From Ireland to Staveley: Nor’wester’s Legacy

Where the Nor’wester Blows

As a chronicler of other people’s family, farm and social histories, it was probably inevitable I would eventually dust off the folders and albums in my study and tell the story of how my parents, farmer and agricultural journalist Roland Clark (‘Nor’wester’) and his devoted wife Betty, came to New Zealand to farm some 66 years ago. However, this book is much more than the tale of one family – it’s also an account of rural New Zealand in the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s, a heartland and social history which celebrates life in mid Canterbury, and especially Staveley. Inevitably, I share much of my parents’ story, but I have chosen to tell it in the third person so the focus would stay on Roland and Betty, their remarkable lives and the people who made it all possible.

I was brought up in a world of stories – not just the ones appearing in the books that filled our sideboard, or those featured in daily newspapers and children’s radio programmes, but stories of my father’s upbringing in Ireland, evocatively recounted at every opportunity. Roland, his brother Dick and their widowed mother Norah lived in a modest bungalow on the windswept coast of County Antrim in Northern Ireland. There were many anecdotes about the boys’ everyday lives, but a much richer canvas was provided by summer holidays with their father’s family at Largantogher, a large house and estate surrounded by a famine wall, and at Ardtara with Norah’s parents, the wealthy owners of the oldest linen mill in Ireland. As a prominent Anglo-Irish family, the Clarks had a significant social, political, manufacturing and military presence in the northern counties of Ireland. Trout poaching lessons from the Ardtara chauffeur, sailing adventures around the North Antrim coast, shooting grouse in the peat bogs and the lives of early Irish saints were among Roland’s favourite topics. He was fascinated by everything – and so was I.

My mother’s memories of early years on Sandalwood, her family’s sheep station in the remote outback of north-west Queensland, also caught my imagination. Her tales of life in the corrugated iron homestead included descriptions of heat so intense crystal glasses shattered, of nights spent sleeping on the verandah (it was much cooler than inside) and of furniture made from kerosene boxes. Plagues of rats and cats swept across the land and my grandmother ruined her best umbrella when she used it to kill a snake. A photograph of the pioneering aircraft the Southern Cross, taken the day Sir Charles Kingsford Smith landed in the family’s horse paddock, has always been a treasured possession.

Then there were the war stories. When serving in the Mediterranean with the Special Operations Executive, Roland landed spies on rocky shores under cover of night, while Dick was ‘Mentioned in Despatches’ for his acts of gallantry, distinguished service and outstanding leadership in Europe. Betty was a physiotherapist in the Australian army and her brother Bob, a wireless operator with the RAF, spent years as a prisoner of war in Germany. More contentiously, their father’s cousin, Francis Stuart, made regular anti-British broadcasts from Berlin.

The frisson of wartime adventure was followed by the sparkle of romance when Roland (by now the manager of a Belfast linen mill) and Betty met and married in Ireland. When they decided to emigrate in the late 1950s, they chose New Zealand. It can’t have been easy to leave the safety of Ireland for a new life in an unknown country, but letters and articles from the time show Roland and Betty never faltered in their resolve or optimism. Every time there was a challenge – whether it be buying the farm at Staveley, dagging sheep or dealing with adverse weather events – they soldiered on, seeing the positive side of every situation. Whenever my parents spoke of our house burning down in the middle of the night (we were lucky to escape with our lives) they said the subsequent warm embrace of the community meant it was the best thing that could have happened to them. It was people that mattered, not possessions.

An irrepressible communicator, Roland started writing articles when living in Ireland, continued to do so on the ship to New Zealand and never stopped. When writing for agricultural magazines (most notably the New Zealand Farmer) Roland’s pseudonym ‘Nor’wester’ and his lively and provocative ‘The month down south’ articles were famed throughout rural New Zealand. Two decades of weekly columns in the Christchurch Star gave him scope to write about almost anything that took his fancy, including grandchildren, Ireland, woodwork, propagating proteas and his passion for tree crops. Roland’s role as one of the founding members of the New Zealand Tree Crops Association was recognised along with his agricultural journalism when he was appointed an Officer of the British Empire (OBE) in 1991. It was a significant honour for someone who once asked his neighbour to show him how to plough a paddock.

As I’ve worked on this book, it’s been wonderful to get to know Roland and Betty, and to explore their lives from an adult perspective. My mother’s positive attitude, solid good sense, financial acumen and robust sense of humour were all pivotal to the way she adapted to multiple new lives. Family, community, gardening and other creative pursuits sustained her through good times and bad.

More remarkably, I’ve often felt my father and I were writing this ‘memoir’ together. Roland’s enthusiasm for almost everything, combined with his love of writing uplifting stories about people, has been inspirational at every point. It’s been a tad overwhelming at times – the archive of family papers beside my desk includes approximately 2000 of Roland’s articles, along with numerous letters, scripts for radio broadcasts, two Country Calendar television programmes, an unpublished manuscript and many photographs. It was an embarrassment of riches, but it’s a problem I’ve been fortunate to have!

Where the Nor’wester Blows: Roland and Betty Clark of Staveley by Bee Dawson, Quentin Wilson Publishing, RRP $60.00