THE RECENT SNOW STORMS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23884, 11 August 1939, Page 14

THE RECENT SNOW STORMS

TRANSPORT SYSTEMS • | ' xo the editor - . Sir,— Being a Central Otago resident of over 60 years, I can claim to nave experienced many snow storms, and I admit that the storm which has just passed was one of the worst in Jjny experience. During all the years of the 1 coaching days I cannot recall one instance on which the old horse coach failed to get through. At least, if the coach did not get through the horses did, and that in the face of snow storms, hail storms, flooded creeks and roads which were often mere quagmires. I will give you an instance or two of how the mail was delivered under almost unsurmountable difficulties. In the late seventies Mr Hugh Craig, of Lawrence, arived at Kemp’s Hotel, Baldhill Flat (now Fruitlands), in the teeth of a howling blizzard, and so overcome with cold was he that he had to be carried off the coach. He was taken into the hotel in an almost unconscious state, and, after receiving treatment / and waiting about three hours, finally insisted on yoking the coach team and proceeding on his way through snow drifts and storm. He finally reached his destination, which was Lawrence, at a late hour, but still the mall got through, At the same place in the early eighties the same driver on another occasion was forced to abandon the coach owing to the great depth of the snow, but, not to be beaten, he saddled up one of the coach horses and used one of the other horses as a pask horse on which he fastened the mails and set out through the deep snow. He carried right on and, after changing horses at Roxburgh, was met at Ettrick by a relieving rider who had been despatched to meet him. Once more the mails got through. In the early nineties the coach from Cromwell to Roxburgh got snowbound on the way. Robert Craig (“Fair Bob”), who drove the coaon on the Lawrence-Roxburgh run, after waiting at Roxburgh until late in the night, decided that something must be wrong with the up-country coach. He decided, therefore, to yoke his team and Investigate. After ploughing through snow, drifts of which were sometimes five feet deep, he found that the up-country driver and his passengers had taken refuge in the hotel at Fruitlands. Mr Craig took the mails and any passengers who cared to accompany him and returned to Roxburgh through blinding snow and snow drifts now deeper than ever, finally reaching Roxburgh at 6 o’clock next morning. He left again at 8 o’clock for Lawrence. So again, the old horses and drivers had won through.

I can recall a number of the drivers who each, at some time or other during his experiences as whip of H.M. Mail coach, had difficulties equally as difficult as those I have mentioned. Some of the drivers who were known to me were the following:—James Mclntosh, Hugh Craig, Thomas Pope, Fred Denham, James Dungey, “Tommy” Beaufort, James Sutherland. Alex McSwann, Adam McDonald, Robert Craig (“Fair Bob”), Robert Craig (“Dark Bob”), Allen Bremner, Brown, Alex Webster, Allen Mitchell and Donald McDonald. Of those I have mentioned, so far as I am aware, all except “ Fair Bob” Craig and Adam McDonald have passed on, and we who are left behind remember them as men of great resource and courage—men to whom difficulties appeared only to be overcome.—l am. etc., Central.