19. The Rabbit YearsIn 1900 the Crown bought various blocks of land around Waiouru. They were obtained under somewhat dubious circumstances that are now before the Waitangi Tribunal. However, the Maori owners at the time were probably glad to get money for the land north of Waiouru that was worthless after 21 years of Studholme’s exploitative overstocking. Its soil was soured, its tussock gone, its slopes infested by rabbits and weeds; it was eroded, snow-bound, wind-swept, desolate.Those sheepfarmers who did lease the 67,000-acre Waiouru sheep-station from the Crown did not stay long. William Craig took up the lease in 1904, A.C. Morton in 1906, H.J. Chapman in 1908. Next came C.P. Hansen in 1916 but he sold off all his stock in 1919. A land speculator, Wenzyl James Schollum (1874-1958, son of a Dalmatian kauri gum digger), then took over the lease of the empty land, and subleased some of it to F.J. Lynsar. In 1929 Schollum entered into a sort of instalment plan agreement to purchase the Waiouru run, agreeing to pay the government £44,000 (about $2.2 million today) plus interest over a 35 year period. Lynsar’s main income seems to have been from rabbiters who were exporting millions of rabbit skins for fur coats. In 1929, 35 rabbiters paid Lynsar a total of about £1200 (about $60,000) for trapping rights on his farm.  The rabbiters had only a small impact on the rabbit population, but during the 1930s there were no sheep at all on the land, and the numbers of feral cats, stoats, weasels and hawks had greatly increased. By the late 1930s only about 1000 acres of Waiouru land was still infested with rabbits. In 1934 Wenzyl Schollum tried to sell the back blocks of Waiouru to NZ Perpetual Forests, but the high altitude made this land unsuitable for the Radiata pine then available. (There are now frost resistant varieties of Radiata.) He next tried to subdivide it and sell it for £120,000 (about $8 million today, a nice profit!) to rich refugees who had fled to England from Nazi Germany. They had the money, but were unable to obtain passports. 
With the outbreak of war in 1939, the government took back the land near the old homestead for military training. In 1942 the government took all 67,000 acres of Waiouru, and in Dec 1943 a frustrated Wenzyl Schollum went to court seeking £53,000 (about $3 million) in compensation. The Crown produced a whole series of experts who declared that most of the land’s sandy volcanic soil was unsuited for either agriculture or forestry. “It would be throwing money away to farm Waiouru.” declared J.B. Campbell, a farm manager, “This high country has ruined a lot of influential men.” Schollum was awarded only £9,000. Source Croom, F.G. 1941, The History of the Waiouru Military Camp. (manuscript - Waiouru Museum library) |