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Peache wrote the epitaph of an era in a letter to his friend, Dr W. G. Grace: ‘Nearly all of us had a very hard fight for many years but those of us who were able to “hang on” are now reaping the benefit although most of our old friends had to “go under” financially, I am sorry to say.’^[1]

Peache married in New Zealand, his wife being a daughter of J. T. Ford, one of Canterbury’s best known stock and station agents and run managers. On a personal level, Peache’s published letters provide a good study of all that was involved for an educated, well-to-do Englishman in coming out to the colonies. Life in Canterbury gave him a wonderful opportunity to exercise his practical talents, just as it allowed him to indulge to the full his love of riding and shooting. At first, he thought that ‘the freedom and independence in an up-country life in New Zealand’ out-weighed the pleasures and variety of life in England. But increasingly, he tended to pity his fate and regret ‘the half-civilized and “cheap” way we have to exist out here.^[2] When he died in 1906 in his early fifties he was looking forward to the time he could sell and return ‘Home’.

The auction of 1889 caused only one change of ownership, that of the now small Shepherds Bush to David Morrow. The Costers did not wish to continue at Blackford, which was passed in at the auction and taken up later by their manager, Alexander McLennan. But although the previous owners kept the runs they were forced by competitive bidding to pay rents sometimes more than twice the upset (and reasonable) price set by the Lands Department. This was one important aspect of the auction. At least as significant were the failures of six of the runholders during the period and the consequent transfer of several runs to stock and station agencies.

In The Early Canterbury Runs, L. G. D. Acland made no distinction between large runs which remained and still remain under Crown lease and those which were freeholded. There is some justification for avoiding a discussion of land tenure. Sheep owners in the Ashburton high country bought sections on every run concerned and, conversely, many of the large properties on the plains contained government leasehold land until 1890. In 1883, two years after Sir Cracroft Wilson died, his executors sold his ‘Rangitata Station’ (Cracroft) as 2000 acres of freehold and 15,000 acres