REPORT FROM NEW ZEALAND

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After some time on the Hargreaves farm, we found an isolated spot near the coast and got permission to live there as squatters. We were prepared to make do in tents and corrugated iron huts, with our furniture stored in crates under tarpaulins, while we built a house of logs, sod and stone. Instead, we discovered an old place—near the road and just at the start of the track I'm building to the sea—where we can live rent free for as long as we need to.

The house was built of pit-sawn timber in 1913, survived the great earthquake of 1929 and has been empty (except for rats, opossums and borers) since 1953. It's still fit to live indry, with room for the family and livestock—and it's an appropriate setting for our furniture. The oil lamps, camp oven, antique pots and utensils have never looked so right. Everything has a new significance here: The tick of the clock, the laughter of the children, the noise of the kitchenware are different from the same sounds in town.

Jos put up the tapestry loom and started weaving while I began work on the track to the land which is available near the sea. The route will be six miles long, and for a third of its length it will follow the course of an old road from goldmining days. There's hardly anything left of that trail save the printing on the map. The earthquake buried it under slips in many places, trees have fallen across it and the vegetation is just as dense there as elsewhere. But the deer and wild cattle here have used parts of the trace, and because the lost roadway was well surveyed—keeping to the same level everywhere—its recovery is possible. The effort is worthwhile because the rugged terrain will make it difficult to find a better way.

Another two miles of my route will be covered by boat, across a large marshy lake which formed when a landslip blocked the valley. The creek at the end of the waterway follows a dry riverbed toward the sea for two miles more. On both sides rise the steep hills covered with dense bush. It's good going along this stretch, although the water must be forded in several places.

At the mouth of the stream—Falls Creek—is the clearing where we have leave to squat. My sheep are grazing there now, on the sweet grass mingled with many herbs. The fishing is good: pauas, mussels and edible crabs abound. The wild surf breaking on the little white beach is breathtaking. Farther along the coast there's an area of rocks and boulders where it's possible to go at low tide. The early settlers used to drive their cattle along there . . . a hazardous, cruel business, moving the animals slowly so they wouldn't break their legs, but not too slowly lest they be trapped by the incoming tide.

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