OKARITO.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXXIII, Issue 15920, 4 May 1912, Page 6

OKARITO.

STORY OP AN OLD DIGGINGTOWN. THE GOLDEN SANDS OF THE FIVE-MILE. (Specially written for the " Lyttelton Times.") (By "HAEREERE.) The news, recently published, that Mr Leslie Reynolds, a well-known engineering expert, was proceeding to Okarito, on the West Coast, to advise on the best means of developing the auriferous beaches of the Five-Mile and other coastal stretches, revives in the minds of old West Coasters many memories of Okarito's golden days. There was a time when Okarito was a name in everybody's mouth, for it was the scene of one of the greatest " rushes in tho history of gold-mining in New Zealand. Nowadays it is about the very "deadest" of the played-out old digging towns of Westland. The olden glory will never be revived; but it is quite possible that Okarito may become a solidly prosperous plaoe, for undoubtedly there is a vast amount of mineral wealth lying undeveloped in that part of the Wild West Coast. Mr Leslie Reynolds is confident that he will solve the problem of how to save the gold that lies buried in the heavy black sands of the Okarito coast. It is believed by many that the bulk of the gold does not come down in the rivers, but is Avashed up by gales from tho ancient beaches, twhich extend out some distance, submerged a few fathoms from the present low-water levels. A curious theory this, perhaps, but it is supported by experienced West Coast gold-winners. It is a pity "that no writer has been drawn in New Zealand to describe, as Charles Reade did in " Never Too Late to Mend," the daily and nightly scenes in these lively old digging-towns. Life in Hokitika, Kanieri. Ross, Okarito and the Five-Mile and Three-Milo was as romantic in the days of 1860-68 as ever it was on the fields of Ballarat and Bendigo, or on the banks of the Sacramento. These "rough shops" were full of picturesque material for the writer of adventure and moving incident. Unfortunately, no Reado no Bret Harte found his way there. But the survivors of the old army of diggers, tho bearded and belted stalwarts who descended on the Coast in their thousands, in the days of Sixty-five -and are full of curious reminiscence.

THE OLD HANDS OF OKARITO. One moist and wintry day a few years ago, three Wellington pilgrims wandered into Okarito, on their way to the Franz Josef Glacier and the faraway Haast Pass. Okarito is a hundred miles south of Hokitika, and it was a wet hundred miles on tho box seat of Jock Adamson's coach. _ It was just as well that we had rigged ourselves out in sou'-westers and oilskins, sailor-fashion, for the West Coast rain is wetter than most other varieties. Okarito, lying there on the edge of its big salt-water lagoon, with the Tasman Sea rollers pounding in like thunder on tho other side of the sandbank, looked the dreariest, dampest spot on the whole Coast. The very nouses—such of them as were standing—bore an ancient and weathered look; there was, I think, a fair-sized crop of grass on the roof of one of them. Outside the dilapidated little inn—it was a venerablelooking hut—sat three or four of the most patriarchal visaged Old Identities that I had ever seen; their Druidic beards descended nearly to their waists; their deep-sunken eyes looked out at us with " wild surmise," as of stout Cortez and his men, when they first gazed on the Pacific, silent, upon a peak in Darien. We stiffly - descended, for we were a-rcold and numb, and advanced upon that inn-door. The most patriarchal of the three Ancient Men stayed us with a question. " Say," he said, in a deep-sea voice, " hev you three sons of (missing word) been shipwrecked? Because you look like three old .sailors togged up in them' there (adjective) sou-westers." The patriarch seemed to tako it as a personal slight, this excessive protection against the soft sweet moisture of his beloved Coast. "One 'ud think," he rumbled, "that there was a (lurid word) 'urricane blowin'! s Look at us! We don't need no (strong adjective) sou'-westers and ileskins." Tho Old Identities followed ns into the bar, as is tho pleasing custom on the West Coast when strangers come to town. " Driest weather we've 'ad for a long time, remarked the First Patriarch, expectantly. The pilgrims took the hint, and in return were told a few facts and other things about the great days when there were ten thousand diggers in Okarito.

