1888 - Duncan, A. H. The Wakatipians [Capper reprint] - CHAPTER X, p 93-105

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CHAPTER X.

BEFORE laying down my pen, I would fain record some of the scenes of an amusing nature which occurred after the diggings had fairly broken out on the shores of the Wakatipu Lake, although these have nothing whatever to do with the settlement of the district. They will, however, give the reader some idea of the strange and somewhat rowdy state of society which flourished during the first rush, and before any law or order had been instituted.

The banks of the Arrow river having been the first ground to be "pegged out," it was necessary for those who were working there, and who were desirous of going to the home station for supplies, to cross the Shotover River on their way. This, at times, was a dangerous undertaking, and a boat was built by Mr Rees for use as a ferry on this river, which boat he sold to a man who made a small charge for taking passengers across.

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Before the boat was placed on the river, Mitchell, when riding across to Hayes Lake one day from the home station, found a man disconsolately seated on a stone in the middle of the river, unable to go either forward or back, so strong was the current. Mitchell rode in about to him and told him to catch a hold of his stirrup leather, and with this assistance he contrived to reach terra when, turning to his rescuer, the man, who up to this time had not spoken a word, said, in the broadest of Irish brogues, "You might think I come from the County of Kerry, but I come from the County of Cork." "I don't care a button where you come from," said Mitchell, "but if you are wise I would recommend you not to get into the middle of the Shotover River again," and he rode off.

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On one occasion Mr Rees, when riding across the Franktown flat, came on a digger busily engaged in skinning a sheep, which he had apparently killed.

"What do you mean," said Mr Rees, "stealing my sheep, in broad day light too?" The man stood up, and looking him defiantly in the face, said, "I'll kill any ----- sheep that bites me." Mr Rees was so dumbfoundered by the audacity of the remark that he could not help laughing, and finding that the

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poor fellow was absolutely starving he said nothing more on the subject but rode on.

This story has been put on record by me for a special purpose. I have seen it in print several times, and each time in a different garb, and never yet have I seen it given truthfully. I now beg to place it before the public in its original state, and as the actors in the scene are still alive, they will be able to vouch for the accuracy of my version.

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Owing to the number of diggers that came trooping up from the Dunstan to the new Tom Tiddler's ground the station supplies were soon exhausted, and the whale boat was kept plying constantly between the south end of the Lake, where Kingstown now is, and the home station, bringing up flour and tea and sugar, but even this was insufficient, and often days went by without any food being eaten by the poor diggers. These would frequently walk from the Arrow and back without getting any stores, and come again the next day in the fond hope that the boat might have arrived during the night. On one of these occasions, when the boat had reached its destination, I was standing as usual at the end of the jetty, in charge of a bag of flour, and out of this I was doling one pannikinful to each man who

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came along the jetty, past where Mr Rees was standing keeping guard with a loaded pistol to prevent a rush, and I received two shillings and sixpence from each digger as he took his pannikinful of flour and moved off. One hot-headed Irishman was present, a pugilist of no mean order, and who had been for years a member of the P.R., and he had boastfully told his comrades at the Arrow that he was going to give Mr Rees a bit of his mind on this occasion. He therefore began by accusing Mr Rees of keeping the stores back, so that they would have to pay boat fare at the Shotover ferry several times for every pannikin of flour they got; and he said that the whole thing was a got up plant in order to rob them and fill his own purse, and, in fact, considered his behaviour anything but fair and gentlemanly. Mr Rees paid no attention to his growling remarks for some time, but at last he quietly said, "I have nothing to do with the boat on the Shotover; it belongs to the man who works it." "You are a liar," said the pugilist, and the words were hardly out of his mouth before Mr Rees' coat was off, and the foul-mouthed ruffian was spread out on the ground, a perfect quadruped. Springing up, however, he threw himself into position, but he had no chance, for his guard was

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beaten down, his face illustrated with cuts, and like a whipped cur, with its tail between its legs, he crawled away along the Lake side a sadder and, I trust, a wiser man. We never had any more trouble when doling out the flour to the many mouths we had to fill, and Mr Rees' name as an amateur pugilist, rose above that of many of the members of the P.R. on the gold fields.

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During the time of my last stay at the head of the Lake there were about fifty Irishmen working in the Bucklerburn, and these occasionally broke out into a state of rowdyism, owing to a supply of spirits having been brought to them by some itinerant grog seller. On one of these occasions they came to our hut in a body, and a very intoxicated body too. I and an old man that we had for cook were alone at the hut, so we were pretty much at the mercy of these fifty drunken ruffians, who swarmed inside the hut, and proceeded to argue on that favourite subject of all Irishmen--religion,--which gradually led to bitter feelings being expressed amongst them. One of them, in the hope of smoothing down the bad feeling which had arisen, suggested a song, when a general chorus about some "maid of Killaloe" was engaged in by

