ANZAC day

Yesterday was ANZAC day. 
Although I was aware of it I've never understood the significance of April the 25th to the national psyche of the Kiwi (and Australian, but they're not under scrutiny right now) and the self-image of the country as a whole. When travelling I enjoy investigating such ideas of collective identity or the perception of the self as part of a greater whole, shared common values and mythology in a historical context so when Brigette said she was going to the dawn parade to represent St. John's Ambulance I had to go along to learn more.

And so at 4.30am I rose bleary-eyed, complete darkness outside and rain lashing against the window. I got dressed and staggered into the kitchen, downed a black coffee, chewed up a muffin and we were off. Around 45 minutes later we arrived (still well before dawn) in Taumarunui, the rain had petered out and stars buried in the spaces between the clouds were beginning to invite upward glances with their flickering; stationary but moving.

Outside the RSA, see any kids wearing medals?

We headed to the local RSA club which is analogous to the British Legion to find a decent-sized group of people waiting for the dawn service. Some medal-decked old men and their families, current servicemen, police, fire and ambulance in uniform, assorted townspeople and Maori wardens, whatever they are, stood about fussing with poppies and sharing bonhomie. Later, but still before dawn a senior member of the club mustered the group into a marching column with the veterans at the front. The column moved off to the irregular beat of a muffled drum in order to reach the town war memorial by the 6am ceremony. 

The column ready for the march

The old boys take a minibus

The group marched down the street, turned right and moved along one of the main east-west streets. more people joined the procession including myself. 

The ceremony was very similar to the ones in the UK, with wreath laying by order of importance, religion, anthem singing etc. There were some interesting differences such as the inclusion of a lot of the Maori language into the service and a haunting waiata (female solo) sung at the end of the service. There is a gun salute in this case provided by a cannon somewhere away in a car park.
The date and time of the dawn service is in commemoration of the dawn landings and battles at Anzac cove on the Gallipoli peninsula in Turkey. After eight months of bitter fighting in the hills of the peninsula the invasion failed and the troops withdrew. In those eight months the Anzac legend was born, an important facet of the Australian and New Zealand national character as some would point out. Of course the veterans of this campaign are long gone, but like armistice day in the UK, subsequent conflicts have unfortunately provided more returned servicemen, some maimed, some just to be remembered by those who return to these spartan memorials every year to honour their memory. However, the way in which Anzac day and the ANZAC spirit have become such an important part of the national consciousness reminds me of a time last year when I was considering the foundation myths of another country directly linked to this story. 

I remember writing about what I had learned about the Turkish sense of identity based on the defence of the Ottoman Empire as it was then from a series of invasions culminating in the foundation of the Turkish Republic. I wondered as I heard and read about the tradition of Anzac day if there was a common nationalist impetus to forging a joint identity using the sacrifice and bravery of the nations soldiers as a figurehead (almost, perhaps prototype?) for the qualities that each nations leaders aspire to. The comparisons between the heroic ANZACs of lore and the way in which the Turkish defenders are portrayed are easy to make; for every Simpson and his donkey bravely evacuating the wounded there is a Gunner Seyit keeping the guns firing using superhuman feats of strength. Both are now more fiction than fact, ideals rather than human beings. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Simpson_Kirkpatrick and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seyit_%C3%87abuk
What is the Anzac spirit? I'm not going to explain it here, as people I've asked here can't really explain it well and I cannot pare it down beyond what i found on wikipedia:

"...endurance, courage, ingenuity, good humour, larrikinism, and mateship."