. OKARITO'S "THIRTY PUBS." ' " Must have been quite a big town once, this village of yours," said one of the pilgrims as he went to the door and looked out around the one-street little settlement, straggling along the beach front, with the sombre mistladen bush rising at the back and misty ranges again'- behind the bush. "Town? Hell!" said the First Patriarch, with some emphasis; "why, mister, it was a City I Why, look 'ere, y'needn't believe me unless y'like, but I tell ye this: there was Thirty Pubs 'ere once! Thirty Pubs I An' now there's only two, or rather one and a-'arf, 'cos the roof of the other one down the road ,is 'arf orf. Thirty Pubs, and now only one and a-'arf! That'll tell yel" It did. It gave us a vivid bird's-eye view - , as it were, of the decline and fall of Okarito. The Coast measures a town's prosperity by the number of public-houses, and certainly it is a reliable guide. in those parts. None of the Patriarchs had been fewer than forty years -on the Coast; in fact, all of them were pioneers of the great gold rush of 1865. One of them —not the First Patriarch—was a fine old Scotchman, a soa of a very aristocratic family, and a University man. t He had helped to survey much of this wild new land in the days when tho " rush" died down and the thousands of diggers departed for the Thames goldfields, in tho North Island, and he told us how in mapping, tho country he had named some of tho lesser Alpine peaks discovered after the heroes of the " Iliad." Two books he carried with him wherever he went, his Homer and his Bible. . . TONS OF GOLD.

About lifo in the Okarito of 1865. Tho principal alluvial field was on the Five-Mile Beach, on the broad, lordly, sandy seashore just to the south of Okarito Bluff, where those fortunate enough to secure claims literally made piles of gold, and spent it just as freely as they made it. Thousands of diggers, most of them young, strong and adventurous, the pick of manhood, came marching down here from Hokitika and Kauicri, and dived into the wild Dorado. Some pushed up tho ravines down which the icy rivers, such as tho Waicu—which flows from the Franz Josef Glacier—bore their sands of gold; they plunged into the forests and wrestled with starvation and the giant mosquitoes of Westland; most of them remained on the Five-mile and the Three-mile and combed the auriferous beaches for their wealth. Even with the primitive appliances used the results were astonishingly rich One storekeeper at Okarito, acting as agent for a bank, purchased tens upon tens of thousands of pounds worth of gold from the lucky diggers. They would come m with tin "billies" brimming with gold-dust, saved by the process of washing the sand out over plush or some similar material, which would catch and retain the precious grains. TH e usual extent of the beach claims was 40ft frontage for each man -out of these small areas ot, heavy black sand tons of gold wero h" ed - *

