"The Branches," Plains Folk #466 (Copyright Hoy & Isern)

When we asked directions to the Branches, a famed sheep station way up the Shotover River, Lorraine Borrell said we should take Skipper's Road--"a regular superhighway," she said--"and just drive till you get here." What she meant was that at this time of year, it was possible to make it in a two-wheel-drive vehicle. We didn't find out until later that insurance companies in New Zealand refuse to pay claims for vehicles wrecked on this road.

We got there, all right--two hours of peering over precipices, fording creeks, and cranking around hairpin turns later. No worries, mate--it's a rental car.

And it was worth the drive to meet Lorraine and Arthur Borrell, as hardy a pair of pastoralists as can be found in the high tussock country.

Theirs is the pastoral life in stark relief. Arthur, a musterer who had worked all over the high country, and Lorraine, a farm girl from the Canterbury plains, took up the Branches in 1969. The history of the station, told at their kitchen table, is a story of struggle with their surroundings--fantastic tales of helicopter-borne riflemen doing battle against rapacious red deer, even bulldoggers leaping from the copters to bulldog fawns; foot shooters stalking range-destructive goats; mountain keas (green parrots) swooping down to lacerate sheep; and always, the rabbits.

What impresses most people about the Branches, though, is its remoteness. The children took their schooling by correspondence. Lorraine does her shopping twice a year, buying in quantity. When she and Arthur drive the ute (four-wheel-drive utility truck) into Queenstown, they prefer to go at night, when they can see headlights on far slopes and find a place to pull over and let one another pass.

The station flock is 4000 Merinos, kept solely for the wool clip. They sell no lambs or sheep off the station, but truck the wool out, slowly.

They also keep a cowherd of 300 Herefords, which presents the problem of how to market the calves. This they do with an annual cattle drive. It takes four days to drive the herd out, penning it along the road each night. Border collies, raised to head sheep, work well nursing the herd along the cliffs. In narrow places the herd must be split and taken through in small bunches.

For emergencies, there is a well-maintained airstrip. Scores of colorful paradise ducks loaf around the strip. The Borrells don't allow hunters to shoot them, because paradise ducks mate for life, you know. Feel free to shoot the rabbits, though.

I wonder how it affects you to live and work in a place as beautiful and as hard as the upper Shotover River. Riding around in the ute with Arthur, I look away up to the divides, while he discusses vegetation and grazing, pointing out the altitudes at which short tussock gives way to snow tussock, snow tussock to rock. There are no perimeter fences, but "We don't have trouble with stragglers," Arthur says; no sheep is tempted to cross the barren divides. He says, "We love that country. It is never grazed."

In my slide of Arthur leaning against the ute, those stark mountain faces provide background, but what most people notice about the image is that Arthur is barefoot. He's always barefoot, even when mustering sheep off the tops. The country really isn't so hard, Lorraine explains. The schist rock of the mountain faces is soft stuff, not as hard as Arthur's feet.

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