HALE AND HEARTY.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 77, 31 March 1928, Page 7

HALE AND HEARTY.

THREE YEARS TO CENTENARY.) MRS. SPEAKMAW, OF FARNELL MEMORIES OF EARLY AUCKLAND.

Born in the reign of William IV. and brought to New Zealand as a bride in her early twenties, Mrs. William Speakman, of Park Crescent, Parnell, still looks out on life with a healthy interest from a front window which commands a view of the native trees in the Domain, the upper waters of the Waitemata and the sunsets beyond the distant ranges. On occasion she may be seen enjoying a motor drive around the city, whose growth she has watched with pride for 70 years. Mrs. Speakman is now in her 07th year, and her many friends are hoping that she will be spared for three years and five months to celebrate her centenarv.

The nonagenarian was found at her window by a visiting pressman yesterday afternoon. She has been reading her evening paper and her little 'Daily Light." Reading is now a difficulty, but her hearing and other faculties are splendidly preserved. Except for the effects of lumbago, Mrs. Speakman is a remarkably healthy woman, and the brightness of her mind would do credit to one much younger. She enjovs nothing more than "to find an interested listener as she talks of rural England and of the early days in Auckland. In this conversation dates flow with surprising facility.

Tire earliest memory of Mrs. Speakman is of the building of the branch railway from the Great Western in the direction of Oxford, and of the turnpike roads and the fenceless fields of Old England. She has an old Bible which was given her in IS4O by her Sunday school teacher at the age of eight. When she was 19 she made her first visit from , the village of Appleford to London for the exhibition, and took the opportunity of strolling through Hyde Park to see where the young Queen \ ictoria lived at Buckingham Palace. The parks end the fields of England are still very green to Mrs. Speakman.

. - 11 ' i- jtaivuiau. Thames Gold in Auckland. On arriving with her husband in Auckland in the spring of 18.19 thev were landed from the sailing ship Matoaka in rowing boats at Fort Britomart. They lived for a time in Onehunga. then in Grafton Road and later opened a shop in Mechanics' Bay. The waters of the harbour then came right up to the main road, and it was a great place for Maori canoes. In 1865 Mr. and Mrs Speakman built a little shop in Newmarket, and carried on business together until the gold rush at Thames broke out in 1567, and the former set out with the throng in quest of a fortune. Those were days of feverish excitement. Business was* at a standstill in Auckland: people" were even pulling down their wooden houses and taking the timber by boat to the Thames.

I stopped at home to look after my little shop." said Mrs Speakman, "and after a while the n.rjers commenced returning with lots of gold, ves, with handfuls of gold. It seemed to go as easily as it eame."

Stepping Stones and Planks. Looking back to her earliest days in Auckland, Mrs. Speakman recalls a few straggling villages between the Waitemata and the Manukau. There were hardly any roads and in places like Grafton Road and Queen Street stepping stones and planking were needed to avoid tlie wet plac.-s. especially in winter time. "W here the cricket ground now is in the Domain.' said Mrs. Speakman. "there was a marsh and beds of flax. Where Queen Street is was an old creek bed, and the waters of the harbour came up as far as Shortland Street. In summer time vj.e could get about all right, because the seasons then were like the dry, hot summer that is now ending. This summer renrnds me of old times."

Tribute to the Maoris. One of the facts that is still a source of wonder to Mrs. Speakman is that even in the troublous times of tlie Maori wars in Taranaki. the Waikato and the Bay of Plenty the nativps in Auckland never molested the European residents. "We used to see a lot of the Maoris," she remarked, "for my husband got 011 very well with theni. He had lived in America and he had seen something of native life there. We found the natives friendly and even in the worst times I was never afraid of them."

With a graphic touch. Mrs. Speakman described the movements of the "red coats" about the old barracks on the hill where Albert Park is now, and especially when, with bands playing, they marched up Symonds Street en route to Oneliunga to sail for the battlefields. In fancy she still sees the soldiers of earlier days swinging by and singing. In between distant engagements there were crowds of military men in Auckland and they took a lively part in the life of the town. "The barracks," remarked Mrs. Speakman, "were always closed at six o'clock."

Left Without Relatives. Some forty years ago Mrs. Speakman was left a widow, and, not having a family, she is without relatives in New Zealand. She still hears from two nieces in England. They are in the seventies. Mrs. Speakman carried on business in Newmarket for fifty years and now lives with a daughter of the one shipmate who is still known to survive, Mrs. Shipton, who came out on the Matoaka at the age of twelve and now, over SO, still lives in Parnell.

The growth of Auckland never fails to thrill Mrs. Speakman as she is driven to places like One Tree Hill and Mount Eden. "Why," she exclaimed in tones of amazement, "the surroundings are just lik? London with the city in The middle/' There will be many who will wish for Mrs. Speakman that she mav be spared to complete the round of one hundred years.