OLD AUCKLAND.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 25, 31 January 1928, Page 8

OLD AUCKLAND.

IN THE EARLY SIXTIES. remembered by a MR. S. J. GORMAN, OP PONSOJ®^ If it were possible to gather all the residents of Auckland turn back in memory for sevenjl** or so they would form a : pany. There would be thongkt. JT? old homes, memories of shipmate* t»w " of early adventure and pointed impressions of the rising

With thoughts of Anniversary mind, and what it implies, » tive of the "Star" set out forTW

Wlti Mr- S. J. Gow man ' ,flj • one more round*. ' le seasons Vai i enter upon u!;; seventieth* vm, £ I* land. Mr. Gorna, was for niu* .vears well knoni !» «*iS* trade, in which U : ; worked until hk seventieth bhttl J2; For Body. • years he h2

the National IndepenS fellows of which he is a P ast Grand Master. He has for vS a prominent figure at the J* Bowling Club, but of late a tST When the pressman found him at K. home m John Street the kindly § grandfather was seated in the J* porch, facing the sunshine, fcpK engaged in peeling potatoes for theS day meal. "I must be doing £ ? w?£' , Said ' " eithet or oS' ; With pride, he pointed to a new way of tar and gravel as his £2 ; achievement. He believes happiest people are the active ones. " Boyhood's Memories. f -*:- Mr. Gorman's earliest memory is * falling into the River Lea while larking with some boys near his di * home at Tottenham, a few miles fragr London—"by the road that John Gilpin u rode." He was in his ninth vear wkm he left England with his parents » September, 1859, for the voyage of 12J days which brought them to Other passengers on the good ship Mm. rod on that voyage were the late lfr. r W. Hoffman, who was one of ft# * pioneers in the pianoforte business ia Auckland and the late Mrs. Wfllhm Buchanan, of Devonport. "I don't remember many of the passengers," aid Mr. Gorman, but he added with a men? twinkle, "I remember Mr. TTnffn™, because the sailors used to set his sea and me fighting." Although the veteran delights to talk of the early days he finds it a rait experience to meet with someone w]».. can go back along the roadway to that. - other Auckland of the early days, the village with its main street followicg the course of a creek, its harbour la summer time fringed with the brilliant red of the pohutukawa, and its Mauri sons paddling canoes laden with lnsdon peaches. One day about four months ago 1I& Gorman met another veteran in Pompdlier Terrace. With the courtesy of age t-hey exchanged greetings, and in the talk that followed the discovery wu made that they had been shipmates as - the Ximrod, one aged nine and the ■ other six. The latter, Mr. Carbine*, also lives in Ponsonby. When two oll« a timers meet the conversation may 1» better imagined than described. Queen Street in iB6O. Recalling the Auckland of the fir* away days, Mr. Gorman said: "The first? building that I saw when I landed was Hugh Coolihan's biscuit factory, hnlt on piles, where the Waitemata Hotd was built later, at the corner of Quees; and Customs Streets. At that time a wall was being built along what is x now Customs Street, and it stretched eventually as far as Fort Britomart. When I landed there was water inside the wall and it spread up nearly as far as the present Fort Street. It was called the 'intake.' When we arrived we were landed in cargo boats at the end of the old wooden Queen Street wharf. I remember only one brick building is Queen Street and that stood somewhere about the present site of the Majestic Theatre. "We came out under the 'forty-acre system'," said Mr. Gorman. "The family. was entitled to take up 120 acres. ® we took up more we had to pay 1" for each additional acre. We took up a block of 111 acres at Ruakahi, near Whangarei. My father, who was » gardener, could not afford to go up tbert, so seven years later he put it up tor auction and Alfred Buckland sold it for 2/ per acre. I have since thought that thousands of pounds worth of k*nn gum may have been taken off that land." Three years after their landing the Maori War broke out and while the family was living at Onehunga they saw much of the military and bsvu forces. Large quantities of provisions were sent from the Manukau to toe Waikato Heads by steamer and j® Drury by cutter. Mr. Gorman- has lively memories of the big military camp a * Otahuhu. Modern Swiftness. With his faculties well preserved *3# hardy old veteran takes a keen inters* in ail about him. He marvels at t® wonders of modern invention, hut inclined to question whether in respects we may not be going too 1 for safety. '"Don't you think," he f s *". in all seriousness, "that some of young fellows who flash round on jno«f cvcles ought to be in the mental ho»P tal ?" He holds the belief that in taw days some of the workers lean heavily on the Government. A doctor recently told Mrthat there was no reason why hfi sflo • not live to be a hundred. He says - is going to do his best.