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the crowd, and I have never heard that song since then without thinking of the agony of that day's whirlwind of discord. This being finished, the argument once more waxed hot and ended in a free fight outside the hut door, the Protestant party being severely mauled by the Roman Catholic. Some ghastly wounds were inflicted, one, I remember, from the blade of a long-handled shovel, which cut a Catholic cheek from under the eye right down, the flesh of the cheek hanging downwards, and the whole of the back teeth being exposed. The leaders of the two parties stripped off their clothes, until they had nothing on them but their trousers, and engaged in a hand to hand pugilistic encounter and wrestling match, rolling over and over each other, and bleeding at every pore from the effects of the sharp-pointed spear grass, which grew very plentifully there, and over which they had been rolling. Beaten in this single-handed engagement, the Protestant leader turned and fled, pursued by his antagonist, who gradually gained ground till the fugitive, to save himself, plunged into the lake, and swam out from shore, whilst the victor and several others pelted him with stones. The poor wretch was nearly drowned before they allowed him to land, and then, apparently satisfied

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with their afternoon's entertainment, which must have reminded many of them of "Ould Oirland," they marched back to the Bucklerburn in a body, and left us in peace and quietness once more.

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One day a boat arrived at the head of the Lake, and a disreputable-looking man landed therefrom, and coming up to the hut, told me that Mr Rees had sent him up to cook for me. I said I did not require a cook, and that he could clear out of the hut as fast as he liked. But instead of his doing so, he dashed into a back room which had been built for the purpose of keeping stores, and began filling his pockets with tea, raisins, &c. I grasped him by the collar of his coat and rushed him outside the door, when he immediately dodged round the hut, and at that moment Reid, the shepherd, stepped inside to get someone to help him to pull up on the gallows a sheep which he had just killed. I went out with him, and to our utter amazement found no carcase there. We hunted high and low, at last, in a hollow of the ground some distance away, we found the would-be cook covering the carcase of the sheep with grass. Reid pulled him up on to his feet, and asked him, in forcible language, what he was doing. "Whisht," said he, "I am saying my prayers."

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"I'll give you something to pray for," said Reid, flinging him full stretch on the top of a spear--grass tussock, which elicited from the prayerful one howls of anguish, and from the mountains around us some weird, fantastic echoes. Such an annoyance was this man about the place with his thieving proclivities that I tied him up in a canvass boat which was on the premises, and sent him off by next opportunity, with instructions to leave him on one of the islands. This was done, but two sawyers, who were living there, found him such an intolerable nuisance that they packed him off to Queenstown by first boat, and two days afterwards he was locked up on a charge of theft. The inimitable Thatcher was at that time giving concerts in Harry Redfern's Theatre Royal, and amongst his many songs on local subjects, none was accorded a more enthusiastic reception from the digging audience than that one which referred to the arrest of my would-be cook, generally known as Cockatoo Jack, the words of which I give below to the best of my recollection:--

COCKATOO JACK.

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Another character of some notoriety, whose name was introduced by Thatcher into a local song, was "One-Eyed Jimmy." This man told Mr Rees a strange and exciting story of his having seen a living moa bird on the ranges near Skipper's Gully. His story was to the effect that, whilst he and his mates were sitting round their camp fire at night, they saw a bird about fifteen feet high walk up a spur just in the full blaze of their fire. He succeeded in persuading Mr Rees to believe that his story was

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true, and got from him an order to get provisions from certain storekeepers in the district, to enable him to prosecute his search for the bird, and to catch it if possible, Mr Rees having promised him £500 should he bring it alive to him.

I was told by one of Jimmy's mates that the so-called moa bird was nothing but a pack-horse; but that Jimmy had been indulging somewhat wildly in the wine that is red, and was being nightly pursued, in his imagination, by even stranger creatures than moas. Apparently Jimmy's true character had come to Mr Rees' ears, for he stopped the order which he had given to the storekeepers, and Jimmy, finding his supplies cut off, was obliged to steer for Queenstown to try to get employment there. I met him crossing the Shotover flat, when he begged of me to give him the wherewith to buy a "nobbler" as, he said, he was nearly mad for want of a drink. I gave him the desired coin, and he thanked me effusively, and told me that the day might come when he would be able to do me a good turn for this; and, if so, I would find "Jimmy on the spot stroke." His luck appears to have been dead out, however; for no sooner did he arrive in Queenstown than Mat Callan, touching him on the shoulder, said, in the words of Thatcher--

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I do not know if Thatcher's Queenstown songs were ever published; but, as many of them referred, in a way, to the subject of these preceding pages, a few quotations, as far as my memory will carry me, may be acceptable to my readers. In one song, alluding to the great changes which the discovery of gold effects in any district, which, up to that time, had been almost in its primeval state, Thatcher sings;--

Again, referring to the glories and wealth of the Shotover, and the money which squatters contrived to make by the sale of beef to the early diggers on their runs, he rhymes:--

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And again, when the snap of winter had fairly settled down on Queenstown, for the first time, Thatcher sang bitterly of the cold, and of the desire which every one seemed to entertain for warmer weather:--

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But enough of these rhymes, which, however amusing and interesting they were to those living in Queenstown in the early days of the gold fever there, are not to be compared to the works of Tennyson, Byron, or Longfellow.