EARLY CAMBRIDGE.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 225, 22 September 1928, Page 1 (Supplement)

EARLY CAMBRIDGE.

STORIES OF THE FRONTIER

DAYS.

THE MELITIA AKD THEIR REDOUBTS.

FLOGGED FOR MUTINY.

(By J.C.)

"The prettiest town in the Auckland province" was a compliment paid to Cambridge, many years ago. It is more than that; I do not know a more beautifully situated or a more pleasant and sightly provincial town in all New Zealand. The South Island has some towns to which the adjective pretty well applies; to mention three, there are Akaroa, Queenstown (on Lake Wakatipu), and Pembroke (on Lake Wanaka). But Cambridge, to my fancy, in charm of position and setting and of layout, and in the added charms of fine old trees and of gardens, comes before them all.

* The Militia Camp. I No doubt it was the commanding situation of this high-set promontory in the curve of the Waikato River that took the eye of the military authorities in 1864 and prompted its selection as the outpost of* settlement on the eastern side of the great central plain. Two hundred feet above the terrace-banked Waikato, with the gully of the Karapiro Creek and the .deep valley of Te Koutu lake to help make it a naturally defensible position, it had obvious advantages |as a military camp and depot and a rallying place for the outside military [settlers.

It was early in 1864, soon after the final battle in the Waikato war—the siege of Orakau—that the Third Regiment of Waikato Militia, nominally a thousand strong, was located at this then rather bare and windswept spot, now protected and beautified by forests of plantations. Each private was given fifty acres of rural land and a town acre; officers were allotted areas up to 400 acres, according to their r%nk. By the, iwA. oi \%ft\ \.hat% ■<»j«xfc «.\>wjA. W*\ve hundred inhabitants of newly-named Cambridge—the original military camp] was Pukerimu, General Cameron's quarters in the final weeks of the war—and the river was a lively channel oi traffic. All provisions and other supplies were brought up by river steamer for a long period after the establishment of the soldier-settlers' town. Up on the cliff-top were the military canteens, which later gave place to private stores. The Militia did not occupy their farms at the outset; it was a year or go Defore the force was demobilised and the greater part of the Government expenditure ceased. The officers and men drew lota for the town and country sections laid out for them by the Government surveyors. Some took, up their farm-lands at once; others were more cautious for a while, fearing Maori raids, and preferred to live close to the redoubt and the whares and canteens that constituted the town.

The Big Redoubt. ' ; ■■• . The military centre of Cambridge in 1864-65 was a large earthwork, that came to be called the "Ten-Star Redoubt,* from its peculiar shape. The usual figure or redoubt in the war days was a square work with two bastions or flanking angles, at diagonally opposite corners. The stronghold of Cambridge as a starshaped, many-angled work, with high earth parapet and deep surrounding trench, spanned by planks. Each angle was allotted to a company (a hundred men) of the 3rd Waikatos. Within these were the military stores and barracks and messrooms. * The redoubt was not intended to accommodate all the force; it was a headquarters protection for the munitions and stores, and a rallyingpoint fot the militia-m n in case of a Maori attack. Each pioneer township in the Waikato—Hamilton, Te Awamutu, Alexandra (now Pirongia) and Kihikihi —grew up in this way, around a central redoubt; in the case of Te Awamutu a group of redoubts.

