The famous cartoon that put a pastoral slice of paradise on the map

On a warm midsummer day, from down a steep hill, Grace, an exuberant New Zealand sheepdog and class clown, suddenly breaks from the flock of sheep she’s meant to be herding.

From there she bolts headlong towards a brim-full cement water trough, where on arrival and with an almighty splash, she demonstrates the canine equivalent of a textbook belly-flop (well, if ever there was a textbook for canine belly flops).

Rounding up the sheep at Waipuru Station, Footrot Flats country.Credit: Anthony Dennis

It could be scene (panel?) straight out of Footrot Flats, the beloved and long-running New Zealand daily cartoon strip by Murray Ball.

The main characters of the humorously sardonic, celebrated strip were border collie sheepdog “The Dog” and his owner Wallace “Wal” Cadwallader Footrot who live on a farm called Footrot Flats near the fictional town of Raupo.

Hugely popular in Australia, the cartoon strip spawned dozens of books, a stage musical and a successful animated feature film, Footrot Flats: The Dog’s Tale with its hit theme song, Slice of Heaven becoming an unofficial Kiwi national anthem.

I’m visiting Grace’s home, or to be more exact, Waipura Station, an 800 hectare sheep farm only 10 minutes from Gisborne, a city of 35,000 on the east coast of New Zealand’s North Island.

I’m here as part of a shore excursion from Silver Muse, one of the luxury cruise ships that forms part of the Silversea fleet.

Ball was born in Fielding, a town elsewhere in the North Island, but lived on his own rural spread here in Gisborne until his death in 2017.

Outside Gisborne’s library behind its prosaic main street, there’s a bronze-cast statue, not of Ball, but of Wal and The Dog.

Wal and The Dog, Gisborne, New Zealand.Credit: Anthony Dennis

The sculpture was created by Weta Workshop, the Wellington, New Zealand, special effects company behind The Lord of the Rings films, among many others.

Back at Waipura Station, which spans five generations of the Maclaurin family, the shore excursion group consists mainly of Americans from the ship for whom Footrot Flats is understandably a complete mystery.

However, for this Australian, the connection to the cartoon strip and the subsequent film, with the main human character, Wal Footrot, voiced by the New Zealand comedian and satirist John Clarke, adds a certain resonance to my visit to both Gisborne and the station itself.

Waipura, which is thought to mean “plentiful water” in Maori, is set in predominantly steep hill country where about 1200 romworth ewes (a romney-coopworth cross for sheep aficionados) do well in such conditions.

During the shore excursion, we’re treated to the obligatory sheep-shearing demonstration, complete with typically dry Kiwi wisecracks, by Matthew Maclaurin and his father Graham in the rustic shearing shed.

The lush green hills near Gisborne, on the NZ North Island.Credit: iStock

That’s followed by the aforementioned sheepdog demo involving the rounding up, with Matthew on horseback, of a flock of Waipura’s sheep.

For maximum, almost cinematic effect, it takes place on one of the property’s precipitous lush lime green hills. One point of difference between rural Australia and New Zealand, aside from the sheep breed, is the headgear.

Instead of the trademark Australian-style Akubra lid, New Zealander farmers don unromantic Wal-like bucket hats, caps or beanies, the latter befitting the contrasting climatic conditions of the two countries.

There’s also morning tea, hosted by Matthew’s mother Anne, and his wife Lou, in the grounds of the farm’s timber arts and crafts-style homestead. The family have been offering these tours, catering exclusively to groups of 20 and above and including cruise ship excursions such as this one, alongside the day-to-day running of the farm.

“We love that we can show our wee slice of farming in New Zealand to visitors,” says Jo Foster, one of the tour hosts. “I think part of the success of the tours is that the time people spend with us is not a show or performance.”

Really Jo? I reckon Grace’s belly flop was pretty showy and that alone was worth the trip from the ship to this pastoral slice of paradise.

The details

Silver Muse underway.

A 14-day Auckland to Sydney, via Hobart, Port Arthur and Burnie, Tasmania cruise aboard Silver Muse starts from $7350 a passenger. Book the featured shore excursion to Waipura Station ahead of embarkation. See silversea.com

The writer travelled as a guest of Silversea Cruises.