Page:Ashburton•Scotter•1972.pdf/48
Ashburton
not change uniformly from sod wall to wire—some of the first sections were obtained because of five-wire fences, wire standards and wooden posts, some later on for sod walls five feet high, planted with gorse, poplars or willows. One, indeed, was for ploughing to the value of £50, a certain amount of cropping for stock feed being officially allowed.[1]
Reed was, perhaps, the most colourful character among local station-owners. He had held a run in Australia and, when working, wore Victorian clothing unusual in New Zealand: a pair of wide, white moleskin trousers, a blue woollen smock and a cabbage-tree hat. Domineering, sharp-tongued and sarcastic, he was noted for his unusual expletives. ‘You damnable savages’ was one of them. He was a skilful stockman and an efficient manager but he carried eccentricity even into organisation. In 1869, M. Bovey, a fellow Devonshireman, who had been manager on Westerfield, brought an action against Reed claiming damages for wrongful dismissal.[2] The trouble between owner and manager arose apparently because the latter thought the system of book-keeping over elaborate. He described for the benefit of the court a labour and day log book, shepherds’ books, ledger, day book, cash book, store book, order book, quarterly return book and letter-book. The jury with H. J. Tancred as foreman awarded Bovey more than adequate compensation. Reed’s ambition was said to be to work Westerfield like an English country estate by letting out his land in farms. He built a mill and sold a few sections in a village. Even these plans seem out of character, though admittedly Reed described himself as ‘of Devonshire, gentleman’ and was a pillar of the Anglican Church.
Another of Reed’s many court actions was a boundary claim against a neighbour, J. C. Wilson, later Sir John Cracroft Wilson, owner of Cracroft, 54,000 acres, across the Hinds River from Westerfield, and the second largest single run in Canterbury. Wilson, an ex-Indian official, was not so much an Ashburton as a Canterbury figure; the owner of four runs and of a fine estate on the Cashmere Hills, he was also politically prominent during the last few years of provincial government. In provincial affairs and in Parliament he displayed some of the less admirable sides of his character. By contrast, his manner in social life could be most attractive. Alfred Cox, a neighbour just over the Rangitata River, thus records his remarks during a brief visit: