Australia and New Zealand (Cont)

The itinerant way of life led by Colin, Isabella and their children in Victoria between 1853 and 1869 clearly transformed them into a hardy pioneering family, accustomed to conditions that were unfamiliar in Mid Ross - including heat, dust, working from horseback, poisonous snakes and spiders, and long distances between settlements that required greater self-reliance.  It was a tough life, but amidst it all Colin and Isabella seem to have ensured that the children got enough schooling to enable them to read and write, skills that they themselves had not acquired in Scotland. Colin too had obviously risen within the ranks of the colony's agricultural workers, and may well have begun to harbour ambitions of getting a property of his own. If so, he would have been disappointed by the government of Victoria's decision to terminate a land scheme that gave first right of refusal to people who broke unoccupied land from scratch.  This check to the aspirations of men with little or no capital resulted in many leaving Victoria for New Zealand. Among them were Colin and his family.  To help pay for their passage, Colin took on a droving job which led him to Melbourne by a different route from that taken by Isabella and the children.  Fourteen-year old William was given the task of overseeing the 400-mile overland trek by wagon that brought Isabella and the family to Melbourne for embarkation.

Isabella and children in Victoria c.1868 (William not present)

Colin Munro in Napier New Zealand, c.1878

In 1877 Colin and Daniel took over the vacant lease of an established sheep run in the relatively remote Taupo district, some 70 miles from the seaport of Napier.  The property, in the locality of Wharetoto, near Lake Taupo, was held on a 'Maori  lease' that had been granted by the local Maori community. It comprised 55,000 acres already stocked with 5,000 merino sheep and 50 head of cattle, and the previous lease-holders had invested in buildings, fences and hedges. However, they had not been able to make the business pay, and it now fell to Colin and Daniel to try to do so.  The Wharetoto Run was also known as 'Lochinver', after the place of that name in Sutherland, but since neither Colin nor Daniel had links to Sutherland it would seems that the designation was the choice of the previous occupants.  The family's new start in their new location was further celebrated by the marriage of Catherine, then 20 years old, to Daniel, who was 32.

New Zealand was a popular place for Scottish emigrants in the mid-nineteenth century,  many arriving directly from Scotland to settle in the South Island in particular.  However, others, like Colin and his family, had tried their luck first in the Australian colonies  before moving to a land that was environmentally more like that of their homeland and where they themselves were less of a minority.  Colin and Isabella first pitched up, around 1869, in the little settlement of Waimate, half-way between Christchurch and Dunedin on South Island.  There the last of their children, Isabella, was born in 1871, and there too Colin went into a butchery business with a young man named Daniel MacDonald, who had also been born in Urray parish (where his father was a farm labourer on the Ord estate). The MacDonald's lived only a mile or two from Isabella's family and it is more likely than not that the MacDonalds and Rosses, if not the Munros, knew each other before the meeting with Daniel in New Zealand.  There were 20 years of age between Colin and Daniel. Even so, a firm friendship was established, and a few years later, with the savings from the butchery business in their pockets, Colin and Daniel headed north to the Hawkes Bay area of North Island.  There, with the end of a long succession of Maori Wars, land was becoming available for lease or purchase.

Catherine Munro and Daniel MacDonald, 1877

There is a diary which provides some details of life on the new sheep station between 1878 and 1886.  It was kept mainly by Colin's eldest son, William, but with occasional entries from other members of the family.  By and large it concentrates on the daily routine of running a large agricultural enterprise.  Amidst fairly regular complaints about the weather (the area was clearly much wetter than the young folks had been used to in Victoria or on the Canterbury Plain of South Island) it records the great amount of work to be done to develop the station and to keep it running as a going concern.  The mustering of sheep in various localities, shearing, washing and pressing wool, protecting the flocks against wild dogs, the sale of wethers (or wedders) to butchers in neighbouring towns, the cultivation of oats and potatoes for family consumption, the construction of various farm buildings, the cutting and carting of timber, and the laying on of hospitality for various visitors - all these activities and more are recorded in the dry account of daily life on the station.