Invercargill Archives

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 Farm development was a major government policy in the 1950s and 1960s and the Te Anau Basin underwent the largest South Island scheme across four decades. Although a new kid on the Long Valley Block in 1968, Phil had previously gained stock management experience on a stud farm in Mid-Canterbury. Before that, he had worked on farms across Southland and in Canterbury as a shearer as well as a general hand. In this profile, Phil talks about some of that work experience and focuses on the...