THE FIRST DAY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 456, 19 March 1948, Page 6

THE FIRST DAY

By

Dr.

W. P.

MORRELL

Professor of History, University of Otago *

HE founding of Otago was ene of the most carefully planned of the colonizing enterprises of the Victorian age. Needless to say, it did not go precisely according to plan; but there was little’ of the misdirected effort, the sharp practice and exploitation of ignorance that so often accompany such schemes. The arrival of the first ships was a triumph over many obstacles and an event well worthy of commemoration. Scotland, at a time when its handloom weavers were in deep distress, seemed ripe for schemes of emigration; but it took the disruption of the Church of Scotland to brings Scots to the province where they have ever since been so much at home. It was in 1842 that George Rennie, sculptor and politician, first planned a Scottish colony under the auspices of the New Zealand Company; but it would never have been founded but for the tenacity and faith of William Cargill and Thomas Burns, who at the same time transformed it into a Free Church enterprise. The Otago Block was selected and purchased in 1844, but the discrediting of New Zealand colonization by the Wairau Massacre and the quarrel between the New Zealand Company and the Colonial Office caused three years’ delay and made heavy demands on the patience of the leaders. However, survey work was going forward. The towns of Port Chalmers and Dunedin were laid out, and on July 4, 1847, Kettle, the chief surveyor, wrote that "Dunedin is now elmost deserted, there being only five houses inhabited, and we have for the present almost given up hopes of the arrival of the settlers." roe * * ‘AT last, however, the settlers were gathering together. In September tenders were called for vessels to convey them, one to sail from the Thames and one from the Clyde. The John Wickliffe, a comparatively new ship of 662 tons, happily named after the "Morning Star of the Reformation," was chosen to carry the stores and the London party under Cargill. She left Gravesend on November 24. Three days later, the barque, Philip Laing, an old stager of 547 tons, with the Rev. Thomas Burns and the bulk of the emigrants, to the numbers of nearly 250, sailed down the Clyde. The John Wickliffe made the faster trip. On March 19, 1848, the South Cape of Stewart Island hove in

sight. Early in the morning of the 22nd the ship was off the entrance to Otago Harbour. She fired a gun, and two boats with Maori crews put out, carrying Kettle, the surveyor, and Driver, the pilot. On the following day she anchored off Port Chalmers. Some parties went ashore there but Cargill at once set off in the ship’s boat for Dunedin. On April 15 the Philip Laing arrived and rejoiced to see the John Wickliffe already in port. Burns, in a letter, gives a_ vivid picture of Otago Harbour in 1848. "The harbour, through the entire 14 miles to which it extends, is one uninterrupted scene of most romantic beauty. Nothing but hills on both sides, steep and bold headlands, and peninsulas of various forms, descending to the water’s edge and forming little bays of hard sand; all of them without a single exception densely clothed from the water up to their very summits with evergreen woods presenting an unrivalled scene of the richest sylvan green and alpine beauty." Long may the patches of bush on the harbour slopes of Signal Hill and Mihiwaka remain to give us some fat idea of the beauty that has passed! Only at the "head of the river" was the land more open. "This land," Kettle had written in 1846, "is mostly covered with high grass, and though in some parts there is surface water to be found, yet it is not at all swampy, the drainage being only impeded by the exuberance of the vegetation." Burns, however, swept away all these refinements, curtly referring to "the swamp at the head of the harbour." In this soil the emigrants had to strike root. They had no experience of pioneering, and though Cargill had gifts of leadership, his army and banking career and his age, 63, hardly fitted him to give skilled direction to the working parties. ‘It was fortunate that a few earlier settlers and the Maoris from the Heads were at hand to help. To supplement the ships’ stores, the pioneer settlers could provide ample beef, mutton and potatoes. : Permanent houses could hardly be built for lack of sawn and seasoned timber; and Maori guidance must have been invaluable in the erection of a thatched storehouse and, in particular, of the emigrants’ barracks, long, low buildings of grass, rushes, fern and small timber. When the ships sailed-the John Wickliffe on May 19, the Philip Laing on June 15-the barracks and a few whares built by the men were ready for the reception of their wives and families, who had hitherto stayed on board. It was high time, for early in May the weather had broken, though Burns tells his brother "the natives said we had brought the bad weather with us, for they never had the like of it before." Centennial visitors may still hear the same remark, Much had still to be

done. The rural lands of the Taieri, the Tokomairiro and the Clutha had to be broken in to the plough. Church and school had to be erected, the institutions of a province developed, and the province itself built into the structure of a British Colony very soon to be self-governing. But the founders of Otago had faith in the future, and time has proved that the foundations were well and truly laid.