High Country High Jinks

Wow! What a day. Meadowbank Station and Tempello Station are celebrating the farming of the adjoining properties for the last one hundred years. The farming families are the Griggs and both branches work incredibly well together as custodians of some magnificent country. It is in flats, rolling hills and high country.
This afternoon hundreds of guests drove in a convoy of four wheel drive vehicles from the woolshed at Meadowbank through the vineyards and gradually up into the hills and into the backcountry. It was a hair-raising, white knuckle drive at times. I did half of it standing in a stock cage on the back of a farm truck…..hanging on for dear life. We ended up on top of what seemed like a mountain but was actually the top of the Tempello Station air-strip. There a large rock and plaque was unveiled by the most senior members of the family. The plaque reads ‘In celebration of 100 years of the Grigg family farming Meadowbank and Tempello. 2013 ‘We come and go but the land is always here”.’
It was pouring with rain for most of the time we were up there on the airstrip. A big storm went through and headed to Wellington away in the far distance. A drenching gun was used to measure out shots of whisky into tiny shot glasses and that was distributed amongst the adults. The younger generation were having a ball once the sun came out. A group of them got hold of the drench gun and were using it to “drench” each other each other with a dose of fruit juice. I was mightily relieved to find it was fruit juice, having first thought they were into the whisky! So it was high country jinks for these high country kids!
The day finished with a heart-stopping ride down the hills to Tempello Station. There celebrations continued with a barbecue at the big Tempello Woolshed. A real celebration!
(Continued tomorrow)