BORN ON KAWAU

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 904, 22 February 1930, Page 6

BORN ON KAWAU

OLD AUCKLAND IDENTITY’S DEATH MRS. F. H. GAVAN Born at Kawau 82 years ago, Mrs. F. H. Gavan, one of Auckland’s oldest identities, died yesterday. The oldest member of the Mothers’ Union in the Auckland Diocese, having been connected with the movement for 38 years, Mrs. Gavan was a wellknown and respected worker, devoted to the interests of the movement. The father and mother of Mrs. Gavan arrived at Auckland in the ship

Jane Gifford, in 1842. her father coming originally from Glasgow and her mother being a native of Paisley. At first they lived in a whare on the site of the old police station building, which was demolished a few years ago. Mrs. Gavan’s earliest memory of her father, the late Mr. Peter McDonald, concerned his work in the enginehouse of the copper mines on Kawau, where she was born. When the mines closed she was seven or eight years old, and the family then opened a store on the Barrier. Later they returned to Kawau, where for many years Mr. McDonald was the school teacher on the island.

In those days Sir George Grey was the romantic figure of the island, and Mrs. Gavan often recounted stories of the friendship that existed between her father and the great New Zealand statesman. They often sat together discLissing books and other subjects in which they were interested. Mrs. Gavan remembered her father coming home and telling her mother that Sir George Grey had bought Kawau Island and paid £ 30,000 for it. She also recalled the time when the Maoris stole blasting powder from Kawau, making a sudden raid by boat at night. It was believed that this powder was afterward used in the Waikato wars. The change in transport from Kawau to the mainland always surprised her. Slie remembered taking 10 days to come from the Barrier in a cutter, and 14 days to return to the Barrier. One day, when they had a particularly fast run, they were carried from Auckland to Kawau in 3i hours, and at a high speed in those days. Her father died and was eventually buried on Kawau Island, alongside a son who had died as the result of an accident some years previously.