Aret rospect Thames Golldfield

Observer, 21 December 1893, Page 18

Aret rospect Thames Golldfield

MADE my first acquaintance with the Thames in the very early days of the goldfield, when what is now Grahamstown was a collection of rough timber and canvas shanties chucked together upon what was then known as Tookey's Plat. Dan Tookey, as all old Thamesites know, was a pakeha-Maori who owned by right of his Maori wife a considerable portion of the goldfield site. Tookey's Flat was separated from the Government township of Shortland by a desolate region, part of which was an old Maori burial place, studded thickly with grotesquely carved posts surmounted by hideous, leering heads, appearing to deride with thrust-out tongue the pale-faced alien race surging and jostling round them, eager and reckless and unscrupulous in the race for that which when got too often proved but a curse to them. I ask old Thamesites to think over the names of the most successful of the early diggers, and of what they are now ; some returned to a life of grinding toil, their thousands all spent; some gibbering in lunatic asylums, and some — perhaps the happiest of all — dust and ashes ! To cross this lonely region from the Flat to Shortland after dark was a matter of considerable risk for a solitary wayfarer, for there was the usual scum which settles on a new goldfield and lives by plunder. Unless a man had at least one mate with him in this perilous passage, he stood a very good chance of being " stuck up" — not in the " sassiety" sense of the word, but by a knobby club with a powerful blackguard at the end of it! No, there was no "society" in those days on the Thames. There were numerous fools but no snobs. We were a remarkably free and easy set, both as to clothing and manners, and the only "side" that was put on was by new chums, who gathered their ideas of what a digger should be from the penny prints, and turned out in all the panoply of a red shirt, silk sash, and high boots, with a knife or revolver, and sometimes both, conspicuously displayed ; fellows who put on the reckless, devil-may-care, up-to-a-thing-or-two manner one knows so well. On the turf, there is no more profitable quarry to the professional sporting fraternity than the " fly flat" — the man who knows his way about, you bet! And this same class bobs up serenely on all scenes where speculation is rife, and his juicy carcase affords refreshing nutriment to the quiet, undemonstrative spider. I came upon a very good specimen of the class a day or two after the goldfield was proclaimed. He was keeping watch and ward over a boulder glistening with yellow metallic scales, and was marching up and down with all his war-paint on, every now and then wading into the creek in his high, well-greased boots, to gloat over his treasure. He warned us off with a flourish of his revolver as we struck off the track to see what sort of insect he was. I was being piloted up to some ground by an old West-Coaster, who had been a fellow-passenger from England some years before, and had pegged out a claim on our joint account near the head of the Hape Creek. Joe looked the man over from head to foot, and then lifted up his voice and said, "Why, you bally idiot"— ,only he didn't say " bally," the word was not invented in those days, "your bally boulder isn't worth a tinker's cuss ; all that shiny stuff is mundic, you fool." And then, as he turned upon his heel, the listening zephyrs carried away into the fathomless ether a rumbling discharge of many words which are not to be found in the most exhaustive of dictionaries. The time I am speaking of was before the days of palatial bank buildings on the goldfield, for I brought up to Auckland one of the first lots of

