BUILDING WEST COAST PHONE LINE 50 YEARS AGO

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30900, 5 November 1965, Page 28

BUILDING WEST COAST PHONE LINE 50 YEARS AGO

Packhorses And Sledges Used Men working on the West Coast telephone line 50 years ago travelled with packhorses, where today folk go by modern motor road. They were able to use a dray on the road as far as the Waiho river, but beyond that all equipment andstores had to be transported either by packhorse or sledge. Of the many South Westland rivers, only the Whataroa was bridged at the time. The others had to be forded on horseback.

These are the recollections of Mr J. Brosnan, who in June, 1910, was foreman of a six-man gang which carried out a general overhaul and strengthening of the line. This was the original single-wire earth-working line from Ross to Okuru, south of Haast, thought to have been built about 1907 by a gang whose foreman was Mr Dinny O’Sullivan. Between Paringa and the Haast, the wires followed the old cattle track over the Maori Saddle—a section later abandoned.

The members of Mr Brosnan's party were Messrs Keegan, O’Brien, Cutbush, Hardy (cook), and another man whose name is forgotten. Six months’ food supply had to be taken down the coast by ship and landed at various bays. The men’s (Met was supplemented by living off the

country. Often one native pigeon was shot for each man for a meal. There were ducks and swans on the lakes, and whitebait in the rivers. The party Hived under canvas. Before leaving Hokitika, the men were told to take clothing which dried quickly, but “not much of it.” They cut their tent poles from the

bush. Their camp beds consisted of two empty sacks supported on runners cut likewise. Sometimes when a nor’wester blew up the rivers would rise so quickly that the men would be stranded on the wrong side from their camp, and would have to spend a miserable night trying to keep warm and dry as best they could. But settlers along the route were often hospitable in such cases. Some of them recalled by Mr Brosnan were: Ferguson, Hendy, Adamson, Graham (Franz Josef), O’Sullivan (Fox), Ryan, Condon, Nolan (Okuru). Most of these families still have descendants in the area.

Mr Brosnan’s party had to clear scrub from the line, and generally improve it. The major work was to set poles in the riverbeds. A handoperated pile-driver was used. Some times, to get a satisfactory crossing point, the line had to be diverted up

river, through the bush. The crowns were cut off trees, and insulators fitted to the tops of the trunks remaining, in order to get sufficient height to run the line out to the poles in the river. One giant rimu used for the purpose caused trouble. The first branch was 70ft from the ground, at which point the trunk was still 3ft in diameter. It would have been a hard job to top this tree with a saw. It was decided to blow the top of the tree off with explosive. Twelve sticks of dynamite were inserted in holes bored in the trunk at the required height. The

fuses were lighted, and the men scrambled out of the way. The top of the tree was severed, and rose into the air like a rocket. The job was done to everyone's satisfaction. Because the line went through so much bush, branches of trees frequently fell across it, and the wire was “earthed” to such an extent that it would not work properly. Usually, it was impossible to ring from one end of the line to the other, and “tandem” ringing had to be used to get through—each station rang the next in turn all along the line, and the message, or conversation, re-

layed from one section of the line to another. When the job was completed, in December, 1910, the party set out in the Jane Douglas from Okuru to Hokitika. The ship also carried a cargo of cattle. The bar at Hokitika was unworkable, and so the ship

i went on to Greymouth—but could not cross the bar there. Finally, the Jane Douglas berthed at Westport, but by that time most of the cattle had died. Mr Brosnan later worked in the North Island, and retired as a senior overseer at Auckland in 1951.