Tom O'Brien believes his ancestors would nod quietly in approval at his endeavours to make their high country land more profitable. Guy Williams talks to the owner of Blackmore Farms about the challenge of adding recreational tourism to the farm's books.
It was only on the first day that Tom O'Brien questioned whether digging a 28km mountain bike trail by hand was a good idea.
The fourth generation owner of Blackmore Farm, Garston, remembers completing about 20 metres that day.
"There was probably a half-hour period when I stopped and thought ‘what the hell am I doing?'
"That was the only moment of doubt."
On December 6, after 18 months of hard labour, the.6m-wide, grade 3 (intermediate) trail was formally opened, closing the first chapter in the story of Tom and wife Katie's new venture, Welcome Rock Trails.
However, it was only the latest happening in the 103-year history of Blackmore Farm, whose 2000 hectares sprawl across the rolling hills of the Slate Range, south of the Remarkables Range, on the border of Otago and Southland.
Welcome Rock Trails takes its name from the prominent rock that sits on the skyline above the homestead. The rock was named by the early settlers - farmers and gold prospectors - who used the landmark as a meeting and trading point.
In 2012, Tom (40) had a bright idea: build a system of biking trails that would follow the old gold mining water races crossing the property.
Gold had its heyday in the area in the 1860s, but prospecting continued in fits and starts into the 1930s. One of its legacies was a series of water races - channels cut across the hillsides - built to bring water from streams to mining sites. Three of them cross the farm.
The 47km Roaring Lion Race - the second-longest in New Zealand - took 30 men three years to build with picks and shovels.
Today, the trail follows about a half of the Roaring Lion's length. Riders can complete it in a day, or stay overnight at one of three huts, including Mud Hut, built from clay more than a century ago.
The trail's genesis was Tom's chance meeting in Kingston two years ago with an international mountain bike trail designer who, after encouraging him to take up the sport, became intrigued by Tom's descriptions of the water races crossing the farm.
A month later, the pair walked over the property, beginning a process of mapping, planning and research that fine-tuned that vision into today's reality: a hand-built cross-country cycling track in the subalpine zone, with the ability to stay overnight in a hut, offering riders breathtaking views and features of historical and ecological interest.
When he shared that vision with his parents, they "probably had their reservations, but didn't express them".
In fact, without realising it, they had laid the foundations of Welcome Rock Trails nearly a quarter of a century earlier.
The history
The story of Blackmore Farm is the story of New Zealand agriculture.
Tom's pioneering great-great-grandparents James and Georgina McLean moved into the Wakatipu area in the 1880s, taking up land at Halfway Bay on the lake's western shore.
Tom says that with his "iron constitution" and huge capacity for work, James laid the foundations for the succeeding generations.
In 1911, James and Georgina's son Angus took up the leasehold at Blackmore Farm with his wife, Katherine, and their 1-year-old son, Tommy.
The next few decades were dominated by the growing of halfbred merino wool.
When Angus died in 1950, Tommy and his wife, Doris, took over. Tom says his grandfather and namesake was an exceptional cropping farmer who diversified into barley, wheat, peas and seed crops.
The farm passed on to Tom's mother, Kit, when Tommy died in 1974. In a reversal of traditional roles, Kit was the hands-on farmer when she married Des, whose parents owned a fruit shop in Gore.
Kit and Des grazed Perendales for lamb and wool, persevering with the latter despite the fickle prices of the era, but also growing cereals and diversifying into deer.
Tom says they worked hard to keep the farm afloat in tough times, disregarding advice to take him and his four siblings out of private boarding schools.
However, his parents' most radical decision came in 1990 when they placed 1000ha - half the farm's area - under a conservation covenant.
The Department of Conservation (Doc) had told them the farm's high country held several species of invertebrates and insects endemic to the area, including the giant Powelliphanta snail and the equally large carabid beetle.
They could continue to run up to 500 stock units in the covenanted area, and in return,
Doc would build two new fences, renew or repair the existing fencing, and deal with invasive species such as wilding pines and gorse.
Tom says the decision made sense given the prevailing wool and lamb prices, and the land's ecological and historical values.
"At the time, people must have thought they were nuts, because they were still paying rates on it. But it wasn't economic to run wethers out there anyway."
Doc was obliged to keep the country clean, which had allowed the land to "rejuvenate".
Pick and shovel
Twenty-three years later, in a reversal of the usual Doc-farmer relationship, Tom approached the department with his proposal for the trail, about a quarter of which would cross the covenanted area.
The result is a formal partnership in which the O'Briens "have basically become stewards of Doc land, whereas in the past they were the stewards of our land".
To free up the time needed to dedicate himself to the project, he leased out Blackmore Farm and began wading through the planning process: preparing a business plan, getting a resource consent and working with Heritage New Zealand on an archaeological survey of the area.
By June last year, six months after that chance conversation in Kingston, he was digging the trail with a pick and shovel - just like the Chinese labourers on the Roaring Lion Race 110 years before him.
"It's the hardest job I've ever had. You become very fit, strong and mentally focused."
Extra grunt came from a succession of Willing Workers On Organic Farms (Wwoofers) from throughout the world.
Many people told him he was crazy - "I probably am a little bit" - but it was the only way to do it, he says.
Heritage New Zealand had made it a condition of its support that no power machinery be used. Hand-building was also compatible with the land's undulating contours and the sensitive nature of its flora and fauna.
"The trail has no straight lines; it's always flowing and changing."
Core values
Tom says cycling trails are "all the rage" now, but thinks Welcome Rock Trails' ecological, historical and landscape values are its point of difference.
He is limiting the number of riders on the trail at one time to 50, to ensure the experience is one of remoteness and solitude.
"We need to preserve our core values.
"It's not a race - we don't want to push people through.
"Fit people could do it in a day, but the whole point is for them to take their time."
The trail has already received the highest possible rating in the latest edition of the Classic New Zealand Mountain Bike Rides guidebook.
When he told author and New Zealand cycle tourism pioneer Jonathan Kennett that he expected only a handful of riders to use the trail each day, Kennett told him his problem would soon be keeping numbers under the 50-a-day limit.
His dream is for the trail to allow the farm's traditionally unproductive high country to generate as much revenue as its productive lower country.
Should it be the success he hopes for, he will start building a second trail in about two years.
About 20km in length, and entirely inside the covenanted area, it would drop down from the Slate Range to the Nokomai River, passing through 200ha of mountain beech forest while following the Braying Donkey water race and dam and other remnants of the Nevis Valley's mining past.
Legacy
Asked what his forebears would think of Welcome Rock Trails were they alive to see it, Tom reflects on the energy and drive of great-great-grandfather James and the entrepreneurial spirit of grandfather Tommy who, after a sailing holiday in the Whitsunday Islands in the 1950s, had to be talked out of selling the farm and buying an island in the group as a tourism venture.
From his parents to his great-great-grandparents, all had seen the fortunes of gold, wool, cropping and milk boom and fade, and "done whatever was needed to grow and grab opportunities".
They would understand his and Katie's decision to add recreational tourism to the story of Blackmore Farm.
"If they could see what we're doing now, they would probably have their reservations like everyone else, but they would quietly nod their approval.
"They'd get it."
