EARLY DIPTON

Southland Times, Issue 20225, 9 July 1927, Page 9

EARLY DIPTON

OLD SETTLER’S REMINISCENCES (By an Old Timer). (Continued from last Saturday). It was shortly after 1874 or 1875 that the Morisons started to do any cultivating and other general improvements to portions of the flat land, and the then absence of many of the later appliances made it a much more arduous task than it is to-day. Even the yokes of the horses were much more cumbersome and unwieldy. No swamp ploughs, no disc harrows, no hundred and one things we have to-day that make the life of the farmer of the present day much easier than it was in those more crude faroff times.

About this time the Dipton station became the centre of the universe so to apeak. Teams both contract and private, men ditching, chipping tussocks, cutting firewood, fencing, and all branches of work going on, necessitating the keeping of a blacksmith on the place, and the cheery glow of the smithy fire and the sound of the hammer on the anvil was quite a new experience from the usual silence of station life.

It may not be out of place here to recount some of the names of those who were employed by the Morison Brothers in the subdividing and generally improving the place so far back in those days. The first contract teamsters to break the stubborn glebe of the Dipton Flat was the late Mr James Burgess and his mate, one Tom Edmonds, ex-waggoners to the Lakes and other un-get-at-able places. Four horses abreast, and sometimes six. was the only yoke in a double-furrow plough, with one horse ruining the other’s fetlocks in the turning. Blocks and chains were not known in those days, and all red tussocks and flax had to be cleared with spade or hoe. How different are such jobs done today with the heavy swamp plough and rightly adjusted chain, with which everything from red tussock, flax and even light scrub can be successfully turned under to rot away before the same land is turned up again. The present generation know little of the difficulties and real hardships of the earlier workers and real pioneers of the early days, and it is really in the interest of the old remaining survivors that I am induced to recall much that may be of little interest to many, and by which I hope to revive pleasurable memories for many of my old-time comrades of the days of our youth and vigour.

Whilst I hope to get on to more solid and interesting matter re Dipton’s progress, I feel constrained to halt by the way now and then to indulge in a little twaddle, for as we old fellows live only in the past, I feel sure the younger generation won’t begrudge us our natural little weaknesses. So I go on to tell you the names of many of our co-workers, though, sad to recall, very many are long since gone to the land beyond the sunset; so I’ll confine myself to those who are still on earth. Mr William Campbell, to whom I referred in my opening remarks of this story, was head shepherd and general foreman in my time, a good solid Scotchman and man of many parts and abilities, who could turn his hand to anything, and a man who always got on well with those under him. In his advanced years enjoying quiet retirement from his life of 60 years or more of pioneering, chiefly at Dipton, he is fortunate that his good wife is spared with him to run down life's hill, and also interesting to relate she came to Dipton as a very little girl and has practically resided here ever since 1860 or about that time. Their hearts are bound up in the old place of their early youth, and all who know them will wish they may still be spared for many years. In concluding my remarks of this worthy couple it is many years since Mr Campbell gave up his position at Dipton, having through his thrift in later years bought a portion of the Dipton property which he farmed with success until he turned the farm over to his sons when he went into retirement 12 or 15 years ago. It is just such men who make a nation. Harry Giller was the home, or what I call the domestic, ploughman. I define a domestic ploughman as one who does not camp away from headquarters with his team, and who is not called upon to live and sleep in any old tumbled-down show or under the waggon with a treacle tin for a billy, a jam tin with the lid three parts off for a pannikin and a few bits of fencing wire cris-crossed anyhow for a grid iron to fizzle a chop on. Those who may not know of these luxuries of the culinary department please don’t laugh, but they were quite toney if inexpensive when one could not get a better outfit, either for want of money or opportunity to get others. There were what I choose to term two parties of contractors on the station in my time. Harry Gould, George Bates and Tom Giller were one, and the others were Bill Musselwhite, Jesse Whip and John Jackson, Jackson and Bates having passed over some years ago.

Now I go on with the progress of Dipton. But again before doing so allow me to say that as well as being fine courteous gentlemen they (the Morisons) took a good deal of interest in the spiritual welfare of all those in their employment, and held service in the old log and dab house that did service as a home for those who were before the Morisons as owners of Dipton, and I was always as a lad impressed by the earnest solemnity of the spiritual gathering every Sunday morning, Mrs Morison, ever a devout and Christian lady, sometimes taking the service herself should either of the Messrs Morison be away. By the times I write of, or even before, the Mr William Daniels who had the wayside house I referred to in my previous notes, had removed from Stag Creek and come to Dipton South, so to speak, and built an accommodation house which was known as the Royal Mail, where he supplied the travelling public with accommodation and which was a real home and camping spot for horse and bullock teams to and fro from Invercargill to Kingston, and when there was any opposition in the coaching line the new starters made this one of their stopping places. Mr Daniels being by nature a handy man, did a bit of horseshoeing and general blacksmith work for any one. He also kept a few sheep and did a bit of cultivating. He was a man of considerable natural ability and had he had the advantages of a good education would have made a big mark in New Zealand as a statesman and thinker, and must ever be regarded by those who knew him as the real father of Dipton, having been the means of first promoting any and everything that was likely to bring Dipton into prominence to ultimately become the place it is to-day. It was he who first mooted the idea of taking a slice of the Dipton station’s flat country for deferred payment settlers, which was ultimately brought about in or about 1874 or 1875. The survey was carried out by a Mr Hay and his party and in due course was thrown open for occupation by ballot. The block comprised 2000 acres, the Morisons retaining half a mile along the Oreti and along the Dipton creek to the west, so that this block, which was by no means the best land, came right in between the Morisons’ river boundaries. As soon as the surveys were completed Mr Daniel got a petition going for a bridge over the river a little to the south of his accommodation house. Time is now going on and all the deferred payment sections are now taken up by various people. I and my mate, Gould, were not successful if I remember rightly at the balloting under the supervision of the Commissioner of Crown Lands, the late Mr Walter H. Pearson, but three successful applicants failed to take possession of their holdings, each 200 acres, and one Jackson, Gould and I ultimately got them much to our ultimate sorrow, for the bulk of the deferred payment land was poor stuff in those days with no drain ploughs, though the same land to-day is improved beyond all expectations after 50 years. All the settlers on that block had a very hard spin for many years.

It was all a clear case of the oft-quoted adage, ‘Tools build houses and wise men occupy them,” but in these cases it was a case of fools take up bad land, clear, drain and cultivate it, and monied men come along and occupv it when all the breaking-up and breaking down is over. I am referring chiefly to the deferred payment block which, in reality, was the backbone of the flat, the soil being poor and thin. The cost of the land from the Govment was 25/- an acre, not dear in a way, but no one having much or any capital, they had to capitalise when most of us trotted off to the pawnshop and really got more money on the practically bare land than it was worth years and years after. Now hold your breath: My mate and I had to pay 11 per cent, from the Otago and Southland Investment Company for our little indulgence in high finance and when we were relieved of 3 per cent, and were called upon to pay only 8 per cent, we thought we were on the high road to everlasting success. But we wern’t all the same, for somewhere around about that time eggs were 5d a dozen and butter 6d, or vice versa, I forget which. Oats were from lOd to 1/- a bushel, yet we paid 3/9 to 4/- for the seed the year previous. These were all bad enough, but the look of commercial annoyance on the local storekeeper’s face when we went in with produce would wean a foal, and he would be as cross and abrupt with us as a bee finding he had been trying to get honey out of a paper poppy. But it was all in the game, all blanks and no prizes. We were compelled of course to find much employment away from the places in those days. (To be Continued.)