How it all started….!

How Foalua Photography got started…!

Most of my ( Tony ) adult life I have been in and around the back country of our beautiful South Island…

As an 18 year old uni Student I joined my good friend from high School days Peter Prouting whos family owned and run Mesopotamia Station, a vast 100 000 acre station set in Mountain country at the head waters of the mighty Rangitata river in South Canterbury..

It was autumn time, and autumn on Mesopotamia was indeed a busy time, with half of the Autumn sheep muster already done before arriving to spend the couple of weeks of uni holidays  working,  one of my first jobs was to assist the “packie” to balance ,pack, and load six pack horses with musterers gear and food supplies  for the ten odd days where they completed the front half of the Autumn muster…

Early this morning with all the horses saddled and packs tied we climbed onto our riding horses, and the Packie on his horse led the pack string as its known out , headed for Bush Creek..

Horses have a peeking order as such, so its wise to have the “alpha” or boss horse up front with the descending ranks following in the pack string, which are tied with Baling twine from the tail of the lead horse to the halter of the second, then in turn its tail tied with string to the halter of the third and so forth to number six.. this is done so if anything happens the string will easily break releasing a troubled horse..

So on our way, …….now Bush stream leads up between two mountain ranges and very soon becomes a bouldery  rough travel, as in time it curls to the left around behind the Sinclair range , and its on this bend some 7 odd kilometres up that we leave the riverbed and start on whats called a “horse pack track”, which to whom dont know, is a track around a foot wide that climbs and descends our mountain country to allow horses access to remote areas,,

Often these tracks have a mountainside one side and the other drops away very steeply  down to the creek or stream bed far below, a place at times that’s not for the faint hearted I can tell you..

This morning we were running late, with one or two horses playing up and holding us up ….. it was at this point where we were to leave the riverbed and start the zig zag pack track which rises some 500 metres up to a plateau and out to the Crooked Spur hut that the Packie asked me if I felt “ok” to slowly and quietly led the pack string up this zig zag, allowing him to go ahead and get a brew on for the Musterers already out there having almost done the first days beat and almost due back at the hut……

A Packies life becomes hell if he is late, or the tucker is’nt ready on time, so he was indeed under pressure from several fronts this day…

Having never led any pack horse string before I was understandably a little apprehensive about the task asked of me, however the Packie assured me everything would be fine…

OK….. was my gittering reply, and with that off he climbed on his horse zig zagging almost directly above me up the track and in time rode out of site…. GREAT I THOUGHT…

So, with the led rope now in my hand and on my riding horse, off we started….. I can tell you it is an impressive site to be on such a trail, when as we climb and do a switch back to look down to see all these horses following one another up …

All was going very well until around half way up this rise, when I saw pack horse number three stop, while horse number two kept going, causing the string between them to snap…. O GREAT….next…. and to my horror…….. horse number three decided to try and turn around on this one foot wide mountain side track, and no amount of yelling to WOOOOOO…..WOOOOO made a scrap of difference from this junior packie..!

Number three continued tip toeing trying to turn around when it felt the string pull up tight from horse number four behind it which in turn caused number three to loose his balance, toppling horses and pack over the side…..

O MY GEDDY AUNT>>>>>   here I was on a horse with a narrow up hill and two horses behind me… one over the side rolling head over heals down a steep shingle slide and the three horses down further now loose …….. WHAT TO DO NOW>>>> ( panacked thoughts racing thru my mind )….

Quickly I climbed off onto the mountain side, tied my horse to a bush, then over the side very carefully down the rest of the horses , pulling them up and re tying to the back of number two..

Looking over the side, I could see a trail of pots and pans, cups and gear trailing down to the culprit far below, who looked to be upside down with its feet up hill and wedged against a large matagouri bush on this shingle slide…

I managed to skirt down past the pack horse string and went down the track a short distance before heading over and down the shingle slide as I didnt want rocks dislodging as I descended rolling down and hitting the below horse 

Several hundred metres down here was the blastered horse wedged against a tree on a fourty five degree angle shingle slide upside down complete with what left of its pack load now been dislodged and sitting at the horses side, with all its associated harness drum tight… the horse seemed alive and sort of ok apart from bit s of skin here and there missing ..

The pack harness was impossible to undo so ended up cutting it loose, and pulling it out of the way…. next the horse… what in the name……… can I do here..??  grabbing his rear legs and down hill from him I pulled as hard as I could, and with him not at all liking this jerked around a little.. repeating this a couple of times I managed to get him around far enough for him to scramble back onto his feet as he continued sliding, and off he went….. straight down hill, all the way to the bottom, and as I watched in disbelief he ran straight back down the bouldery riverbed headed for home…. JUST WONDERFUL….. NOT>>! 

Exhausted from time freeing this individual and scrambling back up this mountain side, I untied my riding horse and led on foot the remaining distance up this track and out to the hut…

Now a thing I will never ever forget as long as I live…..!   As I approached the hut, in the doorway was Malcolm Prouting ( senior ) leaning and looking at us and his first words to me were………. “AIN’T YOU A HORSE SHORT TONY”>>>>>>>?

He and the others could’nt believe my story of what happened……eventually after unsaddling the horses and a well deserved brew, we all headed down the track to the disaster site, then over the side picking up the trail of destruction before hauling all in sundry back up to the hut, with me gaining the nick name of “CRASH”

So my love of horses and packing them, all started a life long adventure

Since completing Uni, and settling to Married life down country, I have kept my love of horse and the backcountry  though to this day..

Running my own team of six horses for many years and having quite a lot of horse packing and travel experience , I have taken many many horse trail parties on treks through our south Island Mountain country, often for several months long excursions ..

Some of these guide jobs have started in Blenheim to the north end of our South Island and headed down through the mountain trail all the way to Alexandria , taking some three to four months to complete…. no easy trip, but a great adventure all the same…

Its while out on these trails and taking lots of photographs of our beautiful countryside, with friends upon our return viewing these and remarking on the quality and subject matter, that we decided once I retired from my 34 years as a contractor , to invest in some large format printing equipment along with Photoshop and computer gear large enough to handle photo processing and then printer requirements that has led onto the forming of FOALUA PHOTOGRAPHY….

Now for the folks who would like to know what FOALUA means, you will need to ask Mandy….

Mandy and I hope you folks will enjoy viewing our journey through this website and our facebook pages ….