Gold Under the Manuka: A Farming Story Like No Other

In the 1940s, Mangaorapa Station in southern Hawke's Bay, New Zealand, was a large, unbroken block covered in manuka and kanuka trees. Thought to be unproductive land, the local farming community considered it near worthless, but Billy Mouat, along with his two sons, Don and Max, saw something that no one else could. The inspirational Mouat family story, spanning several generations, is about hard work, courage, and the relentless determination to succeed. Through vision, intuition, innovation, and thinking big, they achieved a large-scale, gold-standard farming operation. The title, Gold Under the Manuka, represents the unrealised value in the soil, and the essence of the men who turned the land into the equivalent of gold.