Welcome Breeze

NZ Truth, Issue 1175, 7 June 1928, Page 6

Welcome Breeze

QEHIND the counter of a small bootD<shop m Hokitika's main, street

there works a fine 5 r oung-old man, grey-haired, but — despite his seventytwo years — looking. 2o years younger.

To go to Hokitika and not to meet this sturdy pioneer, J. J. Breeze, is to miss meeting a man who can talk with clear memory of the good old .days when the gold fever- bit into the minds of the thousands who wooed the precious metal on the roaring, rollicking

Coast,

He landed with His parents from Launceston m 1866 as a boy of tan and great are the tales he tells of his youth.

In those days life was lived m the raw, so to speak, and milksops had to make way or go under.

Breeze was reared m a rigor out> school where conditions were hard enough to call out the courage m every num. He stuck to the Coast, though the call of new finds m Australia lured thousands away from Hokitika.

And though the diggers have been gone hence many years, Breeze remains, placidly content with 1 his business and his life. He is a mine of anecdote and ready wit.

"Yes," he will tell you, "they were good old times," and the smile he gives you as he says it leaves no room for doubt that J.J.B. at least cherishes his memories of days long dead.