OLD-TIME MIRAMAR

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 147, 18 March 1937, Page 7

OLD-TIME MIRAMAR

The Women Worked Hard For Simple Living

T TOl J.SF.S line the eastern shores of the Miramar Peninsula to-day, but old pioneers are still living who can remember when game turkeys strutted through the tangle of native grasses, and the bright peacocks, like coloured flames, flew unevenly across the grey tawhini scrub that was Mt.. Crawford.

In the sixties, the hand of progress rested but lightly on its newest capture, and a few huts and whares, rough shelter for the handful of pakeha fishermen and friendly Maoris in Worser and Karaka Bays, were sole augury of the taming that was to come. Life then was hard, an unaided personal struggle against sea and land and weather, but it had compensations unknown in the anaemic air of cities. The men swung axes instead of golf clubs, and the women were too busy baking flour to bother with face powders. But nobody cared, for they had health and good food and quaint companions.

AjTANY a tale has been told of life on the land in early New Zealand, but even more fascinating is the story of the coastal folk and their wives. Some say the women then were happier than they are now, for all the hardships they endured. At least they' did not worry about dinner parties and menu cards. Nature’s larder stood at their door, and whoever came could eat—wild fowl and game from the hills where some canny settler had once liberated the first, birds, fish in plenty from the teeming sea, eggs an-d poultry from the pioneers’ own yards, and milk from their goats. Round the roughhewn boards, the coastal folk at these bays must have fed like kings am! queens.

But groceries were another matter. If a woman forgot something in the monthly stores order, which came by ship from Wellington, she had to walk to town to get it—and there were no roads. The Miramar Peninsula was a soggy swamp, covered with raupo and flax and very often flooded. Even if she went to 'Wellington by the stores boat, she had to walk home with her parcels. The first road when it came was a mere track that skirted the foreshore and wound along more miles than the arduous route over the hills and through the swamps. The hills from Seatoun to Mount Crawford were thickly grown with native grass and the . grey tawhini scrub, which on Mount Crawford grew as high as six feet and was Impenetrable in places. It made excellent firing, and was used in the old “colonial stoves,” which con-

sisted of an open fireplace “on deck” and an oven below. If necessary, another fire had to be lit beneath the oven.

Water had to be carried from springs or wells until, or even when, rain-water tanks were installed. Carrying it was the woman’s lot—probably not very welcome when the men wanted the tin tubs filled for their baths. Some of the families were dependent on goats for their milk supply, and most of them kept poultry. Rabbits, already a pest, made a common meal, but the last peacocks and turkeys must have disappeared about 1880. Sportsmen heard of them, aud parties came for week-end trips at any season to take part in an indiscriminate shooting of the lovely creatures. Soon there were no cock-birds left, and the few remaining hens died out.

TTNTIL the ISTO’s nobody lived on the V eastern coast of the peninsula except the pilot and crew of the old pilot station, their womenfolk and children, and three Maori families. To Fort Ballance there came later another family, and there was one some live miles away at the signal station on Beacon Hill, a promontory stretching out beyond the headsBut it was not until IS9O that civilisation really intruded upon the solitary tongue of land. A thin trickle or settlers and fishermen came to Seatoun, as wild a scrub-matted, wind-blown place as anywhere along the coast. School at Kilbirnie. By the time the children were old enough to start school. Kilbirnie was becoming populated, and a school was started there. This was certainly nearer the town, but even so it was a long way for the children to go in _ all weathers. One old pupil of Kilbirnie School in the ’eighties describes his daily journey as a long tramp through the raupo and ilax by a track that ran below the Miramar hills in a halfcircle. over the Rongotai hills, and round the foreshore to Kilbirnie School, which was on the far side of Evans Bay up the Ilataitai valley.

