Ladies of the forest

perhaps benefited from what may technically have been a bureaucratic blunder.

The committee, which had promptly formed an incorporated society, had in 1963 received a welcome farm forestry loan.

When they sought to extend it they were stonily rejected and told they should not have received the first loan; these were for farmers planting a woodlot on their land.

‘‘We did not even hear if anyone was chastised for the wrong decision in the first place,’’ Mrs Buckingham would later report.

Husbands and professionals occasionally having their uses, an advisory committee of familiar masculinity was set up in 1964. with figures like Ted Ramsey from the Forest Service proving key advisors.

The women later joined the Northern Southland Farm Forestry Association and then, in 1977, a management contract went to J E Watson. Nowadays it’s Craigpine that has the contract.

Mrs Buckingham recalls strong criticism by one of the early State Forest Service officers.

‘‘I think he did not approve of a bunch of women trying to do something that the State Forest trained, competent men [maybe with the emphasis on ’men’], should do.’’

Asked what he would do in their situation, his reported answer was scrap the lot and start again. Not these women, buster. In their governance role, they progressively developed their understanding of planting, pruning, fire breaks, insurances, and a host of other complexities.

Alongside which, in more recent decades, they’ve been overseeing the system of passing out the proceeds to the stakeholding branches in for what has quietly developed into a substantial piece of community philanthropy, spread far and wide.

When funds unexpectedly came available in 1990 from a windthrow, the forestry committee decided to give $10,000 each to hospice and mammography appeals and the Cancer Society.

In a gesture towards education, bursaries have been provided to encourage Southland students studying basic forestry.

Generally, however, the profits are passed back to the branches, which are paid in proportion to the support they provided.

The money winds up in a giddying array of places, ranging from the Life Education Trust, to the neurosurgery fund, St John, Southland Hospice, helicopter rescue, dictionaries for school leavers, Riverton Coastguard, fire brigades, kindergartens and playcentres.

Some of the land is in its third planting and right now, as a result of milling last year, there’s about $260,000 to be parcelled out to good causes throughout the south.

For her part, Mrs Casey remembers the horror of seeing trees smashed by the ferocious gale of October 1995, more than balanced by the satisfactions of standing at South Port to see their logs on the wharf, waiting to be loaded on to a ship bound for Korea.

Access has long been an issue and this has, in turn, provided hard-case moments when it came time for inspection tours.

As Mrs Buckingham recalled, there was always a strip of water to be crossed.

Something of an issue back in the early 1950s when it was not the correct thing for women of their age group to be wearing trousers.

‘‘The creek was deep and while not very wide for accompanying husbands to jump, it was certainly not advisable for us in our trim skirts to attempt.’’

Mind you, at least one male advisory member found he couldn’t be too dignified when he had to stand on one foot while members chased downstream to retrieve a gumboot that had been tossed with gentlemanly intent but disappointing aim.

For long enough, the swampy area of flat land was proving appealing to duckhunters, but seemed scarcely of benefit otherwise.

The suggestion arose that they might sell it – ‘‘not sure whether by the acre or by the gallon’’ Mrs Hamilton added, in a sardonic moment.

Selling it didn’t seem appropriate to the spirit of the donation the Hamilton brothers had made. And a good thing too. Nowadays it’s precious in its own right, containing one of the few remaining flax wetlands in Southland.

‘‘Environment Southland are pretty excited about it,’’ says Rural Women secretary Ann Irving. Recently, better access to it has been sorted and a QEII covenant is being arranged.

The committee, the local landcare group, and the ardent youngsters at Dipton School, have been working with the regional council and contractors in a campaign to remove willows, gorse and broom and enhance the area with planting.

And let the record show that in 2012 the forest won the Landcare Trust Award for sustainable farm forestry.

Said judge Ian Jackson: ‘‘This project has obviously touched and influenced people in the wider Southland region over a long period and, as such, has instilled an interest and enthusiasm for trees in many people.

‘‘The activity has influenced many generations to plant trees on their own farms and . . . made a huge contribution to education and sustainable land management Southland.’’

For their part, Rural Women, as a national group, are ‘‘very proud of our forest,’’ Ann Irving says.

‘‘It’s an encouragement for everybody to stick your neck out - though you don’t know when you take a thing on how long you’re going to be in there.’’

Given that the project started out with women venturing into a masculine domain, it’s perhaps fitting to note that the forestry committee’s management contractor, Craigpine, is now a paid-up member of Rural Women.

Which seems fair.