Predicting Weather By The Moon - Xavier University Libraries

Weather By The Moon
ally detect this because the narrator would tell you one thing
and do another went when he thought you weren’t watching.
I had to refer to tide tables because I always set the
net at low tide. I also had to refer to planting guides. That
was all to do with the drovers. These silent throwbacks to a
previous century moved on horseback, unshaven, sullen figures,
in their Man From Snowy River-type oilskins, towing
fresh pack horses behind, and surrounded by ever-moving
yelping keen dogs.. They ‘drove’ cattle from Gisborne
to saleyards and abattoirs further north, to Rangiuru near
Tauranga and Horotiu on the other side of Hamilton. You
would see them coming miles away, hundreds of animals
slowly moving, stopping to graze, holding up traffic in many
cases and leaving messy roads as they went through a small
town. The bigger towns had special back roads for them
signposted ‘Stock Route’.
The drovers ‘planted out’. They carried little germinating
seedlings with them in springtime, which they put in
the ground so that when they came by that way again, they
could reap a harvest. Although they had no land of their
own, they picked areas that were hidden from view - the
back of a disused rubbish dump, the downside bank of a
newly formed bridge approach or the top area on both sides
of where a new road cut through a former hill.
In this way, here and there the drovers established little
growing patches. All were out of sight from the road,
and unknowingly, well fertilised by the farmer. The drovers
grew things that took care of themselves, like pumpkins,
butternuts, potatoes, beans.
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