Often the children had to leave at daybreak, aud were not home before dark—which may perhaps be accounted for by the fact that the boys, at any rate, found great joy in sliding down the sandbanks, making ilax sledges, and taking off their clothes to swim in nearly every ditch or pool they passed. Just how the little girls managed the long tramp in their cumbersome skirts is a matter for speculation. On the whole the life of the children must have had its compensations, too. At least their mothers did not have to plan ways of keeping them amused and the outdoor life must have made them very hardy.

ONE fine raconteur of the old days on the Wellington coastal foreshore is Captain Shilling, Tutchen Avenue, who was one of the first pilots at the Worser Bay station. He joined the service in 1869, and his stories of the times when every ship had to be guided to port by a pilot who met it outside the

beads in an open whaleboat Jiave been told and written many times. But Captain Shilling can tell stories, too, of life at the bays. He well remembers the old Maori whares that stood at Karaka Bay, and the Maoris who lived there.

One was a hunchback, Ngakura, a “steady, good sort,” whose memory is kept alive by the road named after him, near the place where he lived. Captain Shilling remembers the gold watch chain he always wore, “the size of an anchor.” Katherine and Bananas Then there was a Maori woman whom they called Katherine, said to be a princess. Katherine had a partiality for bananas. These were sometimes brought by the stores boat and were hung out in great green bunches to ripen in the sun. But Katherine had a different sense of honesty from that of the pakehas, and they soon learned to bring in their bananas when she was about.

Katherine, however, met her downfall when the Kilbirnie hotel was built. She became over-fond of the pakeha’s fire-water. She would, according to one who knew her, make regular excursions to the hotel, and, returning well “under the weather,” would often pick up a dead shark from the beach. Sometimes it would be days old, but to Katherine time mattered little. Even the fisherfolk steered clear of her whare after she had returned from one of these shark hunts.

Katherine's whare was near the karaka plantation that still exists. When the karaka berries were in season she would always say to those who passed or visited her, “By to-morrow I make a te karaka pie.” It was her way of saying that the good berries were almost ready for picking, but there is no record of the pakeha women making use of these berries for food. q'HERE were three Native whares at Karaka Bay, with little plantations of kumeras and taros. But the Maoris disappeared when the pakeha started to arrive in numbers. Two Old "Salts.” There remained two fishermen, "Bendigo,” a Greek, and "Johnny Mexico,” from the country of his nickname. They lived together for many years in a raupo whare built in native manner, and used to supply a 'Wellington shop with their catches, receiving a monthly pay check of generous size. Their work could not have been very difficult, for old settlers recall how the fish abounded in the harbour. Twenty to thirty schnapper among a boat-load of other species was a usual catch for an hour’s work.

However, Bendigo and Johnny Mexico to the end of their days dwelt in the same raupo hut, for they developed the same vice tis Katherine, ami except for their supply-money, the hotel had their earnings. It was not an uncommon sight to see an old cart and horse coming slowly round the rough coast track, the horse picking its own way. If a passer-by looked inside the cart he would find Bendigo aud Johnny stretched out on their fishy

Captain 'Shilling remembers when the most thickly-populated part of Worsen Bay to-day was a flax swamp, fed by a hillside spring. Old Mr. Crawford, who owned Miramar and Kilbirnie, and worked his farm on the land, used to walk the hills with a spade digging up noxious weeds. He met Captain Shilling one day, and in the course of conversation offered him the ilax swamp for five pounds. Captain Shilling laughed. “No thank you!” he said flatly. But lie can laugh now ruefully, for the same swamp was drained, and to-day must be worth all of ten pounds a foot. In time as people came to live at the bays, the old track over the hills became a road that was destined to see a coach service. At last the womenfolk were able to get to town when it pleased them, but Captain Shilling tells how at first it cost 30/- to hire a coach. Now the tramfare is fourpenee. When the coach service was established, the school children walked no longer but rode to school in the coach. That was the beginning of the end of “the good old days.” Worsor Bay is populated now almost to the last acre, the children have a five minutes’ walk to school, there is a fast bus service, and the women would throw up their hands in horror if they had to carrv water or cook with colonial stoves. 'l’liosc were the days. . . . —B.W.S.