Hokonui Farm Photos
October 24, 2005 – 10:52 pm | by Duncan
My sister Margaret and I drove through Hokonui on the way to Invercargill on Thursday, for the sake of old memories.
I grew up on the family farm there, along with seven brothers and sisters. Most of the farm has now been sold to one of the neighbours who is working with both sheep and cattle. It’s lambing time now but we could also see the arrival of a new generation of cows, as shown in my photograph here.
Southland is going through a transformation with the conversion of many sheep farms to dairy farms. I hadn’t caught on before now to the development of Fonterra, the dairy cooperative formed in 2001 just after I left New Zealand for Australia.
We checked out some of the old fishing spots - sharing yarns about the eels and trout we pulled out of the Makarewa and Otapiri streams. We inspected the spots where the family houses were before they were burnt to the ground - uninhabited and derelict of course.
We drove past the old two classroom primary school which now appears to be a private residence. The Presbyterian country church of Hokonui was closed and removed long ago. What remains as a public building is the war memorial public hall. It looks smaller than I remembered it as a young boy attending Sunday School, community concerts, films and dances.
It was good to hear the familiar sounds and smell the familiar smells of country life - the bloom of gorse, the seeding grass and flowering New Zealand flax.
Here’s a few more photos from my Flickr account…
Tags: Family, New Zealand, Photography
