AN OLD IDENTIFY

Otago Witness, Issue 3111, 29 October 1913, Page 62

AN OLD IDENTIFY

OX VISITING PALMEESTOX OX JUBILEE DAT

You celebrate the jubilee of Palmerston today; The town is full of people, the streets with bunting gay. But think of fifty years ago! What then would meet the eye ? Perhaps a bullock team or two you might see lumbering by. The gocd old days of long ago! With swags upon our backs « We did our twenty miles a day—the roads were only tracks. There were no motors in those days, no railway came this way; A pack-horse was our motor car, our train, a bullock-dray. But most things change in fifty years; to me the hills look bare Without the tussock and the fern—the bu«h that once was there. Old Puketapu still serene looks down on us to-night, As he stood in grandeur since New Zealand saw the light; And, farther on, I see the Shag still flowing to the sea; Its flats, now ploughed and clothed in grass, were fern and cabbage tree. Whore once ’twas tussock, fern, and bush, a township now is made; The tracks are streets a full chain wide the roads with metal laid; But still it’s good to see the change, although it tends to show We re not so young as we were once—say fifty years ago. O.d Palmerston! Dear Palmerston! I’m glad to see you once more - Your old familiar hills I used’ to tramp in days of yore. And though my friends have mostly "one I hope to see ’ Some two or three of my old mates, at this your Jubilee. i) i 4 ~ J , —W- Grimsdale. x almemon, October 22, 1913