WOMAN'S SHARE

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 92, 15 October 1927, Page 8

WOMAN'S SHARE

IN PIONEERING

WAIRARAPA MEMORIES

POETRY AND THE BUSH

At one time the Government was so short of ready money, and also anxious for men to take up land, that when Sir George Grey learned that Peter Hume of the Wairarapa had sold a horse for £50, he personally went to considerable trouble to persuade Hume to exchange his money for a tract of country.

This spectacle of the great Pro-Consul in pursuit of Peter Hume's £50 cheque is one of the diverting sidelights thrown on Wairarapa development by W. E. Bid-will and A. B. "Woodhouse in their welcome volume of memories and family lore, entitled "Bidwill of Pihautea." In the 'forties and the 'fifties the conquest of land up to the point of profitable production, was so difficult that it was hard to get people to exchange money for farms, and the problem of "advances to settlers" must have been very much more intense for Sir George Grey than.for any of his successors. According to the same authority, "it was not until 1853, during Sir George Grey's Governorship, that the Government took any action in acquiring land in the WairarapaV Other chronicles assert that the first payment of gold and silver to Wairarapa Natives for land was made by Sir Donald M'Lean and Sir George Grey at Turanganui. The Peter Hume incident suggests that they may have' found it easier to institute a' buying policy than a selling policy. CIRCUMSTANCES CHANGE OPINIONS. After .the land had been broken in, and after the battle had been won by the settlers by years of effort, plenty were willing to buy land. In later years they spoke of the increment. But few people were after the increment in the 'fifties. The case is something like that of the Northern goldmining company which, in its early non-financial days, triod (vainly) to meet wages claims with shares—shares that afterwards sold at £10 each.

In the conquest of the land a very big part was played by the women of the period and their children. On the feminine side of life the strain was perhaps the greater.

The Bidwill of Pihautea was the original Charles Robert Bidwill. In 1851 —seven years after he drove into the Wairarapa the first sheep—he married Catherine, eldest daughter of John Orbell, of Waikouaiti, Otago. . She had been staying at Wellington on a visit to Mr. (afterwards Sir) William Fox and Mrs. Fox.

Married in Wellington, they afterwards rode the 65 miles to Ms' homestead at Pihautea, Wairarapa, and the bride was "very alarmed at the Bimutaka track," also at the corduroy road through Morison's bush. The Bimutaka track was not widened to vehicular service till later years. Even in 1853 it was barely workable with pack bullocks. Concerning events about the year 1858, it is recorded that Charles Cundy, with a cart, "ran a weekly carrier's service over the Eimutaka to Featherston. At this time, Hastwell, of Greytown, drove^ a trap once a week to Wellington carrying passengers 'and mails. He later ran Cobb and Co.'s coaches, which took the place of the; more primitive conveyance." When the elder Bidwill children reached boarding-school age conditions of transport were still such that they rode the whole way from Pihautea to Wellington over the Eimutakas. . From Pihautea in the 'fifties there was a journey of about fifteen miles to the homestead of Captain and Mrs. Smith at Huangaroa Station. The visits of the ladies to each other were made in a bullock dray, or on horses girth high in mud. These conditions should be remembered by those moderns who, with all the advantages of motor traffic and community services, will be gathered later this month at Carterton to celebrate the annual show. ALL HOME-MADE. In the Bidwill household "everything possible was home-made. Soap was prepared from fat and soda. Bread was baked in a round iron pot, called a camp oven, which stood on legs over a fire built outside.' Candles were made frpm tallow poured into zinc moulds, and when alight had a disgusting smell unless the wick was kept well trimmed with 'snuffers,' wkkh somewhat resembled short blunt bcissors. . . Bennet was prepared from the lining membrane of the stomach of a young calf, which was filled with salt and dried, a small piece being used for curdling milk for junket. Gall was used for restoring the colour of old black lace, etc. Bine bullets were made from lead melted, in a heavy iron ladle and were poured into a mould made for the purpose. The early guns were all muzzle-loaders, being charged with powder and»shot packed into place by a ramrod. In about 1876 Mr. Bidwill's father in the Old Country sens the first breech-loader otat to Pihautea^ and cartridges for this were filled at home. . . All the heavy casting was done by bullocks, up to twelve or fourteen in a team, the rear couple pulling from strong wooden yokes attached to the wagon-pole, while the yokes of the preceding pairs were fastened to a central chain." The bullock-driver was a most important person on the station. As far as possible, the settlers were their own doctors, but "a shod horse was kept in a convenient paddock at night in case of emergency, and once, when only eight years old, Will Bidwill had to ride to Greytown to get the doctor when the youngest child Jessy was born. The ittle boy had to find his way through fourteen miles of roadless, scrub-covered country, at night, and alone." SELF-KELIANT GIRLS. The Bidwill family comprised three sons and six daughters. When the girls grew up, "they were allowed £12 per annum as pocket money, and with this they had to keep their horses shod, their gear in repair, and pay all small expenses. Bolls of shepherd's plaid serge were kept at Pihautea, and from these the girls made their own dresses. . . They were splendid riders and took great pride in their horses, which they looked after entirely themselves. They rode bare-back and astride until eleven years of age, when they were given the side-saddles universally used by women in those days, but their father always ordered the pommel which holds down the left knee to be removed, thus teaching them to retain their seats almost entirely by balance. So expert were they that they could ride sitting sideways without a saddle, and Jessy, riding in this way, used to jump her - cream pony Sylphe over ditches and over the slip panels that took the place of gates. ... It was not considered 'correct' for a girl to ride in a show ring, so the ladies' hacks were ridden by men sitting on side-saddles with a haneine skirt attached." 6 * The eldest daughter, Catherine Came Bidwill, afterwards Mrs. E. J. Barton, inheriting her mother's ability and adaptability, could stuff a saddle and also do the finest needlowork; drew "delightful little pen and ink sketches"

