Transmission Line Follows Historic Hawksburn Road

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32032, 5 July 1969, Page 5

Transmission Line Follows Historic Hawksburn Road

(Specialty written for “The Press" by

S. R. STEVENS)

Construction of the New Zealand Electricity Department’s transmission line from Roxburgh power station to Canterbury, now in progress in Central Otago, involves the building of a road through the mountainous country between Earnscleugh Flats and Bannockburn to transport the. heavy pylon components and other materials necessary to complete the line.

This is a deviation from the direct route between Alexandra and Cromwell through the Cromwell gorge because of the possibility—or indeed the likelihood—of the gorge being flooded under plans now being worked out for future hydro-development of the Clutha River.

The new road follows, more or less, the historic Hawksburn Road which was used extensively in the early gold mining days as the main access route to the digings at Bannockburn in the Nevis Valley. At that time all mining gear and supplies for the Nevis stores and hotels were transported by pack-horse over this road. Strings of pack-horses, as many as 80 to 100 at a time with one man to every eight or ten horses, would trudge up the zig-zag track from the Clyde ferry to the top of the Caimmuir range, then on to Hawksburn and over the hills towards Bannockburn and the Nevis.

Successful miners shouted for the bar at the Nevis hotels by the simple process of buying a case of whisky to treat the crowd. With the valley snowbound throughout the winter the bewhiskered miners’ worst fear was that whisky stocks, brought laboriously up the Hawksburn road from Clyde, would be inadequate to last throughout the winter. Armed Hold-up In a commanding position on the Hawksburn Road, overlooking the township of Clyde, is Banker’s Rock, a landmark which commemorates one of the most dramatic events in the history of the goldfields. On December 14, 1863, the bank manager at the Dunstan, Mr Skinner, set out for the 40-mile trip to the Nevis to buy gold from the miners, for which purpose he carried £lOOO, in banknotes and silver, in his saddle bags. Making an early start, he crossed the Molyneux on the ferry and. set out on the zigzag track up the steep sides of the Cairnmuir. He reached

the top of the hill on the first stage of his journey but as he approached a huge rock he was suddenly confronted by two masked men armed with revolvers, who commanded him to put up his hands. He was ordered to dismount, his hands and feet were bound with rope and he was placed under an overhanging rock. The hold-up men duly completed their task by making off with the money, but the banker managed to free himself and lost no time in hurrying down the hill to the ferry, arriving back at the Dunstan before most people were out of their beds. Two Sentenced The police were notified and later in the day two men who had been seen crossing the river at Muttontown in a boat owned by the Earnscleugh Station were arrested. Each man was carrying about £5 in silver which included a marked half-crown that had been in the bank’s till the day before. The leader of the partnership was a man named Parker who proved to have a criminal record. He was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment with hard labour, and his companion, Cunningham, to six years.

Neither Parker nor Cunningham would admit to holding up the banker and feigned complete ignorance as to the whereabouts of the money. Under the direction of the police some 30 men searched the countryside for several months without success. Who knows—it may be the luck of an Electricity Department worker to uncover a bundle of very old banknotes while excavating the site for a pylon somewhere between Banker’s Rock and Muttontown. The 300 or 400 Chinese who mined at the Nevis travelled over this track, and even heavy dredging material was

hauled along the Hawksburn Road. It also gave access to a stretch of the Fraser River between two gorges that is now submerged by the water of the Fraser Dam. This was the scene of a considerable spate of mining activity in the early days and a dredge worked there for several years. Wing-dam Plan A well-known miner, Bill Hookey, who ended his days in the Clyde hospital at a ripe old age, spent many years trying to wing-dam the Fraser in the Hawksburn area. Hookey built a huge stone wall down the middle of the river for several hundred yards with the intention of turning all the water down one side, while he cleared the gold from the exposed bed on the other side of the wall. When this side was cleaned out the water • Was to be diverted back round the wall allowing him to repeat the process on the other side. This at least was his objective but the project took so long that Hookey had to go shearing during the summer months to sustain him for his next attempt at wing-dam-ming the Fraser. Unfortunately for Hookey, after one of his absences of several months, he returned to his camp at the junction of the Hawksburn and the Fraser to find that a dredge had worked the river bed of the river on both Sides of his stone wall, depriving him completely of any reward for his years of effort in building the wall. Another well-known character in this locality was a rabbiter called Billy Burns. He was a tough little man and lived by himself in a thatch-roofed hut on the Hawksburn side of the Fraser. With the building of the Fraser dam his home has been covered with about 60 feet of water.

Rabbit skins from the high country of the Hawksburn district were always of exceptional quality and invariably brought high prices on the market. This meant that Billy Burns made good money

and to the publicans andtheir hangers-on at Clydes Billy was something of an in- 7 stitution. Billy was goodnatured and liked company. While he was in the money', he would shout for all and sundry so he had plenty of friends. The three publicans, of the town valued his' patronage so much that they would watch the zig-zag trail from the Hawksburn, when he was due in town, and would have someone to meet him at the Clyde bridge to escort him safely to their part ticular pub. Sound Advice Billy’s only real friend was, the local blacksmith who would look after his horse;; and, when the spree was over, send him safely on his way." In a state of alcoholic con-; fusion Billy would manage to stay in the saddle until he reached the zig-zag track where we would slide off his; horse and curl up under a sheltering rock to sleep off. his stupor. His horse was familiar with this routine and would wait around until Billy was ready to continue the journey to the lonely hut at Hawksburn.

This had been the pattern for many years, every sponger in the town helping Billy to' cut-out his rabbitskin cheque. One day the blacksmith gave him some advice.

“Why don’t you take a pull, Billy? These people are robbing you of every sixpence you earn. Before you spend any more in the pubs, goround the town and pay your' bills; and if you’ve got anything left put a bit in thej bank," he said insistently. ‘ Billy finally got the mes-; sage and from then on his visits to the pub became less frequent and the hangers-on at the pub found that he was no longer the easy target of earlier days. In the next year or so he saved over £lOOO and retired to the city.

These were some of the men of the old days who used the Hawksburn Road. They had no thought for the complications of hydro-electri-city or the need for giant pylons in the bills of Central Otago.