<&>Wellington Corpus of Spoken New Zealand English Version One <&>Copyright 1998 School of Linguistics & Applied Language Studies <&>Victoria University of Wellington <&>side one <&>19:15 you can get light snows any time through may june occasionally you get heavy snows then but in MOST cases any snows that fall before the end of may shift and those in june USUALLY aren't too serious but in july when you're into the really HARD part of the year tut you can get quite massive snows and quite a few of them um last year for example we had twenty inches of snow fell um in a two day period and we <.>had it was quite bad because there was <.>s severe souwesterly voc drifting and then a couple of days later we got um WESTERLY drifting as well which did quite a bit of damage in my <&>20:00 normally pretty safe um wintering country the WIND is probably <,> a bigger enemy than the snow because of the drifting factor BECAUSE of the drifting <{><[>factor AND the chill factor <[>mm yes you know <{><[>as far as trying to DO anything out there but there's really not much you can do AFTER there's been a snow <.>for takes a week to settle basically <[>mm mm and then you can consider <,> what may need to be done um tut so your drifts you'd be getting them what um how deep inhales well the further up you go exhales the deeper they get of course because the um the wind gets stronger tut but voc two metre drifts would be pretty common TWO metres yeah mm and <.>over cornices over the banks and things like that you know it's not uncommon to get three or four metres of drifting or more in those sort of areas um up on the carrick where the road goes over on the road you get um two metre drifts sometimes up to three metre drifts but on just off the road there's <&>21:00 MASSIVE drifts there that you know anywhere up to four metres deep are these dangerous in <.>a <.>in in as far as you could er <,> almost like get bogged in them like a swamp well you get stuck in them certainly when you're trying to get vehicles <{1><[1>through them <{2><[2>um when the snow's still soft you can get through voc a metre or a metre and a half of snow <[1>yes <[2>yeah mm you know quite reasonably um what with a normal er <.>w well fourwheel drive <{><[>vehicle <[>yeah something with plenty of power yes and plenty of clearance <,> but as soon as they freeze up um you can't get through in a foot of snow sometimes mm just because it goes SO hard and icy it's like trying to drive through half set concrete or <{><[>something like that <[>yes mm now last year it was where you had er big snow as you said twenty inches or so <,> and drifting and voc so what you <.>were you were snowed in here <.>how what did you do we were snowed in here for a couple of weeks um tut <,> in the old days they used to get snowed in for LONG periods of time i <.>don't i don't think the snows are anything like they used <&>22:00 to be going back forty or fifty years <,> one of the big problems is really just existing <{><[>um <,> the hydro we're on own power here and the hydro goes out in the souwesterly drifting it blots the race out and takes the temperature of the water down to such an extent that it won't run and you often have <.>a problems with even the diesel generators and that we have for stand by plants for keeping diesel firing and things like that you have to mix up to fifty percent kerosene into the systems to <[>mm just because of the temperature yeah mm yeah <.>and but most of the heating um in here is we've got a voc oh a cast iron <,> er freestanding stove there that we always make sure we've got a bit of good ohai coal three or four sacks of good ohai coal and that keeps it warm in here and you can cook something up mhm if you want well <,> there's not really a <&>23:00 lot you can do <,> in snow till it settles a lot of people flounder round in fairly fresh snow and things like that um the stock yeah are pretty secure where we have them um in the sunny sides for the winters so you don't bring them down into the valleys which is what <.>a a city type like me might think you leave them up on the sunny faces yeah <.>the the valley floors are very dangerous in here because it's it's a big open valley quite wide mm and the um the snow drifts really badly anywhere there's a fence or just over the cornice of a hill which the winds tend to drive stock into mm um just prior to all the drifting commencing yes <{><[>yeah <[>so um <,> we've fenced in all the sunny sides and they've all been oversown and topdressed and we religiously keep them from christmas time through to july regardless sometimes we have a bit of a scramble through june finding enough feed for stock but we don't <&>24:00 go into those sunny sides till july regardless because <{><[>that's the ULTRA risk period where you just can't do anything with stock <[>mm so in other words you're minimising your stock losses yes whereas years <{><[>ago it would have been a vastly different story i suppose <[>mm yes you're minimising your stock losses and um if you can give them a little bit of a lift along in midwinter there or stop them going back <{><[>any further <[>mm tut and you feed hay in august voc yeah NOT to my wethers but my ewes and hoggets <{><[>and my cows um <[>mm and <{><[>how many are you running here in total total numbers <[>voc we're running about forty five hundred wethers and we've got thirty three hundred ewes and couple of thousand hoggets and this is merino they're merinos and HALFbreds <{><[>but the HALFbreds are actually being bred through to QUARTERbreds <[>mm mm um <,> i'm not too keen on running merino ewes we used to run merino ewes but with foot rot and the knocks and things they get here the performance of them was so low mm <&>25:00 that it was just a disaster <,> and so we've <,> been running halfbreds but the profitability on the wool on them hasn't been <,> so good the last few years er but we'll go to quarterbreds which um should move us up a bit and also we'll pick up a bit of wool weight and that sort of thing yeah <{><[><.