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acquired Mount Possession from Miles and Company and Johnstone managed the two properties until 1904. A quarter of a century later, when he was seventy-five years old, he bought Stronechrubie, re-named ‘Erewhon’, and so returned to the country which evidently fascinated him.

William Gerard retained Double Hill, runs 118 and 119, totalling 113,500 acres, 23,500 acres barren. This country, situated in the north-east corner of the county, was taken up between 1858 and 1863 by six men including Alexander Lean and William Turton. By 1866, Joseph Palmer, the first Canterbury bank manager, had acquired the leases of ten of the eleven runs and so formed the Double Hill Station. Robert Mackay managed this property for Palmer from 1869; he had been a shepherd on one of the runs since 1864. He is remembered today chiefly as the father of Jessie Mackay, a well-known ‘poet, journalist and social reformer’ of the early years of the present century, who was born in the Rakaia Gorge in 1864 and educated there by her mother. Acland^[1] records that Mrs Mackay went for two years at one time without seeing another woman.

In January 1874 Palmer offered Double Hill for sale with 30,000 sheep and turned down an offer of £26,000, but apparently sold it in June to William Gerard for £20,000. As economic conditions were improving at the time the explanation given, that ‘there was no sale for runs’^[2] was a surprising one. Gerard continued to live mainly on his run at Snowden, north of the river and appointed Murdo McLeod as manager of Double Hill. In those days access to the station was by way of Lake Coleridge, the track crossing the river above the Gorge. Gerard was still pasturing 30,000 sheep on Double Hill at the beginning of 1878. This was the largest flock in the county, the nearest in size being the 26,700 sheep on Cracroft. He remained the largest runholder in the county until his death in 1897. Acland^[3] described him as ‘one of the ablest of the old squatters’.

A brief description of two further runholders—G. A. McMillan and A. E. Peache—will illustrate various aspects of pastoral history. McMillan bought Stronechrubie, already mentioned in connection with T. S. Johnstone, about 1898. He had worked Mesopotamia since 1885 and in 1896, acquired Cracroft, 5400 acres of freehold although most of it was still in tussock. He appears to have weathered the slump of the 1880s more successfully than most pastoralists. Acland pays him the following exceptional tribute: