OTAGO CHRONICLES

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 448, 23 January 1948, Page 12

OTAGO CHRONICLES

TEVIOT TAPESTRY: A HISTORY OF THE ROXBURGH-MILLERS FLAT DISTRICT. ‘By A. H. H. Webster. Otago Centennial cit gad (printed by Whitcombe and ‘ombs). WAITAHUNA MEMORIES. By Eric: Skinner, A. H. and A. W, Reed, Wellington, ACH of these books is in its way an achievement. The district of Teviot has to-day a few hundred inhabitants. Even* when the gold-seekers were there it had only a few hundreds more except for very brief periods, and yet it has been found possible to write a book

about it that is very much more than village gossip. And the Waitahuna volume, though less ambitious, is equally remarkable. Waitahuna Gully is credited, in its liveliest days, with 2000 inhabitants; for a brief period with 5000, though that is questionable; but its population to-day is two or three families, and it can hardly have had a hundred people at any time during the last 50 yoars. But here is its story for. 87 years, beginning with Gabriel Read, and not omitting even "Cranky Joe." Mr. Webster’s effort is, of course, the more ambitious of the two, and all in all the more important. He has a wider field to cover, and the life of his community has never at any stage died down. It is in fact a more. diversified life to-day, more .vigorous, and more forward-looking, than it was when the Molyneux valley echoed with the voices of gold-miners, Necessarily some of the chapters are of local interest only, and one or two mere catalogues of names and changes in school, church, or public life. The introduction must be one of the most daring attempts ever made to interest a rural community in its own history-a paraphrase, in far from popular language, of a soil survey made by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. But the book is so good on the whole that these dreary patches will not affect its sale. One especially valuable section is Mr. Webster’s tribute to the early waggoners, who have not had justice before. Mr. Skinner’ set himself a more modest task, but carried it through with quiet determination and sympathy. Some readers will have looked for fuller portraits of the pioneers, especially of the "characters" among them, but it is not easy to be sure of one’s facts in cases like those, and it may have been wiser to be silent. Mr Skinner has, however, put two of the most picturesque Gully figures on his cover, and preserved others in reproductions of photographs scattered through his text. If the separate tributes to his parents and grandparents seem a little out of ‘proportion, they were the four people he knew best, and each of them played a creditable patt in deanna _early history. —