The Enduring Land - Home Away From Home

Television (Full Length Episode) – 1990

This episode of documentary series The Enduring Land uses a mix of narration and reenactments to explore New Zealand's earliest agricultural activities. It covers a bitter rift between Māori and Pākehā fired by a colonial "thirst for land", and the country's first shipment of refrigerated meat in 1882. It's the story of two topographies: the growth of sheep stations on the South Island plains, and vast burn-offs in the hilly north, clearing bush for railway lines and farmland. Dutch-born presenter Ruud Kleinpaste (who later hosted Buggin' with Ruud) took elocution lessons, and learnt Fiona Kidman's script verbatim.

It was said that the smoke could be seen in Australia.
– Rudd Kleinpaste on mass burn-offs of bush by North Island settler farmers, in the 1860s and 1870s