BUSHMAN’S LIFE 130 YEARS AGO

Press, 31 December 1986, Page 17

BUSHMAN’S LIFE 130 YEARS AGO

— _ fires, females and firewater

A pit sawyer at Okains Bay offers a rare view of pioneer times, as Gordon Ogilvie reports.

Life in early Canterbury, even when viewed by better-heeled observers such as Charlotte Godley, Henry Sewell, Laurence Kennaway, and Edward Ward, seems tough enough to us nowadays. So what must it have been like at the bottom of the pile?

Very few contemporary sources exist to tell us, but there is one unique account of the experiences of an Okains Bay sawyer whose diary is held by the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington. The diary spans a mere 20 months, from November 1857, to July 1859, but its realism breathes life into an otherwise remote period in our history.

The author is, according to how you interpret the signature and other jottings at the need of the diary, either John Pope or John Cope, a young Londoner. Pope (We will call him) writes copiously with weird spelling and a minimum of punctuation. Nevertheless he has a keen eye for the novelty of our landscape, climate, and pioneer lifestyle.

Pope’s journey by whaleboat from Port Cooper (Lyttelton) to Okains Bay was in the face of a “foul wind” and took three days. They twice anchored overnight for shelter, at Little Port Cooper and Little Akaloa. Once at Okains Bay they proceeded up the river where Pope was unloaded with his swag at the top landing. He immiedately got work with Thomas Ware, whose home was nearby, for a pound a week and board.

John Pope milked Ware’s few cows, did the gardening, cleared the bush, and sawed timber. Much of this work was done in the company of Tom Ware and Mary Ware’s oldest child, John (“Young Jack,” as Pope always called him) who was then 10 years old. The Wares, from Devon, had arrived in Lyttelton in 1851 aboard the Castle Eden. Ware was a blacksmith and wheelwright, and at Okains Bay took on timber cutting and dairy farming as well.

The bay’s foreshore was then over 400 metres back from the present beach. Dense bush filled the whole valley and clothed the hills behind. The sound of native birds during the dawn chorus was deafening.

By the time Pope arrived, much of the valley flat had been cleared and, with its covering of grass and fern, seemed to the Londoner “like an English common.” Okains Bay had become the most productive timber community on the Peninsula. The bay’s population then included some 18 property owners —

several of whom had been there since 1850 — and an uncertain number of sawyers living precariously in bush whares or tents, trying to earn enough to buy land for themselves.

Their whares were usually constructed from adzed totara slabs or pit-sawn off-cuts, and roofed with totara bark, shingles, or more off-cuts. Chimneys were made from cob, sod, or tin. There were no bricks then in the bay.

Some of the settlers already well established at Okains Bay on 20-acre sections, were John Fleurty, George Mason, Timothy Hurley, William Webb, Alexander (“Tom”) Coffin, William Moore, Francis Priest, Joshua Rix, William Clifford, Seth Howland, William Gilbert, Barney

and Bill Harris, George Sefton, and John Thacker. Practically all of these pioneers have descendants on Banks Peninsula today. Gilbert Howland, and Clifford were shipwrights, but the others were timber cutting and dairy farming. Thacker, in the process of building up one of the largest estates on the Peninsula, also did some trading. So did Clifford. The only settlers Pope mentions anywhere by name are Ware, Thacker, and Clifford. Pope, finding it hard to adapt to a colonial style of address, refers always to Tom Ware as his “master.” He worked hard at a variety of tasks, which now included planting potatoes. Some of the wildlife troubled him.

“It is verrey warm weather and the mosteatters bite me dreadful to see my face, it is as bad as I ever saw enney children with the meazells or pox.” The Okains Bay "moskquetaters” earn several other rebukes and remain for him as much as spelling as a health problem.

Most settlers and bush workers lived off the land. A trading schooner called at the bay every month or two but the dwellers were always running short of basic items, such as flour and sugar. Pope used to help out the Ware larder by fishing and hunting. In the evenings, or on Sunday, which was a free day, he would go fishing for “eills” or herring in the river. He also learned to shoot “cawcaws” (kakas), the big bush parrots then numerous on the Peninsula and

described them “as big as a fowl and beautiful eating.” Pope also bagged numbers of native pigeons and would walk down to the bar at the mouth of the river and stalk “red bills” which were usually too cunning for him. He was introduced by some sawyer friends to the savage excitement of pig hunting with dog and knife; and on another occasion tried to catch some “porposes” out in the bay. In December, 1857, Pope helped the Wares to build another wooden house, digging a saw pit beside the house site and felling three large trees nearby to provide the timber. His birthday on December 22 was celebrated with some help from his “master,” who supplied the “grog” for a party which lasted until daybreak.

