The Reviving 'Nineties—Still Unlike To-day

Evening Star, Issue 23503, 17 February 1940, Page 20 (Supplement)

The Reviving 'Nineties— Still Unlike To-day

POINTS OF DIFFERENCE RECALLED

Wellington in tlie early ’nineties was a bustling little city full of vigour and vim, though nfiles away behind what it is now. The hills above it were not then built upon; Miramar was a sheep run, a bit swampy in parts, island Hay’s one distinction was its hermit, a cunning-looking old man who called his cave “This House,” and hail a block of wood for nis pillow. . . . Kilbirnie at that time was mostly covered with small native shubbery, but there was an hotel there which was outside the three-mile limit, and therefore available for bona fide travellers under the licensing laws of those days. It was a popular resort on Sunday afternoons among Weliingtouians who were fond of walking. Dunedin then appeared to me to be the most solid-looking town I had so far seen in New Zealand. . . . Walking along the north end of Princes street, I stopped and watched a blacksmith slogging in for all he was worth. 1 never saw a man working harder. Milton was a fairly large town—more important, I think, then than now.

distances apart—at Tuapeka Mouth, Miller’s Flat, Lowburn, and near Albertown. [Punts of the kind have now almost entirely disappeared from Otago, their place taken by bridges.] Cromwell proved to be a bigger town than Clyde. It is now much bigger than it then was. So is Clyde. . . . There is a deal more fruit-growing about both of them than in those days, when mining was their mainstay. In those days Cobb and Co.'s coaches were running round the Otago goldfields, carrying mails as well as passengers. The arrival of the coaches two or three times a week, though they did not carry many passengers, was an event to be looked forward to, and all hands came into the township to set* them and get the mails, just as they do when the steamer arrives at Queenstown. The departure of the coaches at daybreak for Naseby was the means of keeping some passengers, and many of the townspeople, up all night to see them off.

Invercargill struck me as being a very prosperous-looking and well-kept town. There were no slum areas about it apparently, but on the contrary its appearance was generally comfortable. It has gone ahead since then, which is mainly due to the splendid country surrounding it. , . . In those days tha dairy industry was not what it is now, and the export of frozen meat was nothing wonderful, but there was a largo export trade in oats. The advent of the motor car has altered all this.

At Roxburgh miners in gum boots, sou’-westers, and oil-skins were walking about the streets. ... It is much better built and a prettier place these days, and much more of a fruit-grow-ing centre than it then was. Alexandra in parts was much cruder than it is now. There were only one or two gold dredges there when I saw it first, but there was a good deal of sluicing round ahout. At Clydevale . . . the punt was a novelty to me. It was built on boatshaped pontoons heading up stream, and fitted with a rudder, which steered it across the river zig-zag fashion, the down-current of the river supplying the power. There were some more of these punts on the river, but at Jong

Cinemas had not yet come into being, and skating had just gone out. . . . I saw the first movies that, I think, had come to New Zealand while I was there. They were the pictures of Queen Victoria’s jubilee celebrations in London.—“ Harrison Thomas ” (T. H. Thompson), * Reminiscences of the ’Nineties,' in the ‘ Evening Star.’