Tales Told by an Early Pioneer

Lake County Mail, Issue 14, 27 August 1947, Page 12

Tales Told by an Early Pioneer

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 15 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 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 Bees promised him £SOO 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’s ears, for he stopped the orders which he had given for store-keepers, 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 fiat, when he begged me to give him the wherewith to buy a “ nobbier ” as, he said, he was nearly mad for the 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 Cailan, touching him on the shoulder, said, in the words of Thatcher — “ What! One-eyed Jimmy, is it you? I’ve heard of you before; you’re wanted at the camp to tell us all about the moa.” 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:— Rees settled down here on this quiet station, The lake was then of calm desolation; He’d cross the Shotover his cattle to find, But that nuggets lay there never entered his mind, His shepherds then daily unconsciously trod Over tons of bright gold lying hid in the sod, And Rees drove bullocks and branded away, Never thinking what money they’d fetch him some day. So just look around and you’ll quickly behold The question is, “ Where will we have gold; We keep shifting about, and a fellow’s perplexed, The wonderful changes effected by to rush next?” 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— How nice ’twould be to be a squatto*— What say you, what say you, Like Mr Rees, or Daddy Trotter; Very true, very true, Oh! for a claim on the Shotover — What say yon, what nay you, Wouldn’t we there live on clover: Very true, very true.

Ami 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 everyone seemed to entertain for warmer weather—- \ To Dunedin how we’d like go, To taste the comforts down below, When we are bailed up by the snow, And lock like frozen Esquimax, A pretty state of things you’ll say, Now that we’ve come up Queenstown way; It really fills me with dismay, When I think of the coming winter. Oh! Wakatip’s a splendid lake, Upon my word, and no mistake, But oh! how we will shiver and shake, When we get a touch of the winter. 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.

(To be Continued.)