Many messages in gateway

Across the road from the St David’s Pioneer Memorial Church in Cave is a gateway almost as awe inspiring as the church.

It features heavy iron gates flanked by massive stone walls that extend 20 metres in each direction. The entranceway was erected at the same time as the church in 1930. The gateway bears the symbols of the Scottish thistle and the New Zealand fern with the words ‘‘faith, hope, self-reliance, pioneering, toil and sweat’’ engraved into the supporting pillars.

Carved into the stone walls are mottos which translate from Gaelic as: ‘‘We keep the old ways, the good ways’’ and ‘‘What we have, we keep’’.

The actual farm gates were built during the 1933 Great Depression and, interestingly, illustrate the class structure of the time, with a main gate for the residents and separate side gates, one for the English workers and the other for the Irish workers.

The Highlands connection is visible in the name Strath Naver that appears on the gates, taken from the valley (strath) of the Naver River in the Sutherland highlands, a district hard hit by forced evictions of tenant farmers during the Clearances of two centuries ago.

It was from this area that Andrew and Catherine Burnett emigrated hoping for a better life in New Zealand.

The gateway forms the entrance to the Burnetts’ down-country farm, Aorangi. Andrew Burnett purchased the 2000 acres at Cave in 1873. It was run by the Burnett family and began as a lowland farm to supplement the family’s Mount Cook farm that was established in 1864.

The Burnett Homestead Gates are registered with the New Zealand Historic Places Trust as category.

– Karen Rolleston