January 27 - Lyttleton (Christchurch), New Zealand

It’s another sunny day here in New Zealand.  I had to get up early to go on a tour and when I opened my drapes I found I had three visitors on my veranda.  Today’s vista is very different from those of the last few days. The hillsides surrounding the harbor are not covered with lush green foliage.  Instead they remind me more of the hills around southern California.

Lyttleton is the port for the city of Christchurch which is the capital of the Canterbury region of New Zealand.  It’s on the east coast of the South Island.  As of 2023 Christchurch had a population of not quite 400,000. As with other parts of New Zealand the area was first settled by Maori people.  The British came in the 1840’s and the city received its charter in 1856 which actually makes it the oldest city in the country.  Lyttleton is about 7 miles from Christchurch and accessed quickly via a 2 km tunnel.

Today was the day I was supposed to go to Middle Earth but the six hour plus bus ride was unappealing.  Instead I’m off to see a sheep farm. I’ve seen those before, but the ride there gave me an opportunity to see some of the countryside.  Unfortunately all tours today left early so I had to drag myself out of bed.  I shall need a vacation from my vacation.  We boarded our bus with our excellent driver Wayne and headed  east on a winding road around the estuary Lyttleton lies on.  I was sitting up front and I was impressed with Wayne’s skills.  We went through hairpin turns on a road that often had a significant drop-off. Along the way we passed fields with sheep and cattle and others with big bales of hay and other forage for the livestock.  We passed a few lakes which were brown in color because they’re shallow and always quite windy so the bottom silt is being roiled constantly.  

After an hour we arrived at the farm we were visiting, Manderley.  Two gold stars if you can figure out where that name came from.  The farm couple, Ross and Mary, met us as we pulled into their drive.  They live in a trim house built back in the 1880’s.  It looked like it was in great shape and it had both a nice pool and a lovely garden.  The house is at the foot of a pretty significant and steep hill.  Ross first told us a little about his dogs. They are either border collies or a mix of collie and retriever.  One is a pup still in training.  I had no idea, but he told us a well-trained sheep dog can be sold for as much as $9000.  He proceeded to give us an example of their herding ability. Using just his whistle he sent the dog up this steep hill to where a group of sheep were grazing.  They were so far up I could barely see them. The dog rounded them up and then began moving them downhill.  The farmer wanted half to go in another paddock near the foot of the hill and just by whistling he got the dog to separate them and move then appropriately.  A group of six came down to stand near us and the dog sat and watched them.  If they began to move he would go to them and round them up again.  All this with just whistles.

This is Manderley

Farmer Ross

Way up sort of in the middle next to to tallest trees were a bunch of sheep

This boy raced up the hill directed only by whistles from Ross down below

And he brought these guys down to visit with us

This pup is in training. He  desperately wanted to get in on the action but he's not ready for primetime yet.

Next we went into a shearing shed and Ross gave a lamb its first shearing.  The farm has two kinds of sheep, regular wool ones whose wool is used primarily for carpets and merino wool sheep whose wool is used for fine clothing.  Lambs wool is frequently used to make baby clothes.  Adult sheep are shorn once a year; lambs are shorn more often because seeds from plants in the fields get stuck in their wool and can eventually work their way into their skin causing irritation.

Well, this was one laid back lamb.  Ross held him sort of between his legs and began shearing him. As he did the lamb would just flop around any way he was pushed and it probably took 7 or 8 minutes to complete the job. The lamb’s skin was so soft it felt like velvet and he seemed quite happy to be rid of that hot coat.  It is summer here after all.

Here's Ross getting ready to shear. Doesn't he look like the stereotypical Kiwi or Aussie sheep farmer?

The lamb is feeling much lighter after getting rid of his heavy coat.

After the shearing we went to the house to have some tea or apple juice and cookies.  In addition to sheep Manderley also has cattle.  Last year when I visited a sheep farm in Chile the  farmers there told us about the low price of wool, and evidently it hasn’t improved.  I gathered that many sheep farmers are raising fewer sheep and more cattle because there’s more money to be made in the latter.

And now you know more than you ever needed or wanted to know about raising sheep in New Zealand. We took our leave of the farm and headed back toward Christchurch.  I remembered that not so very long ago Christchurch experienced a couple of devastating earthquakes.  Wayne, our driver, told us about them. In September 2010 a 7.1 magnitude earthquake whose epicenter was west of the city struck.   A second one with an epicenter closer to the city that was 6.3 struck in February 2011.  Despite being lower it was more intense and violent so it did more damage and caused 185 fatalities.

We got a little tour of town and if we wanted to we could stay and catch the ship’s shuttle back to Lyttleton.  I didn’t see anything that caught my eye so I stayed on to go directly back to the ship. Rebuilding is ongoing.  To give you an idea about the priorities, the sporting facilities which were destroyed have been almost completely rebuilt.  The big Anglican Church has not.

More New Zealand tomorrow. Goodnight for now.