Farmers are not happy these days. Regulations and taxes have led to protests. But 45 years ago today with farmers’ livelihoods and farming future on the line, protests went to a whole new level. Reporter Toni McDonald walks down memory lane.
Invercargill's Victoria Ave flowed with the blood of emaciated stock slaughtered by frustrated farmers.
"Bloody Friday" — Friday, June 9, 1978 — entered into New Zealand history books after desperate farmers descended on the city’s unsuspecting business district and released more than 1200 starving sheep on to the CBD’s Dee St.
Confused animals, running in all directions, created chaos in the Dee St traffic as they were herded towards Victoria Ave, where most met their death at a predetermined killing zone.
Protest co-organiser Syd Slee yesterday remembered the day with clarity.
Despite the event’s sober objective he recalls some lighter moments when some sheep ran into the Woolly Weavers knitting shop, while another lot got trapped indoors behind automatic doors.
But he also recalls how desperate farmers had become to cull the starving stock from their drought-stricken farms.
"In fact, during the first half of 1978, there were only nine days on which all four of the Southland freezing works were operating at the same time."
There were 116 recorded stoppages in the first five months of 1978, which caused a significant financial loss to multiple sectors of the Southland community.
At the time of the protest, there were still more than a million sheep to be processed, he said.
"Stock were dying in the paddocks and farmers were at a point they felt they couldn’t cope any longer ... It was time for radical action, so the idea of Bloody Friday was born."
The plan was birthed by him and his newly found friend and Te Anau farmer, Owen Buckingham, on a Tuesday, and with the aid of the party-line bush telegraph, by Friday it was a reality, Mr Slee said.
"We were so fed up about it all, we felt determined something had to happen, and it did."
Both farmers were shocked at the level of support they received from the farming industry but were happy they managed to finally get the attention of the Wellington politicians and unions.
"We didn’t know if there were going to be 30 farmers or 300."
More than 300 turned up.
He believed even more would have turned up had there been more time.
The pair knew they risked arrest for their illegal actions, but went ahead anyway.
"At one point near the end of the protest, the police paddy wagon pulled up and we thought, ‘this is it, we are going to be arrested’. Then before our very eyes the police opened the door and out stagger five old ewes. We breathed again."
Each farmer was to bring 10 thin old ewes to town to be released on to Dee St and later slaughtered at a Victoria Ave site.
Despite the pair being blacklisted by freezing workers’ unions and enduring a year of personal backlash, the bloody protest started positive change within the industry, Mr Slee said.
Looking back on that time, he was satisfied with the outcome of the protest, Mr Slee said. But it was not something you could find a comparison for now.
"They were desperate times ... but it is not the sort of thing that you would want to ever repeat."
Mr Slee, now 80, became a lifelong friend of Mr Buckingham after the protest and was invited to tell the story of their experience at Mr Buckingham’s memorial service after he died last week.
