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Haldon
(Runs 19, 43, 60-1-2-3-4 and 137)

This station which remained in the hands of the Bealey family for something like 60 years was taken up in seven runs of forty thousand acres in all, by John and Samuel Bealey. They took up Run 19 in May, 1852, and the other runs before the end of August, 1854. John Cordy seems to have discovered unlicensed country between the Hororata and Selwyn, and was allotted Run 137 of five thousand acres there on 1st April, 1854, but the Bealeys bought him out almost at once and Run 137 was merged in their other runs. On a survey, one of Westenra's Camla runs was found to intersect the Bealeys' country but an exchange made both stations continuous. Haldon took in all the country between the Selwyn and Hororata below a line from Coalgate Bridge to Hororata Church. On the south side of the Hororata it marched with Aylmer and Perceval's run and followed the Rakaia down to the present railway bridge. The Mead settlement and Ardlui and Newstead Estates were all part of Haldon.

In February, 1878, John Bealey sold his interest to Samuel Bealey.

Samuel Bealey came to Canterbury in 1851, just after having taken his degree at Cambridge. He was the third superintendent of the Province. Like all the other superintendents he was a fine type of scholarly gentleman, but he was less of an idealist and politician than the others and succeeded better than any of them in his private affairs, to which he paid more attention. He died in England in May, 1909. John Bealey also was a member of the Provincial Council.

Samuel Bealey did not live much at Haldon and after his term as superintendent returned to England and afterwards paid only occasional visits to New Zealand.

From 1864 to 1869 he let the station to John Tucker Ford. At that time the run was divided into three large paddocks, one on the Rakaia, one on the Hororata, and one between the Hororata and the Selwyn. page 85It was Ford who named the station Haldon.

In 1862 when the Plains began to be broken up, Dr. Knyvett and Williams, his partner, rented three hundred acres of Bealey's run for cropping. Dr. Knyvett, who gave up station life for medicine in 1875, was out here in 1923 as a ship's surgeon and told me that when ploughing along the Selwyn he constantly ploughed up moa bones and moa stones. From the end of Ford's lease in 1869 until Nowell Bealey (Samuel's son) took charge, sometime in the 'nineties, Alick McIlraith was the manager.

Andrew Beattie, now of Hororata, was head shepherd and afterwards manager for about 30 years until the place was sold. In the early days the agricultural work was done by contract by a man named Sandrey and in later times by L. Derrett.

The Bealey brothers (sons of Samuel) cut up Haldon and sold it in 1910. At the end the station consisted of about seven thousand acres of freehold and carried 6000 sheep. The outstation and freehold on the Rakaia had been sold to the Government in 1902. It is called the Mead Settlement.

James Clucas bought the homestead block and lived there until 1928, when he sold it to his brother, the present owner.

The boundary gateway where the South Road passed from Camla to Haldon was just below the present Bankside Railway Station. Middle-aged country people can remember the days when dogs were chained at gateways on the roads to keep the sheep from passing through. The dog at this one reared a lamb. During a howling sou'-wester a motherless lamb took shelter by the dog's kennel and the dog, for reasons of his own, let him stay there and made friends with him. Merino sheep naturally keep well away from a dog's kennel, so there was always plenty of grass for the lamb, who thrived and stayed with the dog till he was a fourtooth, when the dog turned savage and had to be destroyed.