The Press Saturday, December 6, 1930. Central Otago.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 20104, 6 December 1930, Page 16

The Press Saturday, December 6, 1930. Central Otago.

All "who have roots in the south —and they are still a large number all over New Zealand —will feel some excitement over the appearance of a history of Central Otago (Early Days in Central Otago. By Robert Gilkison. Otago Daily Times and Witness Company). The author himself has been so excited that although he is a dry lawyer from Dunstan he is never able to keep to the bare bones of his story. Central Otago has "had a strange, romantic history " even in the short seventy years in " which it has been known to white " men." It is " quite unlike any other " part of New Zealand." Few countries in so short a time " have had such " strange experiences." Its historian "has known it all intimately for some "fifty years, has traversed its heights "and valleys on foot and on horse"back," but is still under its spell, still wonders at that " early invasion" which ha just missed seeing with his own eyes, and still gets a rush of blood when he thinks of the Arrow and the Shotover.

It is a psychological phenomenon which no one will quite understand who has not had quite the same experiences; but it is not affectation or sentimentality. Central Otago is a strange place—even now, when the miners are all dead, and the " claims " are ugly scars on the hills or barren heaps of gravel. There are places in Canterbury which, if a stranger were carried to them at midnight, might seem, when the sum rose, to be Italy; places which might be North America; scores of places which might be England. Central Otago, in such circumstances, would be Palestine, or Kurdestan, or the highlands of China. There is one small area at least which is almost as dry as the Sahara, and which, when the diggers first saw it, was actually a shifting desert. And there were white men there before the diggers, "squatters" who had somehow got their flocks and their herds into places which it must have been madness, as we would count it now, even to attempt to approach. Rees and von Tunzelman, who reached " the magnificent Lake of Wakatipu " at what is now Queenstown Bay " in February, 1860, and drew lots for sides, had to bring their sheep 200 miles " over trackless ranges and val- " leys, crossing immense and danger- " ous rivers [three times], and making " use of mountain passes over 4000 " feet high." One o£ the passes was in fact 5000 feet high, and although it is too long to quote, the .30-line passage in which this three-months journey is described ought to ,be cast in brick and hung Tound the neck of everyone to-day who complains of hard times. I And the squatters, with the Maoris and moas, which lingered on in Central Otago long after they had vanished everywhere else, are only the prologue to Mr Gilkison's main theme, which begins on the day on which Gabriel Read, in the dead of winter, climbed up a gully beyond the Tuapeka River, crossed a ridge, and in a second gully now famous all over the Empire, dug down 2i feet to a beautiful soft slate and " saw the gold shining like the " stars in Orion on a dark frosty "night." The story of the months that followed was long ago told by Vincent Pyke, to whom Mr Gilkison pays generous tribute; but it is retold with so much enthusiasm by Mr GilkisOn himself, and is such an amazing story, that it is a rare piece of good luck to be able to read it in Canterbury on the eve of our eightieth birthday. This would be true if the story of those days, as so many foolishly suppose, were merely a record of gold-getting and gold-spending, of wild men living wild lives in a region wet with blood and drink. But the goldfields were not in the least like that. Although they were not a good recruiting ground for Sunday schools, they -were extraordinarily orderly and law-abiding in relation to the times and circumstances. Even when the law was without any representative, or any means of enforcing its sanctions if representatives had been present, disputes were settled and justice dispensed by methods on which the law later found it extremely difficult to improve. If the punishments were sharp, they were very rarely excessive, and the amount of really serious crime was not great in relation to the temptations and opportunities. is true that our Licensing Act still has "embedded" in it, "like „ a . n ancient fossil of prehistoric times," a clause from those days forbidding saloons to employ "dancing girls"; that visitors are still shown, a house in the Dunstan Gorge in which " Champagne Bill" lived after spending £2OO on "one grand 'shout'," including drinks for the horses; that the notorious Kelly and Burgess operated occasionally, with other less distinguished practitioners; that Henry Beresford Garrett, though he "never did a day's work for pay", earned the right on the Waipori Road to be kept for the rest of his life; that Mr Gilkison devotes a whole chapter to "fatal fights"; that Arrow knew "Bully" Hayes; and that a coach-driver on the Lawrence-Roxburgh road "used to e without some justifica"had bad on his coach at different times a birth, a marriage, and a death."

But it is dangerous to dwell on the picturesque past when we so much need[courage- to endure a drab present. Mr Gilkison, if we are not careful, will have us all out into the wilderness again, richman, poorman, beggarman, Already rumours float round of new prospects," of ancient revivals and long-awaited recoveries. Gold is to make us again as it mad«

us in '62, when Hartley and Reilly dug eighty-seven pounds weight (not worth) out of the bed of the Molyneux before setting off for Dunedin to announce their discovery and claim their reward. Who would endure the slings and arrows of the slump in. wool if, between now and New Year, there were 50,0000z of gold waiting to be retrieved in some silly creek? It happened once. If we go on reading these romantic historians we shall all be waiting for it to happen again, instead of searching for the gold where it lies in the proverb—about eight inches below the surface of weeded and wellworked soil.