RUM-FED BABY

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVI, Issue 21362, 3 June 1939, Page 22

RUM-FED BABY

Now Ninety-Two First Memory Was Murder Fed on rum and ship's biscuits as a six-weeks-old baby; first memories—a murder and Maori raiding parties wardancing outside the door of the home! That is adventuring with a vengeance, but the story-teller Is not a hardfeatured old sea-dog. She is a delightful little old lady. Mrs Catherine Burdett, who was on Thursday 92 years old, with all except six months of that period spent in the vicinity of Auckland. When the interviewer called on Mrs Burdett where she lives with her daughter, Mrs McPherson, in Gibraltar Avenue, Parnell, he expected to find someone w’ho would show the strain and hardship of pioneer life. There was a pleasant surprise, however, for Mrs Burdett revealed herself as an active, gracious little lady, with a laugh that w 7 as constantly breaking through as she recalled one incident of her career after another, each with elements to confound the one w’ith preconceived ideas of pioneering—and its penalties. Would Like to Fly She had just come home from the pictures, had enjoyed herself thoroughly, and now she laid down the spectacles that she had used for some crocheting work with a comment that she didn’t like them—and didn’t need them either except for close work. “I have never been out of New Zealand either,” she commented in confirming her age, and added that that was because she did not like facing an ocean voyage. Then there was a second surprise. . . . “I wouldn’t mind going in a ’plane,” said this 92-year-old pioneer. “Have you ever been up in one,” she was asked. That was when she bubbled over for the first time. “I haven’t had the chance. No one ever asked me.” And then she recounted how the PanAmerican Clipper had passed low over her home on its initial flight here, and she could see those who were inside. She would like to have been with them. Her dislike of the sea is a relic of her earliest experiences. She related how her father and mother had come to New Zealand in the ship, Sir George Seymour, in 1847, and had landed at Howick. Her father was one of the picked settlers, a soldier who was offered land here in return for seven years’ service with the Colonial troops. She had been only six weeks old when she was taken aboard the vessel, and that day she had her first great adventure. Food for a Baby Her father was carrying her in his arms up a rope ladder to board the vessel. He slipped and they fell into the water! They were rescued, however, and there was a second adventure spread over four and a half months, during which time the ship was sailing through storm and calm to Auckland. Her mother was ill throughout, and to complete the diet of the baby she was fed on ship’s biscuit with a teaspoonful of rum put into her food.

“I wonder what the Plunket nurses would think of that?” said this surprising little lady.

And then she came to her first memory—a murder. It was just a sordid domestic drama of jealousy, but this seven-year-old pioneer saw the woman from her then next door house die, bleeding, in her mother’s arms. There was food for a first-class adventure story in her account of the following years, when the family lived in various parts of Auckland—in the city when Queen Street was ankledeep in mud, with a trickling stream in the centre and boardwalks over it at street corners; when the waters of the Waitemata ran under the old Thames Hotel, where now stands the Dilworth Building when Parnell where she now lives, was covered with thick bush; and when Fort Britomart stood as a protector of the infant colony against the warlike Maoris.

The family was living at Ponui Island when a party of 500 Maoris on their way to the great battle of Rangiriri did a war dance on the beach below their home .. . but she was never frightened of the Maoris, she pointed out. “They were a decent race to fight,” she said. “They didn’t murder off women and children. The only one we had much trouble with was old Te Kooti, and that was long after the first wars. Then they pardoned the old devil and gave him a pension.” All the food for the young colony came in the early days from England —even meat being brought. When they killed a sheep, occasionally, in Howick there was such a shortage that half of it was shared with Panmure. That brought another proud comment on the Maoris. “The Maoris would never let a white man go past their whares without a feed, and a shakedown for the night if it was needed,” she said, “but the whites often let the Maoris go hungry.” A time on the Great Barrier Island, and then in Thames for the first of the gold rush. Her father was both a miner and a hotel-keeper, with the Rising Sun as his first house. In the Thames Gold Rush

Those were rousing days. . . “Nothing but fights and drunks. . . Every house that had two rooms was a hotel. There were 100 hotels in Pollen Street alone, but there were no thieves and robbers in those days; I suppose it was because everyone had enough money to keep them going.” There was no talk of pioneering trials in all this; just a bubbling enjoyment of life that was now’ a memory . . . but how would the young women of to-day like to do all their cooking in a camp oven? she asked. On the other hand, how would the modern man like to be able to buy a kauri tree for £l, with enough wood in it to build a house?

Mrs Burdett has a problem and she voiced it, though still cheerfully. She and her daughter had a month s notice to get out of the house in which they were living, and she wondered if she wrote to Mr Savage would he be able to find a home for one of the oldest living pioneers in Auckland? Mrs Burdett is very proud that Auckland is now approaching its centennial —and she will be taking part in it. She is proud, too, that she had done something to help build this country. She has three children left (two sons were killed in the war), and there are 20 grand-children and 30 great-grand children.

“There-wouldn’t be any need to bring emigrants here if everybody had that," she chuckled as she W’as left after escorting the interviewer to the door.