Toilers of the Past

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 173, 12 October 1927, Page 10

Toilers of the Past

HORSES IN TRAMS Memories of Buckland’s Horse-Fair

BEHOLD, tlie life and arimation of the horse fair. It is any Friday, ten, twenty, thirty years ago, and m Buckland’s horse bazaar 200 sturdy quadrupeds are ranged tor sale. . . , Who could then have foretold that inventive humans were fashioning machines to supplant the horse, and that within a decade or so the harse bazaar as a community institution would recede into tie background.

Friday, still auction day at the Haymarket, revives memories of the days when long lines of wagons brought hay. fresh and fragrant from the meadows of Otahuhu and Pakuranga, to be sold under the hammer for what now seems a song. Thirsty and their groaning wains frequented the street now consecrated to Auckland’s motorists as a municipal parking-place. In the adjacent Haymarket ponderous draughts and graceful hacks are still auctioned once a week. But the horse fair is now only a shadow of its former greatness. With sale day

over, cars intrude even into the bazaar once sacred to the horse. Parked on clay that has been pounded by ten thousand hooves, they represent in terms of steel and petrol the change that has encompassed the world. HONEST DOBBIN Faithful, intelligent, honest, the horse yielded early Auckland a good day’s work. Educated beasts took the fire brigade into action at a spectacular gallop. Other four-footed toilers took the infant city to its work and pleasure. In the traces of the old horse-trams were cart-horses for the steeper hauls, and nimble animals for the longer runs to the outer suburbs, where the streets resounded as spanking teams passed by. Crowded as the 5 o’clock trams and buses are to-day, they are no more popular, relatively, than were the horse-drawn conveyances of old. Many of the horses were raised in New Zealand. Others, imported from Australia, were raw and riotous outlaws when they arrived on the Auckland quays; but wedged between a pair of sober workmates, they soon learned to pull their weight. Road-worn and weary, the tired tram horses were released from bondage, or sold at auction, when the bloom began to fade from their energy. Then shrewd buyers entered the market, pastured their purchases on the reviving swamps of Waiuku, anci in a few months re-sold the beasts to the tram company, which knew nothing of the jest until the restored campaigners astonished their grooms by

each plodding sagaciously to his old familiar stall. GALLOPERS FOR A SONG There are echoes of memorable transactions among the rafters of Buckland’s bazaar. A learned lawyer sold his hack at auction, and the buyer groomed its mane and tail, and gave its coat a resplendent sheen, so that the deluded vendor paid double the figure to get it back. Not until he reached home, and his wife explained; "That looks very like our Tommy,” did he suspect the deception. Great racehorses have been bought for a song at the Haymarket. Sea De’il, purchased for a £5 note, later won hundreds of pounds. Frederick,

Rafferty and Kawini were other fine horses that changed hands in the mart, and the sale of Colonel Soult is still remembered for the crowd it attracted. Before the motor-car took charge of the highways, draught horses were worth from £SO to £BO. Now they are in minor demand, and even hacks for gentleman or lady are little sought. Riding is no longer popular as an exercise for the figure. Thus pass the days of the horse. Buckland’s bazaar first stood on the site of His. Majesty’s Theatre, where Thespian declamations follow the exhortations of the auctioneer, who appealed to his whiskered peers in the galleried barn of yore. It was before! the day of the elevator, and a horse; that was better trained than any circus beast moved back and forth on a. measured beat, hoisting grain and trusses to the floor above. Shortly after the firm moved to Albert St., Mr. Charles Brookes, who still operates from the rostrum, became its; auctioneer, and he instituted the system of marking the catalogued horses with a numbered disc pasted on each sturdy rump. Within his recollection, the community’s stocks of domestic: horses were reinforced after roundups of the wild droves which roamed: the Kaiugaroa plains. Five years ago however, the influence of the motorcar became distinctly perceptible, and. since then the importance of the horsefair has declined with every passing month. J. G. McLEAN.