On The Banks Of A Braided River
Kate Fraser
Old farmers know why hills turn purple, why cows sit down in the morning and when it’s going to rain. “It’s the weather,’’ said my Uncle Reggie. “When the hills on the other side of the river are purple it’ll rain tonight. When cows sit down in the morning it’ll rain before tea. You need to know these things about your place, girlie.”
Uncle Reggie was probably 79 at the time. I was about nine and we both lived in Kurow, a small township on the banks of the Waitaki River in North Otago. Kurow is girt about with hills large and small, near and far, and most are rugged and bare with nothing much between tussock and scree but thorny matagouri.
The Hunter Hills on the other (Canterbury) side of the river, though, are different. They rise from the valley floor in gentle folds with sometimes a broad plateau, gullies of bush and bracken. In the mornings these hills are golden-green; in the afternoons they’re pretty with blue shadows. And when they’re bruised and purple as plums, sure enough, it rains in the night.
Kurow is the only settlement right on the river’s banks, yet most of North Otago claims the title “Waitaki District”. It is where I grew up and it is the place I think of as home. I can still say I’m a local as we now have a crib there, albeit further down the Waitaki Valley in Duntroon.
 The Waitaki River is a braided river, wandering from the Southern Alps to the sea and depositing vast spreads of greywacke shingle along its course, among which the water must find its way. Its string of hydro lakes (Waitaki, Benmore and Aviemore) is man-made but their beauty and serenity suggest they have been here since the Ice Age ended. In summer the verges are lush with wildflowers, especially viper’s bugloss, known hereabouts as blue borage, and the air is rich with the scent of blooming briar roses. Even in the chill of winter there is colour: snow-white mountains, jade-blue water and the golden reflections of a thousand willow trees.
Change has come to the Waitaki, but it is not immediately apparent. A couple of rickety-rackety one-way bridges still straddle the river joining Otago (Kurow) to Canterbury (Hakataramea), wild salmon still come upriver to spawn, orchards continue to flourish east of the township, and as ever the autumn muster drives hardy merino sheep down from the tops to the river flats.
It’s a sociable place, Kurow, with two pubs in town – “and one over the river”, as the locals say – and at last count three cafés and two catering businesses. Fast-and-fried used to be the order of the day, but the food revolution is making inroads all the way up the valley from Oamaru to Omarama. Today a good cup of coffee is as easily found as were scones and a cup of tea when my mother and her friends had afternoon tea parties.
 Everyone in our house spent lots of time in the kitchen. My mother had baking days to fill the tins and every day she cooked a two-course meal – three if it was soup weather – served sharp at noon. My father did breakfasts: sausages, eggs, chops, and mushrooms, tomatoes and oysters in season. Like everyone else we had a vegetable garden but also looked forward to the first Jersey Benne potatoes from Totara near Oamaru and tomatoes from Kakanui.
The river offered trout and salmon. Hogget was the favoured meat, sausages were fat loops of coarsely cut pork and “far too much bread”, according to my mother, and bacon was never watery. If we had steak it was “undercut” and pan-fried in butter. Offal was a treat. Rabbit was often on the menu – in pies, roasted, braised in milk and mustard, fricasséed. Uncle Reggie’s version of the mating habit of rabbits was riveting stuff for a nine-year-old.
Rabbits are scarcer now, dairy farms have arrived and sheep numbers are down, but the major change is the arrival of vineyards. Clay Cliffs vineyard in Omarama was established in the mid-1990s but attention has shifted to the limestone terraces between Kurow and Duntroon, and the new vineyards of Ostler and Waitaki Valley Estates. It is said – by those promoting the area admittedly – that the soils and climate are similar to those of Burgundy. Greywacke stones in the creek and limestone on the terraces make a great combination, say viticulturists.
The 2004 vintage was a benchmark for the region – for the wines and, thanks to the efforts of newcomers Fenella Barry and Steve Harrop, as the year the Waitaki’s growers and artisan producers received overdue recognition. Steve is general manager of Waitaki Valley Estates and his wife, Fenella, is a chef. When they came to the district with their two children, fresh from the high-rise stresses of Hong Kong and London, Fenella sought out farmers, apiarists, orchardists, bakers, butchers and cheesemakers.
“It was all here – fantastic fruit and honey, the best meat and wonderful vegetables,” she says. So she organised a “Taste of Waitaki”, with proceeds going into a community trust.
It was a small event held in the Kurow Hall. Ticket-holders expecting the usual selections of bread and cheese were gobsmacked. Forrest Estate Pinot Gris 2004 and Otago Station Estate Doctors Creek Pinot Noir 2003 were accompanied by Island Stream pecorino cheese crowned with Waitaki Honey organic honeycomb, organic Totara Jersey Benne potatoes tossed in seasoned olive oil, smoked salmon served with lime cream cheese in crêpes, sashimi salmon with Waitaki wasabi, walnut shortbread with Whitestone Windsor Blue cheese and quince paste, and more.
