PIONEERING DAYS.

Waikato Times, Volume 104, Issue 17473, 6 August 1928, Page 8

PIONEERING DAYS.

MR. I. COATES’ NARRATIVE EXPERIENCES AT KENNEDY BAY. AN ILL-FATED PARTY. Continuing his narrative of life in I the early days, Mr Isaac Coates, of Hamilton East, writes: In my last I and my new mate, Mr Atkinson, had arrived at Kennedy DaiAfter our arrival a large number of miners and others arrived from Coromandel, but the bulk of them did not stay long. The prospector (a Scotchman) who gave the report was on the ground, and he must have struck an accidental pocket. However, my mate and myself, with one or two others, made up our minds to give the place a good trial. We could always get a fairly good colour in every dish taken from the middle and bottom of the creek, so we all agreed to follow the creek as far as we could, and that meant shifting our tent pretty often. We had left most of our things and extra food with our Englishman's Maori wife- She had a four-roomed cottage, and if we wanted anything in the v,ay of food it generally fell to my lot, being the youngest, to go and get it; but Tom’s Maori wife, although she could speak scarcely any English, gave me to understand that she wanted me to marry her, so much so that I refused to go to the house any more. Just after we got to Kennedy Bay a Maori chief, named Ropata, came to the Bay with about 100 sheep. He seemed to claim the land, but the sheep were very bad with the scab. I went and saw the sheep, and told him that if he liked I would undertake to cure them. I offered to buy the material and do the dressing, in fact cure the sheep, for £lO, which he at once agreed to pay me when cured. He was to let me have a Maori or two to assist. In faith of our agreement I went to Auckland and bought the necessary ingredients, but when I got back I went to sec ltopata, and lie then told me that he had changed his mind and would not have the sheep done. So I at once put the stuff into the sea. When we got about four or five miles up the creek, close to the high ground, the prospects were very much better; in fact the two who had both been in goldfields before said that there were now fairly good prospects. So it was arranged to at once start One man was to make cradles, while one carried up the timber required. I was making sluices and other things, while the dam-head and tailrace were also made. All this took some time, but we at last got all ready. Th.at evening (it was a Saturday) we gave it a trial, and the men all seemed pleased at the results. Up to now we had been so busy getting the goldwinning machinery to work that we had allowed ourselves to run short of food- We had very little to eat that night, and before daylight next morning it commenced to rain very hard, so much so that the water in Die creek began to rise. By the time we got up the creek had risen so much that our month’s work largely shaped like giving way, which it eventually did. Not only had all our month’s work gone down the stream, but some of our tools and the gold-washing machine—in fact everything went that was in the creek. The flood was so high that it was Tuesday before we could go to the store for provisions. We had to Jive on what we could get in the scrub until we got away. I do not know if the two men ever went back to the place, but both Atkinson and myself left that day for Coromandel. We had had enough of that luck.