Old Dogs New Tricks

by Peter Anderson

  While these new Sounds residents have invariably added some colour to the area, and been fodder for a good laugh, many sadly have not lasted too long in the region. Some of their marriages have split up, and some have split up other marriages, and some in one way or another have eventually fallen out with a neighbour. Perhaps they have not understood the value of tolerance in long-term relationships. Essential if one wants to survive happily in remoter areas. Or perhaps they have just craved the social and easier life in the city. Some have returned to their homelands while others have shifted to New Zealand towns leaving their legacies — out of character mansions, a vineyard, and sometimes farms in poorer condition than when they took them over.

  But really only a small percentage of newcomers to the farmed areas in the Sounds have not adapted. Most who have moved in during my time in practice have successfully farmed or semi-retired to smaller blocks while continuing to work in their professions, made possible by today’s incredible means of communication. Some have made huge contributions improving the stock performance on the farms they have moved onto while others have improved the health of the land, ridding areas of wilding pines and encouraging the regeneration of native bush. These people, like those before them, appreciate the privilege and wonder of living in this beautiful and peaceful environment.

  EMIL — PJ

  I have to admit, here and now, that I have never been mad keen on dairy farming.

  My early times on sheep farms in the South Island gave me a great love for the life, the country and the people. The freedom, the wide open spaces, the flexibility of times and places; things which all sheep and beef farmers and their workers will understand.

  Then I spent five years at Lincoln College, now Lincoln University, getting a science degree in agriculture. That taught me a lot of things about land use and sustainable production systems. My education and all my subsequent experience taught me that land use options are based completely around what the soils and the water can cope with. Sheep and beef farming has always been based on those simple principles.

  Dairy farming is very different. Regimented and scheduled, everything revolves around milking times, mostly twice a day. It’s become a cornerstone of our economy now, even if the high-producing, high-cost structure (and high-debt model) is now looking a bit flawed, but it never appealed to me as a way of life. The people on those farms work their butts off, but not all of them see the big sustainable picture. If that turns some readers off now, I’m sorry. I don’t apologise for discussing the principles I’m talking about.

  My direct experience of working on a dairy farm took me, in 1969, to Tokoroa, heart of the timber industry, and also the heart of the Waikato dairy industry. I was 22 years old, fit and healthy. I’d already had a couple of years working on back-country sheep and beef farms, but as part of my first degree, a Bachelor of Agricultural Science, I had to do my time on a dairy farm.

  Grant Turner, a friend from Lincoln College, found me the job on a farm next to his family’s, just north of Tokoroa, and I arrived there in late November. It was a bit of a shock. The culture, the strict timetable dictated by milking times, the small scale in terms of acreage, all seemed foreign. (If I talk in acres rather than hectares, please excuse it as a sign of my age and education. I now embrace hectares, but in those days we all thought in acres.)

  Dairy farming then was not what it is today. It was the dominant part of farming in the Waikato and Taranaki, but not in most of rural New Zealand. It was quite important economically but didn’t match meat and wool on the big screen.

  A sizeable herd was 200 cows, and the stocking rate might be one cow per acre, at best. Fertilisers were traditional with very little added nitrogen. Quite simply, it was more or less a sustainable model. There were certainly issues around direct contamination of streams, but no one took much notice. How the ground has changed.

  I went to work for George Kuttel, a nice man of my own age, a serious rally driver and a hay and silage contractor. George didn’t spend much time on the farm; that was the lot of his younger brother Albert, a serious young man, shortly to be married; in fact he hitched up while I was there.

  George and Albert lived in the family home with their father Emil and their mother, who I only ever knew as Mrs Kuttel. She was a fearsome creature, flinty eyed and sharp of tongue, and she ran the household with an iron rod. I have no doubt she was a good mother, but my admiration for her probably stops there.

  Emil was a delight. In his sixties, he’d arrived in New Zealand as a young man from his native Switzerland, and his homeland was still important to him. He loved Swiss music, but he wasn’t allowed to play it in the house. His solution lay in an old wind-up gramophone that he perched on the back seat of his 1950s black Humber Super Snipe. He would put the car in first gear about 11 each morning and crawl along the winding farm lane. It was lovely fertile volcanic ash country with rolling easy terrain, but with enough small hills to make it testing on a tractor. At various places on the track, where a tree gave some shade, he would park the great black beast. Then he’d triumphantly and carefully slip an old 78rpm record from its paper sheath and put it on the turntable. Very carefully he would put the gramophone arm with the old pointed needle on the outer edge of the now revolving record, hop into the front seat and listen blissfully to the songs of his homeland. He was in heaven, or nearly so, for a man needs a drink on a hot day. Emil loved a beer, but Mrs K wasn’t going to allow the demon drink in her house.

  Emil had a solution for that too. There was a series of drinking troughs at strategic places in the lane. In each of these Emil stashed a couple of bottles of DB brown ale, big bottles, with the long neck of the era. Nice and cool. With his Swiss music going and a glass of beer in hand, heaven was even closer. But not quite close enough. A dazzling ray of sunlight shone through the tree from time to time, spoiling his peace.

