The Conquerors

Southland Times, Issue 22317, 7 May 1934, Page 11

The Conquerors

Saga of the Stations

(By

the Wanderer.)

PAPATOTARA.

THE ERSKINE FAMILY.

(1885—1933).

Through the fcrest neve, caring what the way our feet are faring, We shall hear the wild birds revel In the labyrinth of tune And on mossy carpets tarry in His temples cool and airy. Hurry with silence and the splendid amber tapestry of noon. , • , —From Herbert Bashford.

Papatotara is now a flourishing district, but fifty years ago it was a complete wilderness and it was not till the spring of 1885 that Mr and Mrs Erskine and their infant son came through the bush on foot and blazed the trail to pastures then untrodden by white men. Mrs Erskine claims the honour of being the first white woman to go across the mouth of the Waiau. Miners were prospecting for gold at the river’s mouth and James Memphes owned a boat in which they crossed the deep waters. When Mrs Hugh Erskine came to the river, the diggers had made flags of their handkerchiefs to welcome the first white woman to land on the other side of the river. Both Mr and Mrs Erskine came from the North of Ireland, and they possessed great hope and an unwavering faith in the future of Southland and New Zealand. They came from generations of hardy Ulstermen, who had wrested their living from the soil, and from the time of their first settlement at Papatotara until the present day, the Erskine family has never ceased to work and battle for the district. The first founder of this district, Mr Hugh Erskine, was born in April, 1859, in Drennan, near Lisburn, County Down, Ulster. He was the eldest son of William John Erskine, a very wellknown farmer in that district. Hugh went to the local school at Cargycray for a while and afterwards’went on to the Boardmills School. He was recalled from this school by his father’s illness and at an early age had to work very hard and manage the farm. The Erskine family was most unfortunate, for that dreaded disease the rinderpest broke out in their district. One morning on going out to feed the herd of valuable cows, which were stalled in for the winter, they found them all dead. Then came the authorities to build an enclosure all around the affected area, and no person was allowed to go beyond this boundary. The authorities ordered the farmers to slaughter all remaining stock and to make a bonfire of the carcasses. With the long quarantine and no horses left to enable them to put in crops when their pastures were considered once more safe, a great many of the farmers in the district were completely ruined. There was a large family on the farm, for there were nine boys and two girls to provide for, and it was very hard for Mr William John Erskine’s, family to make a start from the beginning once more. Hugh, had always wanted to emigrate, but his father was very much against the idea and wanted his son to wait till better times when he could pay his passage out. At length a nearby neighbour who had visited New Zealand and desired to go back and settle there because he considered the colonies offered better chances than the Old Country persuaded Mr Erskine to let his son join the party of friends who were going with him on his return to New Zealand. They all left on June 25, 1880, by the sailing vessel Durham and arrived at Part Chalmers somewhere about the tenth of .October. Young Hugh Erskine stayed in Dunedin for a while. Then he went out as far as Henley in the train. and walked on as far as Clarendon looking for work. He fell in with Mr Isaac Young, who had come from the same district in Ireland as himself. Mr Young recommended Hugh Erskine for the. drainage works which were being carried on at the Horseshoe, Taieri, and there Hugh stayed till the drainage and embankment scheme was completed. Hugh Erskine afterwards came across his old shipmates—the Abemethys—and he then went on to Wairuna, where he obtained work with Mr Steele and gained much valuable colonial expenence. From, there he went on to Ashly Downs station, owned then by Mr John Gibson. . It was in the following year that Hugh Erskine sent Home for Agnes Mary, daughter of Andrew. Armstrong, farmer of Hilltop, Ballynahinch, a town about four miles distant from his own. Miss Armstrong journeyed out to New Zealand with two of Mr Erskine s brothers and the young couple were married in Balclutha, where they settled for a year until Mr Erskine was very attracted by the glowing accounts in all the papers of the auction sales of Southland lands being held at intervals in Dunedin. He journeyed to the city and considered himself fortunate when he secured on very easy terms the depasturing lease of the Princess Ranges, an area of 32,000 acres. He came down to inspect his property and, getting as far as The Hump, decided that access to this property was far too difficult. Camping on the top of The Hump, he spent a most disturbed night owing to native rats, which abounded in that area. These pests even attacked his boots and he returned to Balclutha with flax as bootlaces. He went up to Dunedin to the next auction and this time secured 3000 acres leasehold of land on the west side of the Waiau. This also was land as yet untrodden by the white men, but it was flat and Mr Erskine considered it was capable of development. The Southland lands at .that time were offered at extremely easy terms and the glowing accounts set forth in the papers throughout New Zealand and even in Australia proved a great inducement to men who had only a limited capital to invest. Southland seems to have been classed with Otago. The following items are part of the glowing advertisements of many years ago proving that southern New Zealand was so much more fertile than the rest of the Dominion. This is an appeal to men going in for agriculture in those times:—

Wheat at 7/6 a bushel.

