Large Grazing Farms Were

Leased at Low Rentals

ANY Australian farmers, ruined by the droughts of 1851, migrated to New Zealand. It was still a more or less virgin field and at least known to be well watered. These men brought with them the names they had applied to Australian conditions and also a good deal of sheep farming experience. They called farmers in a big way ‘ squatters,’ those with smaller places ‘ cockatoos.’ The latter was soon shortened to the nickname ‘ cocky’ which is in use today. In Australia, the squatter had been a man who simply occupied empty land without bothering to buy it or ask for anybody’s leave.

In New Zealand, although land regulations were generally tighter than those in force in Australia and the disposable area much smaller, a certain amount of squatting took place. The settlers imported with such care and forethought by the New Zealand Company were meant to live in compact settlements engaging in agriculture in imitation of English farming. At their doors, however, were vast areas of natural pastures which could carry immense flocks. Wellington settlers soon spread into the Wairarapa, and the Nelson settlement literally ‘took to the hills.’ Here the Company’s arrangements had conspicuously failed through many of the sections ‘having been bought by absentees, and through the resident ‘ colonists’ being unable to finance the labours of the proportionately larger numbers of working men.

George Duppa had sheep and cattle in the Waiiti Valley in 1844, later moving across the Wairau. In 1851 his position was legalised, when he was able to buy 8,000 acres he already occupied for 5/- an acre. Morse squatted at Tophouse in 1846, while Weld and Clifford in 1847 took possession of a large coastal tract in Marlborough under lease­hold agreement with a chief who lived on Kapiti Island. Some thirty large squatters possessed themselves of the excellent unsurveyed pastures of the Wairau and Awatere Valleys within the next few years. Later the position of these practical farmers was regularised, but without their eviction. But it is well to remember that the word ‘squatter’ has generally been used in New Zealand to mean a man farming a large area, usually by grazing sheep, without reference to the origin of his occupation.

The development of the pastoral industry in New Zealand in the late forties and early fifties saved New Zealand from the failure that would have visited too close an application of Wakefield’s ideas in practice. The Maori Wars disheartened the North Island. But the continually rising quantity and value of wool production were valuable testimonials in England that war expenditure would be balanced by an adequate return.

Run-holding in Canterbury was much nearer to the life of nomads wandering with their flocks than to ordinary English farming. The run-holder had his base where he lived, but his flocks were always on the move and he himself had often to follow them. The actual settlers in early Canterbury, the ‘Pilgrims’ as they called themselves, were men with the small-farming ideas of the Old Country, and they did not at once understand the Australian habit of using large blocks of country held on low rentals with little intention of making permanent homes. Yet in seven or eight years all the runs, blocks, of grazing country up to 50,000 acres in area, were taken up. Men sometimes took up more than one run, a necessity in the wild country towards the Southern Alps, and the 600 runs mapped out for selection were worked as about 250 stations. Men rode out looking for country before they bought sheep. They applied to the Waste Lands Board for their selections. If the land they had chosen were unoccupied, the Board allotted it to them. Even if it were occupied, they might still have a chance of buying the free­hold over the head of the occupier, but he had prior rights to buy a certain area round his home­stead or other improvements. This too might be challenged