THE WAIMEAS IN THE 'FORTIES

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXI, 24 April 1937, Page 23 (Supplement)

THE WAIMEAS IN THE 'FORTIES

It is interesting to imagine this very promising boy walking backwards and forwards between Father Garin's school in Nelson and his home at Waimea West, sauntering along the ill-formed roads, fording or swimming the Waimea River at Appleby, later shaking hands with Pilot Cross at the Outer Anchorage as the “Mountain Maid" left for Sydney and London (Bth December, ‘1854) with the boy who was to return 20 years later as Bishop and to again shake hands with Pilot Cross who fired the cannon at the old flagstaff on Britannia Heights in his honour—the youngest Bishop in the world, who later was destined to be the oldest. In describing how he reached Waimea West, the Archbishop said: “We came up in the boat and walked through the fern and manuka for upwards of a mile to the site chosen for the house. It was rather a painful walk—painful for me, I know, as they dragged me tired and crying through the scrub. “An amusing incident happened, as I afterwards learned. The party came to a small clearing, and there were some native* daisies in blossom. Now the wild indigenous New Zealand daisy is very small and insignificant compared to the field daisies of Europe. My mother seeing, it broke out into this rather bitter and reproachful exclamation to my father: “See what a beggarly country you have brought us to—it. cannot even grow a decent daisy.” She. made a great mistake; for in three or four years she lived to see fine grapes: ripening on the thriving vine near her parlour window —a thing not to be seen in the colder land she came from, j "I may remark, in passing, that the! Waimea Plains were then very hot in summer compared to their present temperature at its maximum. The clearing away of the scrub and the letting in of the cold winds, combined with the plantations of so many trees, and the' covering of the ground with grass and general verdure, have lowered the: temperature by several degrees, so that grapes will not now ripen except under glass. ! “Well, we reached at last the site of i the new house. A well was sunk, near the tent, and at a depth of 17 feet, excellent clear gravel filtered water w;w found, and with a windlass, rope and bucket easily procured. On finenn,, the water the well-sinkers found also a totara tree right across the well, proving thereby that this plain had once; been much lower, when the trees and logs, floated down the river were af-

Monro’s place (after Sir David Monro). He was our doctor and lived about a mile from us. His place was afterwards called ‘Berecroft.’ and is remarkable for its extensive and valuable plantations of fine trees due to the doctor’s taste and foresight. We used to go occasionally to admire the wonderful growth of that eucalypt. It was still unique in the district when I left for Europe in 1854. When I returned in 1874, after twenty years’ absence, I found eucalypts all over the district of Nelson and Waimea, and they had already grown to a respectable size. A general idea had prompted the inhabitants to plant these trees in all their properties. “When I was a boy in this district, there were no larks (save the small native so-called lark), no sparrows, no blackbirds, no linnets, no goldfinches, nor finches of any sort. When I returned from Europe in 1874, I was alike surprised and delighted to find these birds already more numerous than I had known them anywhere in Europe. “I sometimes say to myself, What does a New Zealand child born in our day know about, the flora of the land of his birth? He sees all sorts of trees and shrubs in garden and field, and fancies they belong to New Zealand whereas the real native shrubs are entirely out-numbered by flora imported from many remote lands. I pride myself, owing to my early arrival in the .Colony, in being able to pick out the (genuine New Zealand trees and shrubs land distinguish them from the importI p d article. Again, there were no black swans here in my early days; they had (also been introduced during my ab- ! sence, were put on one island only, but soon flew across the Strait, and visited every lake, lagoon, and pool of any size in both islands. Also the deer, that now abound in the Nelson Province, were turned out while I was in Europe, and it was my brother Henry that loosed the first imported pairs—stag and hind, buck and doc (that is. red deer and fallow deer) in the hills behind Nelson. They took to the backvalleys, and were unmolested for 30 years, when they were found to be in considerable herds, and afterwards deer stalking and shooting became allowed by law.

BULLOCK TEAMS “Regarding the first cultivation of the soil, we found that bullocks were the best teams for breaking up the land.

tenvards cast by the tide upon the beach. The totara wood was in a state of perfect preservation.

