HARDY VETERAN.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLIII, Issue XLIII, 9 October 1923, Page 3

HARDY VETERAN.

AT NINETY-THREE WORKS A

NASEBY GARDEN

To be capable of keeping a quairteracre garden and orchard in excellent trim at the age of 93 is the privilege of Mi* James Crawford, one of the earliest set£lera of Naseby. "I have just been doing a bit of digging,'' was one of Mr Crawford's first remarks to a newspaper reporter who caMed on him, and1 a subsequent conversation showed that his mental powers remain even more than equal to hia physical powers. Mr Crawford is a Crimean veteran, and he was throHgh all the engagements in which the navy played a part as a member of the complement of H.M.S. Trafalgar. More than that, he went to Js|aseby from the Victorian goldfields more than 60 years ago, and he and his party had to clear away 2ft of snow before they could pitch their tent. All the privations and occasional compensations of the early diggers' ■life were his before he went back to Victoria. But New Zealand called him. again, and he came back to be appointed to ihe charge of the great Government water race —a position which he held for thirty, years, while from its glory of 15 hotels, American shooting galleries and thousands of white and Chinese miners Naseby languished to its piresent state of somnolency.