An eye injury to young Jack put a damper on the Ware’s Christmas, so Pope went off to a neighbour’s and caroused until 4 a.m. He would liked to have gone to Port Cooper on New Year’s Day “to see the Reggater,” but was left to look after the milking while Tom Ware . took the "School Master,” (Arthur Tuson) in his whaleboat instead.

John Pope and a mate began in January, 1858, to saw timber on contract, earning about 18 shillings per 100 ft of sawn timber. (The usual rate was then one pound per 100 ft). His diary describes in detail the whole laborious process; digging and shoring up the saw pit, clearing the undergrowth round the trees to be felled, sawing and chopping them down, dragging the logs to the pit with bullocks, manoeuvring them into place, "breaking them down” and sawing them into planks. The weather was foul. High winds sometimes made it dangerous to work in the bush, with

dead trees crashing all round. There was a lot of rain in the summer of 1857-8. Pope and his mate had no awning to work under or any cover for their timber pile. The extremes of heat, cold, wetness, and parching nor’wester borthered them. The clay ground became slushy and treacherous underfoot. Logs, would roll off the skids and hurtle down the steep hillsides where many of the saw pits were sited. Nevertheless, by mid-February they had stockpiled 7000 to 8000 feet of sawn timber.

On March 15, 1858, “while am milking one of the cows I was shook and so whas all the bay tremendious.” This was Pope’s first earthquake. Two days later all was forgotten in the pandemonium of the bay’s St Patrick’s Day celebration. Thacker and Clifford were Irish, and Fleurty and Hurley probably so. Several of the bushmen certainly qualified. “Thear was great doings for so small a place thear whas a few kept it and they were continuly firing of guns and they had an iffige of some person and they burnt it in the evening.” (Cromwell? William of Orange? The Pope?) The festivities, singing and dancing, went on till morning.

By mid-April an equally boisterous Autumn was upon them. John Pope, homesick and miserable amid all the rain and mud, went one Sunday “up the valley that is the only place I can make myself at home as thear is several single young men live there and 3 of them London chaps and pass the morning away talking of old times in London...”

The winds worsened next day

and “trees that are dry are falling all directions.” There was lightning, thunder, hail, and rain all night. Flood waters poured through all the bushmen’s whares on the flat. A tree 7ft in diameter blew over, roots and all, right by the Ware’s house. To take his mind off it all, Pope spent the evening singing and dancing with all the “single chaps.”

After leaving the Wares in May 1858, Pope went to live with “4 single chaps” in their cabin. Some idea of his material requirements can be gained from lists of goods bought from Thacker, Clifford, and Foster (a Lyttelton merchant) which are scrawled at the back of the diary. The items include rope, twine, calico, shirts, stockings, boots, boxes of matches, tea kettle, frying pan, tobacco, shot, gunpowder, caps, nails, candles, flour, sugar, mustard, pepper, and currants. Their menus could not have been very complex.

On July 8, 1858, he attended a meeting with other inhabitants of the bay to see if a church and school could be built. Since December, 1857, the Rev. Francis Knowles had been trying to minister to all the Peninsula bays. Okains needed something more specific for itself. The Rev. Henry Torlesse was to be their answer. Taking up residence in September, 1859, he had a chapel-school built and running by December.

When he arrived at Okains Bay, two months after Pope’s diary ends, Torlesse was appalled by the disorderliness of the bay settlement. Most of the settlers and bush workers seemed to spend all their time getting drunk and thumping one another — or their wives.

Torlesse asked the Provincial Government to install a policeman. Nothing happened. Torlesse then proceeded to straighten out the community himself, largely by giving it other forms of relaxation apart from boozing and brawling. He began at Okains Bay in 1860 the Penin-

sula’s first public library and organised concerts and sports days. However, all of this was too late for Pope whose diary mentions a number of all-night orgies, and records a variety of occasions when pairs of sawyers “fell out” or “had words.” John Thacker, though an enterprising colonist and a key figure in the development of Okains Bay, was often in the thick of legal squabbles relating to assault charges, biting dogs, stock trespass, non-payment, breach of contract, and so on. He employed many men and was regarded as a tough boss.

