WOMAN LUMBERJACK

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 47, Issue 2663, 30 August 1937, Page 2

WOMAN LUMBERJACK

STRENGTH OF CHARACTER CONTROLLING ROUGH MEN. A tail, stately woman approaching her three score years and. ten, who emigrated to Australia as a young woman, waited at a Bloomsbury note!, in England, recently, hoping, before she returned to the land of her adoption, to receive news of her four brothers whom she had not seen for nearly 50 years. Since she left England at the age of 18 Mrs Maude Matthews married, bore children, became a grandmother and lost her husband. After her husband's death 21 years ago she took over the direction of his timber business. , i * She has that deeply lined face that tells of years of exposure to sun and fresh air, and, as befits one who has had to handle hard-natured lumbermen, she has a dominating personality. “When I left England,” she told a reporter, “my brothers were small, boys close to one another in age. Tom, the youngest, had not even started school. Now they are all probably married, but where they are I. do not know. “I intended to seek news of any relatives, but a serious illness I had in •Ireland upset my plans. Now I intend to go back to Australia via the United States, Canada and New Zealand. . Cowed The Men. Then Mrs Matthews talked a little about herself, for in a moment of self-revelation she had confided that she had had a more interesting career than she had ever read in any novel. . She told how the timber business was at one time in low Abater and how, since she had handled it, it had prospered. “Everything I touched went right,” she said. She talked of teams of 30 bullocks drawing huge loads of timber, of . the men who drove them, and of tlie woman, herself, they worked for. The leader of a team of bullocks was having an argument with one of his men, and both, to use her own words, were “swearing like troopers.” “I was afraid that they might come to blows,” said Mrs Matthews, “so I went to see what was happening. As I entered the hut the senior man shouted: “I’m the boss here!” “ ‘Who says he’s the boss ? I broke in. ‘l’m the boss’—it' was the first time I had sworn.” And if you had seen the firmness of Mrs Matthew’s eye as she spoke, you would have believed her when she said that the men were cowed to silence.