Average bushels per acre. Auckland 18J Taranaki 18 j Wellington 18 Hawke’s Bay 25J Nelson 13 Marlborough 17 Canterbury 21J Otago and Southland 29|

OATS AT 5/- A BUSHEL. Average bushels per acre. Auckland 18J Taranaki 18 Wellington 20 Hawkes Bay 20 Nelson 17 Marlborough 20J Canterbury 24 Otago and Southland 30f With such easy terms for very fertile country the new settlers had every hope of success; but it was many a weary day before they could use the plough in the dense bush and deep swamps of Southland, and the early

pioneers, though they worked both early and late, and neither man nor women spared themselves, did not live to realize nor profit by their labour. Southland owes them a great debt for having blazed the trail and carved a way for the present generation. Mrs Erskine received a great welcome from the goldminers when she and her infant son crossed the Waiau Mouth and then Mr Erskine had to get his herd of cattle across. They were an assortment of wild and timid beasts, which Mr Erskine had purchased from the Waicold station, and he experienced great trouble in getting them into the river and had to tow them over one by one behind the boat but after he had driven them along the Spit they all took the river in a body. Mr Erskine at first went in entirely for cattle for the pasture was far too rank and rough for sheep, and he kept on adding to his herd till he would have as many as 700 to 800 at a time. Afterwards he applied for another 3000 acres, which he added to his present run. Meanwhile Mrs Erskine and her small son came down to Orepuki by rail with all their worldly goods. These were transferred by bullock waggon for a certain distance and then sledged to the river’s bank. Mrs Erskine walked with her baby through the dense bush. After many vicissitudes, trouble with the wild cattle and the second crossing of the Waiau, the Erskines at length reached their destination and together Mr and Mrs Erskine built a home of slabs and logs. Mrs Erskine says that she herself filled up all the crevices of this rustic home with clay, and also built a clay chimney which Mr Erskine afterwards boarded round to protect it from the weather. There were only two rooms —a fairly large kitchen with a very wide fireplace with seats on either side, and a bedroom. Afterwards they built a stoveroom at the back. Mrs Erskine only had an open fire and a camp oven wherein to cook the meals, and the household’s bread. A couple of years after the Erskines were settled in their new home, their solitude was invaded by the coming of Young and Fairweather’s flaxmill. Mr Erskine supplied the flax-millers with both beef and milk and had great adventures bringing in the young heifers with their calves. In the summer evenings, and on fine Sundays the flax-millers would amuse themselves with boat-racing, and would row up to a part of the river that they had named the “Roaring Meg” and then return to the starting point. The Erskines lost many of their cattle. Some of them answered the call of the wild and were lured into the vast forest beyond. There were also at that time many gold-miners in the West Waiau, and their camps were never short of beef, but they always affirmed that there were plenty of wild cattle around. At length matters came to a head when a valuable milking cow was missed from the herd and Detective Mcllreny and Constable Joyce were consulted. They came over to look into the matter and the perpetrators were brought before the magistrate and were asked to pay up. The wild cattle shooting then ceased for a while. Afterwards the Flax-mill was taken over by a Mr Frank Mangan and then came the survey party with Mr John Hay and Alfred Hodgekinson, who surveyed and subdivided the land in West Wallace on the other side of the Waiau. It was about this time that the Erskine’s licence to depasture stock on this area expired, and the Western Waiau sections were put up for ballot. In April 1892 the Erskines applied for and succeded in getting their two sections.

In 1894 the Erskines decided to erect a new home about two miles inland. In November of that year the family when visiting this new site, saw smoke in the distance and returned home to find both their residence and storeroom razed to the ground. The waggoner had only the day before brought up stores for the Erskines, the survey party, and the miners on the Waiau. This six months’ supply had been stored in the Erskines’ store-house besides the fittings for the new house, and there was not a penny’s insurance on either the house or contents. The family possessed only the clothes they were wearing. Until the new house was finished in February of 1895 the family was obliged to reside in a small tworoomed hut on the property which had been erected for the flaxmillers. Here the Erskines lived and made the best of things until on February 28, 1895, they moved into the new house. Mrs Erskine was extremely grateful to have her own home once more, for she had a young family of six children, including a baby daughter who had been born in the two-roomed hut on the beach while they were camping there. Shortly after coming over to their new place they obtained a governess for their children, and when afterwards when other settlers came to the West Waiau with their families, the Erskines applied to the Education Board and had a household school; but when the inspector visited the Erskines and saw how the little school was overcrowded and cramped for room, he immediately became in favour of the Education Board erecting a school in the neighbourhood. It was largely due to Mr Erskine’s efforts that more settlers came to the West Waiau, as it was then called. The land west of Orepuki had been surveyed and subdivided and was open for selection, but it was priced at about £3 15/- an acre. It was heavy bush land, and needed both stumping and clearing and no one seemed inclined to take it over at that price. Mr Erskine appealed both to the Land Office and Land Board urging the authorities to reduce the terms. This they did, and the land was offered for sale at one pound per acre, with the result that there was quite a demand for the sections, so that when in 1900 the Papatotara school was opened and the next year the Te Tua school, there was quite a good attendance of children. Miss Fanny Ward Nickless was the first teacher at Papatotara, and a splendid teacher she was, getting the pupils forward in their education. She was a very commanding personality, 6 feet 2 inches in height, and after leaving Papatotara did relieving work at many schools m Southland. She was afterwards married to Mr Aitken and now Mrs Aitken has often welcomed her old pupils to her home in Masterton in the North Island. Mr Hewan Archdall was the first teacher at Te Tua and very popular he was as a schoolmaster, until he resigned to join the National Mortgage and Loan Company. He was one of the earliest agents in Otautau and passed away many years ago at Rangiora, Canterbury, regetted by many old friends and pupils.