The Burnett Family of Mount Cook Station

20/08/2022

The Burnett family's neighbours for many years. Will be a good read.

We’re Duncan & Carol Mackenzie and we’ve spent the last two years writing a book about our 50 years of farming on Braemar Station on the eastern shore of Lake Pukaki in the Mackenzie Country.
We’re excited to announce that Braemar Station (the book!) will be published this month. We'll be sharing more about the book over the coming weeks so like our page to find out more, or send an email to [email protected] to preorder the book!

Photo: At CaxtonPress checking out first pages of the book!

01/08/2021

Wow, didn't realise it had been so long since the last post! The book has been "percolating" away and a lot more research has been undertaken. The story of the Burnetts is an interesting one and we want to make sure everything is covered. One thing for sure, It is definitely going to be a large book.

We'll post something soon.

05/02/2021

This beautiful oil painting by Christchurch artist, Leonard Hampden Booth (1879 - 1974) once hung in the old homestead at Mount Cook Station and was enjoyed by the Burnett’s and their visitors as they walked the main staircase. TD Burnett purchased the painting for his wife Nellie at the Canterbury Society of Arts Exhibition in 1922 and it remained hanging in the homestead until the late 1960’s when it was sold back to Booth. The painting is now in the art collection at Te Papa Tongarewa. More about this painting in the book.

09/11/2020

Meet William Hobson Lundon JP, who was the first shearer at Mount Cook Station in the 1860's. Described by the Burnett's as "a genuine old-time Colonial", Lundon began shearing at age 15. He was a treasured friend of Andrew and Catherine Burnett, as well as their children. William Lundon died in Waimate on 18 November 1907.

29/08/2020

Catriona married the English environmentalist, Richard St Barbe Baker in 1959 and Mount Cook Station became the headquarters of the Men of the Trees organisation for the next 25 years until after Richard's passing in June 1982. Here is a fascinating film, written and directed by New Zealand cinematographer, Leon Narbey, about Richard St Barbe Baker, featuring some beautiful footage of Mount Cook Station. Catriona also wrote and published a book about her husband shortly before she passed away in 2014 entitled 'The Man of the Trees and Other Environmental Guardians'.

Man of the Trees - A Leon Narbey-directed documentary about English conservationist Richard St Barbe Baker. 'St Barbe' (here aged 92) is interviewed at a South Island station where he presciently warns of desertification and laments the earth being "skinned alive". The visionary tree-planting advoca...

23/08/2020

No book about the Burnett's would be complete without a chapter on St David's Pioneer Memorial Church, Cave which was built in memory of Andrew and Catherine Burnett nearly 90 years ago. It is a much loved building in South Canterbury and is visited by people from all over the world.

In March 2007 a group of enthusiastic volunteers led by stonemason Jess Dargue built the dry stone wall in front of the Church and the wall now looks as if it has been there as long as the Church. It was wonderful to have Donald and Catriona present and Donald enjoyed toiling away with the rest of us on the day. He was 92 at the time!!

Lots of wonderful photographs capturing the history of St David's Pioneer Memorial Church will be included in the book.

23/08/2020

When Andrew and Catherine Burnett stepped off the ‘Royal Stuart’ at Lyttelton on 8 October 1861 they had just completed a 16,000 mile journey across the oceans from the St Katherine Docks in London. The crinoline was the fashion for women and men had breast-sweeping beards or Dundreary whiskers.

While still standing on the Lyttelton wharf, Andrew and Catherine were approached by wealthy South Canterbury land-owner, John Hayhurst, and that same day Andrew had been employed to work on one of Hayhurst's farming properties and the couple were on a coach heading south. Andrew Burnett managed three properties for Hayhurst during the next three years and he told Hayhurst the next property was going to be his own. In 1864 Mount Cook Station made that dream a reality for Andrew and Catherine Burnett.

John Hayhurst became one of South Canterbury's most successful station owners but in 1889 he died suddenly, aged 62, on the eve of his departure on a trip to England. Arsenic poisoning was suspected and the cause of death is still officially unknown. More about Hayhurst (pictured here) in the book.

