OLD WAIRARAPA

Wairarapa Times-Age, 21 June 1938, Page 8

OLD WAIRARAPA

EARLY DAYS AT WAIRERE ADVENTUROUS AND TOILSOME TIMES. LIFE OF PIONEER SETTLERS. The late Mr John Rutherfurd, one of the earliest settlers to take up land in the Forty Mile Bush district, at a time when Masterton consisted of only four houses, was the original owner of “Wairere,” now in the possession of Mr L. T. Daniell. In 1915 Mr Rutherfurd wrote to Mr Daniell, at the latter's request, concerning incidents in the early life of Wairere. Mr Rutherfurd died at the age of 81 years at Hamilton, on March 20, 1916. Mr Rutherford’s letter is as follows:— “It was, I think, in the year 1864 or 1865 that I first viewed the place, after following a densely wooded ridge for a distance of nine miles from the Upper Taueru, then known as Luxford's and Barnum’s station, but now better known as Bideford. The aspect of the place then was very beautiful. The whole front of the hill facing the present house was white with the bloom of large toi toi bushes, intermingled with many varieties of shrubs, such as the koromiko, crammer, white leaf (or rangiora), thousand-jacket or lacebark, cabbage trees, flax bushes, fern and native grasses, etc. It had evidently been a Native clearing in the past, though not within the last fifty years, as the remains of whares in the ‘peninsula’ (lower paddock) were in a very decayed state. The bark which had once formed the roof crumbled into dust when it was handled. There was no superstructure; it had bowed its head to the ravages of time and everything lay prone and level with the ground. The flat in front of the house had evidently been cultivated, for I observed the blue blossom of a vine growing through and above a koromiko bush, seemingly like that of the potato. I traced it to the ground and found my surmise was right and that the tuber had reproduced itself throughout these long years from the seed of the potato apple. There a Maori stone axe was found and not far down the Mangarai Stream, in a creek, the quarry or factory from which these implements were turned out, was made evident by large heaps of stone chippings. RESORT OF THE MOA. “This valley seems to have been at some distant date a favoured resort of the moa bird, for the remains of its bones have not infrequently been found. One leg bone was forwarded to the Wellington Museum by Mr Snowden, surveyor. Another was given to Mr Bremner, engineer. A very large one, the largest, I believe, known in the North Island, has now a resting place in the Edinburgh Mus'eum. Bishop Wallis, when on a visit to Wairere, also received some fine specimens of that rare and extinct bird. It may yet be our good fortune to find the egg. Some human skulls have been found. One very large one, picked up at the base of a great matai tree, was remarkable for its fine set of teeth and evidently possessed at one time by a man of advanced years. The dental appendages were so perfect and in such contrast to our present day apologies for the same. It now serves as an object lesson to pupils in the Wanganui Collegiate School who are or may be desirous of attaining knowledge in dentistry or phrenology. Two other specimens of ' the ‘dome of thought’ were presumed to have belonged to slave 1 girls, sacrificed for the royal table, as a distinct bullet hole, entering at the base of the skull and emerging from the forehead was very noticeable. SOME FOREST GIANTS. “I am not learned in ornithology, but it is regrettable that the many beautiful birds of the native kind then prevalent have now totally disappeared by the extinction of their feeding ground, the beautiful native bush. Wairere was long known to the Maoris as the favourite haunt of the huia bird and in 1883 or 1884 Sir Walter Buller, accompanied by two Maori chiefs, came here to get the specimens he required for his great work on the birds of New Zealand. It is with some feeling of pathos that I recall the destruction of much valuable timber in the early days, through unpreventable causes mostly. There was clear evidence that the present bush was but a growth which had risen from the ashes of a primeval forest, whose skeleton remains in huge charred trunks (but fargone in decay) lying prone at the base of the standing bush, like slumbering giants taking their rest. Twenty to twenty-four feet in girth of that valuable timber known at totara were the measurements not infrequently met with but the giant of all was seen by a party of surveyors, who, passing their chain round it. proved it to be 22 feet in diameter, a veritable monarch of the forest. Had it been accessible to the sea it would soon have been converted by the Maoris into a colossal war canoe, the ‘Queen Elizabeth’ and pride of their fleet. THREATS BY MAORIS. “During the Maori disturbance in 1865 the Maoris were much incensed at my cutting tracks through various parts of the bush leading to the Upper Taueru, to Tinui (via Beef Hill or Wingate’s) and to Masterton via the Mangarai for the purpose of procuring stoves or packing our wool to Castlepoint. They appealed to the Government to turn me out of Wairere. The defence force was then camped .onWoodrofe’s section on the bank of theRuamahanga, whom the Maoris defied and dared them to cross the river. They had a pah and rifle pits at Kaicoot on Te Ore Ore. not far from where my track led out. As they looked upon the bush as a safe retreat in the event of a reverse and also as a place from which they could draw supplies of meat, as wild cattle and pigs abounded there, they were naturally opposed to facilities being made to admit of troops getting behind them. The sugar and blanket policy was then in