Fire was the major menace in any bush community. In October, 1858, a bush fire at Okains destroyed five whares. In December, a fire which Thacker had lit for some purpose, destroyed a lot of sawn timber. Thacker would not pay any compensation to the owner so he was taken to court at Akaroa.

One of Pope’s mates gave evidence. Thacker lost the case and had to pay all expenses. Pope and his friend then went on a protracted spree in Akaroa, blew all the expense money, and were four days late getting back to Okains Bay.

In July, 1858, Pope had begun building a house of his own with the help of another friend from “Bounes Bay.” (Bones Bay, since curiously transmogrified into Le Bons.) This friend he identifies as Tom Ockford, another Londoner, and Tom becomes Pope’s closest companion. They did not go into partnership yet, though. Working on opposite ends of a crosscut saw did nothing helpful to a personal relationship, whether you were “top dog” or "under dog.”

When misfortunes occurred the whole community closed ranks and rallied round the sufferers. If there was a funeral, such as for little Arthur Sefton, aged 3, whose clothes caught alight as he was warming himself in front of a fire, the entire

settlement went to the funeral. Three months later Pope described the extensive search for a 4-year-old boy, (Joseph Fleurty, as records show), who went missing on the cliff track to Lavericks Bay and was never seen again.

Pope’s only personal misfortune was to lose his dog pig hunting. “Just as Fred was going to stick the pig young Jack called out Stand Clear and shot the pig through the head and my poor dog with it... poor old flora... a faithful thing she was.”

Christmas, 1858, saw the largest party yet. A boat brought special supplies from the port. Tents were erected and the young men, for a treat, sent out invitations to sundry “females.” (Women are always anonymous “females” to Pope. In this solidly macho environment they rarely get even a mention.) There was drinking, singing, and dancing for two days.

New Year’s Eve saw “another kick up at the tents.” The old year was “fired out” with the customary fusillade and carousing went on until daylight.

A wedding in January, 1859, gave promise of another party binge. Pope was invited to be best man, but he did not think the couple “a fair match.” The man had been married before, had several children, and the bride was too .-young. So Pope declined the invitation and his mate acted as best man instead.

This espisode must refer to John Fleurty’s second marriage. Fleurty’s Maori wife, Ellen, had died five months earlier, leaving four children. His new bride was Phebey, the 17-year-old daughter of Seth and Hare Tiki Howland. Such youthful brides were not uncommon then. George Mason’s second wife, Betsy Rix, was only 15 years old when she married.

In February, 1859, Pope sold his whare and went back to board with the Wares for a month. With Tom Ockford he bought an acre of land on which the two chums built a new home out of their own pit sawn timber, at “one third the expense” of any home in London. Nevertheless Pope continued to have bouts of home sickness.

“No letters from home I am expecting every boat some news from home but I get none.”

Their new house was said to be the nicest in the bay and a house warming was held, with singing and dancing all night. “My mate Tom played the fiddel and consitiner.” Pope and Ockford now went into partnership, briefly tendering for road-making and creekclearing jobs. In the 1859 winter they were happy and snug in their little home and did their share of entertaining. Other single men “covet” their home but “its know use we would not part with it.”

At the end of June the two friends “had a few words” aind parted. To make matters worse, a quantity of timber they had cut on contract was not now wanted and they could not dispose of it. The two got back together again after a “stroll” and a talk, and the diary ends in July with wet weather; sharp frosts, and “work all day.”

By now, Pope was referring to the main settlement at Okains Bay (by the head of the navigable part of the river) as a “township.” The Lyttelton postmaster, in May, gave the bay’s population as 144 persons with 22 houses.

Thomas Ockford went to Lyttelton the next year where he married and lived in Winchester Street. He is described in records as now being a waterman, boatman, or mariner. He later became publican of the Commercial Hotel, Akaroa.

What happened to John Pope (or Cope)? He might have left the province for an easier life elsewhere. Or he might have stayed on. There are several John Popes in the Canterbury directories of the next two decades — one was a blacksmith in Lyttelton, another a bushman at Kowhai-Bush, another farmed at Woodend.

In the Christchurch telephone directory there are currently 46 Popes, not to mention 14 Copes. Any of these should be proud to own this industrious and informative pioneer diarist as their ancestor.

Trouble with ‘mosteatters’

Homesick for London

Minister for Okains

Hunting dog was shot

Mysterious diarist