  Solution three was an old wheat sack, a three striper, moistened in the trough then draped from the roof over the windscreen. Heaven was reached.

  Many times in the three months I spent on that farm, I would see the old Snipe parked somewhere along the kilometre-long lane, sack on windscreen and music wafting from the open windows. The old boy would lie back and close his eyes, but his grip on the glass of beer never wavered.

  For some reason, Emil took a shine to me. It may have been because his wife didn’t like me at all. Perhaps my face gave away the distaste for the boiled whole potato that sat on my plate for every meal, breakfast, lunch and dinner. The only variation was what went with it. Perhaps a piece of toast in the morning, a lettuce leaf at lunchtime, a chop at night.

  Coming from South Island sheep and beef farms I was used to plenty of food, and I always felt hungry in Tokoroa. Whatever the reason, Mrs K didn’t think much of me, but Emil became my friend.

  On one occasion George decided I needed educating in the ways of Hamilton. We left the farm on a Saturday night and travelled at high speed up State Highway One through the little dairy town of Putaruru, and what we did in Hamilton I have no recollection of, but I remember a couple of bars. At 2 a.m. it was time to go home. I was milking and I had to get the cows in from four-thirty.

  Somewhere around Cambridge, with rain on the windscreen, a wet road, and the speedometer showing around 150, George said, ‘Watch this!’ On a straight stretch of road he spun the wheel. The car did three, not one but three, 360 degree spins along the white line of the main highway, and when we’d stopped gasping, George the rally driver headed on home and delivered us to the farm.

  Flick … ‘Shit.’

  Flick … ‘Shit.’

  Something was annoying the hell out of me. I’d lain down on the bed at 4 a.m., fully clothed, telling George I’d just have a rest before I went to get the cows. George, God bless him, had immediately climbed into the adjacent bed and gone to sleep. So, apparently, had I.

  Flick … ‘Bugger off.’

  Flick … ‘Fine man you have here, George.’

  Flick. />
  ‘Fuck off,’ or so George later told me that I’d mumbled.

  Mrs Kuttel was standing by the bed, flicking water from a cup into my ear.

  The boss lay in deep slumber less than a metre away, while his mother attacked the said fine employee, yours truly. It was 5.30 a.m. and milking was going to be late. I stumbled out, completely discombobulated, and somehow brought the cows in for milking but we probably missed the tanker.

  Result: a ‘grade’. Downgraded payout for the day. Shame on the hired hand.

  After that I was dog tucker in Mrs K’s eyes. The summer was a long one, relieved by the odd game of cricket (Sundays 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the Waikato), some evening hay-carting with locals, and the occasional foray with Emil.

  One night, Mrs K went out, a rare occurrence. We all had our dinner, a sausage and a potato, then Mrs K packed her bag and disappeared. I don’t think she could drive, so perhaps George took her or maybe a friend picked her up, because I was left alone in the house with Emil. He was a different man, cheerful and ebullient.

  ‘Hey Pettterrr,’ he said, ‘would you like a trink?’ His Swiss accent was thick and guttural, but warm and friendly. I thanked him, and he took me through to the living room, the holy of holies, where I’d never been invited before.

  ‘Look,’ he croaked. ‘George brought me ziss from Ausstrallia.’ With a flourish he pulled out a full bottle of Benedictine, a high-alcohol liqueur which many will recognise. ‘Ve’d better haft one.’

  He produced two huge glasses, the sort that peanut butter used to come in in the 1960s, about 300 millilitres in volume. They were designed for household use as general drinking glasses once the peanut butter was gone.

  He removed the screw top of the Benedictine bottle with difficulty, and filled the two glasses to the brim. I looked at the bottle as he put it down. It was two-thirds empty. ‘Cheers,’ he cried and, with a flourish, lifted his glass to his mouth and drained the lot, neat.

  I watched, fascinated, as his eyes watered, his face went red, and his hands went to his head.

  ‘Cheeesuss,’ he cried, and disappeared out of the room. I could hear him crashing around in the bathroom, then he must have gone to his bedroom. I saw him no more. I carefully poured my glassful back into the bottle, and replaced the offending article in the cabinet.

  I took the glasses to the kitchen, washed and dried them, and returned them to their cupboard. I looked around. No evidence for Mrs K. I closed the door and returned to my bedroom.

  Never a word was said, but Emil wasn’t at breakfast next day, and Mrs K seemed grimmer than ever. I felt a warm glow for this kind man. A good bugger.

  But I would rather have been on a South Island sheep farm.

  There is a postscript to this story. In early 2015 the phone rang at my home.

  ‘Voice from the past,’ said the unknown caller.

  I had no idea who the voice belonged to. Which one of my old Lincoln mates was it? ‘Give me a clue,’ I ventured.

  ‘You reckoned I couldn’t drive a nail up a dead pig’s arse,’ from the mystery man.

  Now that particular vulgar clause is one some Aussie taught me years ago in Sydney, when I worked with some mechanics. I’ve often used it since as banter to many mates when they’ve made a minor driving error, or just to joke about their driving ability in general. The answer didn’t help at all.

  ‘Give me another clue, I’m stuck.’