 In March this year the second Taste of Waitaki was celebrated. A grander event by far, it drew 500 enthusiasts to Campbell Park, Otekaieke, a mini-castle in large grounds, trumpeting its status to a cluster of empty buildings and a quiet country road. New Zealand’s own London-based celebrity chef Peter Gordon, who was in the district to help launch Waitaki Braids, the vineyard he part owns, was star chef for the evening. Wines came from John Forrest, Valli (whose winemaker Grant Taylor was born in Kurow), Michelle Richardson (also a partner in Waitaki Braids), Craggy Range and Ostler.
Peter was loud in his praise for the regional produce. Even some of the locals were astonished. Whitestone cheese was on the menu, in the form of haloumi and mushroom fritters. Mt Cook farmed salmon cured with Milford whisky was served on blini and also whipped into a mousse and served on Harbour St Bakery black bread. Havoc pork from Waimate (the Havoc plan takes pigs from paddock to plate, from the farm in the shelter of the Hunter Hills to a butchery in Waimate) was cooked on the spit and served on crostini with the tart Raeburn cherries grown by Basel and Myra Severinsen at Tokarahi. Venison from Foveran Deer Park in the Hakataramea Valley was wrapped around rocket and roasted pear slices, while braised merino from Otekaieke Station appeared in a fragrant curry.
A talking point of the evening was the wagyu beef. Wagyu is a Japanese breed of cattle famed for its tender, juicy marbled meat and the cattle are farmed by Nat Small at the family property Taihoa near Cattle Creek. Seared wagyu was served sushi-style with local fresh wasabi, and in a fusion style with ginger, yuzu, hijiki seaweed and a creamy blend of tofu and wasabi.
Desserts too were a feast of the district’s produce: late apricots from River T orchards roasted with cumin and decorated with walnut praline; crème caramel made with sheep’s milk from Island Stream and blue borage honey from Waitaki Honey apiaries, and a goat’s milk ice-cream served with coulis of Waitaki fruit.
 No question, the district is full of wonderful food. So is Waitaki set to become the next big culinary thing? Not exactly. Many of the food growers have stepped up from commodity production direct to export. The best of the meat and fruit, most of the honey and even many of the artisan products are hard to buy locally. For this to change there will need to be demand from the domestic market.
It is possible. Forward-thinking restaurateurs and food distributors are already on the case, and some producers are testing the market with internet sites. Whitestone Cheese (see left) and the Harbour St Bakery both have very successful retail operations.
In the 1950s when boarders at Waitaki Girls’ High School walked in crocodile formation to Oamaru’s Friendly Bay, we took a short cut along a quaint cobbled street whose claim to fame then was the Lane’s Emulsion factory.
Lane’s Emulsion was an unctuous fish-flavoured syrup much loved by parents who believed a daily dose prevented all ills. Its ingredients included cod-liver oil, creosote, lime, eggs and, unbelievably, seven per cent alcohol.
It was an acquired taste, but we should all be thankful for its legacy. Without that busy factory it is possible the Victorian building in which it was housed would have been demolished, along with its equally grand neighbours in the old Oamaru town. The main tenant in the Lane’s factory today is the Harbour St Bakery - one of many shops in the proudly embellished limestone buildings that allow Oamaru to spin its reputation as a centre of Victorian splendour.
Between 1905 and 1960 the citizens of Oamaru voted for prohibition, which meant the town had no bars, no pubs, no clubs and no licensed restaurants. Nothing to drink and not much decent food either. It has caught up fast, but it is a tad astonishing still to be constantly directed to Hampden, 20 minutes to the south, to buy “the best fish and chips in New Zealand”. Maybe the claim is fair.
Others might travel a little further, to Fleur’s Place at Moeraki, where ex-Oamaruvian Fleur Sullivan has built a whimsical restaurant. Here the rich and fishy chowders, fish platters and pan-fried fish-of-the-day selections have established Fleur’s Place as the fish restaurant of choice for a huge number of people – locals and visitors.
Fleur says she had to overcome “a bit of bureaucracy” before she won the right to buy fish fresh off the Moeraki fishing boats that tie up right beside her restaurant, but she prevailed. “Food from on your own doorstep will always taste better,” she says. And though her doorstep is more than 100 kilometres from mine, I find it hard to disagree.
As Uncle Reggie might have put it, “Your own place is always the best.”
FACT FILE
Much of the produce mentioned in this article is not generally available to the public, but some may be sourced direct from the producer or at selected outlets.
Harbour St Bakery, 4 Harbour St, Oamaru, ph: 03-434 9923
Havoc Prime Pork Products, 39 Belt St, Waimate, ph: 03-689 8288
Mt Cook Salmon Farm, Tekapo-Pukaki Canal Rd, SH8 between Tekapo and Twizel, ph: 021 370 038, www.mtcooksalmon.com
Whitestone Cheese, 3 Torridge St, Oamaru, ph: 03-434 8098 (factory tours, shop, café, cheese tasting), www.whitestonecheese.co.nz
Photography by Guy Frederick
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