Early Days

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30610, 28 November 1964, Page 4

Early Days

Sailing Ships and Sheep Stations. By Christian Shirres. Photo Process Printers. 407 pp.

The author’s father, William Shirres, emigrated from Scotland to New Zealand in 1874. He spent his early years here as a cadet at Otematata Station. 70 miles from Oamaru. There, in the desolate outbacks, he found time to write to his parents and to his sister in Scotland. Some of his letters written from Otematata between 1875 and 1878 are reproduced in Part 5 of this book. One of them mentions that on this station there were 25,000 sheep, the wool clip from which totalled 181,2501 b, the yield per sheep averaging 71b 4oz. In 1878. Shirres purchased Gray’s Hills station in the Mackenzie Country in partnership with a man called Fletcher. This run—as he described it at the time — commenced “where the Tekapo river joins the Pukaki river” . . . and ran “north until within about eight miles of Tekapo lake.” It was 24 miles long, seven to eight miles wide (at its greatest

ibreadth). and carried 19.500 sheep. The loneliness of the region is reflected in some of the 10 letters written by Shirres from Gray's Hills during his short occupancy of the run (1878-80), and reproduced in this book. Thqre were “no nice neighbours within a day's journey,” he writes, and “not a marriageable young lady” for miles around. His letters are pleasantly discursive and take in more than the local scene. One of them, for example. mentions how it was possible to travel by rail from the Bluff to Amberley, but for a break of 24 miles between Clinton and Balclutha. Shirres and Fletcher sold out in 1881, the former makling a visit to Scotland. He returned to New Zealand in the following year and bought Aviemore Station in North Otago in partnership with his friend, Murray, of Adelaide. Before going to settle there, Shirres visited Auckland, Gisborne and Rotorua. A letter he wrote from Ohinemutu at the time, affords a really interesting glimpse of the life going on there. It records how “women and young girls” came and stood “about the bars of the hotels drinking rum and whisky.” Shirres saw more drunk women than drunk men about Ohinemutu. |The Maori population he esti- | mated to be from three to | four hundred, and most of those over 20 were, he observed. tattooed, “the women only on the lips and chin.”

Part 7 of this book contains the business letters of Shirres written at Aviemore Station i between April. 1884 and January. 1887. They are a mine i of information concerning the day-to-day work of the station, In 1888, his sister, Christian, came out from Scotland and stayed at Aviemore from June to September, during which time she kept a diary which is contained In Part 6 of the present work. She had a good eye for landscape and her diary richly supplements those of her brother.

The author’s grandfather, in partnership with his broth-er-in-law, Captain John Leslie, and James Laing, owned a number of sailing ships that plied between England and New Zealand. These have been written about in F. C. Bowen’s book. “The Flag of the Southern Cross,” Henry Brett’s “White Wings,” and in S. D. Waters’s “Shaw Savill Line—One Hundred Years of Trading.” Part 3 of the book under review is a collection of extracts and illustrations from these works. Where they are in error the author corrects them. The rest of her book, namely Parts 1,2 and 4, which together comprise a little less than onethird of it, is unlikely to have any appeal outside the author’s family circle.