Migrant who went home

Press, 16 February 1980, Page 17

Migrant who went home

Westland: Journal of John Hillary, Emigrant to New Zealand, 1879. Edited by J. H. Hillary. Acorn Editions, 1979. 11l pp. $9.95. (Reviewed by Mervyn Palmer) One hundred years ago, John Hillary of Tow Law, County Durham uprooted his wife and family of six, boarded the sailing ship Westland at Plymouth, and emigrated to Christchurch, a growing city of about 24,000 people. From the name of the sailing ship comes the title of the book so, West Coasters, beware. All is not as it seems. John Hillary’s grandson, the commentator on the “Journal,” makes it clear that grandfather was a successful man. The voyage to New Zealand, the six months of hopeless struggle to find work, and the return journey to England therefore, formed a traumatic episode. It could be claimed that Hillary’s sometimes dreary account of misfortunes, both his own and- those of people about him, smacks of the first era of the “whingeing pom.” However, we who live in the present age of moaners must consider how we might have . responded to the challenges Hillary faced and overcame. His plain account. of the two voyages effectively underlines the fact long journeys by sea were still terrible endurance tests in spite of decades of colonising experience. Hillary’s personal struggle with the indignity of, unemployment in a strange land stirs sympathy. Add to those things we may all share with him, the sapping stigma attached to the workless

“breadwinner” in the later Victorian age. together with Hillary’s attachment to a brand of Victorian morality that made little allowance for the effects of factors beyond the individual’s control, and we are looking at fundamental ingredients of human despair. It was unfortunate that the Hillarys were lured to New Zealand by one of the great many “agents” who covered the British Isles with tempting, but misleading propaganda during the 1870 s. In 1879, the country was entering into a grim period of depression which was to continue f or 10 years. Its troubles, even as sketched by one who could hardly have understood all the issues, look startlingly like those we face 100 years further on, but the thoughtful reader will avoid the dangerous supposition that history repeats itself and will, perhaps, draw more careful conclusions. The unsung heroine of this adventure story is John Hillary’s wife. Surely those splendid Victorian women were the true anchors of the family and today’s passionate spokespersons for women’s liberation would do well to study the heights to which women rose in the simple, unlovely mess of Victoriana if they would genuinely seek to understand the true greatness of the fair sex throughout history. This is not a remarkable book. It has some historical inaccuracies that are understandable and a few printers’ blemishes which are unfortunate. Readers and students of New Zealand history should not overlook it, however, for it reports well-traced events from a somewhat viewpoint.