"Down in Otago."

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 446, 9 January 1948, Page 5

"Down in Otago."

N we said to a historian the other day that a good deal had happened in 1848 he asked if we meant "down in Otago." At the moment we were not thinking of Otago but of Europe, and had to adjust our thoughts, as he had to adjust his, before the conversation could continue. Now we should like to know how many people in Otago remember, as they enter their centennial year, that it is also the centennial of one of the big years of history. Some will not be interested if they do remember what was happening in Europe a hundred years ago. They will feelup to a point it is a very wholesome feeling-that Europe is a long way off, and that too much has happened there since 1848 to make worrying about it now justifiable. But in fact Europe’s year of revolutions did influence Otago in direct and indirect ways. It made the first settlers more conscious of tyranny and more sharply aware of the meaning and value of liberty, and it even sent a thin trickle of oppression’s resisters to Otago’s goldfields and farms. That of course was a delayed-action result, but can still be traced. Meanwhile Otago has arrived at its own big year, and is preparing to celebrate it in many permanent and passing ways, but above all in the lasting pages of print. Already two official and two or three unofficial volumes have appeared, and the indications are that enough books will appear before the year is over -certainly before the present enthusiasm dies down-to fill two or three cabin trunks. It is all very encouraging nationally, and to Otago natives quite exciting. But it is to be hoped that the historians will give us the land and the life and the people as they really are and were. It would be unpardonable to wash Otago’s face until it shines with goodness, and to make saints of the engaging sinners some at least of its early inhabitants clearly were.