Winston Parks has not parked up the quad bike and put away the dogs just yet.
However, due to turn 80 on April 3, with his wife Hazel following suit next year, they are definitely taking their farming life down a notch.
Married since 1964, when Owaka Rugby Football Club won both South Otago banner and knockout titles in the same year, they have reached a crossroads. Mrs Parks has beaten cancer but is living with health issues and Mr Parks is recovering from an eye operation.
The time had come for the parents of Deborah, Sandra and Athol, to step back.
"It’s a period I’d not looked forward to because I’ve loved the farming life," Mr Parks said.
They are looking to sell the blocks immediately around their house on Nuggets Rd, which they bought as a retirement project before they sold the Sandy Bay farm over the hill, in 2002.
Along with outstanding views to the Nuggets, the land has an outstanding piece of QEII-covenanted bush and historic carvings from the earliest inhabitants of Kaka Point and the Nuggets.
"We gave it to the Queen, and when Charles becomes King we’ll ask him to give it back," he joked.
"No, I think we’ll keep it for William and Kate."
On the plus side, retirement might free up time to do other things. For years, people have been telling the Nuggets identity to write a book. He has yarns that would fill 10 of them.
"People tell me, get a tape recorder and just start talking."
He is the last of the original farmers from the Parks and Murray (as in the late Bruce Murray) families. Between them, they farmed the entire Nuggets for more than 100 years, from Willsher Bay to Cannibal Bay, which takes in some of the Catlins’ and New Zealand’s most beautiful coastlines.
The Parks’ story really begins with his great-grandfather, Alexander Edward Parks (1847-96), who was a lighthouse keeper.
Alexander’s first appointment in the New Zealand Lighthouse Service was to Godley Head near Christchurch, followed by Akaroa (1879), then Taiaroa Head.
Mr Parks tells the sad story of the fourth eldest child, his great-uncle Johnny (John Arden Parks), who was playing with a hoop at Taiaroa — and followed it down the cliff to his death in 1886. He was 7 years old.
"They killed sheep and cattle and chucked the remains down the same gut hole, where the sharks fed below."
But luckily poor Johnny’s body didn’t meet the same fate. It was recovered and buried at the Portobello cemetery, where it lies next to his parents.
Nugget Point lighthouse was the family’s next station. Alexander was the fifth lighthouse keeper and served from 1890 to 1894.
Their eldest son, Edward Morris Parks (1875-1964), who Mr Parks knew as great-uncle Teddy, took over the keeper’s position and continued to follow the tradition, also serving at the Nuggets.
He left the lighthouse service in 1924 and took up farming at Paretai, South Otago, between Kaka Point and Balclutha. He died aged 88.
Mr Parks’s grandfather, Harry Percy Parks (1877-1970), who lived to 93, was the second eldest of this family. Harry also went farming at Glenomaru as a "skinny wee boy of 12 or 13".
"They were never big men, my grandfather or father, and he drove a big team of Clydesdales for the Wilsons. They can still get out the pay books and see that they paid Harry Percy Parks."
Harry went on to work for a foundry and engineering firm in Invercargill but eventually came back as a 19 or 20-year-old, and bought the block at Sandy Bay.
"He felled the bush and started a hill bush farm. Basically they camped there and today you can still see the potatoes they planted. They’re still growing."
Mr Parks’ father, Frank Hamilton Parks (1917-1970), did not go down the lighthouse or farming routes and eventually became an auctioneer and stock agent. The family moved to Dunedin when Mr Parks was of secondary school age. He went to King’s High School in 1953.
On leaving school, Mr Parks went off to get some high country experience with a "fearsome old bastard" at the Jolly farm in Tarras.
"Bill Jolly was a tough old bugger, a hard man. He’d have you trembling with terror in your boots, then when he’d got you where he wanted you, he’d throw his head back and start to laugh."
The unpicked All Black, whose rugby career was interrupted by war, taught the young Mr Parks many life lessons that have stayed with him today.
He returned home in 1961 and bought the farm off his grandfather as a 19-year-old.
He and Mrs Parks, who is from nearby Romahapa and farming stock, were passionate conservationists and started a yellow-eyed penguin sanctuary at Sandy Bay at the bottom of their property.
"Sandy Bay used to have one of the strongest penguin colonies in the South. There could be 50 adults standing there in a great long line before they headed off into the bush."
He still farms the remainder of his cattle and sheep breeds from the Nuggets Rd property and operates a landmark New Zealand Caravan and Motorhome Association camp site, Nugget Burn. There he regularly holds court, regaling campers with colourful tales of the past — most of them true.
He recently met a woman camper whose family was of Cornish origins and had a tie to the Nuggets, which is likely to have been through lighthouse keeper Richard Tregurtha (1881).
"That’s what I love, that we all have these connections."
A keen horseman, he’s ridden in about 23 goldfields cavalcades, and did his last when nearby Owaka hosted the annual event, in 2018.
"I thought that was the way to end it, at Owaka. I’ve pretty much done with it now, but I’ll probably still do rides like the Catlins Canter."
Farming on the coast was not a lot different from farming anywhere else.
"We get the northeast winds, but not as much rain. It’s not a lot different to Owaka, but for every mile you go south you get an inch more of rain."
Farming used to be more about hard, physical work.
"I’ve worked my butt off. Big days, with breakfast at 2.30am and you’re away up the hill with the dogs.
"Farming’s different now. That physical work is done by machinery.
"I’ve rolled three quad bikes, I’ve had accidents and come off horses.
"My back’s stuffed — I’ve been told that, but I do enjoy pottering about.
"If the neighbours need me I’ll be out like a shot with my quad bike and two dogs."
- By Mary-Jo Tohill
