch a pig here'."
"Down the road and 300 yards through the fence, the dogs had a fat sow baled up in 10 minutes.
"My brother Coke [Stan] and I had bagged our first pig.
"In his shed Uncle Cecil had buckets of snouts and tails hanging; hundreds of pigs were in those buckets."
There was a bounty paid by the Waitotara County Council: 2/6 a snout and tail, good money in those days. To keep on top of the pigs, they had to hunt twice a week.
"Over the years that Cecil owned his farm, several thousand pigs and goats were taken out, but with the use of 1080 poison I feel these animals may cease to exist in a few years."
Mr Shaw knows this land well. His uncle's whare was surrounded by "magnificent orchards" - plums, nectarines and peaches, and no diseases.
But the orchards have all gone. The beehives above the whare were all set alight by another owner.
"You can't fathom the mentality of the buggers," he says, the disappointment clear in his voice.
There was Bumbello, a cow with a club foot that would come to Mr Shaw's call, leading a half dozen cattle down to eat the fresh-cut pseudopanax, or five-finger.
The bush where the pseudopanax grew has now all gone as well.
"There were seven farms along the Ahuahu. The first was a road man, Arthur Purdy and his wife. Then there was Doug Candy, who had 2000 acres of what was known as scrub in those days, and which farmers of the day would say was not a farm." Mr Shaw talks about the cacophony of the kiwi "screaming through the night", and the night his uncle's bull terrier Peter ran smack into him in the bush.
"We were both after a pig, and did we get a fright."
Another fright in the dark of night was when the teenager walked home from Trevor Hall's, where he had gone for a roast meal.
"It was jet black. The ruru and kiwi stopped calling, everything was deathly quiet."
Mr Hall's black cow was sleeping in the middle of the road but, hearing the sound of approaching footsteps, had stood up.
"We were nose-to-nose and he snorted over my face," he recalls as he showed us where he met the cow.
Mr Hall was the last to farm stock and sold the land for 2000. It later sold for $450,000 as a hunting block and was now owned by an apiarist who paid $800,000.
There was the Sutter family who lived further down the valley and the two daughters "were after" the 16-year-old Barrie.
"I thought the safest thing for me was up a tree. All I could think about was Sutter's boot up my a***."
Another valley identity was bushman, hunter and farm manager Peter Clark.
"He never swore, instead he said 'apples and pears'. He wouldn't eat pork but Cecil once gave him a feed of pork, telling him it was beef.
"Peter said it was the best feed of beef he'd ever had."
Mr Shaw named his bull terrier Peter after Mr Clark.
"That dog had a fantastic nature. As a pig dog, he was a Richie MaCaw."
But Peter disappeared one day in the valley, never to be seen again. A vehicle came into the valley the day Peter disappeared but, when stopped, the people in the car said they had not seen the faithful bull terrier.
Mr Shaw remembers a time when they heard a lot of shooting coming from a block called Miss Marshall's on the Watershed Rd, a 28-minute drive back up the valley.
He said a car was parked there for about a week in 1951.
"We heard dozens of shots. Uncle took down the car number because he was suspicious. After they had gone, he went up to see what had gone on and found a cleanskin cattle [no earmarks], just shot and left.
"Uncle rang the police, and a few days later they rang back and said there was nothing they could do, as the car was registered to an American diplomat. They had diplomatic immunity."
The last farm on the Ahuahu Valley Rd was owned by Clary Stockman and his wife, who had a granddaughter named Gloria.
"She was a seven-stone dynamo who hunted pigs with dogs and a knife only.
"She said Clary's dogs were that good that she didn't need a gun. Clary said she had to develop muscles to cut the scrub.
"One memory of Gloria's strength of character was when some blokes went there and Clary told them there were two pigs in a gully. They came back two hours later, saying there was nothing there.
"Gloria said 'bulldust' and hopped on her horse, let her pig dogs off and within 20 or 30 minutes was back with two pigs over the saddle. And no gun.
There was Bill Martin and his wife, who had two daughters and they owned 2000 acres.
The next farm was Puketotara, owned by bachelor Harvey Simpson, who owned 8000 acres.
"The last sale of Puketotara, I heard it sold for about $3 million. Alf Brown had about 1500 acres, and the author of Two Dogs and a Gun, Ken Cuthbertson, owned the next farm."
Mr Shaw remembers the roadmen who kept the gravel roads groomed during the years he spent in the Ahuahu with his uncle.
The first roadman was Arthur Purdy, the second Tom Davis, and Nelson Prior Horne was the third.
Mr Horne died on January 5.
"In my eyes, Nelson would make people like Barry Crump fade into insignificance. He had no fear. He was cautious perhaps, but he was scared of nothing."
Mr Shaw says he could wax lyrical for days about the Ahuahu but it is nothing compared with the reality.
His pilgrimages connect him to those days when he and his four siblings were the children his uncle Cecil and auntie Davina never had.