Click photo to enlarge
Richard Burdon and dogs prepare to round up sheep on Glen
Dene. Photo by Craig Baxter.
Nestled between Lakes Hawea and Wanaka Glen Dene Station
is a traditional high country farm in the midst of change.
It is a third generation family farm, owned and run by
Richard Burdon, who took over from his father Jerry, who took
over from his father George.
On the station's hillsides, merinos and red deer with giant
heads of velvet graze on tussockland in the foreground of
unparalleled vistas of mountains, lakes and big blue skies.
At certain times of the year, musterers bring the sheep out
of the hills and with their large packs of dogs, workers
wearing wide-brimmed hats and moleskins get to work in
outdoor wooden yards.
These are picture-postcard images of a high country farm
indeed.
Then look down the hill and you will catch an almost
continous glimpse of the grey ribbon that is State Highway 6
cutting its way through the farm's low paddocks.
This road carries more than 500,000 vehicles right through
the farm every year.
And it is just one clue that isolation is not all
encompassing here.
Glen Dene's homestead sits on the shore of Lake Hawea, only
five minutes from town.
The children of the farm go to the local school, shopping is
done regularly in Wanaka, a tourism hub 15 minutes away, and
there is an international airport an hour away.
And the farm is not just high country.
Branch just a little way either side off the road to Wanaka
and you will pass by one of Richard's two leased flat blocks,
acquired in the past three years to help sustain the farm.
It is in these very differences from other, more isolated,
high country farms that owners Richard and Sarah Burdon see
opportunity and the means to ensuring Burdons for generations
to come will still have a farm at Glen Dene to farm, if they
want it.
One might think they would be busy enough running a 6000ha
high country farm, but the couple is also expanding into
recreation and tourism.
It is a plan that provides them with the challenges they both
seem to enjoy, but also one that will reduce their dependence
on the farm's income and at the same time add to the
long-term sustainability of the family's farming business.
Achieving that sort of sustainability requires taking quite a
different approach to that of previous generations, Richard
Burdon says.
It requires diversification, expansion and sometimes whole
other ways of using land previously only used to grow sheep.
But most of all it requires some hard yakka.
At 7.30am we report in to Richard at the Glen Dene woolshed.
The station runs from the Neck, south between Lakes Wanaka
and Hawea to its border with Mt Burke Station near the Hawea
township.
It carries about 10,500 stock units, mainly merinos, deer and
cattle and the couple also run another 5000 stock units on
300ha of flat land in two leased blocks at Maungawera and
Hawea Flat.
There they grow out trophy stags, grow crops, fatten lambs,
finish stock and winter dairy cows.
Add to that the recent purchase of the 200-plus-site Hawea
Motor Camp, to which they plan to add a further 7ha of land
soon; their trophy hunting and adventure tourism businesses;
plans to expand in to Glen Dene branded meat products and
eco-tourism; Richard's directorship in a Dunedin-based land
management consultancy; holiday rental accommodation and the
couple's voluntary involvement in multiple organisations,
there are few dull moments for those living at Glen Dene.
First on the agenda for the day is meeting the workers to go
over what is on.
The station has four full-time staff and a selection of
locals who work casually.
Today there are two extras, musterers who work to a rota
around several farms in the district, bringing sheep down
from the high country.
