Rambles in a young country

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33816, 12 April 1975, Page 10

Rambles in a young country

Rambles in New Zealand. By J. C. Bidwill. Capper Press reprint. 93 pp. N.Z. price $5.95. John Carne Bidwill “rambled” to New Zealand in 1839 while waiting for his land claims in Australia to be settled. He describes most modestly a three months inland journey from Tauranga which took him across Lake Taupo and included a climb which made him the first European to reach the summit of Mt Tongariro. That adventure cost him a good deal of tobacco to placate local Maoris who regarded his climb as sacrilege. Mr Bidwill, throughout, showed much less concern for his own safety than for the safety of his growing collection of New Zealand plants and seeds. Indeed, his most fervent wish seems to have been to establish as many antipodean

plants as possible in England, a project which he thought would amaze and delight his friends. The high standard of earlier Capper Press reprints has been retained in this volume which includes Bidwill’s original map of the area he covered — not the most accurate map of the North Island, even in 1839 — and a list of the loyal subscribers in his home county of Devon who met the cost of publication. One clergyman at Heavitree, Devon, even took 16 copies at a price of 2s 6d each. Bidwill hoped his account would be of value to people who intended emigrating to New Zealand. Like many other early visitors he found a considerable difference between the reality of New' Zealand and the accounts available at “home”.

Much of his detail can still interest and delight readers today. He found fine tobacco growing in profusion around the hot pools of the Rotorua Pa; he lamented that attractive Maori carving seemed to be much rarer than he expected and saw only one paddle which he thought worth buying; he decided that missionaries, at least in what is now the Bay of Plenty, were tolerated by the tribes only because of their literacy and ability with the Maori language, and not for any other gifts they brought; he expected the supply of kauri trees to be exhausted in 20 years; he suffered agonies from Maori fleas; and his scientific ardour was aroused by a Maori woman who allowed him to see a rare tattooing on her bottom. Bidwill w’ent on to become director of the Sydney Botanic Garden and Commissioner of Crown Lands, but he died of starvation near the border between New South Wales and Queensland in 1853, a fate which nearly overtook him several times in New Zealand w'hen his botanical specimens enjoyed priority over food in the loads carried by his Maori porters. In all, a brief and delightful record of New Zealand on the eve of annexation.