Slower, indeed, they were than horses, but safer, not so liable to break the ploughshares against stubborn roots. They required, of course, two men; one to hold the plough and the other to drive the team and often it happened that one driver would bring in a dozen or two of New Zealand larks, killed by his long whip as they closely followed the plough to pick up the grubs. These nice tame birds soon became rare, owing to the ravages of cats. I have known a cat with kittens to bring in a day to her young over a dozen larks. A similar fate attended the native white-breasted robin, now nearly extinct on the mainland, also

CHANGE AND PROGRESS "When I sometimes visit the. Waimea Plains, and consider what they are now and what I knew them in my childhood and youth, I am astonished at the change and progress they exhibit. I remember them without a single European tree of any kind, having the New Zealand flora exclusively. “I remember the first eucalypt planted in Waimea W«st. It was at Doctor

LATE ARCHBISHOP REDWOOD'S REMINISCENCES In his published reminiscences the late Archbishop Redwood threw many a ay of light on early Nelson and district. The Redwood home at Waimea West was built of peasy, a mixture of c ay and gravel, and finished inside and out by a coating of white plaster. A lime kiln was built at Stoke, and elsewhere bricks were made for the chimney. A comfortable two storey house was the result, and for a number of years it was the best house in the Nelson district, and one which stood without crack through the violent earthquakes of 1848 and 1855. The tent (in which the family first lived) was sixty feet long, was divided into compartments by boarded partitions, and covered with canvas; the whole well fastened by ropes to stakes sunk in the ground. In this the Redwood family lived comfortably for six months.

i the victim of cats. "About 80 yards from our home, my brother-in-law, Joseph Ward, built his new habitation of wood, procured from the forest that filled, barring a few clearings the whole valley up to present Spring Grove and Bclgrove, which valley tapering off to a narrow vale,

was familiarly called the “Tea Kettle Spout"; and the South West wind, furious at times, blowing from that quarter, is still named by the old settlers the ‘Spout’ wind. “He went to live on a section just within the aforesaid forest, where fine

itara and pine timber trees were in

Kindreds. "The site of our house was upon a: iank overlooking a stretch of water! like a stagnant river or lagoon, bordered on both sides with flax and toi-toi. From a narrow gully, about four miles j iway, near a wood of fine lofty timber j trees, issued a streamlet that, swollen j by the winter rains, sent along a considerable volume of water. It entered a winding hollow and formed some miles of deep still stream, which lasted through the heat of summer, and some- ! times broadened out at flood lime, into I a swamp which became a lake teeming : with wild duck.

“Now all that has disappeared, leaving only a dry hollow which gives no idea of the extent of water once there. I remember that, once in a flood, this water was used to float down a large supply of winter firewood to the homestead. At a later peijjod, my father, to get rid of this water, cut a deeper channel near the swamp, so that the mass of water flower away, and the

whole aspect of the landscape changed. For years before this alteration, the stream remained, and in a narrow but deep part of it. just opposite the house, my father had a large maire-tree tree stretched across the water, and with a rope fastened to a series of poles, formed a convenient and safe footbridge. Before this, my brother Henry used to pass the stream in a tub (one end of a cask) worked by a pulley and rope. What a source of pleasure that stream was for us boys! In it, at the age of eight, I taught myself to swim, and what pleasant swims we all had in it, summer after summer! Moreover, my brothers built a wooden

I flat-bottomed boat, to row and sail upon its placid surface, when needed for ;duck shooting, in flood time especially. Oh the happy hours we spent in that boat. How changed now! No water remains stagnant there, but flows on, under the hills, to the right, till it joins a clear, running brook which, between banks lined with flax and monuka, reaches the sea. A DULL PLAIN "What then, was the landscape like when we lived in that tent? In the . far west were the snowy peaks of Mount Arthur, sixty miles ofT, and the range of seaward mountains. In the direction of Tasman Bay, you saw a dry dullish plain of fern and flax and scrub manuka with an occasional lilypalm. Looking inland, you beheld a range of hills fringed with trees, circling round what is now called ‘Redwood’s Valley,’ terminating with a seriet of wooded gullies. Beyond the aforesaid placid stream was an arid stony expanse of native grass and dull thorn bushes, with occasional strips of flax in the hollows. No visible human dwellings, no trees, no shrubs to relieve the monotony. In summer the whitened grass was so scorched by the heat that it crackled under foot, and it swarmed wit hmyriads and myriads of small grasshoppers, a terror to those who crossed these parched spots, especially to ladies. In the air other but larger grasshoppers, or locusts, over an inch long, were flying in all directions pursued and caught and swallowed by hundreds of large' seagulls, catching them just as swallows catch (lies. Nol a vestige of all this is there to-day, but the eye delights in viewing homesteads and gardens and orchards and line plantations of varied trees from Europe, Australia and America. It is a dreary desert changed into a paradise. Cultivation has entirely destroyed the grasshoppers by destroying their eggs.

FOOD QUESTION How at first did we fare in that lent? What sort of food had we? We were never seriously in want. Flour and groceries we purchased in the newlyopened Nelson shops and we bought potatoes from the Maoris, unless wr found some imported from Tasmania; and in the brook we caught eels for fish diet. No fresh meat of any kind, except of various kinds of birds, shot as wanted by my father and brother. In

the wood, about four miles away, pigeons were in thousands; we thought they would supply the colony for ever; and to-day their scarcity requires them to be protected by law. Talking of pigeons, it is no exaggeration to say that when the kahikatea (white pine) berries were ripe, a man could sit under a kahikatea and shoot pigeons all day long, so plentiful were they and so hard to scare. A hundred a day was no extraordinary bag. My mother availed' herself of such abundance, to cook us the most delicious dinners, and, with the feathers carefully preserved, she made for all the family warm feather beds for winter. God bless the pigeons while they lasted! They, alas! will never come again.

