MEMORIES OF A PIONEER.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18710, 16 May 1924, Page 11

MEMORIES OF A PIONEER.

SURVEYOR AND RUNHOLDER.

ASSOCIATE OF E. G. WAKEFIELD.

Some incidents of the pioneer days of New Zealand are recalled by the death of Mrs. Eliza Allom, of Milford, which was announced on Tuesday. Mrs. Allom's husband, the late Mr. Albert J. Allom, was concerned in the early settlement of at. least three of New Zealand's provinces. His parents, in England, were intimate friends of Edward Gibbon Wakefield, under whose then novel scheme of colonisation both South Australia and the middle and southern provinces of New Zealand were settled. Mr, Allom, when 16 years of age, joined the survey staff of the New Zealand Company, of which Wakefield was promoter, and he came to Wellington in the Brougham, in 1841. In this capacity he did pioneering survey work in the Manawatu, Porirua, Karori and Hutt districts. He also had charge of a survey party which, in 1844, made an expedition to Otago, and laid out in 10acro blocks the present site of the city of Dunedin. In the following year the survey party was disbanded, and Mr. Allom and a fellow-cadet, Mr. John Tully, settled in the Wairarapa Valley, on land leased from Maoris, where they formed one of the colony's earliest cattle runs. Soon afterwards occurred a break in Mr. Allom's colonial experience. Going back to England, he became private secretary to Mr. E. G. Wakefield, and as such assisted him in preparing for the press his famous book, '! A View of the Art of Colonisation." While in England Mr. Allom assisted in making the shipping arrangements for the first detachment of the famous "Canterbury pilgrims." In 1851 he became private secretary to Sir Dominic Daly, Lieutenant-Governor of Tobago, in the West Indies, where for a time also he acted as Colonial Secretary. Tt was in 1856 that Mr. Allom married, in England, Miss Eliza Horn, the lady whose death has just occurred. While on a tour in the Virgin Islands in 1858 he was instrumental in preventing an insurrection of negroes on the Island of Tortula, and for this received the thanks of the President and Council of- the island. Low fever drove him from the West Indies, and the service of the Colonial Office. ..",.-.

Mr. Allom's return to New ' Zealand ■was brought about by his acceptance of an appointment as general manager of a New Zealand company, the Great Barrier Land, Harbour, and Mining Company, Ltd., which owned, the copper mines at the Great Barrier. With his family he came out to Auckland in 1861. The financial crisis of 1867 brought the Barrier company to grief. Then Mr. Allom went to the newly-proclaimed Thames gold field, where he was in the service of the Mines and Justice Departments of first the Provincial and then the General Government from the time of Hunt's Shot-over'find, in August, 1867, to the year 1886. The clerkship of the Magistrate's Court in Auckland completed Mr. Allom's official career up to his arrival at the age for compulsory retirement. On withdrawal into private life lie took an active interest; in public affairs. For instance, he was one of those most interested and most active in obtaining and erecting the statue to. Queen Victoria in Albert Park, and was an energetic promoter of the Scenery Preservation Society. Mr Ailom contributed considerably to Dr. Garnett's excellent biography ■of Edward Gibbon Wakefield, published in 1898.