AN AUCKLAND PIONEER

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21598, 19 March 1932, Page 12

AN AUCKLAND PIONEER

ONE HUNDRED AND ONE YEARS OLD (Special to Daily Times.) AUCKLAND, March 18. Mr Thomas Inger, one of the pioneers of Port Albert, will to-morrow attain the great age of 101 years. When he reached his century he had a large gathering of friends and relations at Port Albert to celebrate the occasion, the cake being surrounded by 100 candles. Mr Inger was born in Nottingham, and was one of the Albertland Nonconformist settlers who came to Auckland in 1862 to found a settlement on the shores of the Kaipara. He was then 31 years of age, and was put in charge of an 85ft boat which used to run between Helensville and the new settlement. On one occasion the boat was swamped and the family that was on board was marooned for about .a fortnight before they were rescued. Mr Inger had gone for more stores, but the bewildering number of arms in the Kaipara caused him as a new chum to lose his way. Eventually he found a white man at the mouth of the Hoteo River, who took him to Helensville, and a search party was sent out to find the marooned passengers. Those were the days when new settlers had to turn their hand to anything, and Mr Inger built his own hut of kauri, which he split himself. Later he was mailman and also district coustable. When be first took the contract to carry the mail he had (o swim his horse over the Hoteo River. On one occasion when the cutter bringing supplies to the settlement was wrecked the Albertland settlers had to live on schnapper and pipis for a whole month. Mr Inger’s family lived on sago.