"The exceeding joy of burning" - Pastoralists and the lucifer match: Burning the rangelands of the South Island of New Zealand in the nineteenth century, 1850 to 1890

Agricultural History

Volumn 80, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 17-34

  Peden, Robert ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF OTAGO   (New Zealand)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

BURNING; ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY; FIRE HISTORY; NINETEENTH CENTURY; PASTORALISM; RANGELAND;

AUSTRALASIA; NEW ZEALAND; SOUTH ISLAND;

EID: 33747207592     PISSN: 00021482     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1525/ah.2006.80.1.17     Document Type: Article

References (60)

1. "The exceeding joy of burning" is the title of a chapter from Lady Barker's book, Station Life in New Zealand, which was first published in 1870. In this chapter she described the delight that she experienced from setting fire to the tussock hills on Steventon, the run leased by her husband Frederick Broome and his partner Henry Hill. Lady Barker, Station Life in New Zealand (1870; repr., Auckland: Vintage, 2000), 222-26.
2. Stephen J. Pyne, Vestal Fire: An Environmental History, Told through Fire, of Europe and Europe's Encounter with the World (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997), 430
3. James Belich, Making Peoples: A History of the New Zealanders From Polynesian Settlement to the End of the Nineteenth Century (Auckland: Penguin Books, 1996), 343, 389. Tussocks are bunch grasses that dominate particular grassland communities in New Zealand. For this essay, these communities can be divided into tall-tussock grasslands, dominated by members of the Chionochloa family, and short-tussock grasslands dominated by fescue tussock, Festuca novae-zelandiae, or silver tussock, Poa caespitose.
4. L. Cockayne, "An Economic Investigation of Montane Tussock-Grassland of New Zealand," New Zealand Journal of Agriculture 18 (Jan. 20, 1919): 6-7
5. R. McGillivray, "The Mackenzie Country Grasslands: Progress of Natural Regeneration and Experimental Sowings," New Zealand Journal of Agriculture 39 (Aug. 20, 1929): 73
6. F. W. Hilgendorf, "The Grasslands of the South Island of New Zealand: An Ecological Survey," Department of Scientific and Industrial Research Bulletin No. 47 (Wellington: G. H. Loney, Government Printer, 1935): 22
7. Kenneth B. Cumberland, "High-Country 'Run': The Geography of Extensive Pastoralism in New Zealand," Economic Geography 20 (1944): 208
8. Kenneth B. Cumberland, "Burning Tussock Grassland: A Geographic Survey," New Zealand Geographer 1 (Apr. 1945): 150
9. R. H. Relph, "A Century of Human Influence on High Country Vegetation," New Zealand Geographer 14 (Oct. 1958): 133.
10. R. L. Peden, "Sheep Farming Practice in Colonial Canterbury, 1843 to 1882. The Origin and Diffusion of Ideas, Skills, Techniques and Technology in the Creation of the Pastoral System" (master's thesis, University of Canterbury, 2002).
11. Alexander Garvie, "Report on the Reconnaissance Survey of the South-Eastern Districts of the Province of Otago, Executed During the Months of October and November, also February, March, and part of April, 1857-8," The Otago Provincial Government Gazette 3 (Jan. 1856-Dec. 1859): 280
12. John Buchanan, "Sketch of the Botany of Otago: Written for the New Zealand Exhibition, 1865," Transactions and Proceedings of the New Zealand Institute 1 (1868): 182
13. Kevin F. O'Connor, "Changing Diversity in Open Country Grasslands: The Varied Effects of Early Pastoralism on New Zealand Landscapes," in Glimpses of a Gaian World: Essays in Honour of Peter Holland, ed. Geoff Kearsley and Blair Harris (Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 2004), 70-71.
14. A. H. Cockayne, "The Natural Pastures of New Zealand: The Effect of Burning on Tussock Country," New Zealand Journal of Agriculture 1 (June 15, 1910): 7-15.
15. Cockayne, "An Economic Investigation of Montane Tussock-Grassland of New Zealand," 6-7
16. McGillivray, "The Mackenzie Country Grasslands," 73
17. Hilgendorf, "The Grasslands of the South Island of New Zealand," 22
18. Cumberland, "High-Country 'Run'," 208
19. Cumberland, "Burning Tussock Grassland," 150
20. Relph, "A Century of Human Influence on High Country Vegetation," 133.
21. V. D. Zotov, "Survey of the Tussock-Grasslands of the South Island, New Zealand," Department of Scientific and Industrial Research Bulletin No. 73 (Wellington: E. V. Paul, Government Printer, 1939): 212A, 222A, 224A, 228A.
22. Kenneth B. Cumberland, "A Century's Change: Natural to Cultural Vegetation in New Zealand," Geographical Review 31 (Oct. 1941): 536
23. Cumberland, "Burning Tussock Grassland," 153-54, 160.
