Gavin Marshall

A view of the house from the main road about a 100 meters above the current Foley woolshed. The totara posts would have been cut from the local bush upwards of 160 years ago and many are still in very good condition thanks to the natural oils in the timber.

The stairs are very narrow. Wide enough for me to climb up....just.

There are two rooms upstairs. They are both lines with a type of treated building paper then have had news paper stuck over that again. This was a common way of reducing draft and keeping heat in. The only reason for the drum lids that I can think of is for stopping rats climbing down the strings which were may be holding things like ham.

I found some of the papers used were from the Canterbury Times. A date I did manage to find was 03.09.1902. I still can not date this building or who lived in it.

One article quoted the cocks foot seed price as being 60 shillings for 17 lb cif. Dunedin. It went on to say that space on steamers bound for South Africa was high as the Kent which left Bluff on 0ctober the 10th could not take all cargo on offer and that the Surrey sailing in late November was nearly fully booked.

The house has a massive double fireplace. Great for burning those huge totara logs. Dennis Williams now in his nineties was unable to tell me who actually lived in this house but he has recollections of his grandfather going up to the deserted building lighting a big fire and playing cards by himself. He apparently had built pigeon roosting racks in the upstairs room on the northside.He removed a pain of glass and they came in to roost at night. They were also a good food source for the William family.

I assume this is the dinning table which has seen many years come and go.

With the glass gone and no corrugated iron on the southerly side the weather will do its work on the house soon.

This old cheese vat was a surprise in one of the downstairs rooms. Obviously not its original place.After having spoken to Denis Williams who is one of the oldest long term residents of the bay he tells me that the Williams family had two dairies in the valley. One just above this house on the right hand side of the road was milked by Walter Williams and the other was at the very top above the Haywards property which was farmed by Frank Field and now by the Foley family.  Jim Williams milked this one.Local cheese making stopped in 1940 when the farmers began supplying the Takamatua factory.

It's thought that the late Murray Thacker shifted the cheesemaking equipment from the dairy which he used as a hayshed to the house as he had little storage space at the Okains Bay museum.

The cheese making equipment is still present. Stirrers and curd cutters.

Dennis Williams also told me of the 7 other dairies which existed in Robinsons Bay at that time. There was 2 owned by the williams families, 2 by the Kingston family , 1 by the ewarts, 1 by Tizzards, 1 by the Duxbury. In the early days the milking machines were driven by water wheel. Milking could not begin at one of the lower sheds until the shed above had begun their mlking.

The Williams cheese was called Glen Avion

Many old tins some of which have long since lost their labels to rust. The yellow milk eze tin is not really old as this product was readily available long after I was a child and can still be purchased today.

This is the milking shed above the house which was the lower Williams dairy milked by Walter. It did have, at one stage, electricity fitted. Denis Williams believes the milking ceased here some time after 1940.