Heartland
Albury residents call their local the Pig and Whistle. The whistle probably refers to steam locomotives that chugged up the Fairlie branch line from Washdyke. But pig?
The railway closed decades ago. The pub laboured on despite a dwindling population and speedier transport. It was refurbished in the 1990s, but now stands in faded glory. Yet it has the distinction of having been the oldest wooden pub in the South Island with a continuous liquor licence.
Albury straddles the road about halfway between Pleasant Point and Fairlie, 50 kilometres inland from Timaru. The village predated the railway, but the coming of the ‘‘iron road’’ gave this quiet backwater a boost. Albury was the railhead from 1877 to 1885 and the site of a camp for workers building the line. The trade generated by the railway prompted the building of the hotel.
An older public house still stands at Albury, down by the bank of the Tengawai River, just below where the Opawa River joins it. This 1867 limestone structure replaced an even earlier one that burned down.
This old pub was popular with earlier travellers, but closed many years ago. Hardy wagoneers drove their bullock wagons from Timaru with supplies for farming folk in the Mackenzie Country. They carried loads of wool back from the hinterland, to the port at Timaru.
Albury was a convenient overnight stopping place before or after fording the Opawa River and tackling the climb up the Mackenzie Pass.
The demise of hotels and the railway is reflected in the general decline of Albury. As local farmer Peter Simpson says: ‘‘The town died when the garage and transport closed’’.
Shops and the post office are long gone. Of the three churches,
Picture postcard:
Right: the Presbyterian is a private home, the Catholic is closed and only the Anglican is still used, although its Sunday School is a preschool.
The Albury School remains, with two classes, supported by farming families and a community of commuters who have snapped up cheap properties here.
Simpson’s family has owned and run Mt Nessing Station since 1920. What had been a 35,000-acre pastoral run carrying 13,000 head of stock was first reduced in size by freeholding and then divided into smaller holdings in 2013 to settle farmers on the land. The district next year will celebrate the centenary of the ‘‘settlement’’.
Simpson’s grandfather bought the homestead block and the Ranui-Hakataramea block after World War I. The latter extends over the hill and into the Hakataramea Valley. These blocks are now farmed by Simpson’s sons, James and Matthew, respectively.
A picture-postcard scene of snow-draped branches and snowcoated gates greets me at the entrance to the homestead. I take the long drive between trees bowed by snow to the grand old 1874 timber house.
Simpson tells me the original dwelling was made of cob and the wooden section was added to it at the front. He regrets that the cob part was torn down long ago. It would not be done today, he says.
Robert Pinney’s 1971 history, Early Canterbury Runs, contains a 1921 photo of the homestead. Canvas-topped cars line the drive that loops around the lawn in front of the house, as guests arrive for Sarah Simpson’s wedding. The Model-T Ford, Essex and Rugby cars have trundled off into history, but little else seems to have changed.
Previous station owner Edgar Jones talks about Mt Nessing in his 1933 book, Autobiography of an Early Settler in New Zealand.
Jones left a reputation as an interesting character and a hardworking, progressive farmer, Simpson says. He was a self-made man, short of stature but not of opinions, who earned his nickname ‘‘Runner’’ by doing everything flat out.
He was also a philosopher and an inventor. Part of his book outlines his philosophy, a political creed that today seems almost comically conservative, yet is imbued with the wisdom of years observing his fellow man.
Pinney says Jones lived alone and suggests this gave rise to his ‘‘strange solitary thinking’’. He opposed universal suffrage, claiming, ‘‘We are not all equal and never will be’’. He supported scientific breeding to produce ‘‘super-humans’’.
They say he was good to his workers, doctoring them with ‘‘hair of the dog’’ after they had been ‘‘on the binge’’.
Simpson says Jones invented the snow-plough. He tells how 5000 sheep had to be taken off the run in the big snow of 1903.
Jones harnessed his homemade device to a team of draught horses and drove the 10.5km down to Albury, sweeping snow to the sides of the road.
The sheep followed and were loaded onto railway trucks for cartage to pastures down country.
It is said the last sheep were still leaving the yards at Mt Nessing when the first were trotting up the loading ramp at Albury. ‘‘It must have been quite a sight,’’ Simpson says.