OLD AUCKLAND.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 226, 24 September 1927, Page 21

OLD AUCKLAND.

A TRAVELLER'S MEMORIES. TWO BRANDS OF HOSPITALITY A REAL OLD ENGLISH LAXDLADY. (By NEVILLE FORDEK.)

A commercial traveller doing the rounds of the Xorth in tie early days met with a variety ■ of curious experiences, and widely different treatment at the various "ports of call." More years ago than I care remember. I was a commercial traveller, and earned the sobriquet 'the Flying Man,' , bestowed upon me by my rivals and customers, on account of my habit of setting forth armed with neat leather saddtebags stuffed with "cut samples'" of every conceivable item in the stock of a wholesale soft-goods warehouse. At the railhead or the port, after doing business in the ordinary sample room of- civilisation. I would dig my saddlebags out of one of my multitudinous cases, hire the best horse available, don my breeches. leggings and spurs, strap my bags over the saddle, and set ont for the interior. I was brought up amongst horses, and on these trips had siuple time to become chums with my oniy corn-pan ion on dreary journeys of many miles—mv horse. One such trip and the worst of all (even across the terrible ranges from Mercury Bay to Coromandel, in winter, was not so horribly depressing and dangerously severe) wa« the ride from Helensville northwards, when the onlv soul one would meet on the whole thirty miles would be a lonely "maintenance man" engaged in "attempting"' to fill up holes and make the "road" passable for horse-traffic. Those poor devils had to camp in tea-tree. Prepared for Anything. Having become noted for my ability to adapt myself to circumstances, and accept with a laugh and a jest whatever accommodation my storekeeper or bush publican-storekeeper was able to offer, I was prepared for almost anything when, in the murky dusk of "a winter*e day, I rode up to the door of a "Temperance Hotel." that was the only house of accommodation in a northern settlement. I was wet through, my boots were thickly coated with clay overlaid by the mud of the tidal creek where I and my horse had very nearly perished by being bogged at the "better prashe" pointed out to me by a Maori I dug out of a shanty after trying the regular crossing—so slushy and bottomless that my

steed refused to face it. Incidentally I gave the sleep-soddened blighter a whole stick of Venus for his trouble in waking up and misdirecting me. I was hungrv and wearr, and would have given a crown for a jorum of hot punch, any sort, so long as it was hot and strong";! and it was as much as I could do to induce the "accommodating" temperance hotelkeeper to let his daughter—the only other inhabitant of the weatherboard shack —make me a cup of abominably weak tea without milk, and place before me a meagre plate of cold corned beef and a cold potato! And there was no fire to warm a stiff, half frozen man withal! I couldn't squeeze so much as a single order out of my "hotel and storekeeper,"' and I went to bed to shiver all night under a miserable grey blanket and damp sheet. If I hadn r t had the con-, stitution of a Shetland pony, that trip to Port Albert would have been my last earthly pilgrimage!. A Seal Elopement. Next day, saddling up my ill-fed and ungroomed steed I set out to ride to Mahurangi. on the eastern coast. The road was almost "natural," but a huge improvement on the other, and at Wellsford I made a halt to call upon a newly married couple, Mr. and Mrs. Fred Dibble. The very comely and verv clever young wife was the eldest daughter of blacksmith Norman McMillan, a fine tradesman, who manufactured all sorts of art ironwork and who took the prize at the show every year for really wonderful specimens of the ironworker's art. He and I were great friends; but who could resist Elate McMillan when she came to her pal, my wife, and, disclosing that she had been engaged for some time to young Dibble, a farmer and horsebreeder of Wellsford, and that her father would no* hear of her marrying him, begged us to let her come to us and be married from our place. It was a real elopement. Kate, a superbly built, black-eyed lass, a school teacher by profession, waited till her father had gone off to work and she was left in charge of the house (her mother was dead). She left sister Mary busy in the kitchen, went up to her room, tied a rope to her already packed box, lowered it to the carrier" waiting; below her window, put on her hat and walked over to our house, where the box arrived a few moments later. She slept at our place, was married in the morning by the Rev. R. F. McNiccol, and the elopers went out to that dinkv little wayside hotel, the Roval Oak, nea'r Onehunga, for their brief" honeymoon. Fred Dibble's farm was notable for the fact that a gigantic kauri pine tree stood actually in the backyard of the natty cottage. The whole* place had been a kauri forest at one time, and this was the sole survivor. A nice sort'

of ornamental shrub for a cottage garden, but a little goldmine in itself. I suppose that glorious tree, 17 feet in diameter, and 60 feet in the clear, straight as a gun barrel, has been turned into money many a year ago, and maybe bonny, cheery Kate and her boy lover and sterling husband have both paid the debt of Nature. A chat and a stoup of home-made wine with my friends and I rode on to Mahurangi, where I knew I was sure of a pleasant welcome and good business. I had been there before as a member of a concert party, invited by Mr. Palmer (father of Jackson Palmer, judge of the Native Lands Court) to give a concert in aid of the struggling Wesleyan Church. The Mahurangi Hotel was a cosy, gabled little house standing amid trees close by the head of the Mahurangi River. It was kept, in my time, by Bob Such, who had been for many years guard of the Waikato-Auckland train, and he was probably the most popular official in that department of the railway service in all New Zealand. He saved up and kept his eyes open, and having, during his holidays, spotted that pretty little inn, made up his mind—his wife" agreeing, of course—to retire from the service and acquire it. And he did! Friend and Entertainer. You didn't see much of Such around the house during the day. The modest bar-trade and his new and bigger garden occupied most of his time. But his wife a pretty brunette of say 45 when I knew her, was host and hostess; friend and entertainer, in herself, and she kept that hotel as spick and span and bright and cheery as she had been wont to keep her little parlour and her spotless kitchen at Mercer. Everything in the place, from the liquor to the landlady, was absolutely without fault! Owing to there being no boat avail - 1 able to take me back to Auckland after one of my trips I had to spend several days at Such's, and I can safely say that I never had three more co'mfortable. restful days in my life. It was late autumn and a cheerful fire burned in the shiny grate of the cosiest little parlour outside Kent, the home of cosv little roadside inns. After a night spent in an immaculately clean bed, fragrant with the odour of home-grown lavender, a bathe in the deep fresh water pool close by—the same that I had used to steer Professor Lambert into along with brother Greg and young Jackson Palmer, then a boy of sixteen—a delicious breakfast perfectly cooked by the landlady herself, I'd take a book, load my pipe, pull a great easy chair up to the blazing coal fire and sit and read and smoke and chat with Mrs. Such when she passed through or came out of the bar for a brief yarn. It was cosy comfort to the most enjoyable degree and I even enjoy writing of it after all the years that have rolled between. Eheu. fugaces! '