ON THE LAND.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 263, 5 November 1932, Page 4 (Supplement)

ON THE LAND.

EARNING MONEY,

AMATEUR GUMDIGGERS

(By BARBARA KERR.)

One of the pioneers, Mrs. Brown, was brown and wrinkled of face, looking much older than her actual years. A life-time spent in the open air had been responsible for her gnarled appearance. To her, the greatest penalty of oncoming old age seemed the enforced staying indoors in rough weather. Many a time she said Nature must have made a mistake in creating her a woman for she liked man's work far above woman's. Give her a spade and she was perfectly happy, especially if an area of gum land lay before her eyes. In the happy, old days that are gone for ever, Mrs. Brown had toiled like a man on the gumfields. She could strike and dig the gum as well as any of the men neighbours. To her credit be it said, she could also bake a batch of bread with any woman, and no other butter made in the district was equal to that of her churning. It was a secret sorrow of the old woman's that none of her six daughters inherited her love of the out-of-doors, although they all married farmers. A day in the bush to lier meant an enjoyable day of- hard work —gathering taraire berries for wine-making, chopping down nikau palms for the, sake of their white pith, or collecting wood for the home fires. A day in the bush to "the girls" meant the finding of a comfortable dry spot where they could sit and 1 sew all day iong, their tongues going busily the while. Mrs. Brown had a motto, '"Doing, not talking," but unfortunately, when she did speak her tongue was sharpened with bitterness. Nothing aroused her fire more quickly than to hear young girls telling each other their dreams for the future. Wishing and dreaming were a wicked waste of time. Girls should not dream of wonderful things to happen, for by her own experience she knew that they never did until one was too old to enjoy them. The girls, her nieces and granddaughters and young neighbours, smiled knowingly to one another when she spoke in this way, for what did a person who had lived in the most isolated part of the backblocks all her sixty years, know about life and dreams? . Wishing For Things. So often had we heard her views on "wishing*' that none of the younger girls dared mention their rose-coloured hopes if she were near. One day,' however, Maisie and I were sunning ourselves on the side verandah while sewing dainty things for another fiend's glory box, quite forgetting that Mrs. Brown was watching a batch of bread in the kitchen oven nearby, and could hear every word we said. Money was very scarce—as it usually is on. the farms —and we were each planning how we would spend a five-pound note, the possession of which was extremely remote. The old woman marched out upon two guilty-looking girls and' began to speak her mind, probably over-heated through being in the hot kitchen on a lovely day when she was longing to "be out in the open. "Dreaming again!" she said scornfully. "If you want anything hard enough, you'll get it —if you work for it; Wishing will never win you a gold wristlet watch (and pray, why won't a silver one be good enough for you, Madam Maisie?) And don't think anyone will present you with the money to pay for a holiday in Auckland, Molly, because nobody would' be so foolish. Why don't you both set your minds to earn some money?" We protested that, although our hands were never idle, it seemed impossible for us to make any money from our work. "Have you forgotten the gumfields?" she asked incredulously. "Tons of gum are almost staring you in the face every day of your lives. Dig it out, earn money that way, and you'll soon be rich. I'll teacli, you." She laughed at our eagerness in accepting her offer. Next morning we set out to try our 'prentice hands in the art of gumdigging. It was a glorious morning in late spring and the fields were neither too wet nor too dry for digging. Hope rose high in our 17-year-old hearts—already . Maisie was raising her wrist to see the time on her longed-for watch, and while the larks were carolling above us and the wee grey wa,rblers plaintively singing in the manuka, I was in fancy walking along Queen Street, gazing in shop windows and being jostled by -the. crowds I had not. seen for nearly four'years. Alas fof imagination! my promenade came to an abrupt end l when I, stepped into an old gum hole that lay hidden beneath a tangle of bracken and umbrella-ferns. Not too gently, Mrs. Brown and Maisie pulled me out and I decided to keep to the gumfields. , ' At length our guide announced in professional tones: "There will be good 'colour 5 here. We'll try it." Probing about with the spear, she soon struck "colour," and bidding us watch carefully, dug with deep, strong thrusts of the spade. The sods were turned easily and lump after lump of good white gum was dug out. Wo thought it would be just as easy when we tried, but she would not give up the spade for some time and then soon exclaimed: "That isn't the way. Watch me." The perspiration streamed down her wrinkled old face, but she was in her element, proving that there was more strength and skill in her old arms than in ours, still young and untrained. However, she threw us 6ome crumbs of consolation by saying wo might become proficient in time, if we tried long enough. Meanwhile she lit a fire and boiled the billy, j remarking how she would like to have a penny for every time she had boiled a billy on these 'fields. Hard Work. The plain but satisfying lunch, with its accompaniment of Mrs. Brown's tales of early gumdigging days, was the most enjoyable part of the day. Our hard work did not meet with the success it undoubtedly deserved, and we suffered many days with stiff, sore arms and backs. We did not mind these, for Mrs. Brown insisted on giving us the gum she had dug. It was a pleasure to have an excuse to go on the gumfields again, she said, for although some of her neighbours were too proud to be seen gumdigging, she felt proud to be able for the work. Politely we protested against taking the fruits of her labour, but were glad when she insisted that we take it. When the aches and pains were over, we two amateur gumdiggers set out for a day's digging. With beginner's luck, we found two or three pounds during the morning, in sods turned over by real gumdiggers many years previously. As we ate our lunch we calculated how long it must be before our dreams were realised. Gum being at peak price then (it was two shillings a pound) we decided that one hundredweight would be enough to dig; already we had nearly a pouiid's worth to scrape. \"