WILY PATRIARCH

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 192, 7 April 1932, Page 2

WILY PATRIARCH

KNOWS T HlE "GC)N" MErsi LddKS A "HAYSEED" BUT STILL SHREWD AT 95 AT BRIDGE OPENING SYDNEY, Sunday. "Cori" men peeririg around co'rners, others casting sidelong ^glances dt him, "con" men to the left of him, "con" men to the right of him, hut still Charles Wooster, 95 years df age, "father of Nabiac," 9n the Manning Pivfer, a patriarchai gentleman who is in Sydriey every Easter, but this time particularly for the bridge op'ertihg, has no fears for tlie nimblefingered and glib-tongued gentry. • More like 60 than his great old age, Mr. Wopster, despite his varied experiences and adventurous life in all parts of the world, still looks the "hayseed" — an easy prey to the confidence men who follow him around the city. " "Excus© me, but I seeni to know you. Weren't you shearing on the Warrego?" whispers a voice over his shoulder as Charles Wooster turns to answer. "Yes, I was; but it was many years before you were born." "Gome on, Joe," says the con. man to his confedefate, and wily Charles Wooster preens his whiskers and waits for the next "shearer." Wohld Be a Risk The oldest soldier in the Commonwealth, still genially happy with a keeri humour, Charles Wooster would Iink arms with Mrs. Maria Ryan, the centenarian, who .will cross the bridge at the official opening. "B.ut," he says, with a gay twinkle in his eye, "I had better not, for, you see, it is Leap Year. So it's off." At the age of 12 Mr. Wooster was a sailor in the Mediterranean, and in 1857-8, the time of the big famine in Ireland, he was helping to run Russian grain to the stricken country. In 1863 he left London as chief officer of the Helvellyn, and arrived in Auckland with the first arid only consignment of live rabbits ever to leave Britain. Leaving the sea for good, with the eXception of a short period of trading on the coast of New South Wales, in later years, Mr. Wooster plunged into the Maori war, with the flying column, under Colonel Hautain. Battle Fought On Run He was with General Cameron, when the latter flew his flag of truce — his handkerchief tied to his sword, at the battle at Haraka, which lasted for three days. Wars then were fought on rum, and it was a common sight to see half a dozen meii around a bucket of i-um, dipping it out with pannikins, until the last dregs had gone. That was the position at Haraka when General Cameron pleaded with the Maoris to liberate the women and I children frorii the pa. A woman jumped on the parapet and told Cameron that the women ahd children tvould die with the men. Suddenly the chief dashed out of the pa, and sprinting across country, with a blanket around him, was the target for Cameron's rifles. "But," says Mr. Wooster, "not one marksman could hit him. They were too full of rum by this time. Eight hundred gallons of rum, in addition to the issue, was consumed during the battle." From gold mining in the Northern Territory, where he found the first gold, and at Gulgong, where he uncovered the first reef, Mr. Wooster went to Nabiac. There, while a storekeeper, he cultivated the whiskers that became such an attraction to the confidence men of Sydney.