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management of the creek and to pay a share of legal and maintenance costs.^[1]

However, council control raised further problems. The farmers along the banks of the creek had been in a privileged position—as Grigg tartly pointed out to James Brown at the council table. They had enjoyed a free supply of water. On their part, the farmers considered that the creek was a natural waterway and some of them had paid more for the land on its banks. Moreover, they saw themselves meeting charges—including those for a first cleaning of the creek—which they considered should be shared by all those served by the hundred miles of water race dependent on it. Brown held up further progress by promoting a petition against the cost involved. He had decided what was right:‘. . . I shall always give my vote for what I consider right, regardless of what the majority may be against me . . . it is my duty to see that the expenditure on the eighteen miles of creek below Mr Bullock’s . . . is to be borne equitably by those likely to be benefited’.^[2] As the last protester, he threatened to stand by his rights at law. Consequently the problem of creek control remained and caused far greater embarrassment before it was solved a few years later.

James Brown of Netherby farm played such a prominent part in the whole water-supply question—much of which cannot be mentioned—that a description of the man himself forms part of the story. Throughout his career he showed determination in the face of odds. He began farm work in Scotland at ten years of age and continued his education at night school, mined for four years, spent eight years in Australia, partly at the goldfields, and later failed to make a living on the diggings at Dunstan, Otago. He then took up road construction and bullock-driving in Canterbury and bought fifty acres of land at Doyleston. There through active membership of a local ‘Mutual Improvement Society’, he received an education in public affairs. In 1873, at the age of forty, he migrated to ‘the wastes of Wakanui’ and built up a farm on 470 acres of ‘heavy, stiff clay loam’. In the local politics of Wakanui—school committee, road board and river board—he prove himself able to dominate stormy meetings and to express unpopular opinions with force and cogency. It was said in 1887 that ‘. . . if for the courage of his opinions he . . . had to fight some bitter battles, it was because he always held on sternly to the faith that [was] in him’.^[3] Admittedly in the creek controversy the available facts made him appear more obstructive than useful—