OLD OTAHUHU.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 90, 17 April 1925, Page 8

OLD OTAHUHU.

1 » MRS. DIXON'S REMINISCENCES. GAY DAYS OF THE REDCOATS. I. As a girl. Mrs. M. A. Dixon, of Hutton Street. Otahuhu, clambered up on to ihe roof of a shed and watched the men march out of the big military camp on the slopes of the rising ground across He arm of tho Tamaki River. Down the Ptinmurc Road came the column, swung round into Portage Road, past the vicarage, and then the young Irish girl Inst sight of it as it went over a rise in the road. The redcoats were "troopin', troopin', troopin' to the sea, where the ship's a-coalin' up that takes us ' 'ome to-day." She wasn't exactly coaling up, for that was before the days of steamers, and one of the troopships was the well-known Ida Zeigler, of which craft, by the way, one of Mrs. Dixon's brothers was second mate at one time. An end having come to the Maori war the Imperial troops were going i back to England, home, and beauty- And Ihe tune to which they stepped out was the very one the bane! played the other day in London when the Prince of Wales left on his South African tour —"The <iirl I Left Behind Me." So the musical tradition of the army does not change very rapidly, does it, seeing that very nearly (10 years have flown since the young Irish girl watched the column go jauntily seaward, and heard the strains of the old tune come floating down tho hill. The Sergeants' Ball. Mrs. Dixon's father, Private Callaghan, was born and brought up in the army, and he was one of the original pensioner settlers who were brought out in the year 1848 to found Otahuhu, one of the four villages clotted across the isthmus from Howick to Onehunga to protect the infant city from the Maoris. Naturally, Mrs. Dixon's memories have a good deal about soldiers in them, and if anything were needed to give the cachet to those long-away days it was the fact that little Miss Callaghan's first ball was a brilliant affair given by the sergeants of the Imperial Camp as a farewell to the Otahuhu settlers. She will be 74 years of age come May, but her eye twinkles still with pleasure when she recalls the gay event The large Public Hall, which for years was one of the largest round about the environs 0 f Auckland, had just been finished, the supper was put on in a stylo that did the hosts credit, and the regimental band played the music. J ben, of course, there were the smart sergeants in their bright red coats and pipe-clay belts, and the fact that it was a tarewell to the gay lads who had made the village so lively! And the programme was none of your modern acrobatics. Good old Sir de Coyerley, lancers, quadrilles, .and something called a "cushion dance." J rom the time she was sixteen Mrs. Dixon danced until she was forty-five, after her thirteenth child arrived, "and " she says "I thought it was time to give up dancing." Did she approve of the modern dancing, and particularly jazz! She was not certain that she had ever seen it, but one day she went over to Buckland's Beach, and there was some sort of dancing going on. She asked what it was, and they told her it was the jazz. "Well," says Mrs. JJixon, with conviction, "If that is what they call jazz I want none of it There is nothing to-day like the beautiful old square dances, and the waltzing was hot like the modern style that goes by the name, but most graceful and beautifully steady." Talking about Buckland's Beach Mrs. -Dixon says she used to live there fortyfour years ago in Alfred Buckland's time, and on her 70th birthday she thought she would .like to 'co back and have a look at the old place. When she and her husband lived there the beach was a quiet lonely spot to which the scow*' used to come and unload cattle. When she went back she found a row of shops where the cattle used to browse. Arid that ] S typical of the changes she has seen ! take place. When she was a girl sh° i byed for a while near St. Benedict's Church in Auckland, and then the area that is now thick with buildinn-s was nothing but green fields. When Money Was Scarce. When the pensioner settlers first arrived in Otahuhu—they came out in the ship Ann, whose name was given to Ann's Bridge, about which there have been several paragraphs in the "Star" recently—the Sydney carpenters were still busy on the cottages, and some of the newcomers had to live in raupo huts, while others were billeted on the other pensioner settlers at Onehunga. Mrs. Dixon was not born until 1851, but T\,° f,el L used t0 I'ear the old people « X._, v, J lage talk over tl,e beginnings of Otahuhu, and of the hard but not unhappy times they had. It was the cJoL % tU "»ilt a lot of the Great South Road, and all the pay they got was 3/G a day. And their pensions were not lavish. Some of the men got only sixpence a day from a -n-ateful "Ho. don't you srieve for mc My lovely Mary Ann; I'll marry you yit. on n fonrp'ii-r bit As a time-expired man.'' Still the Otahuhu pensioners managed to rub along, and to-day the old family names can be found scattered about the. district, many of them holding honoured posts. If, however, the pay was light, the cost of living was not as heavy as it is to-day. Five shillings would buy a sack of potatoes, and if the worst came to the worst there was always plenty of fish to be caught in the Tamaki River, which flowed past the back end of the settlement, or in the ManukaU, which w r ashed the other side. Other wages were in proportion to the meagre 3/6 a day, which was all the roadmakers got, and housemaids, for instance, only drew from 5/ to 8/ a week. >. When the Imperial troops were camped at Otahuhu, on what was afterwards known as "Camp Farm," on the Panmure Road, just at the back of the Richmond Hills (on which stand the water-towers of the borough), Otahuhu w-as a busy -place. There were no less than three hotels in the village, the Star, the Criterion, and the Commercial (since defunct) and then there was the canteen in the camp itself. After the red-coats marched away, it was not long before there was another invasion, the newcomers being called "Brogden's Navvies," the men who built the railway line, Brogden, of course, being the contractor for the work. (To bo concluded to-morrow.)

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