THE GOLD-RUSH DAYS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 80, Issue 306, 27 December 1937, Page 9

THE GOLD-RUSH DAYS

MR. THOMAS TAYLOR’S EXPERIENCES ADVI Ml KOI S DAYS RECALLED CHRISTCHURCH, Dec. 21. The gold-rushes in Otago were re- ' called by Mr. Thomas Taylor, a retired bank manager, who is 86 years old. Mr. Taylor, who left Christchurch yesterday to attend the Riverton centenary celebrations, claims to be the oldest Justice of the Peace in New Zealand, and is certainly the oldest in Canterbury. Arriving at Bluff by the New Great Britain in 1863, at the age of 12, Mr. Taylor recollects the ship’s 'entire company being placed m i ’ quaranline as a sailor had brought Iwith him a tame lox. Alter the I quarantine period had elapsed, Mr. | Taylor .-•ailed up the estuary to Invercargill, where he and his fellow pioneers were lodged in a huge barpacks near the Courthouse. I Mr. Taylor’s first position was as printer's boy in the Southland Tmi<He later joined the staff of the Invercargill branch of the Bank of Otago, and was sent io Riverton to act as accountant in 1869. Mr. John Bell taught him the gold-buying business there, and Mr. Taylor can recollect many amusing incidents which | occurred on Saturday mornings when the miners sold their gold to the bank. He cheerfully told of a six-day 2-1-1 hour vigil in the bank when Sullivan, Burgess, and Levy, the Maungatapu murderers, camped outside the town. After three years in Riverton Mr. Taylor was sent to the Queenstown branch, and it was while he was stationed there that the Bank ol Otago was bought by the 2<ational Bank of New Zealand. l.n 1902 Mr. Taylor was the head of a wool-buying concern at Gore,

and in 1918 he retired. An experienced mountaineer, and knowing every inch of the back country behind Riverton and Cromwell, he says that, the Government would be well advised to exploit possible tourist attractions there