These qualities are considered so important that politicians have considered including them into some sort of citizenship test- except there is no practical way to test if you're fit to join the Kiwi club. 
If this is such a large part of what it is to be a New Zealander, is there any chance that over the last 99 years the meaning and use of the public holiday has changed? Certainly the memorial has become more of a public holiday (of remembrance) with the liberalisation of trading and licencing laws. However, there is still a lot of pride here, in the tenacity of these island's inhabitants in the face of hardship in particular. So it seems the events of 99 years ago will not fade from the public consciousness soon, to the contrary the increasing mythalogicalisation of the Gallipoli campaign (Mel Gibson, again) is even now overshadowing the sacrifice of the Australian and New Zealand soldiers in northern Europe during the Great War where many more were killed and wounded over a longer period of time.  It seems from my observations that in the years since 2001 and the subsequent wars, this remembrance and encouragement to feel pride is on the upswing. 
To someone who grew up in the relatively non-observant 1980's having to sit through emotional powerpoint presentations and holding a full minute silence (followed by an actual bugle rendition of the last post) in school assemblies is a little unsettling. The young people now enthusiastically marking this anniversary are the great grandchildren of the veterans of world war two and the great-great grandchildren (at least) of those that fought in the Great War. What about their children, and theirs? Will we still hold such parades in 100 years from now? If so why? In New Zealand I believe that the 'myth' of the Anzac spirit is so deeply ingrained in the common identity that I think it will go on, I cannot say the same for the UK where there is no equivalent and after the centenaries approaching over the next four years as well as the decreasing number of surviving veterans from WW2, I expect that the original meaning of armistice day will begin to fade for better or for worse and the rituals become more divorced from reality and living memories, text book history. I hope that whatever happens the insanity and the slaughter that occurs when so-called civilised nations go to war with each other will not be forgotten in the plastic poppy fever, and the silence.

Down on the farm with the Neesons

The farmhouse and two of the wool shed- covered livestock yards.

The drive to Taumarunui took hours, it didn't particularly look far on the map, as I sat in the back of my cousin-uncle's shiny red Holden I watched as the countryside flashing past changed from the flat pasture land of the Hauraki plains the rolling hills and then to what we'd call mountains back at home. Now and then we saw the summit of a volcano through the clouds, Auckland and parts of the Coromandel reminded me a lot of southern Devon and Cornwall, now I felt as if I was somewhere different altogether, unfamiliar and foreign.

We stopped off for some dinner in McDonald's as it was the only place in town open at that time of night, several local people were there too, having something to eat and drink, sitting around and chatting. I asked how long it would take to drive to the farm. I expected fifteen minutes.

"About an hour" Lyn said.

She wasn't lying, the car headed off down the 'Forgotten World Highway' crossing numerous small bridges (ONE. LANE. BRIDGE. as it says on the road) and beginning to take tighter and tighter turns up and down increasingly sheep hillsides. The tarmac ran out after around twenty  minutes to be replaced by loose gravel, the road narrowed to a single carriage width and stayed there, we continued further into the darkness. Eventually we crossed a small bridge where Alex said that his farm basically began, the bush along the side of the road and the darkness over the hills stopped me seeing too much. We went to bed pretty much as soon as we got in, when I woke up I looked out of the window and saw this:

Tell a lie, same view, different day. The wheelbarrow is just back from ford concreting.

The farmhouse stands on the top of a hillock in some stunning country. Paddocks stretch away in all directions, the Ohura river flows lazily past this time of year in the bottom of the steep ravine across the road, surreal shades of green for this time of year come from native trees that contrast to more recently planted imports with their leaves falling for the autumn. The grass clings to the steep hillsides except where the livestock have worn down a little track and the papa is exposed. The first impression of the place was that it is so incredibly quiet here; there are no major roads for a long, long way, no through roads, no neighbours for 10km, not even airliners passing overhead. Instead the sound of livestock, the river and the wind through the grass and trees is the background noise. Nowhere I've ever lived has been this isolated and quiet. It's good, for me right now, it is good.

I wrote to my cousins a while back asking to work for them for a while, I wasn't sure what work I would do or could do, I was pretty much looking forwards to taking time to learn something new be it skills or knowledge. I was also looking forwards to staying in one place for a while and getting to know a side of the family that I had never met. I was glad that the first major job was not too unfamiliar, a ford across a creek had been destroyed by the heavy rains eroding the soft rock beneath. The whole gang turned out to prepare the ford, mix the concrete and to put the stuff in the correct place and shape.

Concreting the ford with Tim, Callum and Alex

 I found myself wheeling concrete back and forth one afternoon, then the next day mixing and barrowing the stuff around, the next day the same again. The raw cement ate away the moisture from the skin, got into the eyes and mouth and collected in the bathtub after the nightly showers. The wheelbarrow handles gave me blisters on my hands, blisters that subsequently burst and cracked to be filled by concrete. 
However, I'm not moaning. I am happy: There is so much to be satisfied about in this type of work. Sure I got nasty blisters that stung like hell for a while (especially with that lovely calcium hydroxide sloshing over them) but every barrow-load I mixed, shifted or troweled actually went into building something that would be useful and last (hopefully) for a while. For the most of the fords construction it was just Tim, Callum and I working, we broke up the task into sections based upon tractor-trailer loads of builder's mix and cement bags and an honest day's labour. We drove our vehicles to the job every day in the cool morning air, dew on the grass soaking shoes and lower legs on the way. In the tired dried-sweat evening we would pack the tools away, put the site into a decent sort of state, clean the tools and set off along the dusty paths leaving great cream coloured pumice dust clouds behind on our way back to the farm and a cold beer. I decided I like concreting.