>wi <[>tut now you've got um <,> a hydrosystem which you've had to <.>in install at great cost er which gives <.>you voc gives you power of course and you've got <.>a <.>a a diesel generator backup here so you can exist you were talking about <{1><[1>that before er but you'd still get snowed in er you know you'd have to get out for supplies and that kind of thing now you had trouble with that LAST winter even though the winters are voc bit warmer than they <{2><[2>USED to be <[1>yeah yeah <[2>mm yeah <,> we <,> we were here for about two weeks last winter but let me explain we keep ourselves pretty well supplied as far as <&>26:00 provisions and things go and if we didn't get out for a month or so really it wouldn't matter mm um we're pretty well set up with big freezers full of meat and you know bulk flour and <,> <{><[>goods and so there's NO real risk to life as far as that goes but you get bored after a while and you want the paper and the <[>sure mm mm mail and just a bit of <{><[>contact mm <[>see someone else and yeah yeah but what happened LAST winter was we had this big snow tut and <,> it drifted round for a week before the snow started before it really started to freeze and the snow started to harden cos GENERALLY you get <,> say two to six inches of snow and they build up progressively but when you get inhales that much snow half a metre or so of snow that's all drifting round all at once it takes a long time to settle and harden <,> tut so <,> we were wanting to get out to get a few odds and ends but more than anything we had the tut speedway end of year prizegiving <{><[>which <[>ah you're a stock car man <&>27:00 yeah <{1><[1>yeah which we were quite keen to get <{2><[2>to <[1>yes <[2>mm so you were trying to get over to cromwell well it was actually in alexandra oh yes yeah <,> um but it took me about twelve hours and we burnt about fifty odd gallons of diesel pushing the road open the road tut here it's actually a county road but they don't acknowledge um it's officially closed <{><[>between may and october <[>mm tut so it's up to YOU to keep it open yeah <{><[>yeah <[>inhales so you do that with a <.>wh a what a bulldozer yeah we've got an old t d fifteen petrol start t d <{1><[1>fifteen that we leave up the road there and being petrol start we can usually get it to go <{2><[2>but i took twelve hours to to open the road up yeah and that was only pretty rough too <[1>mm <[2>inhales mm i had to actually go back and tidy it up a bit <,> after that but anyway we got out to the speedway do <{><[>in the end <[>laughs inhales and you would have had some voc <,> tight moments some funny moments perhaps over the years er voc getting out <,> over <.>the over the carrick over the road there tut yes we've been stuck a good few times and <&>28:00 laughs er people often ask why you don't go skiing but i reckon that i've shovelled more snow than most people have skied on mm over the years <,> and yeah you get close calls and the big thing is is not to treat the wind with any the wind is a killer <,> you know like it um obscures the vision and it drifts the snow around and it just takes the temperature down so far that if it starts to blow you just don't go if there's loose snow still drifting around mm you couldn't see where the road was no <{><[>no <[>mm inhales have you been caught yourself up there or inhales close to it i have um <,,><&>3 i've been caught seriously i suppose half a dozen <,> times up there um only ONCE with other people with me mm <{><[><.>wha <[>oh TWICE with other people with me what was the WORST time <,,><&>3 possibly the most <,> stressful time to me <&>29:00 would have been exhales we um <,> we got stuck up there with <,> with the wife and um and the kids were reasonably small just babies inhales and we got into a drift and half off the side of the road and we couldn't get exhales back up onto the road and i had to walk down and get my neighbour to come and <,> er give us a hand to tow it out or back up onto the road that was the most dangerous time as far <{><[><.>as <[>it was dangerous because of what well it <.>was probably wasn't DANGEROUS but to me it was quite stressful mm leaving <,> um the wife and quite small children at <{1><[1>that stage <{2><[2>up there <[1>yes <[2><.>in in voc VERY low temperatures yeah <{><[>yeah and it was WELL up you know it was up on four thousand feet <[>inhales mm yeah and they survived okay voc yeah they did <{1><[1>yeah they were probably quite safe but <{2><[2>inhales you <.>don't <{3><[3>you DON'T worry about yourself much <{4><[4>but you worry about <[1>yeah <[2>yes <[3>just kept the <.>en <[4>no kept the engine running i suppose yeah <{><[>yeah <[>yes just to provide a bit of warmth yeah yes <&>29:51