Puketoro Station
MY TOWN
WRITER: LEIGH MCNEIL / PHOTOGRAPHERS: REBECCA WILLIAMS & LEIGH MCNEIL
What is lockdown life like when your bubble includes 18 other people? That has been the reality for farmer, Leigh McNeil, writing from a 21,000 acre station on the East Cape. With the local village an hour’s drive away, isolation is a way of life for the farming community of Puketoro Station.
Covid-19 lockdown. Week three. Never in my life have I been more grateful for where I live. I have to admit to being somewhat surprised that I’ve ended up living up here, in the back blocks under the shadow of Mount Hikurangi. Our bubble is an hour’s drive up a winding gravel road, normally thick with logging and metal trucks and dirty Hiluxes. Pine trees are our neighbours for most of the drive, and when we get to the main road we still have another hour to get to Gisborne. It’s not for everyone.
On the flip side, we have 21,000 glorious acres to play in while the world battles this damn virus. Of course, it’s business as usual for us as we are deemed to be an essential business. Thank God. It’s also deliciously quiet now, with no trucks rumbling past the gate and no queues of camo-splashed hunters coming in for the ‘roar’.
Up here at Puketoro Station, we are also in the slightly unusual position of having 19 people in our rather large bubble. We’re more like a small village. We range in age, from four months to gold carders, so there’s always someone to chew the fat with. Given that our six single boys who live in shared accommodation are all under 25, there’s entertainment aplenty around the cookhouse table at dinner time. There has been an assortment of hilarious lockdown hairdos, performed after a couple of beers or three. It’s lucky that no-one’s going home to see their mothers anytime soon.
The banter round the table ebbs and flows with a very masculine perspective. Estrogen up here is in slightly short supply but fortunately our wondrous cook, Jen, is quick to laugh and is broad of mind. She says the wine helps. So far, everyone seems to be coping admirably with the lockdown, having a job to do and lots of space certainly helps. I can’t imagine any of us being in an apartment in a city.
Tokomaru Bay is our local, an hour’s drive away. A quintessential seaside village of palm trees, rolling surf and 500 ‘coasties’ who call it home; it’s a great place to escape to, though of course, not right now. Everything is shutdown in Toko except for Chris and Becky’s Four Square, which is doing a roaring trade. When I spoke to Chris today he was outside holding back a line of 15 people waiting patiently to stock up their larders. He says that in his business he never expected to be holding people back from buying stuff. A strong community man, he also spends half his time doing deliveries for the kaumātua, who are the village’s most vulnerable residents.
Because of Chris and his right-hand gals, we’re lucky up here at the Station that we don’t have to venture out of our bubble to get our groceries; although it’s getting to the stage that a visit to the Four Square in Toko would be akin to an overseas trip in excitement value. These days, we call the shop with our various orders and out it comes, up to nine at a time, packaged up on Barb’s rural delivery truck. Food, beer, smokes and Easter eggs. All the essentials of life.
We could not be more grateful to live where we live and to work in the farming industry at a time like this. We have a job that we love, we have vast spaces, and we have a great group of fabulous people to be in lockdown with. What more could
one want?
The view from Leigh’s bedroom at Puketoro, with the iconic Mount Hikurangi in the background.
The Puketoro annual sheep and cattle sale, in early January.