and was also a skilful carpenter; arnj was, of course, an expert horsewoman. The social life was according to thdj period. To a Pihautea dance the guest^ rode from all quarters, "the girls ■with, their ball dresses and the men with their evening clothes tied in swags oa^ their saddles." DEVOTION Or A GIFTED WOMAN, Bidwill of Pihautea died at Pihautea in 1884, his widow ten years later. Of Mrs. Bidwill, the "Standard" (Greytown) wrote: "Her house was her, home, and she rarely left it, all her thoughts were centred upon it, and upon the right and proper way to rear and women. . .A modest and unassuming woman, whom 'thousands of people in the Wairarapa have hardly, ever seen. All her married life was passed at Pihautea. For her there was none of the strife of politics, none of the talk of women's emancipation; for .her very gentleness and home-living made her freer and more emancipated than any bestowal of women's rights can give. Her house from roof to cellar was a model of purity and cleanliness.'* And note that the woman who came into the wilderness to carry out la seclusion this great and arduous work was by no means a f rontierswoman born, but the daughter of an Essex-Suffolk family—a cultured girl who wrote verses in both English and French. At the age of 22 she had arrived in New Zealand with her parents in 1849, and her journal of their voyage in the sailing ship Mariner is a feature of "Bid* will of Pihautea." There seems to be something pre« scient in this verse from the poem witK which Catherine Bidwill (then Orbell)j winds up the long voyage:— The Mariner! The Mariner! Tho' a weary lot be ours Cast where the lone bush ranges He, And earth's untrodden bowers. Yet her memory, like the rainbow, * • Breaks forth mid rays of light, Cheering the prospects dreary, and Illumining sorrow's night.

How many people reading Catherine Orbell's journal, full of poetry and Early Victorian conceits, would see ia this graceful writer and observer the isolated, home-keeping woman of civil* isation's frontier. Yet so it proved. Well may the co-authors of her story pay; this tribute to pioneer women in thai Wairarapa:— "When one remembers that they had been born and bred in the Old Country, were 'generally quite unused to horses, and had led sheltered, quiet lives at home, so very different fromi the discomfort and toil of the earlyj colonial days, it is wonderful to think; hn r bravely and cheerfully they accustomed themselves to their new life, They were a noble band of women, and we who are reaping the reward of theiij labours should never fail to do theinj honour.'/