Oct 1, 2008
These United nation jobs were pretty lucrative. We were paid in American dollars, at rates that would match the sort of pay that an American scientist would expect, and it was not taxable. Furthermore the "subsistence allowance" as it was quaintly called, which was additional, was about double what you really needed to live on, so all in all, you came home with about 10 000 New Zealand dollars in hand for every month you spent overseas.
So by 1992, when I had just spent three months on a project in Indonesia, I was sufficiently flush to start looking about for somewhere to invest it. At that time, land prices had still not really recovered from the 1987 share market crash, so with a lot of guidance from Barry, I looked around for a block I could put into forestry, and finally bought the 22.5 hectare block at Paparata for $90 000, in April 1992.
Barry showed me where the block needed fencing and he, along with the family and Terry, set up electric fences in strategic places. By 1993 it was ready for sheep and Barry bought me 300 ewes for it while I was away on another U N job in the Seychelles.
Nevertheless, there was a need for better access to some parts if we were to transport posts and plant trees, so I got Norm Strong with his bulldozer to scrape a sort of roadway around the head of the main gully so I could tow the trailer round there. The track was scraped out of pure clay. When it was wet it was very slippery and pretty well impassable for anything less than a crawler tractor. I wanted to get a fertilizer truck round there to blow super phosphate down the sides of the gully, but of course Murphy's law came into play, and steady drizzle kept the track greasy and treacherous for weeks on end. "Alright, Murphy," I thought, "If that's how you want to play it, I'll sow some grass seed on the track. The rain will splash some clay over the seeds and will encourage them to germinate, and the rain will keep the hungry birds off the track meanwhile, as they will be seeking shelter in the trees."
So between showers i went to work with my bag of seed, strewing it with august and rhythmic gesture on the naked clay, and even singing a little in time with the motion. Murphy must have been taken by surprise, for he let it rain for a few more days before starting a drought to frustrate germination. But too late! The little seeds fattened and sprouted, the birds hardly got any of them, and the track was soon firm enough to give a grip to the fertilizer truck.
In due course the truck arrived, driven as it happened by a diminutive Chinese, who, like half of the men of his race, was called Jason. (The other half are called Norman). Jason looked at my pristine track and swallowed and said, "No wonder they sent me ". However, when I climbed up beside him with a show of bravado, he decided to have a go, and we trundled around the head of the gully in a magnificent plume of flying super phosphate. He baulked at going along the ridge beyond the end of the track, but never mind. we had accomplished much, and his nerve had improved to the extent of agreeing to spread the rest of his load over some pretty rough terrain in the open paddocks.
It all worked well. The grass came up, obscuring the track from the prying eyes of the local authorities, (You need a permit these days, every time you blow your nose), and it limited the erosion which would otherwise most certainly have occurred when Murphy realised his error and started the rain again.
Success! Well yes, until the neighbour's itinerant goats invented a silly game which involved climbing onto the bank above the track, and then sliding down while dislodging a cascade of clay. Great joy! It even seems that when one of them achieved a particularly significant mud slide, he was rewarded with the permission of his fellows to go up and consume one of the small trees that I had planted along the top of the bank. Over a year or two the passable width of track was reduced by about half, and if a horse chose a narrow part to initiate, with his great foot, a small landslide on the downhill side of the track its overall utility could be reduced pretty much to a footpath.
I had in mind to get a bloke with a bobcat or something to come in and do a tidy up, but Murphy got wind of that and kept the track wet and greasy all winter, and even now it is still too soft in places for a repair job.
But it's great for mountain biking. A young lady with a motorbike phoned recently seeking permission to use it for a motocross course. I said, "OK" and she phoned back later to say that it was awesome, no less. It's an ill wind...