22/08/2020

Mount Cook has got to be one of the most popular landscape scenes in New Zealand and artists have been capturing it on canvas since the very early days. A lot of the early surveyors were keen artists and a favourite of the Burnett family back in the 1860's was surveyor Edmund Norman whose drawings and water colours they treasured. A lot of artists visited Mount Cook Station on their way to paint Mount Cook and Andrew Burnett or his son Donald would guide people across the Tasman River so they could continue their journey up the Tasman Valley. Raworth was another artist to enjoy the hospitality of the Burnett family in the early days.

Donald and Catriona also enjoyed visits from artists during their long tenure at Mount Cook Station and Austen Deans and Elizabeth Baird-Friberg were particular favourites. In 1962 Austen Deans received first prize in the Kelliher Art Awards for his painting of Kea Hut (on Mount Cook Station) with the Southern Alps in the background. I love this photograph of Austen and his award-winning painting of Kea Hut which Catriona had kept in her photograph collection for over 50 years.

More stories about artists at Mount Cook Station and the family's love of art, in the book.

05/06/2020

South Canterbury Museum have done a fantastic job cataloging Donald Burnett's photographic collection and incorporating it into the Burnett Collection at the Museum. The Burnett Collection also includes the "Early Identities" photographic collection which used to hang in the dining room of the old Takapo House in Tekapo (demolished over 60 years ago), early photographs featuring scenes of South Canterbury and the Mackenzie, pieces of furniture, art and Burnett family items. They even have Donald's Merino wool trophies presented to him by Loro Piana in the early 2000's and the suit made from his "world's finest bale" in 2000.

30/04/2020

Here is a closer photograph of 'Big Ben' with some of the Burnett sisters also included. Some of you may be familiar with the large oak tree which still stands on the Museum site (more about that in the book)! Unfortunately I understand the monkey puzzle tree is gone.

29/04/2020

In the late 1860's Andrew and Catherine Burnett made the decision to have a Timaru base where their children could have easy access to secondary school education. At about the same time they also began buying up land at Cave and they eventually owned five farms in a valley on the other side of the Cave Hill which became known as the 'Burnett Valley'. They named the homestead block 'Strathnaver' - after the Sutherland-shire village in Scotland from whence Andrew and Catherine originally came and built a single storey homestead which was eventually extended to the double-storey home which still stands today. Over the years the homestead block was renamed 'Aorangi'. There will be lots of material about life at Timaru and Cave in the up-coming book but in the meantime here are a couple of photographs of the Burnett's Timaru town-house known as 'Big Ben' and the Aorangi Homestead. 'Big Ben' was bequeathed to the people of South Canterbury by Jessie Agnes Burnett in 1958 and the South Canterbury Museum now stands on the site.

24/04/2020

High on the hill above Cave village in South Canterbury is the Cave War Memorial. Commissioned by TD Burnett MP, owner of Mount Cook Station from 1903 to 1941, this striking memorial is made of Timaru basalt and was placed on the site following World War I. TD wrote the inscription on the memorial stone and his hand-written notes drafting the inscription still exist and may feature in the book along with other memorabilia relating to the War Memorial.

Down the other side of the Cave Hill is St David's Pioneer Memorial Church, also commissioned by TD Burnett, and the Burnett Valley farms.

The inscription on the Cave War Memorial reads :

"So long as the rocks endure and grass grows and water runs, so long will this stone bear witness that through this low pass in the hills, men from Cave, Cannington and Motukaika districts rode and walked on their way to the Great European War, 1914-1918, and to World War II, 1939-1945. Some of them have not returned but have left their mortal remains in foreign lands and strange seas, that our British way of living may continue. But their immortal souls have risen from the grave."

The names of those soldiers who did not return from World War I and World War II from the Cave and Cannington area are all listed on small walls which stand each side of the monument.

Lest we forget.