SAM DAW.

Feilding Star, Volume IV, Issue 1072, 31 December 1909, Page 2

SAM DAW.

A VETERAN COACHMAN. RETIRES FROM THE BOX SEAT. MAIL CARRYING FOR 21 YEARS. Everybody knows Sam Daw. That is, everybody who has been in Feilding for . any length of time. Some people call him "Mr" Daw, but they are the ones who don't know him. live genial old coachman, who, although he has been for over thirty years driving and coaching, has never lost his soldierly bearing, has at last decided to -nit the box seat, and leave it to a younger man to carry His Majesty's mails to and from Kimbolton. "I started carrying the mails to Kimbolton and Rangiwahia in 1887," he told us. For close upon. 22 years he has carried good news and bad, tho Christmas cards and New Year' 6 greetings, to the settlers in the back blocks of Kimbolton. "And I have never 1 been late with the mails." Whatever delays occur in the delivery of postal matter — and these delays do occur occasionally — the fault ha 6 never been Sam Daw's. "I was the only coachman in those days. The roads? They were bad!" „ "What was Feilding like? And Kimbolton?" asked the interviewer. "Feilding was a very poor little place, and Kimbolton was just about a pub and a store. Before I took up the mails, I used to cart, goods to Cheltenham. Then ac the road was opened up I went to the hill past Cheltenham, then on to the place they now oall Kiwitea, and again on to Bryce's gate. At last I got to Kimbolton. There was scarcely anything but standing bush on both sides of the road then, and I have gradually seen the whole of it cleared. I can remember one day when a piece of the road at the top was nothing but slips from one end to the other. Soon after I started the coach I took the surveying party on their way to sur•vey the Apiti block before it" was opened for settlement." "Did you ever have any accidents?" "Accidents? We? Nol I never had any accidents. I never threw a passenger off or lost anything. That's a record, isn't it?'* The interviewer agreed that it was a Tecord, indeed. "No, I never had the Governor aboard, nor yet Dick Seddon. They don't travel. by coaches. And Joe Ward goes in a- motor-car!" Feilding's oldest coachman landed in New Zealand in 1874, and came to Feiiaing in the following year. He is not leaving the district, hut thinks that twenty-one years on that drive -is. quite enough for one man. .There is nobody who knows him but will join with us in wishing the veteran jehu a happy New Year, and offer to a valued "servant of the public a word of appreciation on his retirement.