  ‘Greymouth,’ he said. ‘1974.’

  I still couldn’t think who it was. I’d probably used the jibe a thousand times. It usually made people laugh.

  ‘George Kuttel,’ he said.

  Bloody hell. George was Emil’s son, the dairy farmer and hay and silage contractor and rally driver. I hadn’t seen him for 45 years.

  Now the Greymouth bit comes from when Ally and I were first married in 1972 and we went to live on the West Coast. I worked for the Westland Catchment Board as a soil conservator, and Ally taught at the local Catholic high school. The Rally of New Zealand came through the West Coast one weekend. I knew George was in it, so I went down to the Greymouth centre where all the cars were on display on Saturday. I found George’s car, but I couldn’t find George, so I’d left a note on his windscreen.

  ‘Sorry to miss you, but you couldn’t drive a nail etc, etc …’

  I hadn’t seen him since, but in 2015 George had been in a bookshop in Tauranga and seen Cock and Bull Stories. He’d recognised my name and bought it. Then he’d looked me up and rung me.

  I was really chuffed. Forty-five years and we still had a bond.

  Such is rural New Zealand.

  BINKY BOYLE — PJ

  Dogs. I’ve always loved them. As a child in Dunedin we had a bad-tempered family cocker spaniel called Jamie, who bit so many people he was eventually put down, but he didn’t put me off dogs.

  When I went to work on farms it was a joy to have my very own dogs, to train and spend most of my working day with them.

  As a veterinarian I found I had a natural affinity with dogs, and I got on pretty well with most of them. And yet, looking back, without being reminded, I can only remember a few as individuals. Apart from those we owned as a family of course.

  Of the individuals I do remember, one standout was Binky Boyle. Really there was nothing particularly standout about him, but there was something very special about his owners.

  Binky himself came to us in 1998, not long after we opened the new clinic in Redwood Street with Stuart Burrough. I think he may have been Stuart’s patient at his previous practice, but I’m not really sure. Over the next nine years we all saw Binky regularly. He was a solid little bichon frise, who had many of the standard mishaps in his life.

  A ruptured right anterior cruciate ligament. A corneal ulcer. Then a ruptured left anterior cruciate a year later, a not uncommon problem for dogs. Persistent ear infections. Skin infections on his abdomen which turned out to be food allergy, and so on. In later life Binky prolapsed a lumbar disc, developed moderate hypothyroidism, and was put on ACE inhibitors to treat his elevated blood pressure.

  None of these things are unusual in a dog’s life. But his owners were simply extraordinary.

  Raewyn and Don Boyle were and are good ordinary New Zealanders. There was nothing flash about them, and I’m sure they live straightforward and decent, simple lives, still.

  They would do anything for Binky, and brought him to the clinic regularly. In later years they would have up to 20 visits to the clinic in a year, and we had a solid, friendly relationship with them both.

  What made them very special was chocolate. Raewyn Boyle made chocolates to a standard as high as most whose whole business is chocolates.

  She made thousands of them, in myriad shapes. She must have had hundreds of moulds, and her skills were wondrous.

  Raewyn didn’t sell any of her chocolates, she gave them away. And The Vet Centre Marlborough was one of the greatest beneficiaries of her generosity. Three or four times a year Raewyn would appear in the clinic with a massive basket of chocolates, sometimes two.

  Their presentation was superb. Coloured ribbons and tinsel, Father Christmases, reindeer, Easter bunnies, you name it, Raewyn made it. There were solid chocolates, chewy chocolates and chocolates with a huge variety of delicious soft fillings. Every basket was labelled ‘From Binky Boyle’.

  There would be whoops of delight in the staffroom as the receptionist arrived holding the latest wonder from Binky, and so large were the offerings that it usually took several days for a dozen hungry nurses and vets to clean them all up.

  Raewyn’s generosity was amazing, and her skill in making the chocolates was extraordinary. I never found out whether Raewyn and Don had grandchildren, but if they did they must have thought gallons of chocolate was normal life.

  From time to time Binky would turn up for another appointment, never very happy about being there, but stoically enduring whatever latest indignity we were putting him through, whether it was a thermometer up his bottom, so
me fluorescein in his eye, or blood being taken from his cephalic vein in the front leg. He never grumbled, but neither did he look excited to see us.

  There has never been another Raewyn Boyle and probably never will be. She and Don loved Binky passionately, and the chocolates were their way of showing they appreciated our care.

  It’s generosity like theirs which puts the icing on the cake for us veterinarians. We did our jobs as professionally as we could, and the successful outcome of whatever we were doing was reward in itself. But the amazing and special relationships we formed with people made worthwhile all the long hours, the late calls and the working weekends.

  Just before I retired in 2007, Don and Raewyn made an appointment for Binky, and they wanted me to see him. At that stage Binky was developing mild Cushings disease. This is a chronic over production of corticosteroids from the adrenal gland, and is life threatening. He was in his twelfth year, and was drinking and urinating a lot, and the Boyles were worried for him. He was getting pretty lethargic and I knew he didn’t have long to go. But he was still interested in life around him, and it wasn’t yet his time.