Page 26 - NZ Hereford Magazine 2023

Three generations of Patersons – Laurie and Sharon (left), their daughter-in-law Steph and son Ross, and their three children.

aikaka Station is a name synonymous with
the foundation of pastoral farming in the
southern South Island when vast tracts of
hill and high-country land was leased out
Wto runholders to graze massive sheep flocks
during the mid-1800s.
At its peak, the station carried 80,000 sheep when in 1876/77
a devastating snowstorm caused crippling stock losses, and
only about 29,000 sheep survived.
The station changed hands several times before Laurie
Paterson’s great-grandfather sold up a productive gold
sluicing claim on the Clutha River and bought the station’s Waikaka Station – home to stud Herefords, Romneys, Texels and
‘home paddock’ block, when it was broken up into smaller Romdales.
blocks for settlement in 1907.
Laurie’s grandfather Matthew Kirkpatrick had a
distinguished military career with the Camel Corp and Fifth
Light Horse Brigade in the Middle East during the First World
War. When he returned home to Waikaka he started breeding
Romneys in the 1920s and set up a Hereford stud in 1953.
The family has continued breeding Herefords and Romneys
ever since and ventured into Texel and Romdale stud flocks in
the early 2000s.
Today the historic Waikaka Station name has been
preserved and is the home of the fourth, fifth and sixth
generations of the Paterson family. The farm is mostly flat to
rolling hill country and, with the purchase of neighbouring
blocks as they came up for sale in 1970s and 1990s, has
expanded to 730ha. New calves on Waikaka Station.

24 HEREFORD MAGAZINE Year 2023