24. Relph, "A Century of Human Influence," 133, 139, 146.
25. R. P. Hargreaves, "The Golden Age: New Zealand About 1867," New Zealand Geographer 16 (Apr. 1960): 3
26. R. P. Hargreaves, "Speed the Plough: An Historical Geography of New Zealand Farming Before the Introduction of Refrigeration" (PhD diss., University of Otago, 1966), 185
27. Alan H. Grey, Aotearoa and New Zealand. A Historical Geography (Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, 1994), 209
28. A. D. McIntosh, Marlborough: A Provincial History (1940; repr., Christchurch: Capper Press, 1977), 104.
29. K. F. O'Connor, "The Role of Burning and Top-Dressing in Snow-Tussock Management," Tussock Grassland and Mountain Lands Institute Review 1:2 (1961): 19-23 (hereafter TGMLI Review)
30. A. F. Mark, "The Narrow-Leaved Snow Tussock," TGMLI Review 10 (Mar. 1966): 39. Mark came to a similar conclusion after a snow tussock burning trial.
31. K. F. O'Connor, "Why Manage Grazing Animals?" NZ Range Management Guidelines 4 (1977): 6
32. K. F. O'Connor, personal comment, Feb. 25, 2004.
33. Ian E. Whitehouse, "Erosion in the Eastern South Island High Country - A Changing Perspective," TGMLI Review 42 (1984): 17
34. M. J. McSaveney and Ian E. Whitehouse, "Anthropic Erosion of Mountain Land in Canterbury," New Zealand Journal of Ecology 12 (supplement 1989): 159
35. I. E. Whitehouse and A. J. Pearce, "Shaping the Mountains of New Zealand," in Landforms of New Zealand, 2nd ed., ed. J. M. Soons and M. J. Selby (Auckland: Longman Paul, 1992), 151.
36. H. E. Connor and H. A. MacRae, "Montane and Subalpine Tussock Grasslands in Canterbury," in The Natural History of Canterbury, ed. G. A. Knox (Wellington: A. H. & A. W. Reed, 1969), 168, 177-87
37. Geoffrey W. Harte, Mount Peel is a Hundred: The Story of the First High-Country Sheep Station in Canterbury (Timaru: Herald Print. Works, 1956), 15.
38. E. Jollie, "From Nelson to Canterbury," in Alone in a Mountain World, A High Country Anthology, ed. David McLeod (Wellington: A.H. & A.W. Reed, 1972), 23-25
39. Laurence J. Kennaway, Crusts: A Settler's Fare Due South (London: Sampson, Low, Marston, Searle, 1874), 130-32.
40. Pyne, Vestal Fire, 352
41. J. B. Acland, Notes on Sheep-farming in New Zealand, with a Short Notice of the Canterbury Province (London: Clowes, 1858), 9.
42. Hargreaves, "Speed the Plough," 185.
43. Samuel Butler, A First Year in Canterbury Settlement (1863; repr. Christchurch: Kiwi, 1995), 152-53
44. E. C. Studholme, Te Waimate: Early Station Life In New Zealand (Wellington: A.H. & A.W. Reed, 1954), 98.
45. David McIntyre, ed., The Journal of Henry Sewell 1853-57 Vol. 1 (Christchurch: Whitcoulls, 1980), 461
46. Rollo Arnold, New Zealand's Burning: The Settler's World in the Mid-1880s (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 1994), 89-92.
47. Rakaia Terrace Station Journal, June 30, 1853-June 14, 1854; fire on Sept. 2, 1856, Rockwood Station Diary 1855-1857, Transcript, Canterbury Museum Documentary Research Centre, Canterbury, New Zealand (hereafter CMDRC).
48. Fires in Sept. 1866 and Sept. 1877, Henry Ford Diary: Typescript of Grampian Hills Station day book kept by Henry Ford until March 1866, the farm diaries of Pareora and Holme Stations, October 1862-December 1873, CMDRC, pp. 7-8.
49. Fires on May 1, 1860, Sept. 10, 1860, Sept. 29, 1860, Sept. 18, 1861, Frank Mathias Journal, Oct. 1, 1859 to Sept. 1861, Hocken Library, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand.
50. W. S. Davidson, William Soltau Davidson, 1846-1924: A Sketch of His Life Covering a Period of Fifty-Two Years, 1846-1916, in the Employment of the New Zealand and Australian Land Company Limited (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1930), 13
51. Crawford Noel, The Station Years: A History of the Levels, Cannington and Holme Station, with Special Attention to the Upper Regions of the Pareora River, Where They Joined (Timaru: Noel Crawford, 1981), 38-40.
52. Acland Family Papers, Boxes 4 and 50, MB 44, Macmillan Brown Library Archives, University of Canterbury (hereafter MBLA); Studholme, Te Waimate, 96.
53. Acland Family Papers, F1/3, Box 50, MB 44, MBLA.
54. Ibid.
55. See Table 1; Acland Family Papers, F1/1 to F1/3, Box 50, MB 44, MBLA.
56. Acland Family Papers, F1/3, Box 50, MB 44, MBLA.
57. These were blocks that were specifically named in the diary as being burned. There were other references to burning where blocks were not named and therefore the burning cannot be quantified: E.g., shepherds "up the run burning," or "in the backcountry burning." Acland Family Papers, F1/3, Box 50, MB 44, MBLA.
58. Zotov, "Survey of the Tussock-Grasslands," 224A.
59. Acland Family Papers, F6/5 and F6/6, Box 72, MB 44, MBLA.
60. Lady Barker, Station Life in New Zealand, 222.