Country Life: Woodchester Station 10 years after the Kaikōura quake

Dave and Rebekah Kelly were in their mid 20s when they took over Woodchester Station in North Canterbury.

They were 12 years into a 30-year plan to develop Rebekah's family farm, including installing kilometres of new fencing, a water reticulation system, and diversifying their income streams into sheep, wool, beef, and honey.

It was working out fine, but then suddenly, it wasn't.

Ten years ago, on 14 November, 2016, the Kaikōura earthquake struck, and the couple's world was turned upside down, almost literally.

It was two minutes past midnight when the 7.8 magnitude quake struck.

"I woke up to Dave yelling as he was watching a piece of furniture leaping across the floor at him," Rebekah told Country Life.

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"It was incredibly loud, and we just leapt out of bed and raced down the hallway to the kids.

"We definitely didn't feel safe in the house.

"We have four children and we grabbed them and got outside, and then just stood there because it was a 90-second earthquake and that is a really long time."

They then drove to flat ground and huddled together in the car in the pitch black. When the dawn broke Dave went out for his first recce.

"It was just a shock, an intense feeling of vulnerability," he recalled.

"There are a lot of parts of the farm that, if we had been going about our daily work, we would have been buried alive, so the fact that it was at midnight I think saved hundreds of lives. We felt like we'd dodged a bullet."

In a minute and a half their plan to future-proof the farm against droughts and lean seasons had all changed.

"Well, I think there's two disasters," Dave said.

"There's the natural disaster, and then the looming financial disaster, which comes when your business has just been turned upside down. We spent close to $200,000 on unbudgeted repairs in the first six weeks. We had two bulldozers, a couple of diggers going, men fixing water pipes. We lost all our water tanks. We had no power, and you know now, 10 years later, with really good prices, those decisions to reinvest are paying off really well."

Dave said the farm had become a pretty dangerous place very quickly.

"You'd be coming over a brow of a hill, and wouldn't know that on the other side of that brow the whole thing had dropped up to four metres.

"I was pretty lucky a couple of times when out surveying the damage."

When the enormity of the disaster hit home Rebekah admits to having had thoughts of leaving the land she grew up on.

"I questioned whether I felt safe to be here anymore, with four children. You think you know a place quite well, and it turns out that it's got this other underbelly.

"My whole life's been here, and I very quickly rationalised that where else would I live. This place is a place that I know myself the best, and it's a place that I was really enjoying bringing up with children and living here with Dave."

The recovery meant diversifying their income streams further.

They had 320 Angus beef, 3500 breeding ewes, a forest in the Emissions Trading Scheme, and 250 beehives on the property and then Rebekah began attracting tourists to Woodchester to see the damage from the quake.

One of the main features of the farm tour is Lake Rebekah, a one kilometre long, 150 metres wide, 30 metres deep lake formed when the earthquake dammed the Leader River.

Its outlet is a 25 metre waterfall affectionately named the Victoria Falls after Rebecca and Dave's daughter Victoria.

Rebekah named the lake after herself as a joke.

"The children thought that Lake Quake would be quite a good idea, but after I mentioned the name on the Kim Hill Show, Lake Rebekah has stuck."

For Dave and Rebekah the last 10 years have continued to be challenging.

"Only two years ago we were on our hands and knees," Dave said.

"We'd had our driest six months ever. We were in drought, sheep prices had crashed, lambs were down to $10 a head. Wool was $1 [per kg].

"That was only two years ago and we just knew we had to play the long game. We got capital stock, fed them, and you know we looked after them, and then things started to turn around."

Dave is a believer in technology and loves using his drone to survey his farm and herd his stock.

"Yeah, dogs tend to create an argument with young cows and calves so drones are pretty much a game-changing kit. As much as I love traditional farming, drones sort of become like a third man. You're sort of farming in 3D … and it even barks, through a small speaker on the front."

Back at the homestead, sitting around the family table, Dave and Rebekah reflect on where they are now 10 years on.

"It's not so much the farm or the land. It's the relationships and knowing that you're going to hand this business on because you really only learn by doing."

As for Rebekah, Woodchester is an inheritance she does not take lightly.

"The fact that I am the one of the four siblings that is now the owner of Woodchester and the custodian - we do the best way we can, as did our ancestors before us, and I hope that I can look back and say that about our farming career."