Near Duntroon, approaching Danseys Pass, you enter fossil country – a land in which the limestone captured dolphins, sharks, even whales, during an epoch when everything here was under water. It’s a route they call the Vanished World Trail.
Take the road that climbs above all this, up into the foothills of the Kakanui Mountains, and you come to Dome Hills Station, home of David and Cindy Douglas. You might say that this place also represents a near-vanished world – that of the high-country family farm. It’s a world of mustering by horseback and remote huts, with vast flocks of sheep driven by dogs through long-shadowed tussock land. Big sky country – 7000ha of it – with views all the way to the North Otago coast.
It’s been David’s life, a place he’s been away from as little as he can be, other than for a stint at boarding school in Christchurch and six months’ travel overseas. These days, though, various industry commitments mean he is often travelling. The third generation of the Douglas family to farm Dome Hills, he doesn’t see “iconic landscape” when he looks out; he sees home. “It’s just your life, part of who you are,” he says of the farm of 12,000 sheep and 1000 cattle.
Cindy is more voluble about her love of this part of the country. Raised in the Canterbury high country, she moved to Dome Hills when she and David married in the early 1980s. That first year they lived in the single men’s quarters while David’s parents built a new house for themselves up from the homestead.
Beside the Kakanui River, which begins its journey to the sea in the high reaches of Dome Hills, she points out a flock of paradise ducks – “parries” – flying past. When her three now-adult children were young, she would ferry them by Land Cruiser to the deep pools here to swim, float on lilos and eat a picnic beside the water. The place is in their blood too.
“I love it here. I can’t imagine living anywhere else but in the high country of the South Island.”
It’s not an easy life, however; when we visited, a three-month drought had only just broken, mere days before the water tanks would have run dry. They can be snowed in for a week and when the wind is up they are right in the firing line.
In this kind of surroundings, you need a big, warm, dry house. After Cindy and David moved into the homestead, they engaged Queenstown architect John Blair to rework the place.
“Everything was opened up to let the light in and to make much bigger rooms,” says Cindy. “When you’ve got three children under five, as we had at that point, you need lots of indoor spaces, especially in the winters. It’s a good family home.”
That’s family home in the broadest sense: on the walls are images of David and Cindy’s ancestors. In one instance, they even appear in the same photograph – a shot of the 1928 All Black team to South Africa. There is Cindy’s grandfather, Maurice Brownlie, the captain, and just behind him her great-uncle Cyril Brownlie; in the back row is David’s great-uncle, Bill Hazlett. “It’s a bit of a family joke – two great-uncles in one photo,” she says.
The big sitting room has seen parties for three family 21st birthdays. From the front windows you can see the farm road making a snaking descent through the foothills. Oamaru, the nearest town of any size, is 40 minutes distant.
Living up here requires a degree of planning – you can’t just pop out to the shops. Trips into town are organised around a series of jobs, such as picking up supplies from Rural Traders, visiting the vet and bringing back a serious load of groceries. Cindy’s storeroom is stocked with her home preserves – quinces from a friend in the Waitaki Valley, Kakanui tomatoes, endless jars of marmalade.
But Cindy doesn’t consider herself cut off. “Even Christchurch isn’t that far away. It’s only as isolated as you make it.”
Since David’s parents moved to Christchurch and Cindy revamped their house as a guest lodge, there have been more visitors in the past two years than in the previous 40. Guests come to hunt or to fish, but in many cases they’re attracted by the idea of being part of a high-country farm.
Cindy, who runs the lodge as a business concern, tries not to let it affect the day-to-day running of the station. “But, if guests are here at the right time for the mustering, then I can take them to be involved or to watch, either on horseback or, if they can’t ride, then in the truck. And they love it. I hear it so often: ‘All my life I’ve wanted to go into the high country on a cattle muster’.”
It wasn’t always so accessible. Before David put in something like 160km of farm tracks, the only way to muster Dome Hills was by horse and the mustering team would have to spend nights in the back country. These days it’s generally just a single-day exercise.
“Packing up for an expedition to Crumb Hut was major,” says Cindy. “There’d be pots of stew, candles, fruit cake, tins of fruit and beer.
“But the kitchen is still an integral part of station life. I’m in there making sandwiches and things to send out at shearing time and so on. And with the lodge I’m probably cooking as much as I ever have. I cook a lot of lamb and mutton, because that’s what we grow.”
Cindy also cares for her horses. “Off the record, I’ve got nine of them; I don’t think David’s counted yet.”
She also regularly visits her children. Polly, 26, is a Wellington solicitor; Ben, 24, is in banking in Auckland; and Lucy, 21, is studying at Otago. Will they eventually take on the farm? Possibly. “They all feel passionately about this place, but they’re away doing what they need to do first.”
Whatever happens, David is certain that Dome Hills, freeholded several years ago as part of the tenure review process, will never be sold. “There aren’t a lot of other places now where you can go out with your horses into the back country and that heritage is going to become more and more important. We’re going to maintain this part of the high country.”
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