Loburn
(Run 1a)

Loburn is the spelling which has long been used for the name of this station and for the district which is named after it, but the older spelling was Lowburn, and Macfarlane, who named it, said it was undoubtedly the right one.

Loburn lay on the north side of the Ashley and took in the downs at the back of Mt. Grey. At one time it took in most of Whiterock as well. Run 1a, of about thirteen thousand acres, was taken up by John Macfarlane in September, 1851. Macfarlane sold Loburn to Cunningham Brothers (Arthur and Charles, sons of Cunningham of Fernside) in 1862, and built a new page 68homestead at Whiterock, in my note on which I have placed an account of him. John O'Halloran, afterwards of Glentui, was his head shepherd at Loburn.

Loburn was very scrubby, and a bad place to get a clean muster, and the Cunninghams had a very bad time with scab. It was a poor run altogether, but there was some heavy land in the valleys, a good deal of which was bought in small blocks by navvies with the money they had been paid for digging the Lyttelton tunnel.

Dalgety & Co. took the station over from the Cunninghams in 1884. At that time it carried 6000 sheep, but Dalgety & Co. sold off the land bit by bit, and since their time the homestead and land with it has been through many hands. Among others, I had it myself in partnership with Hugh Reeves for a few months and we did well by further sub-dividing it. The homestead afterwards belonged to James Wotherston and then to Thomas Gibson of A. H. Turnbull & Co. I do not know what became of A. Cunningham after he left Loburn, but Charles Cunningham was afterwards a stock inspector. He died at Rangiora in the 1920's and was kind enough to tell me a good deal of the run history of the Ashley district.