This mill was featured in a TV1 documentary "We Live Ourselves" about the Dutch born Tim Vos and his family, who lived off grid on the West Coast of the South Island. The mill was hand built in around 9 months, and used for mechanical tasks including sawing, and flour grinding. It had a bowsprit with 6 sails, aligned in the fixed direction of the prevailing wind. It reused some iron mechanical parts, particularly the (wind)shaft, and belt wheels, but otherwise was built mainly from wood, with leather belts used to transmit the power down from the windshaft to the machinery below.
In the programme, starting around 38 mins in, we see the preparation of timber for the windmill, and the raising of the frame, all by hand. A second sequence at the 50 min mark, shows the sails being added, and the children playing on them! A final sequence from the 53 min mark shows the mill fully clad, and the programme ends with views of the mill sails set, and it turning in the breeze, as a horse and cart goes by. The film makers knew what they were doing - the windmill certainly gives a memorable hook to the programme.
Press, 30 November 1977, Page 15Press, 8 December 1977, Page 21A thought-provoking film
By KEN COATESHanafi Hayes did what he promised to do — he produced a beautiful film, "We Live Ourselves," about a family living in an alternative life-style in the West Coast bush, was also as thought-provoking as it was informative. Hayes and his cameraman, Hamdani, had obviously worked hard, long, and sympathetically to explain in film just what the Vos family is doing, and where it is. Visually, the results were quite delightful — a boy filling buckets in the fresh early morning from a sparkling stream; a toddler butted by the family’s billy-goat; a man and his son driving a road through the bush; and the achievement in baking bread and building a windmill. The notes of haunting recorder music provided just the right background for lonely bush and the simple life. The family’s spirit of togetherness, based on deep religious faith, came through strongly in sequences showing members sitting around the meal table and praying together. “We live Ourselves” was a vigorous film with the smell of sawn logs, animals and freshly baked bread about it.
...Long-forgotten memories were evoked, interest was aroused, and the feeling of most New Zealanders rekindled that somewhere out there in the backblocks it is possible to find renewal, an alternative, or perhaps just escape. ... A city dweller with a practical turn of mind wondered whether the windmill actually did drive the sawbench and grind wheat: another wondered where the money came from to buy essential supplies, and animals such as draughthorses.
Tim Vos, the lean, wiry, Dutch-bom New Zealander who has been hacking out an alternative life-style for himself and his family for six years in the West Coast bush, has found he can turn the clock of history back only so far. But by a shrewd mixture of idealism and practical commonsense, he, his wife, Jos and their seven children, aim to get the best out of both worlds. The Vos family, featured in a Hanafi Hayes film on TVI, “We Live Ourselves,” came to Christchurch for the first time for five years last week. Normally, they live simply, using hand tools, supporting themselves from the land, and going without modern appliances, electricity, and pet-rol-driven machinery.[info]
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Tim and his wife were obviously pleased with the way in which people had reacted to the film about them. Many stopped them on their visit ... in tearooms, on the street, and in shops. "People have been genuinely interested," they say. "They wanted to know about the windmill, the animals, and our life at Corbyvale. between Karamea and Westport."
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"I am not technically inclined at all," admits Tim. All he knew from his training was how to "shoot the sun" and plot the course of his ship. "So I learned how to do things like swing an axe, look after animals, and build things." "We have just got on with it, building in much the same way as the Fijians used to build their canoes — just by feeling. I did not use exact measurements at all.” Tim Vos and his family will find their strength and ingenuity will be taxed to the full in the weeks ahead. The windmill with the sails that turned so bravely in the film was blown over and badly smashed in a winter storm. Tim has a theory that Hanafi Hayes tempted fate by suggesting that even if it were blown over by the wind, it would be built up again by the hands that first constructed it. The prophecy will be fulfilled, he says. The windmill did drive the saw-bench effectively, and worked a small grinder constructed in the top storey. We were very pleased with it, and will improve it so that it will stand up to the worst possible wind." Neighbours and friends have offered parts, including a shaft and cast ironplate from an old water wheel. The setback does not worry the philosophic Vos couple — "all things have to develop in this way," Tim says.
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Once the family ran out of wheat, which they grind for flour from which to bake their own bread. They had no money to buy more so they cut giant "king fern" from the bush. After slicing, drying, and roasting, they ground it up and used it as a substitute.
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