MR JOHN PLIMMER.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1291, 26 November 1896, Page 33

MR JOHN PLIMMER.

Sr.a.l.) As the Exhibition could not be opened;, without the Father of Wellington, [and as no account could be complete without the old gentleman's history, I called upon him. Need I say that I found him ready to givo me tho benefit of that fine memory, which retains the smallest details of the far-off past, Tho man who reclaimed the first yard from the pea some 40 years ago was quite ready to give bis experiences for the benefit of the most resent Exhibition on the remotest of the many acres which have been reclaimed under the system ho inaugurated. Did I want any documents ': .Ho had tons of them—in boxes and bundles and barrels. Thank you, kindly, sirree. No ; I just want a yarn with you„ and that's better than all tbe documents.. Whereupon the ancient memory started of£ cm its travels right away, beginning with tho year "One," , I was born in 1812, said the veteran, and I can very \vc\\ remember the news of the battle of Waterloo coming to the country. Itwas at Upton-uuder-Amon, two miles from. Shrewsbury. Tho family name wasn't always Plimmer; it was changed by my father's great grandfather, who was one of those who signed tho condemnation of Charles 1., and had to fiy to the wooded country, and go into hiding there. He was educated, Mr Plimmer wont on to inform mo, at the Parish School of Madefy, in Shropshire, near Coalbrookdale, and at the* i a«-e of 11 gave up schooling, and took toearning his bread. " I've kept myself from that day to this," he commented, as a halt I aside to his narrative. Tho business was his ! father's, who was a woodman; and all the mysteries of the woodman's craft young: , Plimmer acquired in a few years—the felling of trees, the cutting up of the timber, the disposal of the charwood, basket-wood and the" rest, down to the clearing up of the final odds and ends as charcoal. It was a grand training for a colonist destined to copo with a forest wilderness at the Antipodes. To make himself still more fitted for that work, of which, by the way, ho never suspected the coming, young Plimmer, at 19, left his father •& service, took to the building trade, and worked away at it for two years, making

wages. . . , ~ Having thus furnished himself tor the battle of life, he married at 21, and settled down as a builder at Willenhall, xa Staffordshire, not far from Wolverhampton. I remark about that great centre, and 1 learn that in those days jt had not moro >than 8000 people. " There I built tho first National School, put up a couple of station houses on the Midland Kail way line, and got through a power of work." In 1811 he decided to emigrate to New Zealand, and landed in Wellington in October of that year, just 55 years ago. " I was twentynine," said the veteran, " which makes me-eighty-four years of age to-day, and I had £lO in my pocket." Work at the building trade being scarce, the sturdy immigrant determined to build himself a house, and set about it straight, beginning in the forest with his axe. It was not long before ho had an adventure. He was bowing away at a tree, with his little boy of 6 close by, when a Maori creeping up through the forest surprised him by an attack with a tomahawk. When he turned to repel tho attack ho found his antagonist had slipped off the bough on which ho had perched to make the stroke, and falling had got his foot jammed firmly in the fork of a. ; tree. " I very soon reached him with my axe.DULhe was so helpless and frightened that I let him off. Then some 2UO Maoris came up with the chief Moturoa, and I thought my time was como, and gripping the axe made up my mind to sell my life as dearly as I could. But when those Maoris, saw tlie face of their friend as he was fixed up there, they burst into roars of laughter. "Kapaite pakeha,' they cried, and they complimented me on my strength to have given such a blow which had fixed him up so. The house begun under these difficulties was finished in due course, and stands to this day on the same spot in Ingestre street, not far from the Wooicombe street hill. " My daughter, Mrs Brown, lives in the house now. When I had been a year in tho Colony, during which I did a good deal of limeburning, being the only one who knew anything about that business, I was offered .£3OO for my house. So I had kept myself and made .£3OO besides." The course of the old history flowed freely on past this point. Tho building trade soon became brisk, and who so successful as the Shropshire builder ? The lime-burning continued, and brought good profits; the years rolled on, prosperous, and full, and accumulatory ; and tho income rose from hundreds to thousands. "There were earthquakes m those days r Weren't there ! There waa the big quake of IS4S, which killed nobody, frightened the whole place, shook many buildings to pieces, and topped over " all the brick chimneys, except mine," as the veteran says with professional pride shining out of his eye, adding "My damages were calculated by the Government at .£1800," a fact which throws some light on the use made by the sturdy builder of the first seven years of his colonial experience. After that we have the story of the earthquake of ] 855, "the big one that raised the land," as tho veteran said. It la-ted threo days —Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday—with heavy shocks each day an 1 little ones in between. .Mr Piimnibr's experience on that any was distinctly " fearsome." He was sent for on the second day by Captain Bhodos to inspect his » store and repivir damages. Lie had '■ just climbed a ladder and was looking through the roof, when the second big shock came, fteahsing instantly that his only chance of safety was to hold on to tho building with the ladder, he seized the lower slates of the roof with both hands and held on like grim death for what seemed an eternity. The building swayed too and

