Jo McKenzie-McLean

Land Girls kept the country’s wheels turning when the men went to serve in World War II, but they were ‘ written off’ and their efforts largely forgotten. talks to four Land Girls about their time running the land.

The year is 1942. A tall, fit and healthy blue-eyed, black-haired woman from a dairy farm on the Otago Peninsula walks into the Dunedin war office. Sadie Lietze (nee Stuart) had turned 19-years-old and her time working at the Tip Top Milk Bar in the Dunedin’s Octagon was over. World War II changed everything.

Women across New Zealand were being enlisted for ‘‘essential work’’ and along with 4000 other women across the country, Lietze opted to become a Land Girl and join the Women’s Land Service.

The service was established in 1940 under the Women’s War Service Auxilliary to meet the shortage of male labour caused by the enlistment in the forces.

‘‘Women were being manpowered into clothing factories, woollen mills, tram conductresses, herd testers, hospital personal and of course the armed forces,’’ Lietze says.

Lietze was interviewed and she chose the Women’s Land Service and a week later tickets arrive in the post. She was being sent to Omarama to work at the high country station, Tara Hills.

‘‘Omarama was a place I had never heard of, never been. I had to look in the map to know where Omarama was. It was quite an experience for me. I was just 19. I had never travelled much or been away from Dunedin.’’

The 94-year-old recalls the trip to the high country station, where she would remain for two years, vividly.

‘‘I left in the morning by the Mail Bus ... My new boss met me in Omarama. As we travelled the three miles to Tara Hills Station in a jogger, a two wheeled cart pulled by a horse, similar to a trotting sulky. Little did I know I would stay two years as a cowman, a gardner, assistant rabbiter and horse breaker, a musterer, a wool classer and a general rouse about.

‘‘I milked cows morning, night - every day of the year and never had a break. You would get Saturday afternoon off to do your washing. I just did everything that was asked. I did it. People say to me, ‘why did you do it?’ I say, ‘‘well, you did it because it was a war effort’.’’

Growing up on a dairy farm, Lietze was using to milking cows. But the backaching task of rabbiting was hard, she says.

‘‘Rabbits were real problem. Trapping rabbits was a fulltime job in winter. Rabbits were trapped, gutted and hung in twos on a fence at the road gate. These were picked up an hung on the rabbit truck and taken to Pukeuri Freezing Works near Oamaru to be later sent to England for food.

‘‘After trapping we poisoned the rabbits. A furrow was scratched along the foothills, carrots were packed into saddle bags and I would walk along dropping sliced carrots into the furrows. Two days later. I would do it again. I had to dig a huge hole big enough to bury a horse in. Then the next day I would drop carrots which had been laced with strychnine. The following day we would pick up hundreds of frozen rabbits, take them in the saddle bags to the big hole. Here we would skin them. It was a back-aching chore. In the evening we would stretch the skins on wires and hang them on a line to dry. When we had almost forgotten the pain we would start again on another block.’’

The biggest hardships were the conditions and the cold, she says.

‘‘There was no electricity. A Delco engine charged batteries for light and the wireless, which we listened to for the War News at nine o’clock. Then I would go to be and be up again at 6am. I just slept in an old hut. You take the sack off the floor and put it on you - it was freezing. Omarama is cold and you put the sack on top of your bedding to keep you warm. I wasn’t the only one.’’

She grew to love the four children who lived at the property, whom she was reconnected with several years ago. ‘‘I don’t think I would have stayed if it wasn’t for those children. I often wonder why I did it, but you just did things like that. The children were a delight and the only bright spark - other than my dog and horse.’’

Nevertheless, after turning 21, she returned to the war office and asked to be reposted where she spent the next eight months at a property at Kelso and was treated ‘‘like a daughter’’ before the war ended.

‘‘I went back bundled up my gear, said goodbye to the children, the dogs and horse. The little children were crying. It was so sad. I didn’t really want to go either when the time came. But I was posted to a lovely home where I was treated like a daughter. I lived there for eight months and then the war finished and the women’s land service was dissolved. It was just finished.’’

After the war finished, the women were ‘‘written off’’. The lack of acknowledgement for their war efforts remains still very much in the minds of the women who kept the country’s wheels turning while the men were at war.

‘‘We were never given a number. We were the New Zealand Women’s Land Service which was the same as the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAFS), the Women’s Auxiliary Army ... We had a uniform we were given, but we never had a number. That is the sad thing because we are not affiliated with anything and when the war finished they just wrote us off. Nobody knows about us. People grew up and had never heard about us and the work we did. There were no contacts and the New Zealand Government do not even have a record of us. We tried to find out and they don’t even know. It’s shocking.’’

Author Dianne Bardsley was instrumental in bringing the courage and determination of the Land Girls to the attention of New Zealanders in her book The Land Girls: In a Man’s World 1939-1946.

‘‘I came from a rural background, born at the end of the war. I was very used to hearing my parents making comments like, ‘Of course, they had land girls during the war’ or ‘She was a land girl’ and it was obvious from the way they spoke that they were regarded as someone special, and different.

‘‘Teaching at a secondary school years later, I was concerned that there was no