ACLIMPSE OF CUMFIELDS

New Zealand Illustrated Magazine, 1 December 1900, Page 202

ACLIMPSE OF CUMFIELDS

fHE gumfields are those tracts of country in which the buried gum of the kauri tree is found. They are peculiar to the Auckland Province, yet the people of the province do not seem very proud of them.

" I don't know," says the citizen, " but I think — I think we might have been better without them. They attract unwelcome characters, and the land is poor."

The digger, that is the man who gets his living by finding the buried gum, is often given a worse name than he deserves. His sin is carelessness. Sometimes he drifts to the gumfields because he is careless, and sometimes the gumfields make him careless. But there is no doubt North Auckland would have had a better name but for her gumfields. The sight of them has turned away much permanent settlement, though on the other hand they have been of very material assistance to the struggling settlers, and have in a great measure saved Auckland

city from the constant cry of the unemployed

He who rides or walks down the length of the North Auckland Peninsula will travel day after day over open hilly country, a country of jagged ridges and gently sloping spurs, half-mile flats, and narrow serpentine swamps. Low fern and scrubby tea-tree grow on the dry land, and reedy raupo and dark green rushes on the wet. Monotonous country, the traveller will call it, for though every mile gives a fresh landscape it is fresh only in outline, there is a dreadful sameness in the characteristics. A small patch of bush in some deep gully, or a clearer view from some hill top of a distant bush-covered range, is for miles the only variation.

This open country is not all true gumfield. On many of the higher ridges the digger would get nothing for his work. The true gumland can be distinguished miles away by the ragged and patchy appearance of its scrub, an appearance caused by the digger's fires and the workings of his spade.

Here, then, on this gumland is whero the old kauri forests once grew. All the wealth of timber has gone from the hillsides, but when working on black soil flats, the digger finds the charred shells of gigantic logs, or down under many feet of swamp he will come upon shattered tree heads, the limbs still lying bedded among the leaves, twigs, and cones that fell with them hundreds of years ago

It seems curious that the sap of a tree should outlast the seasoned wood yet it is so with the kauri. Of course this sap is no longer sticky and milky white as it ran from the

tree ; it is now a resinous gum so hard and glassy that it will turn the blow of a steel spade.

Ihe gum that is dug from the hillsides is covered by only a few inches of earth ; on the flats it usually lies deeper, and in the swamps it is often buried eight or ten feet down. The quantity of gum that ran from some trees must have been great. Old diggers tell stories of wonderful " patches," and how, in the early days, it was the common thing to go out, and get in a few hours as much as they cared to carry home. An early settler in the North is said to have ploughed it out in such quantities that he stacked it in heaps and burnt it. Such stories naturally grow a little with the years, but at the present time, even in the shallow ground, fifty pounds of gum will sometimes be found heaped together in one spot, or a single piece will be dug out weighing a quarter of a hundredweight.

Auckland has had hor gum trade for tho last fifty years, and her present export is something over 11,000 tons a year.

By going into kauri forosts that aro now standing one can doubtless see an exact reproduction of those that aro gone, and know for certain the beginnings which led

to the present gumh'elds. In these younger forests are seen the great trunks rising from the undergrowth of spidery tafra and cutty grass. Gigantic pillars they are, five, seven and nine feet through, true in the round, and with scarcely perceptible tapering, though they run up forty and fifty feet beforo breaking out into that forest roof of branches.

,If a cut is made in the bark of one of these trees or a leaf is broken across, beads of milky white sap will gather along the wound. The tree also seems to bleed naturally, for in many places the sap has run down over the bark, and set like wax down a candle. Great quantities sometimes collect in the main fork of a tree, and knobs can be seen high up clinging to the branches. By kicking into the rubbish underfoot one can turn out pieces of gum that have fallen and already been buried, just as those other

pieces fell and were buried long ago on what is now the gumfield.

This fresh bush gam is not so valuable as that which is dug from the open country, but it is quite worth gathering. Diggers work through the rubbish that lies beneath the trees, climbers, by the help of ropes, scramble into the tree head and gather the gum from limbs and forks, and that which they are not able to reach often adds considerably to the wages of the bushmen who fell the tree. Even the men who work in kauri mills get a share, for the saw will sometimes open up great cracks in a log that aro full of gum.

