Overview Fifty years ago, Lottie boarded ship at a Dutch port bound for Wellington. She and her fellow passengers were New Zealand immigrants under the government's assisted passage scheme for displaced persons following the end of WWII. Embarking on a new life with the help of her first employers, Sir Matthew and Lady Oram, Lottie quickly adapted to the New Zealand lifestyle. A few years later, she crossed the Tasman but unable to adjust to the hot South Australian summers, she returned to New Zealand....

Overview Evan's boyhood interest in deer hunting around Waimate led him, at the age of twenty-one, to apply for a job as government culler in the Te Anau Basin. Two seasons for the Forest Service were followed by several years as a shooter involved in the venison recovery industry in southern New Zealand. For almost a decade, he and his wife and children were based at Martins Bay on the Fiordland west coast before moving, in 1983, to start a new deer farm on the outskirts of Te Anau. This recording...

Overview Fifty years ago, while the politicians and planners made board table decisions about the future development of what was one of New Zealand's remotest regions, Chris Carran and his brothers were working on those changes from the ground up. As agricultural contractors, in the mid-1950s they were hired to clear the land and plough paddocks that would permanently alter the topography of former run country in the Te Anau Basin. From those inauspicious beginnings as a teenager, Chris returned to Te...

Overview Dave spent about eighteen years working as a shepherd and farm manager in the remote back country ranges between Mossburn and Te Anau before and after the government's 30-year farm development scheme in the same region. This interview looks at the changes Dave experienced working for an individual runholder whose attachment to, and investment in, the Burwood/Mavora/Centre Hill area could not compete with the government agency that by 1966 had bought the rights to the leasehold properties and...