The South Island’s Top Spot /
Exploring Puponga Farm Park and its picturesque surrounds
The 400 ha of pastureland of Puponga Farm Park is found at the foot of the wild 30 km Farewell Spit. It steps down a coast studded with cliffs and bluffs, borders Kahurangi National Park and stretches south past the dramatic Wharariki Beach. Exploring this area is a must-do.
In the early 2000s American-born Nelson-based New Zealand citizen Tom Sturgess became known for purchases and leases of large South Island farms, including Mt Albert and Godley Peaks Stations. While a number of these properties have since changed hands, Puponga Farm Park, leased in 1998, remains; and is the smallest farm in his present enterprise. ‘It belongs to the people of New Zealand,’ explains Tom. ‘Administered for their benefit, by the Department of Conservation. We [Lone Star Farms] are just fortunate enough to do activities on certain portions of it.’
But Puponga Farm Park is no ordinary farm. One motto of Lone Star Farms is ‘ farm like everyone is watching you’. An adept ethos given at the most recent count 100,000 people visited Puponga Farm Park in the last year. Unsurprisingly, farm manager Shane Ricketts states ‘people skills’ as the most essential requirement of his role. ‘I like the personal touch. I like seeing people enjoying themselves,’ he shares. ‘People can wander over the whole farm.
‘You have to be patient on the roads,’ he continues, ‘as often people don’t know how to drive around stock, so we have one person in front and the other at the back.’
The property is open during lambing and calving, offering visitors the opportunity to gain a first-hand insight into a working farm. ‘A number of visitors have never seen a lamb or a calf born,’ shares Shane, ‘or had the opportunity to experience newborn lambs up close.’ He laughs as he recalls some of the mis-mothered lambs, let out from the woolshed in which they are bottle fed, rushing up to visitors in the paddock expecting to be fed.
Shane is from a Bainham farming family and has farmed in Golden Bay for 25 years. He talks with pride about managing the 2800 sheep and 75 Angus cattle, and the pleasure of producing good quality stock on Puponga Farm Park for Lone Star Farms. Both Shane and Tom enthuse about the Te Mana lamb the farm now carries.
However, as well as managing animals and crowds of people, Shane is ever mindful of the land on which he is farming. You can’t just go out the back door and dig a post hole on the Conservation Estate.
As far back as 1850, cattle grazed on Farewell Spit.
The spit was formalised as a nature sanctuary in 1938 and Puponga Farm Park established in 1973. But it wasn’t until 1974 when Geoff Rennison took over as the Chief Lands and
Survey Ranger for Golden Bay that the remaining wild cattle on Farewell Spit were rounded up by ‘cowboys from Nelson’, and the Spit was left to the birds.
Management plans for the Farm Park and Nature Reserve were set up on Geoff ’s watch. ‘It was more simple in those days,’ he says. Geoff, like each of the present guardians of the farm I spoke to, talked of fostering the spirit of good coexistence between two completely different land uses: a farm and a nature reserve.
Today the good working relationship between the Department of Conservation and Lone Star Farms is vital to success. ‘I’m the liaison, the hub in the wheel, between DOC and Lone Star Farms,’ explains Golden Bay Department of Conservation Community Ranger Andrew Lamason. And one of the highlights of his job? ‘The Cape Farewell Eco-sanctuary.’
Driven by Peter Butler of Collingwood-based HealthPost, and in partnership with the Department of Conservation and iwi, Manawhenua ki Mohua, the Farewell Wharariki HealthPost Nature Trust was formed in 2019 ‘to create a wondrous accessible nature sanctuary at the tip of the South Island’, aided by $ 100,000 worth of donations from various sources. On 11 June (2020) it was announced Tom and wife Heather would donate $ 100,000 to the Trust this year and significant sums in following years.
Cape Farewell (found within the Farm Park) is the South Island’s top spot, its most northwestern tip. It’s where Captain Cook bade farewell to New Zealand. Here in January 2020,
Farewell Wharariki HealthPost Eco-sanctuary’s $ 120,000 predator-proof fence was officially opened. This 200 m fence crosses the headland, protecting 2.5 ha of land and cliffs beneath. Sea birds will be translocated to nest there this summer.
HealthPost has been involved with much plant restoration work on the Farm Park over the years. ‘There’s already southern rata growing well, there’s manuka and nikau,’ enthuses Peter, who dreams of ‘takahē grazing amongst the sheep’.
Of course, the life of birds around Puponga and on Farewell Spit requires a volume to itself. Thousands of migratory birds use this area as a staging post on their long-haul flights – 112 species have been recorded: gannet, godwit, royal spoonbill, white heron in the mix and near Puponga, 12,000 black swan. Until the fire of November 2019, the Farewell Spit Café’s telescope provided a glimpse into this avian world. Otherwise access to the Spit is with an organised tour.
Mass whale strandings on Farewell Spit often came up in my conversations, specifically the stranding close to the woolshed and farmhouse near Puponga, on 14 February 2017. Andrew recalls it as being the biggest whale rescue in history; 660 pilot whales stranded, 416 died. Shane alerted the Department of Conservation and worked with them. Darryl Heaps, former farm manager, had to organise the media and parking in the home paddocks for the 4–5,000 people who turned up. Tom spoke of it as ‘an amazing coming together of humanity, with one mammal trying to help another mammal’.
Shane is ever mindful of the land on which he is farming. You can’t just go out the back door and dig a post hole on the Conservation Estate.
A high point for visitors to the area is of course Wharariki Beach. Word quickly spread about this spot, when Lonely Planet wrote about it as ‘a remote dramatically beautiful beach’. And when Microsoft 10 added a shot of Archway
Rocks as one of its screensavers, Wharariki’s celebrity status was further boosted. Be prepared to be bent over by a sandstorm and overwhelmed by the power of the sight of the Tasman Sea’s breakers. Or on a gentle day, wander along the sand and let the nursery of seal pups entertain you.
With plenty to explore, entertain and discover, this is a magical part of New Zealand, and as Andrew puts it, ‘an edge-of-the-world experience’.
‘There’s already southern rata growing well, there’s manuka and nikau,’ enthuses Peter, who dreams of ‘takahē grazing amongst the sheep’.