94-YEAR-OLD WOMAN SAW LIFE IN RAW IN AUSTRALIA AND N.Z.

Wanganui Chronicle, 4 November 1950, Page 5

94-YEAR-OLD WOMAN SAW LIFE IN RAW IN AUSTRALIA AND N.Z.

NEW PLYMOUTH, Last Night (OC) —Today 94 years of a very full life are behind Mrs Mary Mclntosh, of Carrington Street, New Plymouth. Born at Breckin, Scotland, on November 4, 1856, a year before the outbreak of the Indian Mutiny, she came around the world in the hazardous days of sailing ships, and saw Australia and New Zealand in the days when they were struggling colonies.

Alert and active, and after 70 years * away from Scotland still speakingwith the unmistakeable brogue of her homeland, Mrs Mclntosh has come 1 through the rough and tumble of those early years with unimpaired health, and with her vigour diminished only by her age. At the age of 87 she was condemned to become bedridden as the result of a broken hip, but today she climbs the stairs of her two-storied house more briskly than some younger women. She wears glasses, but her eyes are keen enough for her to malic and mend her own clothes and km: her own stockings. She washes her own clothes, and with sure hands invariably dries the dishes.

The 94 years of her life cover a historic period, and with crystal clear memory she can reach back into the past and summon such incidents as watching Queen Victoria on her way to Balmoral Castle, bowing to her cheering subjects, and of her uncle going off to India in the days of the Mutiny. At the age of eight Mrs Mclntosh was working half of the time in a cotton mill and half of the time was at school, eventually becoming a weaver. At the age of 17 she went to America, to where there was a general trend, but she returned to Scotland on a doctor’s advice, and at the age of 22 was married to a flax dresser. LURED TO AUSTRALIA

Lured by El Dorado stories, the young couple set out for Australia in 1880. They found not prosperity but heat, discomfort, hard work and unemployment. The journey out by sailing ship took tour months, and in those months they saw many passengers, most of them children, who succumbed to the poor food and poor water, wrapped in canvas and buried at sea. At Brisbane, where they landed, reception facilities were unknown. Migrants slept the first night at a depot. Very quickly they found the stories of the prosperous south were untrue, and leaving his young wife at Brisbane, Mr Mclntosh went 500 miles inland in search of work. When he secured a job on railway construction his wife joined him. Their itinerant home was a tent in the bush. Water was short, except when devastating thunderstorms came down, and comforts were negligible. Their only child, Lillian, now Mrs Ward, was born during this period. Because of the effect of heat on their young child, the couple moved to a place near Melbourne, where Mr McIntosh tried his hand at brickmaking. Again stories of pastures new on the other side of the Tasman Sea attracted them, and Mr Mclntosh went ahead in 1893 to survey the prospects in New Zealand. He landed at Wellington and found a job near Feilding at 4s 6d a day grass-seeding. His wife then joined him. HOUSING PROBLEM

Housing was as much a problem then as it is now, and all the Mclntosh’s could secure was a room. Mr Mclntosh's next endeavour was as a road contractor. With teams of horses he helped form roads back from Waituna West. From this he transferred his horses to the Main Trunk railway, then being pushed up through the rugged country in the centre of the island. Life and travel was still fairly primitive, and Mrs Mclntosh recalls the time when the completed section of the railway ended at Taihape. If was necessary to transfer here from a passenger train to a Public Works train, which had no carriages. She remembers herself dressed in a white frock riding on top of a truck load of steel and emerging from a tunnel as black as a nigger. After this Mr Mclntosh tried his hand at the flax business at Karioi, but this was not successful. Finally he and his wife settled at Ohakune, where he set up a timber mill. He remained in this until he retired. He died 17 years ago. Mrs Mclntosh went to live with her daughter at Raetihi, and three years ago she and her daughter came to live with Mrs Ward's daughter, Mrs R. Bolger, at New Plymouth. Life in the open spaces of New Zealand contrasted sharply with the cramped conditions of her home town in Scotland, and Mrs Mclntosh, when she and her husband returned for a visit. 29 years ago, adamantly insisted on returning to the Dominion. With memories of a father who earned 10s a week, and of dealings in halfpennies and pennies, Mrs Mclntosh cannot accustom herself to today’s price levels, but money troubles are at. least one worry of which a beneficent Government has spared her. for once a month she can take a taxi into town with her daughter and draw her pension.

Representatives, 36 of 91 Senators and 32 State Governors. The Democrats' strength in the Senate now is: 54 seats compared with the Republicans’ 42. Democrats hold 262 seats in the House, the Republicans 169, and the American Labour Party one. Three seats are vacant. To gain control of Congress, the Republicans would have to retain their present seats, and win seven Democrat seats in the Senate and 76 in the House. Mr. Guy Gabrielson, chairman of Republican Nat’onal Committee, has gone no farther in his pre-election statements than to predict that Republicans will gain a minimum of five Senate seats and up to 30 House seats from the Democrats. Even if this pre. diction were fulfilled, it would still mean that the Republicans would fail to win control of Congress. The feeling in the Democrat camp has been that the party could not only hold its present majority, but, could win a number of seats from the Republicans. Some political observers believe the Democrats, who had privately taken a gloomy view of their election prospects just after the outbreak of the Korean war, when the United States troops were in retreat, had justifiable grounds for optimism now. If Democrat predictions should prove correct, it would be a major political development and disaster for the Republicans. Traditionally, in an off-year election, the party in powerin this case the democrats- loses seats to the Opposion. Only once in 18 years have the Democrats managed to make gains in such an off-year campaign. That was in 1934, when the New Deal was riding a flood tide.