When Bill Cashmore built fences on his Orere Point farm he made certain they would be around in 50 years time by using eight wires and plenty of battens.
“You mightn’t put up so many but you were sure they would last,” he said.
And now the new deputy mayor of Auckland is applying the same logic to the huge infrastructural issues the city faces.
“You’ve got to build for the future,” he said.
“Everything is coming at us faster so we need a New Zealand Inc approach.”
The 59-year-old left school at 17 to go home and start at the bottom on the 1200 hectare farm settled by his ancestors in the 1880s when they arrived on horseback.
In each generation since, one person has been able to buy the rest of their siblings out, allowing a straight line of succession.
After a few years a Meat Board fellowship allowed him to visit the United States then he travelled to Europe before heading back to the farm to eventually take it over.
Today 3700 Romney ewes are run with 360 straight Angus cows on the home farm and 600ha of leased land nearby.
A third of the ewes are put to a terminal sire with 4000 prime lambs going off the property every year.
Over 95% calving rates are achieved but sheep and beef farming has mostly been a struggle for the last 35 years.
The worst times were in the 1980s when he cut scrub and fenced around the area to pay the mortgages he and wife Lynnette, a nurse, held.
Now son Robert is farm manager assisted by Willie Jenkins while the Cashmores’ other son, Benjamin, lives in Melbourne where he works for Crown Casinos.
Bill decided to get involved in local politics just six years ago when the Supercity was formed.
“I could see it could be problematic for rural people with everything getting sucked into the city,” he said.
A run-in with the former Manukau City Council persuaded him as to his response.
“The only way to fight is from the inside.”
He ran for the local board, became deputy chairman then, with the retirement of the local councillor, took over that position.
He chairs the council’s Rural Advisory Panel then, when councillor Sir John Walker stood down, also became the chairman of council’s Audit and Risk Committee.
That led to then Mayor Len Brown asking him to sit on the Auckland Transport Alignment Project with the Government, which took a collaborative approach to the many issues involved.
“It stopped paralysis by endless analysis,” he said.
With the recent election of new mayor Phil Goff he was named deputy, taking over from Penny Hulse.
“I didn’t expect the mayor would pick another grey-haired guy,” he said.
He’s settling into what he still calls Penny’s office, seeing the priority in his new role as ensuring the work of council is well understood by politicians through working closely with central Government.
He describes Auckland as the biggest rural district in the country “and probably the most diverse”.
“People are doing the most amazing things and they have to be nurtured and cared for,” he said.
He believes the council’s unitary plan is a great win for the rural sector because, through a collaborative approach, it’s got rid of a lot of rules inherited from previous councils and rural sub-division has been halted.
But he fears for farmers affected by Waikato Regional Council’s Healthy Rivers Wai Ora plan.
“People with skin in the game have been marginalised,” he said.
“They’re angry and afraid. But all farmers are environmentalists at heart.”
On his farm virgin bush pockets remain in all paddocks and streams have been fenced off over the last 30 years as income allowed.
Auckland Council’s even-handed approach is seeing a reduction in non-complying urban water run-off such as that from roads or wastewater plants so water quality overall is heading in the right direction, he said.
But the big unknown for rural areas is what science will deliver when it comes, for example, to improved stock feed.
The recently released Sea Change Spatial Plan for the Hauraki Gulf will be a challenge for the council and likely to be “put up the drafting race”, he believes.
“But parts will be lifted out and go into planning mechanisms.”
The key is that all sectors understand their part in the process.
“Everyone wants something perfect but they don’t want to pay.”
He describes himself as still a farmer at heart despite his fitness routine now involving climbing 100 flights of stairs in the council’s office before his working day begins about 7am, rather than farm work.
But there’s one thing about which he’s very certain.
“I’m not ever going to stand for mayor,” he said.
“You inherit everyone else’s potholes.”