retorted gold from the Thames in a leather satchel. It was a dull, rough, reddish - looking mass of metal, weighing over ninety ounces, and something after the shape of a flower-pot, not much to look at but possessing great " potentialities," to use a Johnsonism. During the long and dreary night-trip to Auckland — for it was before the days of fast steamers and. four to five-hour trips — I felt some of those responsibilities of wealth so many hear about but so few experience, but my responsibilities were to a certain extent vicarious, for the gold belonged to the shareholders of a claim. I dared not turn in for a snooze, which was hard, for it was a deeping share I held in the claim. I sold the filthy lucre to the Union Bank, and the then jovial manager asked me the name of the claim from which it came. "Better not ask," I said, pleasantly, "I don't think your bank will hold it." "Why, what do you mean? I must have the name to enter in the books." "Well, if you will have it," said I, "Clachan na Kilty doch an — " "Good heavens, man," said the shocked manager, " don't commit an outrage like that upon the bank. What is it all about ?" " Well, you see," said I, " most of the shareholders are Highlanders from Inverness, so they thought that Clachan na — " " Stop!" cried the manager, in a stern voice, "if you use that language again I will send for the police. Be decent and call your claim the Inverness." And so it is called to this day. Those were the days when the police-station at Shortland was a tent ; the custom-house was another ; and the court - house was an ancient raupo whare somewhat obtrusively scented with the Maori or kauri bug, which is it? that dreadful insect with a depraved love of notoriety leading it into the perpetration of the vilest odours. Well I know it, for did I not spend the greater part of three days within its unsavoury walls defending a " jumping" case ? All public announcements were made viva voce at "Butt's corner," and the more important of the frequent pugilistic encounters were arranged to come off at the same place. On my first visit to Shortland, I arrived just in time to assist — as a spectator, of course — in a very lively combat ; indeed, I may say that I was dumped down like a sack into the midst of it, for as the tide was out the cutter in which I had taken passage from Auckland had to anchor some distance from the shore, which necessitated either a tramp through some hundreds of yards of mud up to the knees or, as I did, the chartering of one of the crew to carry me on bis back. The fight was working its way along the edge of the beach, and my porter, in his anxiety not to lose any of the fun, put on a sharp spurt as he neared the shore and shot himself and me head-first into the ring. Our sudden arrival did not embarrass the crowd at all ; they simply passed over our prostrate bodies in the wake of the combat. Then there came along a well-known West-Coaster considerably encumbered with his drink, expressing in forcible language a desire to insert the point of a pick which he was waving about into the headpiece of another Hibernian gentleman, for whom he was calling loudly by name. Well, "Well ! One could fill a book with old recollections when one begins to turn over one's mind and dig up the buried past. There is something infinitely pathetic in the recollection of our vanished youth, when hopes were high, belief in the worthiness of human nature was strong, and confidence, nerve, and digestion intact, and whilst we look back upon the petty troubles

