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George Allan McMillan was a fine old-fashioned squatter of a kind common enough forty years ago, but now [1930] extinct. . . . When I first knew him he had given up doing much actual shepherding and his only dog was a half broken one kept for companionship rather than work, but with ‘Chevy’ I have seen him take a mob of 1200 merino ewes and lambs away from Mesopotamia yards in a way that was a pleasure to watch. . . . He was not the least purse-proud or pompous, but always modest and unassuming—a staunch and generous friend to rich and poor alike.^[1]

Alfred Edward Peache of Mount Somers deserves attention for a number of reasons. In the first place, he was probably the only gentleman runholder in Ashburton who possessed the necessary skill and experience to work his property. After leaving Haileybury College, he learned farming at Cirencester College as well as on two very different and expertly managed English and Scottish farms. He is credited with being the first man to run half-bred sheep on the high country. His ability as a sheep man helped him to survive the slump. Secondly, he displayed to an unusual degree the mechanical ingenuity and practical ability of the successful modern farmer. He was prolific in inventions and ideas which he passed on to his engineer brother in England to develop. But he especially applied his flair to the working of the limestone and coal found near Mount Somers. He supervised the quarrying of quantities of building stone and planned his own plant for crushing and burning agricultural lime. He improved the tramway to the quarry and the mines which the County Council allowed him to lay and finance by a local rate. Thirdly, and most important for an understanding of the period, the recent (1870) publication of his papers makes clear that his financial survival while so many failed depended not primarily on his skill but on sound backing. He took over Mount Somers at the age of twenty-three when he had been six months in New Zealand; yet within two years he was on the point of selling. In 1886 he commented in a letter ‘To think of the money that first and last has been sunk in the place is really horrifying . . .^[2] After having been forced by his father’s lawyers to relinquish financial control of the property he was unwilling to resume responsibility. Even when in 1890 his father cancelled the mortgage, his response was ‘There seems no chance of selling this wretched place. It has been a curse to me from first to last.’^[3] Conditions improved towards the end of the century but in 1905