REV. D. K. FISHER

Southland Times, Issue 19357, 24 September 1924, Page 6

REV. D. K. FISHER

HIS STAY IN THE MOTHER COUNTRY. LONDON, August 12. The Rev. D. K. Fisher (Lumsden), who sails this week by the Rotorua, is taking back with him to New Zealand innumerable memories of an exceptionally pleasant and interesting visit to the Homeland. He has spent a good deal of his time in Scotland, Montrose being his native place. Throughout his travels he has made many interesting acquaintances as the result of letters of introduction which he brought from New Zealand. Among the quondam New Zealanders whom he met was the Rev. R. Ferguson, now living at Cambuslang (formerly for a number of years minister of First Church, Invercargill). On several occasions he preached during his stay in Scotland, and he naturally took the opportunity of telling his congregations something of the work of the Presbyterian Church in New Zealand. During a visit to Johnstone, near Glasgow, Mr Fisher called upon the Rev. Evan Bissett (late of Woodlands, Invercargill), and Mrs Bissett, who were both very glad to have late news of the Dominion in general, and of Southland in particular. Mr Fisher went to France and Belgium, and covered a good deal of the battlefield area and military cemeteries. Following the directions supplied to him by the New Zealand chaplain who conducted the funeral service in France after the death of his eldest son, Mr Fisher made his way through Beaumont Hamel village and up the hillside overlooking the valley, and passed the very ground where the Canterbury men, with whom his son was serving, marched on that fateful morning of April 5, 1918, where so many of the New Zealand rifles mingled their bleeding dust with the soil of France. Mr Fisher visited a few of the surrounding cemeteries, and he found the graves of the soldiers—known and unknown—flanked sweetly by spring and summer flowers, or robed with wreaths of everlasting green. “Then,” he writes, “I wished that all the desolate widows and all the broken-hearted mothers, and the mourning fathers, sisters and lovers of those brave, but now silent sleeping men could see for themselves with what tenderness, care and devotion those sacred grounds are watched and tended. They would thank God that their dear, courageous boys at the long last found eternal peace, and serene and beautiful repose.” While at Invergowrie, Mr Fisher had the privilege of visiting Mr Hardie, who is now over 90 years of age, and who, with his wife, took up 40 acres of land in the Auckland province in 1859 under Government Warrant. Only for a few days did Mr and Mrs Hardie have a look at their new home, when they got wearied of their solitude and wild surroundings, or possibly homesick, and sailed straight away for Sydney. Ultimately they drifted back to Scotland, and before Mr Fisher left, Mr Hardie drew from his treasured papers and documents the original warrant of Hue paper authorising him to take possession of the property, which he never actually did. Now he desired this precious document to be made use of somewhere, or put into one or other of the museums in New Zealand. Mr Fisher, who took possession of this warrant, promised to see where it could be placed on his arrival in the Dominion.