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Untroubled by the turmoil of the land boom, the high country runs seemed to provide an element of continuity in the local story—as indeed they did. But when the slump arrived no other class so clearly suffered loss as the runholders. In Ashburton County, six or seven of the remaining twelve sheep stations changed hands because of failure. Moreover, in 1889, the stations went through their most thorough reorganisation by the government.

When the provinces were abolished in 1876 and the New Zealand Government took over control of Crown lands, an attempt was made in Parliament to force Canterbury runholders, like those in other provincial districts, to compete at auction for their properties. However, the pastoralists had bargained successfully with the government for a continuation of their leases and so remained undisturbed until 1890. The auction to decide the future of the runs from that year was held in 1889. Before they were offered for competition, the Lands Department tried to improve them as farming units by re-arranging their boundaries. As originally taken up and consolidated, stations consisted of as many as ten runs; they were now treated as units and numbered in a regular sequence. Three of the largest in the county—Mount Possession, Hakatere and Double Hill—were each divided into two separate runs but nevertheless they still remained under the same owners. (Mesopotamia, then but not now in the county, is not dealt with directly in this history.)

These three stations are most worth discussion. Mount Possession, now of 45,000 acres, went to W. C. Walker although he was soon forced to hand it over to Miles and Company, a leading Canterbury stock and station firm. Hakatere, 81,000 acres, of which 27,900 acres were barren hilltops and shingle slides, was secured again by the New Zealand Loan and Mercantile Company, which had held the property since T. H. Potts was obliged to relinquish it to them about 1885. This station was associated in people’s minds, not so much with Potts or the company as with its manager, Thomas Scott Johnstone, one of the best known figures in the Ashburton back country. James Johnstone, his father, had come out from Roxburghshire in 1863 under engagement with the Walker brothers to manage Lower Lake Heron Station and had brought his family of fourteen children with him. T. S. Johnstone thus grew up in the high country. He had already had fourteen years’ experience as shepherd in the neighbourhood before he took charge of Hakatere. In 1892, the Loan Company