Run rabbit, run

The battle tactics John Perriam learned, trying and failing to save the family farm and community at Lowburn and honed to a lethal degree over the years, have taken him to war time and again against various bodies, boards and bureaucrats. “That’s when I got my Diploma in Bureaucracy,” he says of the high-dam battle, “and it has stood me in good stead ever since.” Many a politician and bureaucrat, both national and local, has rued the day John graduated with a first-class degree in Political Street Smarts. Controlling rabbits, negotiating with the Department of Conservation over fragile areas of Bendigo (a forerunner of the Land Tenure Review process), challenging the Wool Board’s ability to market fine merino wool then leading the breakaway body Merino New Zealand are some of the numerous occasions on which he has been driven to take up arms.

But he says being prepared to fight for what is right has not been the single reason for the burgeoning of Bendigo businesses, nor has it been his most effective weapon. Quite the opposite, in fact. The transformation of Bendigo owes as much, say John and Heather, to relationship building. This is no New Age Speak but how they learned to market and gain higher prices for their products and to diversify what the station could produce.

The clearest example of their argument is what they have done with merino wool. Bendigo fine merino fleece used to leave the farm, sealed in bales, and that was the end of the story so far as they knew. It was a commodity and they took the given price. “We had to change that mind-set,” says John. “How do you do that? Ask any good marketing person and they’ll tell you the same – it’s all about the story.”

Moving Bendigo merino wool to become a high-value fleece involved years of genetic selection in the stud, certainly, but equally important have been the years spent developing ongoing relationships with users. These started back in the 1980s with John and Heather travelling to Japan, curious to learn how wool was processed (a rare thing for farmers to do in those days). That was followed by joint ventures with Italian families to breed merinos for superior processing quality in their wool. That partnership extended to the joint purchase of stations on which to breed merinos.

Today, following the creation of Merino New Zealand (the breakaway growers’ collective formed to fight for premium prices for fine wool and led by John), there are regular visits from clients such as the family owners of high-street fashion label PG Loro Piana. The Piana family, which has come to stay at the homestead, is equally keen to build on relationships with New Zealand’s leading fine-wool producers and learn the stories such as that of Bendigo because they, in turn, add value to the Loro Piana brand. Authentic high-country New Zealand stories have market cachet in Europe.

In pursuit of the same sort of story, John went to the Champagne district of France after being persuaded by winemaker Rudi Bauer that Bendigo’s north-facing terraces were ideal for growing pinot grapes. John was keen but wanted a European partner with access to those markets. Rudi found the perfect partner. The Chauvet family has been making Champagne since 1529 and with them John developed a three-way partnership linking the old-world marketing infrastructure with the new world in the Quartz Reef flagship label.

One story which neither John nor Heather ever set out to tell, nor could they have imagined doing so, was that of the hermit merino found high in the Dunstan Mountains in April 2004, almost unrecognizable as a sheep under a 27kg fleece. Shrek’s stellar career as a fund-raiser for children’s charity Cure Kids has taken him to meet a prime minister (Helen Clark famously declared she found him better company than the group of protestors also due at Parliament that day), on many aircraft and even in a helicopter on a perilous lark out to an iceberg for his second shearing. His Lordship’s career is coming to a peaceful close as the now very old – in merino terms – chap lives in a bespoke shed with his own Icebreaker livery. Though Shrek was, in his heyday, a fine fellow for making friends, particularly with children, his life is less sociable these days. A big outing might involve being loaded into the back seat of the Jeep and taken by John and Heather for a stroll in his old stamping ground while they have a barbecue breakfast looking over Lake Dunstan and the Pisa Range.

The story of Shrek is emblematic of how the Perriams have tackled their challenges. No one could have guessed when Shrek first came to light that his story would, like a lightning rod, crackle round the world and focus such attention on the station. Yet that attention was not garnered for self-gain or even the Bendigo brand but effectively harnessed to raise money for a kids’ charity. It is one of those quirks of fate that within months of developing the relationship with Cure Kids (largely involved in children with cancer), Heather was diagnosed with cancer of the eye – a cancer that last year claimed her eye.

The story of Bendigo is far from over. Only 170 or so years have passed since it was taken up as part of the great Morven Hills Station. It is this story, of the Begg and the Lucas families who farmed it prior to the Perriams, of the gold-miners and the rabbiters, the musterers, rousies and shearers and of all the characters who make up the colourful history of Bendigo, that John’s latest project has seen gathered into one great book – Dust to Gold. It wasn’t his easiest battle but well worth doing, he says. Heather is mightily glad it is over. “That book,” she says, “there was nearly a divorce over it.” And, in true Perriam form, all royalties are going to Cure Kids.

* To go in the draw to win a copy of Dust to Gold visit our competitions section.

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