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being allowed to enter their names. An overwhelming majority of the 3400 applications must have come from the county, as only three of the successful selectors of farms over 100 acres in area were from outside.

More than a thousand people travelled to Rakaia to watch the ballot being drawn. This was by far the largest crowd seen in the township to that time and twice as many as any building could accommodate. An animated crowd—‘bankers, merchants, commission agents, lawyers, squatters, farmers, mechanics, labourers, with their wives and daughters’—gathered before the town hall porch. The excitement was maintained in spite of the necessarily tedious procedure, for the show had elements of a gigantic gamble, successful selectors not only winning prizes but often being able to estimate the resale value of their sections. Officials read all the names of applicants for each section and placed a numbered ball in the box for each; there were 193 entered for one section and an average of forty over all sections. The balloting lasted from mid-day until 6 p.m.

The first marble drawn at the ballot gave Section 1 to Daniel Buckley, jnr. It was a popular success, as his father had farmed on the Rakaia plains for years. The family kept the section for twenty-eight years. The Vaughan family retained Section 10 from 1896 to 1961. Section 24, of 639 acres with the Highbank homestead buildings on it, one of the most sought after, went to Peter Drummond of a well known Lauriston family.

In 1898, two years after the ballot, the newly-opened Highbank School contained fifty children. The Highbank District Association had fifty-nine members. Two hundred residents now replaced the half dozen workmen of a few years before. Thousands of trees had been planted. One settler had imported two hundred vines from Australia and France and was on the point of establishing a new industry. High hopes were expressed of a good harvest of wheat as recompense for two years’ work. Then, on 23 September, a nor’-west gale swept much of the district bare, removing the soil from 2900 acres of tilled and sown paddocks until it covered the fences and filled the water races. The government granted a little relief, immediately supplying seed which had to be paid for within three years. But fuller compensation followed only after lengthy protests. Settlers planted less crop from that time. The Lands Department completed the roading on the settlement by 1901, farmers being given the work on a co-operative basis. By