by Ken Fife | Sep 12, 2022 | Book 1
1970 was an eventful year for several reasons. We had been farming Cairn Peak for six years, and though heavily burdened with debt, we had continued with our development program and our carrying capacity had increased significantly. As livestock numbers increased...
by Ken Fife | Sep 12, 2022 | Book 1
Slowly Going Broke! My new bosses asked me to pay a visit to the farm about a week after they’d hired me. My task was to count a mob of cattle that hadn’t been mustered when the stock take occurred. It was a typical Southland winter day when I arrived, a biting...
by Ken Fife | Sep 12, 2022 | Book 1
WEST TAUPO I now lived in Taumaranui and my responsibility as a Field Officer was supervising the development of four blocks on the Western side of Lake Taupo. The four blocks between them comprised about 30,000 acres. This was called pumice country from its volcanic...
by Ken Fife | Sep 12, 2022 | Book 1
INTRODUCTION Legend has it that New Zealand was discovered by Kupe, an early Maori explorer who when seeing some low clouds on a distant horizon announced to his starving crew, “We have found a new land.” They probably said, “Yeah, yeah, whatever,” but as they paddled...
by Ken Fife | Sep 12, 2022 | Book 1
A long time ago, Gronk was sitting by a fire outside his cave. He was aware that a four-legged carnivore had been lurking rather too closely around his camp. On a whim, he threw the bone he had been gnawing. That moment was the dawning of a permanent bond between man...
by Ken Fife | Sep 12, 2022 | Book 1
INTRODUCTION I was born in Wellington New Zealand in 1939 and later that year on 5th September, New Zealand’s first labour prime minister, Michael Joseph Savage, got wind of my arrival and was so depressed that he rang Neville Chamberlain and they both decided to...
