If you ever stumble across the old ‘Waipiata Sanatorium’ you will wonder what on earth you have struck. This is a vast collection of elderly but obviously well-kept buildings on the slopes of a barren hill overlooking the Maniototo Plains of Central Otago. ‘In the middle of nowhere’ is an absolutely apt phrase to use here.
This is really a story of three subjects – the Maniototo, the sanatorium – and Ewing Stevens.
Let’s begin with ‘the Maniototo’. It’s a huge, mountain-ringed plain on the northern edge of Central Otago. When I left school in 1957 and went to work for Dunedin-based stock firm Donald Reid & Company, the Maniototo was almost a ‘secret’ place. The main route into Central Otago in those days was what is now SH8 via Lawrence, Roxburgh and Alexandra. The alternative routes – SH87 via Middlemarch and SH85, the Pig Root – were very much secondary ways into Central Otago. As a consequence, the Maniototo and its hardy residents were left pretty much to themselves.
At Donald Reid’s I was largely Dunedin office bound but I learnt the place names: Ranfurly, Waipiata, Patearoa – and tucked away in a corner, Naseby. I also learnt that Maniototo farmers were almost royalty and were to be treated with the highest of respect.
Maniototo farmers raised mostly sheep and/or cattle on large farms that reached up into the surrounding schist strewn hills and the land was stark. Trees were noted by their almost total