Most gumfields are owned by the Government. Until lately they have been open to all men without question and without licence. The fields that are privately owned are leased by gum-buying storekeepers, who therefore have a monopoly over them. The advertisements which such men put into the newspapers are often the

first hint to the needy stranger that he can " easily find work in North Auckland. " Wanted," says the advertisement. " Wanted at once, fifty diggers. From two pound ten to four pounds a week can be made. — Apply Scales, storekeeper and gum-buyer, Loads Flat." What " hard-up " ever saw such a notice and did not feel the safer for it ? Or what sailor, who was dissatisfied with his ship, did not slip ashore with his bundle after reading it ? And when these men make further enquiries they find that the gumdigger has no loss, that he can work when he likes and idle when he likes ; that he lives in a house that can be built in two days, and that the climate of the gumfields is said to be perfection. " Why," say they, " it's one long moneymaking picnic ! Who wouldn't be a gumdigger !" That is naturally the first-formed enthusiastic ideal. Experience soon teaches the reality. Perhaps out of every two that try the gumfields one soon returns to his old haunts, and gives his fellows to understand that the land of tea- tree and sack shanties is a land to go mad in, and that he will prefer to stay away, and eat grass rather than try them again ; the other, if he went determined to make a cheque, stays until he has made it, but it may be that he is one of the easy going sort, and the freedom and carelessness of the life suit him. " What's in your jobs ?" says he. " I've worked under bosses, and made big cheques, but I was never any better off at the end of the year. I can make my pound or two here and take it eaay. This life is going to suit me." Most of the old hands on the gumfields are such men. They are men without homes, without families, and without mates. A few poles do for the framework of their whares, if they are camped on the open gumfields four penny gum sacks serve for a roof, if near the bush nikau leaves make a ready thatch. These homes are not very durable, but they last as long as they are wanted.

"Three months on one field," says the

digger, "is enough for me."

A few years of this gumfield life and the digger can stand nothing but individuality. Partnerships, or anything binding:, gall him. This is illustrated in the working of some of the swamps. In many cases these swamps would pay to dig from end to end, but instead of co-operating and working on a face, each man sinks his own gumhole where he strikes the first gum, and in throwing out the soil covers more ground than he digs. Instead of all spending a week or two in draining the swamp, each man has his own backet, and the water he bails out eithei runs back into his own gumhole, or into his neighbour's. But he is bolter satisfied with what he gets in this way than with a greater quantity secured by cooperation

When two holes are sunk together in such ii swamp, and good gum is found to lie between, we see that a goodhumoured rivalry is better than a fretting partnership. Each digger in his anxiety neglects to bail. The water vises, and the mud accumulates until he is half covered "with a mixture of the two, and groping for the gum at arm's length. But he who is drowned out first calls good-humour-edly to his rival : " Say, mate," says he, "how do you feel ? My skin's cracking for want of moisture."

Beside these camp diggers there are many settlers who depend on the gumfields for

their income. Their homos wo scattered all through the North, wherever the price or quality of the land was thought favourable. Want of rail or water communication with town has not always limited their choico. Patches of good land have drawn Homo to the back districts, whore their homes stand on the border land between the gumliold and the bush, with only one neighbour in sight, and the nearest store four miles away.

By working hard ou the gum Holds for two weeks the sottler can porhaps oarn enough to keep himself and family for three. In this way he has a third of hi.s time for the

impi'ovement of his garden and orchard, or the sowing of grass for an increase of stock. If his family is a big one, well, it is rather an advantage than not. After the father has worn down the spade he can pass it on to the boy, and many odd pounds of gum are procured by the youngsters while herding the cows about the swamps ou the gumfields.

Even under favourable circumstances it means years of hard work before a settler is independent of the gum. Sometimes one is beaten in the struggle. If a home is seen whore the fences ai*e down, and the outhouses falling, where a few lifeless stumps are all that remain of the orchard, and where the scrub is already closing up to the very door, one may be sure that the owner has given up all hope of cultivating the land, and now lives by gum alone.

Between the camp digger and the settler there is little sympathy. The settler has all the pride of landownership, and looks upon the other much as the ratepayer looks upon the tramp. The digger, on his side, prides himself on his liberty, and resting on the hillside above the homestead he ridicules the settlers attempts at agriculture. He also charges the settler with jealousy and a wish to monopolise the guradiggiug. Said a digger one day :

"I didn't intend to, but now I'm going to stay on the field here until that swamp is dry. It's my opinion it's just paved with gum."

