CELEBRATION Happy Birthday to There’d be very few historic companies comparable with Harraways in New Zealand. The iconic oats company – established 150 years ago in Green Island, Dunedin – is still privately owned and proudly championed by the Harraway family, including the great grandnieces of founders Henry and Catherine Harraway. Dorothy Duffy and Carol Ball – on celebrating the company’s century-and-a-half of existence recently - say being a Harraway is special in the deep South. “There is a strong sense of belonging,” Duffy says. “In the South Island, our family stretches far and wide, as there are so many of us! Our descendants also live in Canada, South Africa, England and America.” That’s not very surprising, given their grandfather Fred – Henry’s brother – was one of 21 Harraway siblings (only 18 survived). The family lived in Green Island where the Harraway mill is still located, and there were enough males in the family to start up a Harraway cricket team. Dunedin’s population was fuelled by the gold rush of the early 1860s, and some of New Zealand’s oldest companies were established alongside Harraways – Wright, Robertson & Company (now PGG Wrightsons), W Gregg and Company (now Cerebos Greggs), R Hudson and Company (now Cadbury) and Briscoe, to name a few. The need for wheat flour to feed the population and oats for horse fodder was encouraged with the change in the size of land able to be purchased, making new farm sizes affordable and manageable. The Taieri plains, Dunedin north and south, as well as areas of central Otago yielded top quality grain, which in the 1880s was exported to the United Kingdom. A rail tunnel from Kaitorai Valley to Caversham in 1875 allowed goods to reach Port Chalmers and export markets. In 1893, Henry Harraway replaced the old method of stone-grinding (powered by energy from the Kaikorai stream) with an oat roller milling plant. In its first year, the plant produced 1000 tons of oatmeal, although flour remained important to the company through the 1900s. 8 JUNE 2017 The company was purchased by Charles Hudson (son of baker, confectioner and the first person to patent and produce self-raising flour Richard Hudson), and in 1958 – after the purchase and consolidating of a number of competitive flour and stock feed processing plants – Harraways became the largest mill in Otago/Southland. Fifteen years ago, the company exited both stock food and flour processing, and is now focused on producing quality flaked oat and grain cereals for the local retail and commercial markets. But the company still processes oats by traditional methods, giving its products a distinctive flavour and retaining nature’s goodness…and the family firmly believes that the oats have ensured longevity and good health in its flock. Grandfather Fred married grandmother Agnes, and they had 15 children, including Walter Harraway…Duffy and Ball’s father. There are seven children in his family, and all are alive and well. Duffy says Henry Hathaway was what the local paper on his death described as “a distinctive figure walking the streets of Dunedin and will be missed.” All the Harraway men are tall – more than six-foot – and this continues today. “We have a rich history and are very proud of it,” Ball says. “Our eldest brother David has even written and released a song called ‘My Family Tree’. Our family tree has actually been traced back to the 1600s, but nobody has enough wall space to house it!” The great-grandnieces recently flew from the Deep South to Auckland to feature in a special commemorative event – a coffee caravan serving up oat treats for scurrying inner-city pedestrians and consumers. Ball reckons the event was “bang on, as that’s what Kiwis remember from their childhood, and Harraways is part of Heartland New Zealand.” HARRAWAYS
FT-Jun17
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