NINETY-TWO YEARS OLD

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21391, 16 January 1933, Page 10

NINETY-TWO YEARS OLD

AUCKLAND-BORN WOMAN " OLD DAYS WERE THE BEST M A claim to be the first white girl bora! in Auckland was made yesterday by Mrs.E. Inkster, of Union Street, who celebrated her 92nd birthday last Tuesday/ "I was born at Mechanics' Bay on January 10, 1841," said Mrs. Inkster. "Two children were born about the same time, Willie Began and myself. My parents came to New Zealand in the ship London in 1840 and I was born in the following year." Mrs. Inkster said that her father, Mr.M. Byan, was a bushman and they first' lived in a raupo whare at Mechanics* Bay. Subsequently they lived in the Waiwera district and at Waiheke and Coromandel. Although she had visited several places in the Auckland Province she had never, during her long life, gone anywhere outside the province. = Although not certain about the date, Mrs. Inkster recounted her experience of what was evidently the Mechanics' Bay raid of April 17, 1851. She said that when she was a girl a large party of Maoris came to Mechanics' Bay clothed only in mats. Their faces were marked with red and black lines and they carried spears* They shouted and danced and their feet' thundered on the ground in unison. They, could be heard a mile away. Some cf th® European women wondered if they wera going to be killed, but the Maoris went away. „ "New Zealand was a good country td live in in the old days, and I supposa it is now," she said. "Then we were like one family, but nowadays there are too many restrictions. The old days were tha best. They say times are hard, but God Almighty sent no one into the world without making provision for them. People spend all their money nowadays. We used to save fourpence in every shilling.