"Why?"

" Because that settler over there said there was not enough in it to keep a man in tobacco."

There is this great advantage about gum, it is always saleable. On most gumfields the digger has not to carry it beyond his own door. The storekeeper meets him there, prices and weighs it, and then gives it over to his packman or bullocky to carry to the store.

Selling day in a big camp is often a busy one. It is the only serious day that mauy diggers have. The camp liar finds it especially serious. For the last fortnight he

has been telling his neighbours of the loads of gum he got " yesterday " and " the day before;" in fact, every day but those in which he was know to have come in with nothing. The scales, however, prove that he has obtained little more for the whole fortnight than he said he got in one day. This quietens him for a time, but like others of his kind he soon recovers.

" It's queer how I have been off it, lately," he says, " but I had a big selling last time."

The buyer has a serious day as well as the seller. There are sure to be diggers in camp who think it a sign of softness to take bis first offer. They have not proved themselves . good business men if the price is not raised at least one shilling per hundredweight. The only buyer who can avoid this barracking is he who is quick to see the class of gum before him, and who is known to give one price and one only. This classing is compai'atively easy in winter, for then the digger is working in the shallow ground, and the gum he gets there is good in quality, but that which comes from the swamps in summer is different ; it varies in quality from the hard and glassy gum that is worth a shilling a pound to the dark, grainy stuff that is worth only seven and six a hundred- weight.

The buyer also knows that he is likely to be " had." It is to be noticed, though, that the digger has some conscience even in his gum selling. He will never tell of having " had " (they don't call it cheatiug) a storekeeper until he has proved to his heai'ers that the storekeeper first tried to have him. So if the buyer has done anything that can be looked upon as sharp business, he must in future be careful. The digger in return will sometimes tip good gum that has been priced into a bag which already has inferior gum in the bottom, and he looks upon his account with the buyer as square when both good and bad gum are weighed up together and booked at high quality price. The digger knows too that some swamp gum is spongy. A sack of such gum has absorbed as much as a bucketful of water, and that shortly before it was put on the scales.

The digger has little respect for land laws. Without questioning whether he is right or wrong he soon comes to look on gum as common property wherever it lies. He laughs at the rights of the absentee landlord. He boils his billy with the prosecution notice, and digs for the rest of the day inside the forbidden boundary. When writing of this wandering man of the gumfields it is difficult to avoid giving him a bad character ; his gumfield faults, like his old clothes, ai-e so noticeable, but like them also they only overlay the real man. There is a suspicion that if you could but persuade him to give himself a good shake, morally and physically, both faults and clothes would fall from him, then give him five minutes to dress differently, and revise his vocabulary, and you would have a man remarkably like the rest of men. With all his faults the gumdigger often exhibits sympathy. He has been known to voluntarily retreat from good digging on the land of a struggling settler with a " Poor beggar, he wants all he's got." He will also help the gumfield new chum. He will give him endless advice, but more than that, after glancing round the bareness of the new chum's whare, he will mention that he has a box round at his place, anyone is welcome to it, and it would make a first-rate cupboard. Or perhaps it is a piece of sack roofing he haa got to spare, and he shows the stranger how, if he will only come round and get it, the rain

can be stopped from beating through the ivhare end.

The tools used by the digger are the spade, the spear, and the hook. The spade everyone knows, but the spear and the hook are tools peculiar to the gumfield. The spear is a long slender piece of steel, four-sided and tapering to a point. When

fc in a handle it is easily driven into the from the bottom of the deeper and wetter swamps. It is a rod of iron perhaps twelve feet long, looped at one end for a handle, and with the last three inches of the other turned off at right angles and given its own peculiar shape. When the swamps are dry the hooker has to open up the hardened surface with a spade, and when they are very wet he has sometimes to lift the gum the last part of the way with his toes. What the hooker wants is a swamp firm enough to hold the gum steady, find soft enough to allow it to be drawn easily

soft ground, and the grating of the point will tell when it has touched gum. In the early days the digger found all his gum with the spear, but he no longer uses it in the shallow ground. It answered well enough in the days when gum was plentiful, and it only payed to dig the bigger pieces and the "patches," but now what is left is so small

and scattered, and so much more valuable when it is got, that it pays to use the spade only, and turn all the ground over. The spear is still used in the swamps, for the digger wants to be sure of getting something for his work before he sinks a hole eight or ten feet deep. .