fro -with -wild jerks, the gable not far rrem the ladder came down with a crash, the uprights of the ladder worked and ground two meat half round cuts out of the slate, as clean as if done by a stamper, and it was almost impossible to hold on. " But I was pretty strong in those days, and I did it. But it -was awful tiring work." When he got down le found himself among the guardians <ef the bonded goods, who had watched his perilous performance and congratulated him on his escape, with pale faces. "Wo thought you'd have been dashed to pieces," they said. On the way to look at his various properties he saw three bodies. A man and two •children had rushed out of their ho&se during •one of the big shocks, and were making their way past a big brick wall of Fitzherbert's, when another shook came " the land rose, and jumped the. wall right on to the three, killing them instantly. They wouldn't have been hurt at all if they had only stayed in doors." The incident made him all the more anxious about the fate of his own during that trying time, and he set off post-haste to make •enquiries, only to find the family safe on the top of the hill, where Whitehall and the handsome young oak tree now stand. An incident of the early fifties is recalled to <every remaining pioneer of these days by mention of Noah's Ark. Unhappily, but few remain, and there are vast numbers of later arrivals who have no cause to think there ever was any other ark than the famous structure of the original Noah. " Some time an the early fifties the ship Inconstant," said the veteran, as he got away from his earthquakes and his ladder, and his falling gable, and the white-faced guardians of the bonded who thought he was about to be " Some time in the early fifties the ship Inconstant came in disabled and had to be abandoned on the beach. I bought her as she lay in front of where Barrett's Hotel is now, and called her Noah's Ark." He then made her into part of a three-story warehouse, 68 x 30, by building two stories over her, and profit came thereout for storage and sale of goods, bonded and otherwise, and —as the old gentleman puts it with that comprehensive indication of a stiflish forefinger—" all manner of things." From Noah's Ark the fortunes of the Plimmer family soon found a solid resting place in the sea alongside the craft retired Jrom maritime business and gone into partnership with land-keeping lubberly hulks unfit for a buffeting in the "roaring forties." This fact in the life of the founder of the family fortunes touches on the very first reclamation made in this city of many reclamations from the " vasty deep." •'You see," says he, " Iwas making money as fast as I could make it in those days," and he proceeded to impress me with the fact that he was anxious for solid ground round about his place of business. Obviously, a store, even a composite marine and land store, required solid ground. So its owner got leave from the authorities to reclaim a space, and ho accordingly reclaimed an acre—"that block," he say&, with a careless jerk of his hand in the right direction, " by the Central Hotel and the Union Bank." It cost him .£3000; he built a wharf and a sea wall around it, and he realised the greatness of the achievement so well that he hired a boat and went out for a survey. " I measured the water," said the veteran, with succinct brevity, •'from Te Aro over yonder to Pipitea Point," and so deeply did he think of the future of that bit of measured vrater, that he sent the results to Sir George Grey, then Governor. Sir George sent Colonel Collinson, R.E., to examine into the matter, and he reported in complimentary terms that Mr Plimmer, the amateur surveyor, had made no error whatever.

The next step was a request from the Governor to Mr Plimmer to accept J 2400 a year to superintend the reclamation of the measured water. Mr Plimmer said, '•' No, thank you. What will become of my business ? It won't pay me." Renewed applications, culminating in an offer to let Mr Plimmer remain in business and draw his j 6400 a year nevertheless, met with continued refusals, until at last came the unexpected demand, *' Will you tender ? " Yes, he would tender —thank you —but as he didn't want to be disturbed in his own work, which, as will have been Been ere this by every reader of this sketch, was distinctly profitable, he figured out the quantities, clapped 100 per cent, on to the tender, and sent it in. To his unutterable surprise the tender was accepted. In this dilemma he bethought him of one McDowell, who had been his rieht-hWiid man in the building of the Ark, which was to carry the fortunes of the Plimmer family. Now McDowell had that very day been bewailing the want of employment, the Ark having been safely delivered out of his hands. " The very man !" thinks the Father of Wellington, and McDowell was presently hard at work reclaiming solid city sites from the hungry sea on a system of half profits with his friend and former employer. " So we reclaimed Lambton quay, sir, and we each got JS2S a week for the time we were making it." I have an idea which 1 communicate to the Father of WeD ; ngton at once. It has grown out of this ' .ve reclaimed Lambton quay " of the veteran. Let us have two companiou pictures ; Ist, Lambton quay in all its glories, railway station, Printing office, Government "Buildings, palaces (ahem) at the corner of Charlotte street, Supreme Court, New Zealand Times office, T. K. Mac's, Club, Occidental, Keichardt's, Kirkealdie's, Dresden, and so on and so on ; 2nd picture, the Father of Wellington in a blue shirt, moleskins and a boat, " measuring the water " where these edifices are now flourishing and making fortunes or reputations for their lucky occupants. The veteran gets the companion pictures into his mind's eye, regards them with shrewd contemplativeness, and eays nothing. We run rapidly over the rise of the Plimmer fortunes after they touched ground so firmly on terra firma, stepping out of the Ark. How the founder went into the grain trade, kept to it for nearly twenty years before banding it over to his sons, how he sent timber to Christchurch to put up the first Provincial and Municipal Buildings there, how he erected the germ of the Assembly Buildings still to bo seen in a corner of the bis? pile that; .smiles under the electric on winter nights with a broad smile of flaring light from every window ; how he served his town (was ho not its father ?) for eleven years as a member of the old Board of Works, hard-headed and practical old City Fathers when there was no city ; two yearn in the Mrjuicinal Council when a city was provided as well as Fathers, and two as a full-blown Provincial Councillor, :: which was all the politics I overdid, Sir;" how in later times he had taken by the horns all kinda and conditions of bulls (including bulls Ministerial and mercantile) and throwing them over made of their prostrate bodies a bridge for The Manawatu Bailway Company to get into the country and open up the land. These

and many other things the veteran recoiintea:, with many an anecdote and a rem'inis'cence besides, for which there is no space here.

And then the Father of Wellington blandly renewed his offer of documents, historical, full and otherwise. Thereupon I the hint that enough light had been thrown on the early days to make interesting the reclaimed ground on which the Exhibition stands, and. seeing more documents rising in those steadfast eyes that had looked fi roily on the Maori with his tomahawk, and 11 ' measured the sea " with prophetic foresight, I hastily murmured thanks for courtesy, ?*ird bade the veteran good-bye-.