Lorelei Hayes: Waiaua to Kauri Cliffs 

Lorelei Hayes

Think sheep stations, think South Island High Country. I lived in the Far North for nearly five years and cannot recall even noticing sheep. We had possums in the pohutukawa, bush rats in the ceiling and mice in the organic compost bin. My sister, in Okaihau, kept a kuni-kuni pig. I also saw wild goats on a rocky ledge near Kingfish Lodge on Whangaroa Harbour and once engaged with turkeys crossing State Highway 10. Sheep? Nah.

So Waiaua to Kauri Cliffs, the Story of a Northland Sheep Station 1833-2000, comes as something of a revelation to me. The author really sticks it in when she declares it to be "one of New Zealand's oldest sheep stations". Who can argue with her?

Lorelei Hayes and her husband farmed the property for nearly 40 years before it was sold in 1995 to the American businessman Julian Robertson, who then whistled up the bulldozers and magically turned much of the Waiaua spread into the internationally renowned golf course, Kauri Cliffs.

All the more reason to be grateful to Hayes for faithfully and lovingly recording the history, in European times, of one of the most spectacular stretches of coastal land in the country, and not just her family's experiences, but the three families, the Kings, the Stephensons and the Leslies, who owned the property before them.

Hayes' father — a Queen St lawyer and the son of New Zealand Women's Weekly founder Otto Williams — bought the farm in 1951. He was smitten when he first saw it. "If I could get that place," he said, "I would shut up office, kick up my heels and you wouldn't see me for dust."

There came hardships, some foreseen, others not: isolation, poor access, labour shortages, droughts and hectares of wild gorse. Tough, too, was the Government's removal, in 1984, of the Supplementary Minimum Price scheme. To help make ends meet, Lorelei

Hayes and other farmers' wives went off to the church hall in Kaeo to learn new skills such as making soap and baking bread.

Folk like Hayes are treasures. Every good community should have one. They are local historians. Not all, though, write as well as she does. Nor do they always produce a publication as attractive on the eye as this one undoubtedly is.

* Published and available from I. and L. Hayes, Box 104, Kaeo 0471, Northland $25