THE “WILD OLD DAYS”

Dominion, Volume 25, Issue 80, 29 December 1931, Page 8

THE “WILD OLD DAYS”

Central Otago Diggings THE POWER TO SHOOT “Those were the wild old days. Everything was free and easy.” said Mr. A. H. C. Orr, manager of the Sydenham branch of the Bank of New Zealand, in describing life on the diggings in Central Otago forty years ago (says the Christchurch “Star”). “In 1893, by force of circumstances, I was placed in charge of £30,000 worth of gold from three banks at Naseby and St. Bathans, to be taken by coach and train to Dunedin,” Mr. Orr told a reporter. “There were several ‘wags’ in the coach, and in the train who kept remarking on the gold I was guarding and what would happen to it. On the coach it played so much on my nerves that I warned two men that I had power to shoot, and would do so on any provocation. They sat opposite me in the' train, and made reference to what would happen in the tunnels. This played on my nerves more. While going through the tunnels the two men kept up a continuous conversation —as they afterwards explained, to let me know they were still there, and had no designs on the gold, thinking I might shoot at the first sounds of movement. One of the men was'-Mr. W. Carncross, now Sir Walter Carncross. Speaker of the Legislative Council. • When Opium was Legal. “Opiunf smoking was quite legal then, and besides the Chinese on the goldfields I have-seen low-clas Europeans at it. There were Chinese shops in the township. and smoking went on at all of them." From Naseby Mr. Orr was transferred to Westport, where he was stationed for ten years. His principal job there was gold smelting. Westport was notable at this time for the sixty or eighty beack, combers who made their homes on the' beach and earned n very meagre living on their claims. A number of them had been wealthy miners who had squandered every penny. Mr. Orr was then transferred to Christchurch, where he remained for sjx years. After that he went to Bangiora for three years and a half, to Oxford for nine years, and, in 1922, to Sydenham, where he has remained ever since.