Kaye Eden - High Country Kid

She grew up with an idyllic childhood, the envy of many, roaming barefoot through snow covered tussock lands and riding her horse through the swift currents of the Shotover River up into spectacular mountainous terrain.

Kaye Eden, daughter of legendary high country runholders Lorraine and Arthur Borrell, had the privilege of growing up on the Wakatipu’s remote Branches Station, something she’s never taken for granted. From age 10 she and her siblings would head into the hills on horseback and camp out. “Nobody was worried where we were,” she smiles. At 12, she’d independently take the six-hour horse ride to Queenstown for ‘The Hunt’.

Treats for Kaye on a day trip to town were simple: “It was always exciting – a cup of tea at Lakes Restaurant, Mrs Hood’s Sheep Shop in the Mall, and I loved Wheatley’s Drapery Store, because he had two little Sidney Silky dogs,” she says. “I’d buy mince from the butcher for 50 cents and feed it to the trout long before Underwater World began.”

Born in Christchurch, they moved to the Branches when Kaye was a child after Lorraine, tragically widowed in her 30s when her farming husband died of a brain tumour, remarried Arthur who had an affiliation with the station.

The transition was easy – a huge, scenic, backcountry playground to explore.

Kaye recalls the first ever Wakatipu High School Branches Camp kids arriving unannounced and bringing great glee. “I ran up to the house and yelled, ‘Mum! There are loads of kids in the paddock in tents!’ to which she replied: ‘Don’t be silly’,” Kaye chuckles. Camp founder and science teacher Ian Daniel hadn’t asked permission for the camp as he thought he’d be turned down, she says.

Kaye put her foot down and refused to follow her sister and brother to boarding school, opting for Correspondence School instead, adopted by Ian to join camp activities each year. “I’d hang around the kids. He always ordered a spare chocolate bar and orange for me.”

An innocent country kid, national Correspondence School camp in Palmerston North was an education of a different kind. “The expelled girls held signs up in the back of the bus announcing where they were staying to the bogans in cars behind. The rest of us, all country and lighthouse kids, were pretty naïve,” she laughs.

Maybe it was the country way. “The Upper Shotover Management Board – basically Daggs and Arthur, used carrots to poison the rabbits in the 60s and 70s. They had a shed by the Wakatipu Aero Club at Frankton where they stored the arsenic,” Kaye says. “I’d tag along. They’d tell me to go away put hankies over their faces and mix the arsenic with the carrots in a concrete mixer, then Tex Smith (legendary pilot) dropped it from the plane.”

Power cuts didn’t strike up at Branches despite knee-deep snow and temperatures plummeting to -18°C or -20°C. DIY expert Arthur built a hydro plant, so much power to dispose of that they’d run heaters under the station vehicles overnight to draw the power, Lorraine’s bonus – a heated swimming pool all summer.

After completing her nursing training in Dunedin Kaye worked at Clyde Hospital while the Clyde Dam was being built, falling into what became an extremely successful career as a goldminer. Early metal detecting was becoming popular but there was gold in them ‘thar hills regardless. “A battery stick would’ve found it. It was everywhere,” she says.

By then she’d met ex-husband Justin Eden, who was goldmining and possuming at Skippers. From 1981 they had a claim and hut at Bullendale where they mined summers, mining winters in Western Australia. “Most seasons we came home with 65 to 70 ounces.” It proved to be a lucrative career that funded 50 prime acres (20ha) at Arrow Junction, a nice house and their Arrowtown Gold Shop business. She still rejoices in her one-and-a-half-ounce Aussie find. “Justin had told me I was in the wrong place,” she grins. Justin’s brother joined them, discovering a 36-ounce nugget and a four-ounce beside it which bought him a house in Cromwell. “There weren’t the restrictions we have today.”

They were constantly unearthing historical finds – camel registration tags and a working Chinese compass in WA, and mining gear relics - pieces of picks and shovels, 19th Century dolls and kids’ toys around the Wakatipu.

“Arthur once found a moa bone at Branches and waited until my kids could join him to dig it out,” Kaye says.

She says growing up in the backcountry taught her resilience and practical DIY initiative. “You couldn’t get anybody else in to do it, so you had to figure it out yourself,” she says.

“It was just such a special place. I’m very lucky. I didn’t realise it as a kid,” she says.

That adventurous spirit lives on. Kaye recently took the trip of a lifetime to the Antarctic, walking on Ross Ice Shelf, visiting Scott’s and Shackleton’s Huts, and held hostage on the boat by a giant Humpback Whale.