THE DANCE-GIRLS OF THE COAST. And at night Okarito sat up and made things hum. This dea'd old town, did itself proud, in 'sixty-five. When the sun went down in tho Tasman Sea and old Orion hung out his glittering Belt over the saw-edged range of the great Aljw, this long beach was a blaze of light and a place of giddy revelry. Tho "pubs" were open from dark till daylight; they never closed their doors. But the chiefest joy of the gold-winner vras the dancing casinos, a great institution all over the West Coast in the roaring days of the sixties. The heart of the gold- . seeking adventurer yearned for the bright eyes of women, so an enterprising Hokitika man supplied the want by importing from Melbourno dancing partners "for the men of the shovel and the wash-dish. Scores of goodlooking girls, able to dance and sing agreeably, were brought to the Coast and distributed from Hokitika to the various diggings, generally in "teams" of five. Down the wild Coast they came on horseback, fording the dangerous ' rivers, toiling through devious forest tracks, and their arrival was the signal for, boisterous jubilation. Tho rough but chivalrous diggers treatil ed them like queens. When a new Girl came to town, from the far north, riding on a man's saddle, and wearied with her hundred-mile, elow journey, all hands would turn out and march along the track to meet her and escort her to her hotel. .Their rousing' welcome would have gratified even a modern Queen of Song. The dance halls on the Five-mile and other, rich diggings did roaring business. The privilege of dancing with the ladies cost two shillings per head, in addition to which the gentleman had to "shout" for his partner. The last figure in each dance was "Ladies to tho bar!" Many of the girls got ; £9 and ' £lO per week salary. • Some of the dance-girls found permanent homes on the Coast, marrying well-to-do diggers. Naturally there was great competition for them. " Ah," says one of the Patriarchs, . a reminiscent - look in his fine old blue eye, "it took a good man to get a wife on the Coast them days." Okarito even had a newspaper. This" was tho "Okarito Observer," conducted first by Mr J. Carroll and after- : «j wards bv the late Mr R. C. Reid. :. The inhabitants were proud of their paper and lent a willing hand to get it out on publishing days. The proprietor would stroll down the street, mention to any unemployed and thirsty citizens that there was a bottle or Whisky at the old stand. The crowd - straightway adjourned to the ' Obser-. ~r~ ver" office, and in turn toiled away at the hand-press' until the whole issue was printed, and then discussed the contents of the inky sheets over the editorial waipiro. There was a darker side to Okanw» goldfields life. Most of the diggers were fine, genuine, honest fellows; but there were a number of " hard cases amongst them, from California an<t from Sydney:side. Sometimes a diggerwould''suddenly and "mysteriously dis- * appear in the bush—murdered, it was whispered, for the sake of his gold. Sudden death in the dangerous snowrivers, too, was many a digger s end. In 1867, out of sixty-eight graves in the Okarito Cemetery, on the scantily grassed long sandpit opposite the town, six-ty-six were those of men who had been drowned in the Five-mile Creek, the Three-mile Creek, the Waiau, and othef.atreams 'in. the district. Drowning, in fact, came to be regarded as a natural death in those parts. .THE WHISKY SCHOONER. An Auckland merchant, who was a sailor in his youth, once told me the story of his first and only experience of Okarito. The schooner in which he was an A. 8., was chartered to take a cargo of whisky and flour—the two staDles of life on the Coast—round from-Dunedin .to the digging town. Thciharbour-entrance is a very precan»< ous one; the bar is often completely? closed. The little West' Coast, steams? Jane Douglas (recently wrecked neaS . d'Urville Island) was once bar-bouna for several weeks inside,, through the channel completely Bilting up, until a "fresh" released her. The schooner in due course arrived off Okarito and hove-to, waiting for a signal as to the state of the bar. The signal went up \ on.the flagstaff: "Take the bar." Tho ■'■■ i schooner heaved for where a captain ■imagined the entrance to be; - he could see none, but he trusted to the shore" signal. Presently he discovered: thati'the bar was completely blocked by a high'sandbank, but it was too late .to go about. \ Bumpl and the schooner-was soon high and dry on the sand,.lifted right up by the long easy 'rollers.'' '*■' The-skipper., was in a frightful tern-r£ per". •■■'" Why the unmentionable did you" signal me to come. in?" heyelled; Butlpretty.well the-whole pop-- •«* ulation of Okarito was there to back the signalman up. '•-' . "■ " Keep your ; hair * on, Cap'en," said the'principal' storekeeper, with a clrawl and a smile; "we signalled you because we wantedithat: whisky and that flour. We ain't had a drop to drink . here for the : last; three weeks. You're ,„?'* just in time' to save our lives. couldn't drive you away, and you the flaming bar like a bleedm' hero.._i Don't you worry your little self, we'll ssj float your darned old schooner for T * you." ' * ' • /• And they did. All hands turned out and hold of cases. of whisky and sacks of'flour in less than noitime, and hundreds of diggers ; toiled with ££jj jacks and rolling skids until the s£S schooner was 6afe in salt water again, -hThat was the way Okarito did things if £SB? 'sixty-five. .. Lv£S