It was part lure of the mountains but primarily a means of business expansion for which the Miller family bought Glen Eyre Station in Northern Southland.
Jason Miller told a recent Beef and Lamb New Zealand West Otago monitor farm field day at Wilden Station that while he has a love of the high country, the 3500ha Glen Eyre Station was also an opportunity to link a breeding property with their 600ha intensive finishing operation at Glencoe in Southland.
While Glen Eyre was a summer-safe property, he said the terrain was not well balanced, growing out young stock was a problem and winters were long.
It was running between 4500 and 5000 stock units of half-bred sheep and Hereford cattle.
They replaced the flock with Perendales, but he said they still had many small lambs which, when taken to Glencoe for finishing, compromised wintering because of the time needed to reach killable weights.
Mr Miller said the focus fell on lifting lamb weaning weights, from which overall performance improved.
As part of that, cattle numbers were lifted and used over winter to tidy pasture before being taken to Glencoe for finishing in the spring.
Being summer safe, trading cattle were bought to control summer pasture quality.
Ewes were condition scored through winter and pregnancy scanned, a fertiliser regime employed to improve clover and burning and oversowing used to lift the quality of spring feed.
Average weaning weights subsequently lifted and the fit with the downland finishing farm was completed.
"By focusing on one thing, it flowed over to others."
The family eventually sold Glen Eyre, in part due to its being 100km from Glencoe, but also because of the insurmountable issues of its altitude, 300m above sea level to 1500m above sea level.