The 1870s

The next decade was a period of intense activity for Dr Horne. He was appointed Medical Officer of the district in 1870. In 1871 he bought an adjoining 150 acre section in Dillons Point from the estate of an absent owner, George Lachlan, for one hundred and fifty pounds. This section was also undeveloped and it brought his rural holdings up to 300 acres, stretching to the Opawa River.

A Dillons Point landowner's wife, Mrs Charles Lucas, died in 1873 and Dr Horne conducted the post-mortem. Unlike today, details of the condition of the heart were fully published in the Marlborough Express!

Dr Horne's mother had died in England and her will was proven in 1874. Dr Horne was mentioned in the will, along with other family members, but it is hard to prove when he benefitted from the will. After 1874 he purchased a further four 150 acre sections in Dillons Point and embarked on an intensive programme of flood protection, stocking and other development for the rest of the 1870s.

The vendors of the four sections purchased in 1875 were No 9, Mr Harper, No 1, co-

Horne's homestead. Taken after 1900 when it had been reduced from 14 to 10 rooms. B. N. Holdaway.

page 7heiress of J. Kidd, No 3, Smith Fowler and No 4, Mr Davies. Dr Horne now held 900 acres of rural land and turned his attention to reading and flood protection for the area of Dillons Point.

A founding member of the Omaka Road Board in 1875, he was an enthusiastic advocate for the improvement of reading to the Dillons Point settlers. With his medical practice, local authority work and his farm supervision, he was very busy.

A tragedy occurred when one of his farm workers, Alfred John Merrett, was riding a horse to move cows. He drowned in the Opawa River and his body was found by a Maori six weeks later at Whites Bay.

Dr Horne pressed for an improvement of Swamp Road, a direct route from Blenheim to his farm properties, which was often impassable and covered with water. Each settler put gates across it, because it was not fenced on each side. He also pressed for an extra road to follow the high ridges through the sections on the south side of Dillons Point. This road, surveyed in 1874, lined up with a bridge over the Opawa near his townhouse.

Dr Horne made section No 4 the homestead block for his farm properties and was able to get artesian water at a depth of 180 feet, with a head of 6 feet. A single storey homestead with 14 rooms was built, as well an ancillary farm buildings.

In January 1878 Dr Horne was elected to the Board of Conservators of the Lower Wairau District. In addition to his own drainage efforts on his farm properties, he encouraged the building of a long stopbank. This was to protect properties, including his own, from the overflow of water which originated at Conders Bend and spilled over the Opawa Loop at Budge's Riversdale Farm, flooding silt soils near the Opawa lower down.

When a diversion was being planned to divert flood water directly to the lower Wairau River, Dr Horne was very worried that it would affect his original farm purchase, Section No 7. As it happened the contractor, Mr Foster, failed physically and financially to complete the diversion. Dr Horne had Dillons Point settlers in mind when he accused the Blenheim Borough Council of not worrying if water spilt over Dillons Point, as long as it didn't affect the town.