NZ Folk Song * Big Yellow Paddock of Gorse

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In the 1800s, settlers from Northern Europe cleared New Zealand's lowland forests and established grass paddocks in order to produce mutton, beef, butter and wool for export. To contain the sheep and cows and to give them shelter from biting winter winds, they planted gorse hedges. In NZ's hot summers, the gorse seedpods burst, flinging seeds across the paddocks.....

Can't remember the last time I took in this view,
Hills spilling green and the sky shining blue,
Where the creek used to run down it's water-worn course
Is now just a big yellow paddock of gorse.

Where the house used to be, just a chimney stack stands,
And all the hard work of my grandfather's hands,
The dykes and the gardens, against nature's force,
Is now just a big yellow paddock of gorse.

Chorus

It's just a big yellow paddock of gorse in bloom,
Hedges of hawthorne and ditches of broom,
Everywhere you look there's no more room,
It's just a big yellow paddock of gorse.

The bush and the birds once covered this land,
Great rivers that twisted their way to the sand,
Have all give way to the grasslands and dams,
For the big yellow profit of butter and lamb.

Fields falling fallow at man's heavy hand,
Prices are down and so is demand,
No point in trying to flog a dead horse,
You're left with a big yellow paddock of gorse.

(Chorus)

I remember a time we looked out for each other,
Neighbour for neighbour and sister for brother,
Now it's each to his own and it's all getting worse,
Y'left with a big yellow paddock of gorse.

(Chorus x2)

Gorse in New Zealand

In the colder climate of northern Europe, gorse (or furze) made good hedges.

But in New Zealand we now have large spreading infestations over thousands of hectares. The seed can lie dormant on the ground for up to 50 years, germinating quickly after the adults have been removed.

Unfortunately, most methods of removing adult gorse plants, such as burning or bulldozing them, create the ideal conditions for the gorse seeds to germinate and total eradication with current technology seems impossible. Gorse is now one of the most widely spread agricultural weeds in New Zealand, covering 700,000 hectares.

Gorse as a nursery plant

Nutrients added to NZ soil by aeons of seabirds were quickly leached from grasslands, and grass-clad hills are prone to erosion. So gorse is valued for its role in starting the rapid development of protective native forest.

Gorse is a legume, with nitrogen-fixing bacteria in its root nodules, and the thousands of tiny fallen gorse leaves form excellent mulch for the native tree seeds in the droppings of birds that shelter in the gorse. The bird droppings also add more nutients.

Shade-tolerant plants such as māhoe and poroporo grow under ageing gorse and quickly push through the collapsing gorse stems. Then as light levels increase and the mulch layers build up, more ferns, mosses, shrubs trees, insects, worms and birds establish themselves. Regeneration

A social indicator

In the mid-1900s, 2 million New Zealanders were busy asset-stripping the land's resources, and everyone had enough resources to share with each other. But in the 2020s there are now 5 million of us and fewer resources, so life has become a lot prickly and it is much more difficult to get through it.

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Webpage put onto folksong.org.nz website April 2022