Ghosts of Bungtown and Half Ounce

Press, 29 March 1980, Page 17

Ghosts of Bungtown and Half Ounce

Ghost Towns of New Zealand. By David McGill. Reed, 1980. 248 pp. .... $15.95. ! ' (Reviewed by A. J. Petre) When the surveyor J. T. Thomson put forward Maori and classical names fo - r Otago townships in 1863 the ‘‘bigoted worthies” above him demanded good Scottish names instead. As a joke, he submitted such fabricated animal names as Eweburn, Hogburn, Horseburn, Kyeburn (swine), Sowbum. . . and to his horror, his humourless masters accepted them. Meanwhile, such romantic town names as Half Ounce, Larrikins, Bungtown, Duffers, Brandy Jack and No Name disappeared, and Welshman’s was bowdlerised to Cambrians. Towns sprang up in days, and vanished almost as fast, if the gold ran out. “Everybody who does not dig sells grog, and everybody who digs, drinks copiously,” wrote a contemporary correspondent. Law enforcement was a sometimes thing, yet serious lawlessness was rare. Large Chinese populations encountered racialism, but in many areas they also encountered widespread acceptance.- Sam Chew Lain ran a hotel at Lawrence with a

firm hand, became a member of the local Masonic Lodge, and was buried in the local cemetery, an honoured citizen. Life was hard. Savage weather, mudslides, floods, and the absence of medical help cost many lives.. The pubs were usually the centres of entertainment, of course; usually the first buildings up in the town, and the last to go. Sports days, challenges, fights, and social events were planned there. Canterbury was not ghost town and gold country: Otago and Southland, the West Coast and Nelson areas were the places. In the North Island, Coromandel and north of Auckland were where small towns sprang up, then vanished. Most came and went because of their dependence on one product: gold, coal, timber, flax, or ?um. It was the towns with more eggs in their baskets that survived.

David McGill has written a fascinating book on a subject that he obviously loves, and clearly has researched with great care. The volume is generously illustrated with some splendid old photographs of the places and characters it describes, includes a good index and useful,

clearly-labelled maps, and above all, is readable and entertaining, There majr be some ghost towns /that McGill has not discovered, described, and placed in historical frame — if so, it would take an expert to find them. Anyone who has travelled the countryside of New Zealand will find the book a delight; others will be tempted to go exploring, and to find more of the history of the areas and times that brought these settlements into being — then caused them to vanish beneath bush and sod. The ghost towns of New Zealand form an important part of the country’s history, and their story is very much a tale of the early development of the land and its people. That they and their inhabitants have been chornicled so deftly is great good fortune. It would be a sad reader Who could not raise a smile at such McGill tales as that of the resident of a shortlived coal town who reeled home from the pub, and replied to his wife’s comment, “Drunk again,” with, “So am I.” Or that of the lad who ran home to tell his mother that there was a new man in the two-up game called “Hugh Bugger.”