Ladbrooks, where the crocs are not forgotten
All New Zealand hails Olympic champion sculler Mahe Drysdale. But a little community south of Halswell says: ‘‘Don’t forget Dick Arnst.’’ The Ladbrooks lad won the world professional single sculls title in 1908. He defended it in 1910 on Africa’s Zambesi River, with his brother going ahead to shoot the crocodiles. Arnst lost the title in 1912 but won it again in 1921, when he was 38.
Ladbrooks is wet. A myriad of springs feeds a maze of streams in this ‘‘sinkhole’’ of the Canterbury Plains. The marshy ground is not suitable for rowing, of course, but at least there are no crocodiles.
Maurice McCarthy has lived here all his life. He was seven when Arnst died in 1953. He often heard the story of Arnst rowing from Ladbrooks to Tai Tapu across flooded paddocks after heavy rain.
If Arnst is Ladbrooks’ favourite son, Howard Kippenberger is not far behind. The World War I soldier served again in World War II, becoming the most revered senior officer in the New Zealand Army 2nd Division.
The name Ladbrooks was not applied to the locality until the 1890s. The area was previously referred to as ‘‘the swamp south of Prebbleton’’, or simply Lincoln Swamp, McCarthy says.
William Ladbrook’s pioneering family arrived at Wellington in 1842. They shifted to Canterbury in 1853, but then moved to Southland. Forty years passed before their name was applied to the area.
Railway bosses decided in 1880 that a station was needed to serve the farms between Prebbleton and Lincoln, on the Christchurch to Southbridge and Little River line. The station was built on land formerly owned by Ladbrook. The school opened in 1889 but was known as Prebbleton Side School until locals got the name changed to Ladbrooks. Railway authorities picked up the name too. However, they spelled it as Ladbrokes, then Ladbrookes, before getting it right.
Resident Dave Ellis has a photograph of the station. A neighbour, artist Olivia Bennett, had no water after the 2010 earthquake because of damage to her well. The school let her use their supply and, in gratitude, Bennett sketched the station from Ellis’ photograph. The framed picture hangs in the school.
Ellis has a collection of postage stamps bearing the Ladbrooks Post Office mark. Driving through Ladbrooks, you would not think it had a post office, but one operated here from 1900 to 1952. There was also a store and a creamery. A hall opened in 1913 and is still used.
Arthur Hight attended the tworoomed Ladbrooks School from 1935. Most families then milked a few cows and supplied the creamery. Some delivered milk to homes down Christchurch’s Lincoln Rd.
Hight remembers milking machines being installed in 1944 and their herd increasing to 20. Then the big snow of 1945 broke the power lines and he had to milk by hand again. The herd later grew to 100. Dairy company trucks picked up cream cans at the gate, until the change to tankers.
More recently properties were subdivided for lifestyle blocks. City professionals moved in and land prices rose. Only two dairy farms remain. School principal Sean Bailey says closer settlement has boosted the roll to over 100, with five fulltime teachers. It remains very much a community school, though land-use changes have presented one problem. The school awards a cup for the best calf on Pet Day each year. Once, nearly all the pupils had calves. Last year there was only one.
McCarthy says extensive drainage works from the 1880s boosted farming. The digging of a canal south of Ladbrooks removed much of the water and lowered the level of the Halswell River. As farming developed, the population increased. A hall was needed for social occasions. Arguments over building the hall threatened to split the community. The women wanted weatherboards. The men favoured vertical sheets of corrugated iron.
‘‘The women wanted glamour but the men held the cheque book,’’ McCarthy says.
A compromise was reached, which is why the hall’s frontage is weatherboard, and its other walls are iron.
The hall has always been well used. Dances, balls, card evenings, magic lantern shows have given way to karate and dance classes, while Country Women’s Institute meetings still go on.
McCarthy says the daily workers’ bus service between Tai Tapu and Christchurch, via Ladbrooks, prompted further change from the 1950s. ‘‘It opened up a new world,’’ he says, as young people could work in town and live at home. It broke the pattern of marrying ‘‘the boy next door’’. Life is quiet at Ladbrooks. An air force plane’s forced landing near the school 75 years ago is still talked about. It caused the greatest excitement since Arnst sculled the Zambesi.