The ford in action after completion, upstream is to the left, you can see that the temporary culvert has been blocked and water is beginning to collect behind the dam, soon to flow over.

However, the best thing about working on a farm is that the work varies. Being a lamb and beef farm most of the day-to-day work involves moving livestock around. The act of collecting livestock from a paddock (actually a section of grazing land, not just a field) is called mustering, my cousins muster their paddocks with dogs which work in small packs to herd the livestock to where they have to be. One man and his dog this ain't.

The landscape created when soft ash and clays are eroded by heavy rain.

Mustering a hill paddock requires good control over a group of dogs at a distance of around 1,500m on an average. 'Filthy bush-mongrel' sheep tend to hide among manuka and scrub and in the trees along the ridge line. Someone has to go to the top on the hill and run them off towards the rest of the rest of the herd, again and again for each little group of animals. This is why dogs are essential for this type of work. To cut a long explanation short they do all the running about, because they cannot see far at times due to scrub and the fact that they are dogs the shepherd does the thinking for the dogs and communicates via a series of shouted and whistled commands. Dogs are livestock farming, a good shepherd looks after his trained hound companions first, then himself. They even have their own little trailer:

The 'A' team on their way to muster a paddock, Stig, Boss and Kai, bow!

The paddock Tim is shown mustering is across the Ohura river from the farm and downstream, it overlooks the falls and the confluence with the Wanganui river and miles and miles of hills and woods. It truly is a spectacular place to work. Just imagine doing this every day.

Driving to the river crossing, several months with little rain has made the river quite low.

I'm sat on the back of Tim's quad bike at this point, not on piggy-back as it appears. Something I noticed is that both Tim and Alex continuously scan the landscape when they're out and about. This is very useful for spotting sick animals or animals where they shouldn't be, things like fences that need mending and the condition of the paddocks.

Small groups of sheep were scattered over the hillsides, altogether there were around 200 there,  the grazing stretched from the river all the way up to the ridges on top of the hills. The change in elevation was at least 400m. Dogs are essential here as in order to push the scattered sheep into a herd and along the lane to the shearers they must go to the top of the ridge ('run to the top!'), bark to get the sheep moving ('speak!') and push them along ('move 'em up!').

The Huntaway dogs move some sheep along.

Sometimes a few sheep hide in the scrub where the dogs cannot see them, then the dogs have to go all the way back up and chase them down.

Controlling the dogs as they muster the sheep is a challenging job on good days, in bad weather it must be pretty damn frustrating. Sheep who break off from the main herd are a problem and slow the mustering down as the dogs have to be recalled to the shepherd and sent out again in a new direction to round up these awkward characters. The dogs get tired and as the morning goes on the temperature climbs until heat exhaustion is a possibility for them and the sheep on their way to the wool shed.
There is something odd about sheep psychology, they behave much more predictably in large groups, in smaller numbers they are more likely to vanish into some undergrowth and on their own they have a tendency to stay put.  

Some lambs who emerged from the Manuka after we passed by.

Tim gets the dogs to move the sheep out of the gullies on the left towards the path to the right.

Lambs are much more difficult to muster than ewes; another two to send the dogs back for.

Not a bad day for that kind of thing...

Occasionally a sheep will stop and refuse to move, sometimes they are not well and collapse soon afterward. This 'playing dead' may have evolved as a last-chance defence against predators or just as a physical manifestation of what we would call depression due to poor health. In any case they collapse and stay there in a state of shock. As we had left the dog trailer at the foot of the hill we had to put this sheep on the bike.

The dogs clear the ridge of reluctant sheep, Stig had never worked this far out before and in doing so well earned himself an extra biscuit for tea.

The north-facing slopes heat up fast.

The sheep move towards the bottom gate, down and along the contours of the hills.