of our youth, which seemed heavyenough at the time, we think of what we have gone through since. If the question had been asked us in our hot, eager youth " is life worth living," the answer would have been "Yes, yes! a thousand times yes! better life under any circumstances than never to have been born. If we are having a bad time to-day, may we not have a good time to-morrow, with lashings of fun, love, wine, adventure ! "We will have them! Who shall prevent us ?" But the time comes when youth has fled from, us never to return, and if the question be again asked we say, ponderingly, "Is it ? Is it ? I don't know. What does it amount to after all ?" " Weary waiting and weary striving, Glad out-setting and sad arriving ; What is it worth when the goal is won ? All things must end that have begun. " Speedily fades the morning glitter, Love grows irksome and wine grows bitter. Two are parted from what was one, . All things must end that have begun." In the days before the advent of mining companies and scrip gambling, every purchaser into a claim had to assist in the working of it, either by his own labour or by the employment of others to do it, and very mysteriously wealthy some of these wages men became. I remember one case especially, for I was interested in it, where the yield of a mine fell off in a quite inexplicable manner, and in course of time a wages man in the claim bought into two or three paying mines at a high figure. But most of the wages men were worthy, honest fellows enough. There were two I call to mind who worked for a friend and myself in a claim in which we held shares. Dan O'Connor had been a soldier in the 65th Kegiment, and was a broad-shouldered, powerful Irishman of middle age, brimming over with fun and devilment, and with a tongue that nothing could stop but sleep or the neck of a bottle. He worked as hard as a horse, but talked all the time to his mate or himself or the quartz he was picking out — abusing it in a brogue you could cut with a knife — for not carrying gold, for sad to relate the claim was a rank duffer. His mate was Jim Holloway, an Englishman and ex-Koyal Artilleryman, as taciturn as Dan was loquacious. They were devoted chums, and watched over one another in their drink with the utmost devotion. They made a point of never both over-drinking their capacity at the same time, but took turns about, for there were many infamous hoodlums on the field who lived by the plundering of drunken men, or sober ones, for that matter, if they got the chance. But woe betide the unlucky individual who interfered with the incapable chum when the sober one was around. A pair of enormous hairy fists played such a tattoo upon the interloper's head-piece that left him reclining upon the bosom of mother earth, a shattered wreck. The track to the claim was a rough and dangerous one and, for a long distance, led through dense bush, crossing and recrossing a. creek strewn with enormous boulders, so the sober man had almost invariably to pack his helpless mate home on his back, for they both believed in doing the thing thoroughly when they laid themselves out for a spree and were utterly incapable so far as locomotion was concerned. How they managed was a mystery, but at eight o'clock in the morning they were invariably on the claim and ready for work. Of the two I think O'Connor had the hardest task, for whilst he was only the happier and more jovial for his drink, Holloway was quarrelsome and morose, and it must have taken Dan all he knew to keep him out of mischief. Their idiosyncrasies were well shown by the sounds which were wafted on the breeze in the small hours of the night when they were nearing the claim. If we heard a thick, rollicking voice singing, " Oh, there's whisky in the jar, And there's more behind the bar, Touch me if you dar Cries the bowld sowljer bhoy," then we knew that Dan had been having his turn at the cratur, and that the muffled, growling accompaniment was toiling and sober Jim expostulating with him for waking the camp. And when we heard loud outbursts of blasphemous abuse and uncomplimentary epithets hurled at the struggling Dan, and his voice replying in cheerful accents, " And so I am me bhoy ; sure its the truth you're telling this minut," then we knew that Jim was being humped home and was calling his chum all the names he could lay his tongue to. I fancy that their knowledge of mining was very limited, for they dug a narrow open trench about ten feet deep to follow up a small leader, and, ignoring the laws of gravitation, they ultimately got the bottom considerably wider than the top, with the natural consequence that the sides

fell in with a dull thud — providentially, a few minutes after they had got out for dinner. Dan strolled up and gazed down into the trench for a second or two and then said, "Sure we couldn't have done it better ourselves, Jim ; I was only thinking that we might make it a bit wider." Just his own cheerful way of looking at things. At one time, I had a share in a general store occupying a quiet and secluded position between two grog shanties on Tookey's Flat. My partner, who managed the concern, was a jovial, popular debonnaire young fellow, and for a time, until keen competition set in, we throve hugely, and the store was a favourite lounging place with the miners, who sat about of an evening upon anything handy, yarning and smoking. Amongst them was a fair-haired young fellow, rather short, but with the broadest pair of shoulders I think I ever saw on a man. He had a particularly pleasant, mild expression of countenance, and I took a fancy to him, and we frequently had a yarn together. His name was Dick. I suppose he did possess a surname, but it was never used —and he had been a sailor. Nearly every night a sudden clamour would break the peaceful calm of the street — a blaspheming torrent would burst out of one or the other of our neighbours — the grog shanties. Pandemonium would be realised in the shape of a free fight — and the bumps against the shutters, which were always put up at dusk, became loud and frequent. I used to notice that a far-away look came into Dick's eyes at these times, and that he appeared to lose the thread of our discourse ; then he would shuffle his feet about and listen eagerly. At length, he would say, "Well so long; I think I'll take a turn outside," as though he were going out into the peaceful moonlight for a stroll. As he got near the door, he would make a bolt into the crowd and fight his way backwards and forwards through it, hitting out indiscriminately and giving vent to joyous whoops. "When it was all over he came back beaming with smiles and spitting on his hands, and looking as happy as a little Sunday-school boy who has appropriated the sixpence he was to have put into the collection box for the heathen. Good old Dick ! He was a sober, quiet fellow enough, but with an unconquerable thirst for gore drawn by the impact of his knuckles from nature's fount — the other fellow's proboscis. "Mundic "