page_title: Davey Gunn
section_title: Biography
hierarchical_section_title: Davey Gunn / Biography
caption_attribution_description: English: large swing bridge over Pyke River at Hollyford Track in New Zealand, high
context_page_description: David John Gunn, generally known as Davey or Davy, was a New Zealander and promoter of the Hollyford Track. A farmer and bushman, he ran his almost wild cattle in the glacier-cut Hollyford Valley in Fiordland, South Westland, New Zealand.
context_section_description: Gunn was the fourth of five children of Scottish parents, Isabella Grierson Robertson and her husband, Alexander Gunn. A one-time shepherd, Alexander Gunn ran a sheep farm of 27,000 acres in Central Otago. For secondary schooling David lived at Hook, near Waimate, with his maiden aunts on their 500 acre farm. Leaving school, he briefly followed other family members into Dalgety's (an agricultural company), working as a clerk in a branch office before deciding the work did not suit him. He went back to work on and later manage the farm at Hook. He underwent military training at Trentham Military Camp in 1918, but was too late to be sent to fight in the First World War.
  He went farming on his own account 100 miles south of Waimate at Sutton. On 10 July 1919 at Morven near Waimate he married Ethel May Willetts, a confectioner. They were to have two daughters, Isabel and Dorothy, and a son, Murray. His wife took their children to Oamaru to be educated and Gunn returned to his family for brief visits only twice a year. 
  George Gunn, an early runholder, mapped some of the Hollyford Valley in 1861. In 1926 David Gunn bought freehold land there from remaining original settlers, the McKenzie family. He increased his Hollyford landholding in 1929, just before the onset of the Great Depression, by acquiring four leases totalling more than 25,000 acres. He then moved to the valley, establishing his solitary base at Deadman's Hut on the banks of the Hollyford River. Gunn cut a number of well used tracks and erected huts in the more remote parts of his run.
caption: A bridge on Gunn's Hollyford Track
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