Underneath the Larches

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 463, 7 May 1948, Page 12

Underneath the Larches

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SUNDOWNER

BIG WINDS

HAVE a brother whose dramatic sense is so much more active than my own that he once described a gale to me as strong enough to compel him to throw himself to the ground-he weighs about 200 pounds-and hold on to the tussocks to avoid being swept away. He was on the top of a ridge,

he told me, and as he clung desperately to his hold his legs flapped in the wind

| like trousers on a clothes line. I’ve lived too long in Wellington, and the windier parts of North Canterbury and West Otago, to be disturbed by an ordinary gale, but I was twice on this southern journey reminded of the fate of my romantic brother. The first time, I was driving from Burke’s Pass to Tekapo and was caught by a wind that came at me with a roar. that frightened me. If I had not been driving straight into it, I should probably have had to shelter in the only cutting till the gale speed dropped from whatever it was to 40 or 50 miles. The second time, I was near Blackstone Hill on the way to Naseby, and the trouble in this case was that the wind caught me on my stern quarter and pushed me so hard that I could not drive my top-heavy vehicle in a straight line. I did not have to attach myself to the tussocks, but I had the feeling that I was moving sideways as well as forwards like a big mechanical crab, and I was glad when I dropped into the slight dip of Ranfurly and found shelter in the lee of the hotel.

FIRE BRIGADE

T was a strangely moving experience to sit in the vacant station of the Naseby Fire Brigade. I went there on the suggestion of a man who told me that he had spent all his life in Naseby and remembered a time when both 1 Prean maeal

sides of the road on which we were Standing were filled with offices and

shops. He had seen them disappear one by one, but told me that if I went up to the brigade station I would see some of the old faces. ma

tie was fright about the faces. I found the butchers and bakers, the watchmakers, carpenters, blacksmiths, publicans, and miners who for 80 years had protected this high settlement against fire. I am sure they never failed to answer a call whether the thermometer stood at 90deg. or at nine; and if their engine was just a highwheeled drum_pulled ang operated by hdnd, I found it as affectionately preserved and polished as if it had cost them thousands of pounds, They had given it what money could never have bought, faith and devotion, and it had given them safety. But it had done more than that. It had brought and kept them together for three generations,

This was their club-room, their meeting house. Its story was their story for many hours every week. Round the walls were not only the faces of past brigadesmen but home-made concert programmes, invitations to smoke concerts and dances, cartoons and jokes, all sobered up in the most solemn way with a reminder that in the end we all die. If it was impossible to laugh with those bygone humorists, whose jokes had long lost all meaning and savour, it was impossible to laugh at them. Their own grandchildren can draw better, paint better, do far better lettering, but it has yet to be seen how they will react if destiny lands them in as tough a spot as Naseby was for 50 or 60 years. In any case I have no inclination to laugh at men who do necessary jobs that I am too selfish to do myself. The man who has worn a fire brigade helmet for 40 years may laugh at it if he feels inclined, but the laughter of those who have sat by the fire while others have trained is a little too offensive to be endured. * * we

THIRD GENERATION MINERS

HEY told me in the "Ancient Briton" in Naseby that if I went out the back door, up the tailings and over the hill I would see a sluicing claim working, I not only saw it. I spent half a day in the claim itself, seeing everything that

there was to see there, and if it had been washing-up day when I arrived I could have seen

that too. It still seems strange to me that the partners’ (Hore .and Brown) were so open and frank, but gold secrets belong to the past. It used to be the case, Mr. Hore explained, that a miner would not venture on another man’s workings without an invitation, but he welcomed anybody who came openly. "It’s a lonely job standing at a nozzle all day, and visitors make a pleasant break. Anyhow we have nothing to hide." ' (continued on next page}

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"Not even your takings?" "No. We have good wash-ups and bad, but the whole district knows our average." "You are not afraid of competition?" "No, that doesn’t worry us either. Water is our only anxiety. We are both third-generation miners and have our own water-rights, but at present we haven’t enough water to keep the nozzle going night and day." "Because of the season?" "Yes. Our water comes from the mountains several miles away, but it has been a warm and dry summer, and the creeks are low." "What happens in winter?" "The supply stops altogether then because of the frost. But the harder and rougher the winter is the better the supply is next summer." "How high are you here?" "Well above 2,000 feet. But Central Otago is a good place for anybody who will stick it out and work. When the water stops we go fabbiting, and that can be just as profitable as mining. I have often made £200 in the off-season with a gun and a couple of dogs." "Are you the only miners here or are there others?" "No, there are several others. It is not as it used to be, when you counted miners by the hundred, but there are at least a dozen men round about who live as we do." "Is gold the only mineral?" ‘ "It’s the only mineral worth bothering about. But thee is a lot of zircon too. You’ve heard of zircon, I suppose?" "I don’t think I have. In any case I can’t remember what it is." "Have you heard of tungsten?" "Yes, that sounds more familiar, Is zircon another name for it?" "No, but they are related. Every yard of this dirt contains about 1/6 worth of zircon, but we have no means of saving it in commercial quantities." "Tt is still reasonably profitable to work the gold? You are not just carrying on for romantic reasons-because your father and grandfather were here before you?" "Well I suppose I am sentimental about that:' not only about my father and grandfather, but about a dozen or more generations of mining ancestors in Cornwall. We can trace them back to about 1400. But every acre of this ground contains about £1,700 worth of fine gold, and recovery depends chiefly on water." "Why has mining ceased in general?" "Because the water has been taken for irrigation." "But if you can take £1,700 an acre out of this land, that is as m as good farming land would produce in 200 years, and more than this class of land would produce in 1,000 years." } "That is our argument precisely. We are not ‘destroying good land, but getting the best possible return out of bad land. And we don’t destroy it either. Have you seen those larch trees up by the swimming dam?" "I was there this morning." "Well, only a few of them were planted. The rest are self-sown, and they are spreading all over the old tailings. If we had the right to fence our worked land it would be a forest in 30 or 40 years." "Without planting?" "Without any assistance at ‘all but protection against rabbits and farm

stock. It would pay the country handsomely to give us the right to fence. You can imagine what trees have to fight against here in a hard winter." "Who would suffer if you fenced?" "Chiefly the rabbits. Though the trees are winning against all opposition, they would win faster if the opposition were weakened. It is a situation that was not foreseen when the Mining Act was drafted." "Were you not surprised yourself when the larches began to spread?" "Yes, I suppose I was. But I’m past that stage now. I see trees as the answer to alluvial mining wherever the tailings retain moisture. There will be a forest here in another hundred years." (To be continued)