“Wild duck of different kinds filled the rivers and swamps, and sheldrakes (commonly misnamed paradise ducks), were very numerous, now almost extinct. Many also were the pukekos and kakas. The grass teemed with quail, the original quail like the Egyptian species, now extinct, I think, in New Zealand, but still found and shot in parts of Australia. My brother Henry used to bring in twenty brace in an afternoon. They were pleasant to shoot, and on the table simply delicious, far superior to the present Californian quail. Every day, therefore, or as often as needed, the men used to go and shoot the dinner, sometimes one bird, and sometimes another, in charming \ ariety.

THE FIRST CATTLE “By degrees cattle came, followed in due course by sheep and horses. First came working bullocks already broken in to the yoke. My father bought a team of six for £6O. He also purchased imported drays and ploughs and harrows, etc., and set about cultivating the fifty acres, which wcVe soon surrounded by a ditch and bank topped with manuka branches. Soon we got cows and welcome milk. Then sheep, then horses. Regarding horses, the Maoris afforded at times great amusement. At first they were amazed at the sight of a horse—they did not know what to call t —a big flog or what? They learned 'he name “horse" from the Europeans, hut unable to pronounce the “s,” their best attcnjpl was “hohio,” which remains to this day tnc Maori ruwvie for torse. It was great fun (not foh the mfortunate animals? to see the Maoris handling and riding their new steeds

\Vhich they eagerly bought. How we used to see them scampering and racing up the valley on the way to Motueka! They would, on arrival, .turn out the poor exhausted animals all white with foaming sweat; and, of course, in many instances, they caught a chill and died from neglect.

WALK THROUGH WAIMEA PLAINS

“I had to leave to go home (from Father Garin’s school at Nelson) to Stafford Place once a month. It was distant 14 miles. I used to walk the distance at my leisure, and wade the Waimea River. I had no fear of water, being a good swimmer. Arriving on the Saturday evening, I was at hand to serve Father Garin’s Mass on Sunday, in our house, which then served as the only available church. On the Monday I walked back to Nelson in my own way, as Father Garin did in his, he visiting the people as he thought fit. I came home, one Saturday, with my fiddle in a green bag. “What have you got there in that bag, Frank?” they said. “A fiddle,” —said I. "A fiddle, what do you know about a fiddle said they. “I will soon show you,” I replied. And forthwith I began to play a number of favourite familiar tunes. It was a surprise and a revelation. My father was so pleased that, hearing of the artist, Charles Bonnington, he ordered me to take lessons from him, which I did. Afterwards, in France, I had a good professor trained at the Paris Conservatoire, and I won the first prize at the French College, St. Chamond, Loire, and became first violin in the college orchestra.

HARVESTING “At harvest time I had to go home and do my fair share of work in the harvest field. Machine reapers and binders were yet unknown in New Zealand. The crops were gathered by hand. I was, for a boy, a very expert reaper with a sickle, and did my halfacre a day, or thereabouts, as well as the men. "Harvesting in those early days was quite Homeric in its main features and environment, reminding me afterwards of what I saw described by Homer on the wondrous shield of

Achilles, the God-Jike work of Vulcan. There was the master of the field, staff in hand (Homeric style) in the person of my father, in the midst of his men and boys, directing and encouraging

the reapers. There was the golden wheat gathered in sheaves and stooks. There were the workers round the festive meal, with abundance of good small beer, my father’s special brew for the harvest. There were my mother’s dainty cakes and fruit pies, and the soothing tea. Ah, I shall never forget that tea refreshment at four o’clock in the scorching summer afternoon. Nothing like it to allay thirst and mildly stimulate.- Unlike the Homeric chieftain, my father often took his sickle and did his part as a

reaper, and meanwhile regaled the company with a good anecdote or story. “Besides being poetical, farming paid well in those days. I remember distinctly that, one year, my father grew, in a hundred acre field just cleared and fallowed, a crop of wheat splendid to behold. It was taller than,a # standing man, and was reaped by men who had not to stoop. Afterwards the high standing straw was burnt. It yielded 60 bushels to the acre of the very finest sample of wheat—6ooo bushels in all—which my father sold for ten shillings a bushel, because owing to the Australian gold diggers, wheat was wanted at almost any price. With the money thus gained, my father bought an extensive sheep run in Marlborough at ten shillings an acre, the low price then offered to induce persons to settle upon the land.”