Family’s kindness changed orphan’s life

The future for Mac Cawte didn’t look too bright when the three-year-old and his nine-year-old sister Barbara were placed in an orphanage after their parents died in the early 1930s.


Mac Cawte driving the first tractor used on the family farm at Pongakawa.

Garrett Family
Maire Cawte (nee Mark) still lives in the house which was she and Mac’s home, while Barry and Catherine live in the homestead built by the original owners, the Garrett family, in 1886.

In their kitchen hangs a framed, hand-drawn survey map of the farms in the area, dated 1889, with notations on the back which show the land sold for seven shillings and sixpence per acre.

“This is a wonderful old house with such a homely feel about it. Whenever alterations have been made old newspapers have been found behind the scrim and even the bank book of the original owner dated 1886,” says Catherine.

Catherine and Barry have between them five adult children, Sara, Kate, James, Grace and (little) Kate, all of who loved spending time with Mac on the farm and enjoying Maire’s afternoon tea after school.  Maire trained as a school teacher in the late 1940s before marrying Mac, so was extremely helpful with homework too.  

“They were so lucky to grow up having such a close connection with their grandparents.”

Mac’s mother and aunts, the Benner sisters, were among the “first day” pupils at Pongakawa School in 1892, and Mac and his sister Barbara also attended, riding horses there each day. Later Mac and Maire’s five children, Barry, Sally, twins Ross and Graeme and daughter Kim, were also pupils.

Barry says when his father arrived on the farm most of the work was done by horses. “Dad loved horses and although his father bought a tractor, Dad seldom used it at first.

“When I was a child we still had two old draught horses which were used to compact the silage pit and give us very slow horse rides, as they were pretty much passed doing anything else.”

When he was a growing up, much of the property was over-grown with blackberry, barberry and big old tree, giving Mac the excuse to do what he loved: cutting down trees and building fires.

“Dad saw five cowsheds on the farm during his time,” says Barry. These included an old walk-through shed which Mac milked cows in for many years, until problems from a back injury necessitated something better.

“He built one of the first herringbone sheds in the southern hemisphere in 1954 and many locals thought it was a crazy idea,” says Barry, who also milked cows through the shed which was a 10 aside.


Maire and Mac Cawte on their wedding day.

Radial change
“Visitors came from as far away as Australia to see it as it was such a radical change from the way cows were milked in the traditional walk-through sheds.”

In 1982 Barry built a new 16-aside herringbone shed that was later converted to a 34-aside.

In 2013 when James returned to the farm, a new 54 bale rotary dairy was built and it was Mac who had the honour of putting on the first cups at the first milking.

“Dad just loved the farm, working with animals and milking. By the time he was 60, I thought he should be taking it easy and tried to ban him from the shed at milking time but that made him thoroughly miserable so I had to give in after a couple of months.”


The Cawte family in the yard of the new rotary dairy built in 2013 – from left: Catherine and Barry, James, Marie and Mac.

Catherine says Mac was still riding a two-wheel motorbike at 87 and was very active in the day to day running of the farm.

“It was only after he’d gone that we truly realised how much he did. It was hard to get him to take time out from farming.”

Conscious of the legacy Mac and his adopted parents have left, Barry, Catherine and family have worked through a succession plan to ensure the Cawte family’s links with the land continue.

That’s because, they say, “this is much more than a piece of farmland. To us it’s a very special place for our family and the generations to come”.


Barbara Cawte and her brother Mac used to ride horses to Pongakawa School.


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