TKe hook is used for raising the gum

up to the surface. It is likely that gum will be worth digging during many years yet, for as it becomes scarcer it rises in value. Inferior gum, great quantities of which are still left, is now worth what good gum was worth years ago.

There are said to be 10,000 men earning their

living on the gumfields

Divide among these the value of the animal expoi't, which is £600,1)00, and you have for each digger an income of £60 a year or rather less, for the storekeepers and exporters want their profits. Sixty pounds a year does not tally with the storekeepers' two pound ten to four pounds a week. But such wages can be made, and a few by real hard work do make

them. Most diggers, however, do not work hard. Many are like the man who was one day startled from his couch in the fern. "Yes," said he, " I've been to sleep. I was so disgusted. It is work, and work your life out, and there is nothing. I think I'll toddle home." He was a short, thick man, who should have made storekeepers' wages. He had come out late, worked a few hours in a tired way, and lunched, then gone to sleep and been awaked in time to get home by four o'clock in the afternoon. But before he went he lit his pipe, and told what ho thought of the gu infields. He was one of those diggers who fifteen years ago were of the opinion that their trade was done, and who every day of every year since that time have told and retold that opinion. " The fields are dug to ruin," said he. "They're turned to blazes! The game is played out ; it's done, mate, it's done ! It's completely cooked ! It's ' But the climax is not to be written. Still he gave it with effect, his hand raised, just about to strike the match head on the clay pipe. ' If he had included himself in the condemnation it would not have been amiss, for he looked played out and lost to all regeneration; his spade leant against him, his gum bag was on his back, his clothes were mouldy-looking and his shirt overflowed his belt, and in his face was an expression of contented hopelessness. No one abuses the gumfields more than the digger does, yet he clings to them, and they-.are kind to him, with an overindugent kindness. His carelessness of dress and looseness of speech can there go undisciplined, and he need work but to supply his hunger. Perhaps though this abuse is prompted by a dim unanalysed consciousness away down somewhere in the man, that it would have been better for him if he had been" disciplined. There is no worse dissatisfaction than that caused by the knowledge of a wasting life, and life is often wasted on the gumfields. It is a land where good men spoil, where the careless become more careless, where the thoughtful grow

morbid, and the morbid mad ; its nomadic liberty is its curse, yet the source of its only romance.

To know the gumfiold at its worst a mau must know it in bad woathor. Crouching for shelter behind a scrub bush, ho looks out on a landscape darkened by heavy clouds. He hears the wind corao circling round behind the hill, and with it the sound of the rain. They sweep over and past him, and blurr the landscape in front. Crouching there for an hour with the cold rain dripping from bush to hat, and from hat, to clothes, he may think he knows what misery is, but he is mistaken. lie has to wade hnuo through the switching wet scrub first, and come to a camp that smells of mouldy sacking and damp ear! hern floors. There

he meets his fellow diggers, who open the mouth but to curse, and in whoso uncleanness and raggednoss he sees but a likeness of himself. He collects his driest wood and lights a fire. He goes down on his knees and blows it, but it never gets beyond the hissing steaming stage. Tho sod chimney won't draw; instead of tho smoke going up the rain and wind come down. He coughs and chokes, and the firo goes out. He hears his neighbours cursing horribly, but it is all a part of the misery, and in response he laughs — 'laughs like they say the lost laugh.

Bat as there is a worst there is also a best. When bound down to strict hours and unshirkable toil he, who was once a guuadigger, will remember the day when he

and another rested on the hillside, their backs in the fern, and the free, wild, uncivilised landscape of ridge and gully before them. The sun was warm, the air was clear and the sky was blue. Below them some one was wandering and singing. A stray breeze came along the hillside, and brought with it the scent of the gumfields, a scent of young fern and flowering scrub, so faint and delicate that it seemed only such a sun could draw it, only such an air could hold it in its purity,

and only such a gentle wind could carry it. And as they lay there they agreed that life was not altogether for. work. To work on such a day was a sin, so one told his yarns and the other answered with his. Lucky gum "patches " were struck again, and big lumps found. " Who'd work for a boss ?" said one. " Who would ?" said the other. "Who wouldn't be a gumdigger ?" said oue. " Who wouldn't ?" said the other.