P. AND T. PIONEER

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 80, 2 October 1933, Page 14

P. AND T. PIONEER

DEATH AT AUCKLAND

EARLY DAYS IN NEW ZEALAND

The death, has occurred in Auckland of -Mr. Alfred' Clark, a pioneer telegraphist and postmaster in New Zealand, in his eighty-third'year. Mr. Clark came to New Zealand as a boy in 1859 in-the ship Mystery, which had a tragic history and eventually ,was lost at sea. Mr. Clark took passage in the Mystery on her first voyage to the Antipodes, and ho often recalled the story of her eventful journey from Tilbury! Docks to Lyttelton. No fresh meat or milk was carried, and the ship did not call, at a single port in the whole five months she was on the voyage. Illness broke out amtong the passengers, and eighteen children died. Upon reaching Christchureh tho passengers rushed to, the barracks to secure work. Employment was to be obtained in abundance,) harvesting absorbing tho majority of the men. Mr. Clark remembered j Cathedral Square when it was a swamp, covered with flax and gorge* and he saw the foundation-stone of Christchureh Cathedral being laid. Some of his ear Host recollections were of the Lytteltou hills'before they were pierced by the tunnel. At the age of 14 he became a nowsboy and rode over the hills, daily on horseback! MAORIS AND TELEGRAPHY. In 1870 a new phase of Mr. Clark's life commenced, reports the "New Zealand Herald." He entered the Post and' Telograph Department as a messenger at Kaiapoi, and in 1875 was in tho telegraph room at Napier.' Those were the pioneering days of. telegraphy in New Zealand. Tho Maoris saw in tho mysterious wires crossing the bushclad ravines and hills a particularly evil token of pakcha power, and gave the bush linesmen endless trouble. Sometimes it happened that a new-sec-tion of line had only been opened a few days when it was pulled down by belligerent tribes, and it iwas during Mr. Clark's term at Napier that several surveyors were murdered in the *Waikato. . . . , , ' Everyone's nerves were on edgo and every time the Morse buzzed the operators expected to hear further bad news from the "shifting camps," as the outpost parties of linesmen were known. Mr. Clark used to sleep in those days witli an electric bell beside his bed so that he could be awakened in an emergency. Communication with the outside world was expensive. It cost Is to send a letter to England via San Francisco and Is 6d via Suez. When the telegraph lino from Auckland to Russell was opened in 187,4 Mr. Clark went; to Auckland. He opened ! tho Waipu Post Office in 1875, was relieving postmaster at Whangarei and Warkworth, and from 1877 to 1886 he was postmaster at Waiuku. He was then transferred to Bakaia, in the South Island, and was postmaster at Otaki for three years, at Eketahuna for another three years, and at Lawrence, Otago Central, for six years. He retired in 1911. Mr. Clark is survived by his wife and five children, three of whom—Mrs. Amy Chisholra, Mr. Leonard Clark, and Mrs. Nellio Norrie—live in. Wellington.