vogue and I presume their wrath was for a time appeased by a liberal donation. On the watershed of the Wangaehu, some four or five miles down the Mangarai, I built a comfortable whare as a sort of half-way house when pack- « ing. as sometimes the road would be blocked by fallen trees. It was also near our hunting ground for beef in Perry’s clearing. The whare was stocked with cooking utensils, axes, bill hooks, etc. The Maoris, remembering this, showed their animus by destroying everything that was there. They waited long and patiently for a signal from Titoki Waru (or some such name) to commence operations and I was to be the first victim, if I may judge by their naked foot-prints sometimes seen on a muddy part of the track . within sight of the house but themselves not visible. WILD DOGS TROUBLESOME. “Wild dogs were for years the great trouble at Wairere, causing great loss amongst sheep and lambs, sometimes assisted by wild pigs, especially at lambing time. Though pork and beef largely contributed to keeping our larder full, the presence of the pig and the bull was not an unmixed blessing for the former would root up the grass by the acre in a night, besides ruining fences by burrowing under the bottqm wires. Then came the rabbits as an extra plague to beggar or ruin the pioneer. A yearly tax to introduce stoats, ferrets and weasels was suppost ed to be a remedy, but though supple■mented by rabbiters and many packs of dogs, poisoned wheat and oats and the German method of asphyxiating Britishers by poisonous gasses (by introducing phosphorous into their burrows) it was not so effective in reducing the pest, as it was when the * majority of settlers decided to clear their lands of the titree and scrub, that this scourge began to disappear. The wild bull, and there were many of them, was no friend of the back settler, for he lured away the milking cows and calves by his frequent bellowing on the hilltops in the dense bush, whither they went, there to be shot either by the Maoris or by snipers, who were -out hunting for beef to supply distant bush camps. I have shot bulls from the kitchen window when bailed up by the dogs, which had brought them in with the cows from the bush. PLOUGHING BY BULLOCKS.

“The horrors of packing over bad roads and streams without bridges, when needing stores from Masterton (distant about 25 miles) induced us to grow skinless oats and wheat, which we ground in a hand mill imported from England by Mr Borlase. It was a very complete affair and turned out fair samples of both oatmeal and flour. But the rats brought it to grief in time by chewing the catgut which revolved the many wheels connected with the grading of the flour. The nether stone of this ancient mill was presented to Mr William Beetham, who could tell some interesting personal experiences with it, when most of the early settlers ground their own flour. The hillside at the back of the house was in the ‘long ago’ broken up and ploughed by a team of bullocks under the able guidance of Mr Henry Burling, now known as the lord of many acres or a vast estate. It seems incredible to us even in these days that bullock drays went out of Wairere and into Alfredton or took loads of wool over the gorges, from Clapham’s, to be delivered at Castlepoint, nearly fifty years ago, when the same journey would seem impossible even at the present day (1915). Most of the back paddock, hillsides included, have been under crop, potatoes chiefly, by the slow process of the grub hoe, but after the roads began to improve, this primitive method of cultivation was abandoned.”