The winning of the west

Press, 11 June 1977, Page 13

The winning of the west

This is how Edward Dobson, Canterbury Provincial Engineer

anti designer of the Lyttelton railway tunnel, sketched one

of his great achievements—the Trans-Alpine Road to Otira.

But F. A. ATKINSON, of Darfi eld, paints a different picture of

how the way to Canterbury’s wild west was won. He says

he is the last man alive who can tell, first hand, the story 0f...

When Messrs Holmes id Richardson were

awarded the contract to drive the Lyttleton Railway tunnel they brought from England a Mr Harry Walles to be their foreman. They also brought a prefabricated house of four rooms for his family to five in at Heathcote. Walles was unable to find leading hands, so he sent for his brother, Thomas, who was on the Victorian goldfields, and ■who was an experienced tunneller. . Thomas was asked to come by the first ship, and to bring two more experienced men with him if he could find them; but when the trio arrived at Melbourne they found that no ship would sail for Lyttelton for some weeks. So they bought a large whaleboat, and fitted it out to sail the Tasman, laying in a ton of flour for ballast, and tarpaulins to wrap it in. Fortunately one of the men had been a sailor, and had a fair

knowledge of navigation, and they duly arrived safely in Lyttleton.

When the tunnel was finished Harry and Thomas Walles each took up 80 acres at Kowai Bush. Holmes and Richardson gave Harry Walles the house, and the brothers dismantled it, and carted it in a horse and dray to Harry’s block, making several trips. Thomas was a bachelor then, so they built him a two-roomed cob house on his block. As funds were getting Low, Thomas left his brother to look after both properties and took a job w'ith a gang cutting out a road from Bealey to Arthur’s Pass, mostly through dense bush. They had no horses or drays. Everything was done with slasher, axe, pick, shovel, and wheelbarrow. While shifting their gear one day they had the bad luck to tip their grindstone over a bank, breaking it. They had no other means of

sharpening their slashers and axes; and it was essential that they get another grindstone. How? The road to Bealey then was a rough waggon track. Horse-drawn waggons came through periodically, with stores for the stations and camp; but the waggons had just returned to Christchurch, there was no means of communication with Christchurch, and no horses were available. Thomas Wallis put enough food on his back to sustain him on the way, walked to Christchurch, where he bought an 841 b grindstone, put it on his back, w'ith enough food to get him back to Arthur’s Pass, and walked the distance back. The roads then were mostly just dray and waggon tracks, and the country was open and bleak. And the wages were four shillings and sixpence per day. Perhaps one can truly say that is how the West W'as won. I knew Thomas Walles,

arid 1 listened to his story with my parents round the fire on top of a colonial oven in the house which was carted from Heathcote with one horse and dray. This was in 1908, and my father had recently bought Harry Walles’s farm. The next year we had a heavy crop of oats, and when it came to stacking them nothing would do but Thomas must fork those oats from stocks to drays — and he did, it was no trouble to him. He was 82, and still a very fit man. But in about a fortnight he was dead, of a sudden complaint which had nothing to do with his work in the harvest field. Had doctors and ambulances been available then as they are today he might have been saved for a few more years. The old gentleman, and he was a gentleman, lies in an unmarked grave in Springfield cemetery, along with many more who paved the way for the future. At those times there were no bridges

over the rivers, no telegraph, no telephone, radio, or television, and only an odd newspaper when the waggons arrived with stores.

The food must have been monotonous — no rabbit, deer, or fresh meat except for mutton at Cora Lynn station, about 10 miles away and on the other side of the Waimakariri. Their main meat was woodhen (weka), wild pigeons, and eels from the Waimakariri area. Perhaps many who pass that way today regard those roads as something which just happened. But how? Perhaps it would be worthwhile to erect a dummy grindstone, with a plaque to tell future generations how it was done. We have lost a lot of our history, one such instance being the removal of the old hotel at Porters Pass, something that should never have been done, as this building played a great part in the early development of the back country and the West Coast.