Mustering the lambs for shearing is a tremendous effort over three or four days where everybody has a job to do, by the third day everyone is quite tired but the job must be finished. By now the sheep had been driven downwards to the track above the Ohura river, Alex had been clearing and adjacent paddock and had arrived downhill from us in order to put the herds together to drive them up the track to the wool shed across the river.

The lambs join the mob from the other paddock and are moved by the father and son team on Alex and Tim.

Alex waits with his dogs to head off the lambs and get them going in the right direction.

The combined pack of dogs push the lambs along the track.

I must say, this is my favourite picture

What happened to the sheep who dropped? He went in the dog trailer of course together with another one who collapsed on the way, a quick look at their gums showed they were both very anaemic; a sure sign of barber's pole worm. Not to worry- nothing a dose of wormer won't fix.

'well, this is awkward'

A team of shearers was working away from early morning in one of the wool sheds, they work very, VERY hard and are well looked after by Lyn and Monique who send out food at regular and predetermined intervals for breaks ('smokos') and lunches.

The shearers sweaty vests are changed and hung out.

The shearing gang consisted of four shearers at work at any one time, two sweepers to collect up the wool into a pile and another to pack it into to the waiting wool-sacks and compress it. The atmosphere inside the shed is hot, noisy and smelly while constant activity means there is a feeling that the process is almost fully mechanised while instead it is in fact very labour intensive. The gang work as machines, or perhaps bees all day.

The Shearers at work

This guy sustained a rate of one sheep sheared every 1m5s all day long, the four shearers got through at least 300 sheep a day each.

Wool going into the wool sacks for compression.

Sheep waiting in their pens for their date with the clippers!

With the shearing done the work is was not over, Callum gave each a dose of wormer (drenching), counted them and then they had to be put back in a paddock some distance away. These were long days indeed.

To my surprise you can also muster cattle with dogs, thankfully for us as the landscape would be difficult for two-legged creatures to chase cattle around on. However the process is a little different as the cattle are not particularly scared of the dogs instead seeing them as a nuisance and a threat to their calves. As a result they are a little more stubborn than sheep and often charge the dogs. However they still have a strong herding instinct and this can be exploited to get them moving in the right direction. The skill of the shepherd is not just controlling the dogs to gather the stock from the paddocks but to understand the behavior of the animals; knowing when to put pressure on them by getting the dogs noisy and close to their heels or when to take the pressure off by backing off. The most impressive handling I've seen is where the dogs are called off and the natural behavioral patterns of the cattle drive these huge beasts exactly where we want them to go.

Alex Neeson at work.

The dogs moving cattle along.

The cattle are being mustered towards the path of least resistance, in this case the track along the river to the right.

Some cattle can be a little crazy and lash out (as I've found out working in the cattle yards when half a ton of beef gets a little tetchy) as well as go pretty much where they want to go. Not surprisingly some of these tendencies seem to be heritable and some of the herd are known for their 'madness'. I find this fascinating as there are many parallels between the human inheritance of traits such as aggression. A sheep and beef farm is  a good place for observing human nature.

The cattle cross the ford, yes, it's a ford, the river is super-low due to drought.

Huntaway dogs drive the cattle up the lane to the covered yard.Woof.

Around the S-bend

And into the yards.

Luckily for me there is more going on than moving livestock around (as I can't do that). There are numerous repairs to undertake and land to manage, as well as fords to build there are culvert pipes to lay, tracks to improve and fences to repair. Fencing itself is an art-form of unrivaled precision. Fencers must pride themselves on the even-ness of the distribution of their batons, the uniform nature of the wire, the spacing and angle of the staples.....

I did it for a couple of afternoons in the hot sun on a dusty, thistle-y hillside. I can see how after a few days of doing that you would be over it. Oops, apologies for the kiwi-ism.

Callum moving the fencing trailer with the air compressor for the staple gun into position. Callum is wearing blue underwear.

The thistle fence line awaiting it's batons

The finished article, thistles bashed.

The wool sacks are loaded on to the lorry.

Ready to go! Lamb's wool.

Living and working with the NZ Neesons was an excellent idea, I can't remember where I got the idea, but it was a good one. I love making all of the obvious comparisons that living with them allows. The best part is working alongside them, I think that gives me the best insight into who they are, what makes them tick. I'm here in New Zealand until mid-August so I have plenty of time to consider my next moves. I think I'll need it.