CHANGE AND DECAY.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 209, 4 September 1929, Page 6

CHANGE AND DECAY.

GUMFIELDS MEMORIES. (By JEAX BOSWELL.) It is a painful thing to contemplate the change j and decay which tyrant Time marks in the places 'and people we love, and one on which we must I bring to bear all the cynicism and philosophy at [our command if we are to regard it with any 'degree of equanimity. I have been reading lately of the closing down of the old Aranga gum .swamp and store, and it was as though I read the obituary notice of a beloved friend. The old swamp! How many hundreds of tons of the .one-time precious resin has been speared and .delved from its squelchy, soggy depths? How many more lie concealed in its inky-black muck? Yet the decree has gone forth, and another wellthumbed page has been turned in the history of the Auckland guinfields. Vivid as a painted canvas the old familiar scene lives before me—the picturesque little cottages of the gum sorters; the "big house," set in its plantation of pines and graceful gums; the clustering diggers' huts, guarded by the encirclingsilver swords of the flax; the big drain, sluggish and oil}') draining the life blood of the swamp; the great swamp itself, stretching as far as the eye could see, rush-green, black and rust-red, with here and there a dark;* stagnant pool gleaming with a metallic lustre in the white sunlight. In its heyday Aranga, then known as Maunganui Bluff, was a busy, bustling little centre of an important industry, while to us, the backblock children from the bush five miles away, it was a veritable metropolis, the centre of the world's commerce. What a delight it was, on the bi-weekly mail day, when the returning gum wagon brought the mails from the Kaihu railway post office, to mingle with the cosmopolitan crowd that gathered in and about the store and the tiny attached post office. Dalmatians by the dozen swarmed up to the counter, their tongues wagging in the ear-splitting, concerted jabber peculiar to their race. Here a couple of Frenchmen shrilled their saucy demands, answering the impatient retort of the harassed postmaster with characteristic cackles of laughter; here the guttural tones of Germany rumbled; the gentle, liquid Maori; the soft dialect of "Hornie"; broad Irish; j broader Scotch; the sibilant Welsh; the high I note of the Swede; the oily murmur of the Italian; and the hard, uncompromising voices of a dozen arrogant young colonials, all blended in an utterly indescribable babble of tongues, while i from the big gum shed across the road rumbled I the insistent thunder of the hand trolleys as the gum sorters classified and sacked the seemingly endless mountains of gum. -Various incidents associated with these different nationalities and their oft-times desperate j efforts to make themselves intelligible, arise from niy many childish memories. Our farm, with its fine garden, was the Mecca of the Aranga gumdiggers, and very amusing to them were our attempts to interpret their varied requests. I remember on one occasion, our parents being away, my brother and I, children of nine and ten, were left to translate the demands of two Dalmatians, whose combined speaking acquaintance with the English language consisted of a fairly good imita-. tion of "Good-day." Vegetables were easy. Anyone can make known a desire for a cabbage when it is growing in front of him, but what to make of our customers' demand for "Boot-tra!" repeated again and again with great rapidity and vehemence, we did not know. In desperation at last my brother brought out a pair of old boots and offered them. This was too much for our visitors, who sank down on the grass with great guffaws of laughter. Finally, one of them, gazing round, saw our little churn sunning itself on a fence. He gave a shout of triumph, ran to it and patted it affectionately while he uttered with great satisfaction, "Ah! Boot-tra! Boottra!" In high good humour they went off with their cabbages—and their butter. It is hard for me to reconcile 'the description of the old swamp as it stands to-day—twelve or sixteen diggers, I think, it said —with my recollection of its busy, bustling throngs. I am glad I left it when I did. I am glad I did not witness its decline and decay, yet the echo of its death knell reaches me here, reminding me that I, too, am keeping swift pace with the swinging years. Ho is a relentless old tyrant, Father Time. A few golden hours, and it is noon. Evening falls, and we are old, and a careless world watches our passing with cold eyes.