Cambridge, the advanced field base, 1 had an outpost, or rather two of them, in 1864-65. These posts were at the great Maori entrenchments of Te Tiki-o-te-Ihingarangi, where the spurs of the Pukekura Hills, below Maungatautari abut on the swift Waikato, about three miles above Cambridge. For the attack on this Kingite stronghold General Cameron had assembled heavy artillery, and had Wiremu Tamehana and his' forces remained in the pa the fight would have been the heaviest action in the Waikato War. But they abandoned it and retreated to Matamata, and Cameron had a bloodless victory. He garrisoned .the works with detachments of the Waikato Militia. The lower redoubt, on the cliff-top above the river was called Pukekura Redoubt; the upper one, on a hill-crest, came to be called the "Crow's Nest." "Hog Peed" for the Militia. Donald Sutherland, the pioneer of Milford Sound and discoverer of the famous Sutherland Falls, used to spin a yarn of his soldiering days in the Waikato. When he was a militia-man in the Pukekura and Crow's Nest Redoubts. His story showed that, contrary to the ; general belief in these later days, the Waikato Militia-man was not exempt from the punishment of flogging any more than the poor British Tommy was. "I was stationed* with two hundred other boys- of the Militia in the upper redoubt at Pukekura," said Sutherland, "well on in 1864, and we got shocking s bad rations—regular hog feed. Scrap biscuit was dumped down in sacks at Cambridge, on the river bank, and sent on to us; it had lain for weeks without covering, and with hordes of rats making tunnels through the sacks. This was what we had to eat, this and rotten pork. Only for some wild cattle that we rihot now and again we would have starved. "At last all hands mutinied—we refused to eat the stuff. The Articles of War were read out to us, and General Galloway, an old Imperial soldier, came up to have us shot, as we heard. It was pretty serious; we were not Imperial soldiers, and too scared to kick jp a row. We held out for our rights and decent tucker. We demanded good biscuits, but they wouldn't give us any. At last they sent for three hundred of the 18th, the Royal Irish, to disarm Us; so we decided we might as well cave in before there was a bloody set-to. "Then General Galloway got even with us. In the redoubt were three or four large huts or barrack rooms. The officers marched through and grabbed three men. I was there with a lot of others lying down, but I pulled a coat over my head, and they passed me by, otherwise I probably would have made

one for the triangle on the parade ground. Next day they had a courtmartial on the three that were grabbed, and for refusing to eat rotten pork and biscuits they were tied up and got 50 lashes and were then sent off for six months in gaol. That was soldiering in the 'sixties. 7 ' Timothy Sullivan's Head. The militia-man's day passed. Many military settlers sold their sections for to or so, and went to the gold-diggings. Many made an effort to farm thexr fern lands, but they had no capital for seed, implements or stock. Some succeeded, by sheer perseverance and endurance and a liking for the life. The early military phase gave place to another, when the frontier trouble assumed an acute stage in the early seventies. There were frequent alarms, culminating in the Sullivan affair of 1873. About mid-way between Cambridge and Orakau were the Roto-o-Rangi and Pukekura lands, which were being managed by Messrs. Walker and Richard Parker. Two men, Timothy Sullivan and David Jones, were employed in laying manuka fascines over a swamp to make an entrance to a native leasehold property at Pukekura adjoining the Monavale and Roto-o-Kangi properties. There was a dispute between the pakeha lessees and the Maori owners about shares and payments, and an aggrieved Maori named Purukutu, getting no redress, squared his account with the tomahawk.^He and several others chased Sullivan-and Jones one day, got Sullivan, decapitated him and cut out his heart.. The savages carried the white man's head and heart through the King Country villages by way of Aratitaha and Aotearoa. tremendous excitement on both sides of the frontier. The redoubts and. blockhouses from Cambridge to Kihikihi to Alexandra were reinforced and new posts were built. This chain of frontier forts had been occupied since about 1870 by the Armed Constabulary, and the force was rapidly strengthened in 1873. There was, too, that mobile border force of armed settlers, the Waikato Volunteer Cavalry, consisting of two troops, Te Awamutu and Cambridge, under the command of Major William Jackson, the veteran of the Forest Rangers. The cavalry, an idea! body for patrol work and scouting, watched the frontier from the Maun«atautari side to the Waipa;. the Constabulary, in small handy detachments, were ready for instant dispatch to any threatened point. It was a crisis that alarmed the whole colony. The trouble presently died down, but Purukutu and company were never brought to justice. The Government could only have' done 'so by sending an armed force into the King Country, and that would have meant another war.