Gavin Marshall

Gordon Ogilvie in Banks Peninsula Cradle of Canterbury stated that...

James Pitcaithly and family took up the property above Goodwins and lived in a house called "Rochbound" in 1872. Previously arriving in Pigeon Bay in 1860 and being an innkeeper, mailman to Little Akaloa & Okains, hirer of horses and a timber merchant. His son James Junior farmed on after the death of his father and his own wife. It is not known at this point when he died or when the property became amalgamated into Bookshore.

I talked to Mr Allan Reynish an ex resident and neighbour in Pigeon Bay who has worked on Brookshore over the years and he told me that as a child he remembers cows being milked here on the bottom story. So by my reckoning that was about 1935. However Mrs June Hay recounted to me that she remembered that the house was pulled down during the second world war. It is unlikely that James Junior was still milking cows at that time. Mrs Hay also recounted that the women folk of Pigeon Bay had a plan to hide up at Pitcaithly's in the event of a Japanese invasion during the second world war. There men folk were stationed at Birdlings Flat, I assume with the home guard.

The present building on the property is a two story corrugated iron shed with entrance to the top story off the level of the old house site. This has an amazing tongue and grove floor and is still occasionally used as hay storage. The cow bales is on the bottom level and difficult to access with the new fences.

Out on the road side there is an old motor. No one I have spoken to at this stage is able to tell me what it was used for. One could speculate it drove a mill but I have no definitive proof. It has had a tree grow up through the middle of it which was flourishing when I hunted possums in the area in 1980 but has since died.