This article is part of Famers Weekly’s annual Land Champions series. Read the full series here.
For 125 years, access to summer grazing on Central Otago’s Hawkdun Range has been a relief valve for a group of Maniototo farmers.
That all comes to an end in 2025 when stock are excluded from the land, now part of the Oteake Conservation Park.
The syndicate’s origins lie in a horrendous snowstorm in the 1890s and the ensuing stock losses that drove the runholders of the Eweburn and Hawkdun stations off their properties.
“When they mustered the sunny country on the Eweburn, they didn’t have enough sheep to pay the wages, so they walked off,” said syndicate shareholder and secretary Grant Geddes.
In 1897 the government granted low-lying farmers summer grazing on the then vacant 12,000ha of tussock high country.
Since then the land has provided summer and early autumn grazing for five syndicate shareholding families.
In recent years the families have had permission to graze up to 9000 halfbred ewes on what is now 8000ha, though the actual number has never exceeded 7500.
It has been a long, convoluted path to retain access since Robert Scott and Chas Inder first negotiated the Mt Ida pastoral occupation licence 124 years ago.
There were five similar grazing licences issued to Maniototo farmers for various hill blocks, but just two have endured – Mt Ida and the neighbouring Soldiers Syndicate, an arrangement made in 1920 for returned servicemen who settled farms in the Maniototo.
The Mt Ida syndicate is in the Hawkdun Range behind Naseby, a major catchment for the Otematata River, which flows into the upper Waitaki valley.
It is an exposed alpine tussock landscape ranging from 600m to 1500m above sea level, with large plateau areas, dipping into deep river gorges.
As far back as the 1960s the government began to talk about stopping grazing access, and from 1968 it issued leases on a 10-year cycle. That lasted until 2003, when the paths of the two syndicates diverged.
Early that year the Soldiers Syndicate was issued a grazing concession and special lease from Land Information NZ (LINZ).
Several months later the Mt Ida syndicate was told it would be issued the same lease.
Geddes said he was informed by the chair of the committee considering the licence that there were three options: a fee simple, a special lease, or to remain within Crown ownership but be administered by the DOC as a conversation reserve.
“He favoured a special lease, the same as what was recommended for the Soldiers Syndicate, and he told us it was in the mail. It never arrived,” said Geddes.
After months of not hearing from LINZ, the syndicate members discovered that the recommendation had been overturned. The block was to be administered as a DOC conservation reserve.
Grazing ends in 2025, when the land becomes part of the 79,000ha Oteake Conservation Park.
LINZ later tried to rescind the Soldiers Syndicate lease, too, but the shareholders took it to court and won. The costs involved put that option out of Mt Ida’s reach.
The syndicate appealed the decision but, said syndicate shareholder Jock Scott, it was considered – and turned down – by the same panel that had made the original decision, rather than an independent body. This felt unfair, he said.
Up to the 1940s tents provided musterers with protection from the elements. Later, old railways huts were relocated onto the land.
The current leaseholders are the fourth generation to have access to the summer grazing.
They are bitter about how they have been treated, and what they said is the disregard for their family’s contribution to the area’s history. Decisions were made by faceless bureaucrats who relied on reports without visited the area, they said.
Syndicate member Mark Inder said as part of their current licence, they were required to install monitoring plots – and a report showed there is no difference between those where stock was excluded and those where it was not.
The report concluded that any land regression was due to natural events, not grazing.
“We thought this was a big win but when we tried to get a new concession, they totally ignored that report.”
Scott said the findings echoed earlier comments from officials.
“Field officers within LINZ commented that since the exit of wethers in 1969, the land had improved and never looked better.”
Geddes agreed.
“After 125 years of summer grazing, the flora and fauna is still there.
“We believe they looked at aerial photographs and attributed areas of degradation to stock grazing when we know it was natural erosion.”
At the time the decision was made a LINZ spokesperson defended it by pointing out that the Crown Pastoral Land Act is “quite specific” about what can come under consideration when deciding on the fate of the land – and about the outcomes for land. “There’s not a lot of discretion, really,” he said.
Now wilding pines are beginning to encroach, which light grazing from stock has controlled. Geddes fears that will become a major issue now stock is excluded.
Scott said in the early years the tussock was burned and overgrazed, but those practices ended 40 years ago. The syndicate ensures the land is cared for, he said.
Initially they had more access for stock, and wethers would be grazed year-round. Changing farming practices ended wether grazing.
Today they have access for a 12-week period between January 7 and April 25.
After weaning it takes a day to drive the sheep out to the block and Scott said by April, most sheep start moving back to the muster areas, ready to return home.
There are three sets of holding yards.
The old station boundary fences are still there, but degrading in the tussocks. They are mostly lines on a map or the path of a creek.
Scott said there is no shortage of people willing to help take stock to the block or muster to bring them home.
It’s become a must-do for friends, family and acquaintances and they have even taken tourists along for the muster.
The autumn muster takes 11 musterers, four horses and a cook five days to complete, with the sheep driven to the Scott’s farm where they are sorted into their lines and returned to their respective homes.
“They are fit, healthy and ready for tupping,” said Inder.
A packhorse team crosses the Otematata river.
Typically they each lose between 20 and 30 but often stragglers are recovered the following year.
Importantly, by removing ewes from their farms it means they have not had to quit stock due to a dry summer.
Initially mule trains were used to cart provisions to the block and musterers lived in tents before old railway huts from the 1960s were relocated.
Scott recalls that the food boxes carted in by mules were repurposed from containing the insecticide DDT, which was later banned due to its toxicity to the environment.
Early snowfalls are a constant threat and Scott said even today musterers can be caught out.
Better roading and the relocation of the railway huts made for improved comfort levels. Huts were subsequently upgraded and a new hut built.
Scott recalls being trapped in the Wire Yards hut for three days by 1m of snow in 1967.
Running out of food and with no let-up in the storm, they decided to head home in complete white-out conditions, an ordeal that gave Scott a new appreciation for the homing instincts of animals.
“I really was awakened by the instinct of animals over the intellect of humans. We were using mules to cart our gear and they knew where they were going.
“There was no packer leading the way, the mules were in front and men walking behind in their tracks. The mules knew where they had to go.”
Scott recalled a later incident when Laurie Inder lost a dog at Tailings Creek hut. He heard yelps coming from the long-drop toilet. On inspection with a torch he saw two eyes peering back at him from the bottom of the hole.
Scott said the only solution was to tip over the toilet, run and hope the dog cleaned itself up.
Shares in the syndicate are attached to the original farms, and for 125 years the five families have worked together to make the syndicate function, with decisions discussed among them.
The camaraderie forged by living and mustering in the mountains together and the collegiality among the families is a sense of pride and has created an indelible connection with the stunning – but at times unforgiving – Hawkdun mountains.
The public have open access to the area and syndicate members relay stories of helping stuck or stranded motorists and lost trampers, and warning ill-equipped walkers of an impending storm.
They also relay stories of how in recent years four-wheel-drive enthusiasts have destroyed shingle screes, swamps and tussock faces. They fear a spark or hot exhaust could ignite a fire.
“Who’s going to police it when it’s shut up? It won’t be DOC,” said Scott.
Geddes despairs at the damage done in recent years by four-wheel-drive enthusiasts.
“They have destroyed more tussocks in a year than our sheep have in 125 years.”
• A function is being held next March to mark the 125th anniversary of the syndicate, with more than 100 people expected to attend. To register contact Grant Geddes: gmgeddes.glenbrae@gmail.com.