THE OLD-TIMER LOOKS BACK

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 493, 3 December 1948, Page 14

THE OLD-TIMER LOOKS BACK

Written for "The Listener" \

by

G. R.

GILBERT

ORIRI was a proper West Coast township- just a pub and a store, a church and another pub, all flanking a a road that led nowhere. At least it led nowhere when we lived at Koriri. Once it had shown the way to a series of fly-by-night settlements that stretched right across the flats to the foothills. That was in the ‘eighties when gold was still plentiful enough to bring up a family on. Father had been a boy’in the ’eighties and he couldn’t get the glories of the past out of his blood-he liked to think that he

had lived in the time when_ grandfather had made strike after strike and ended up by losing the lot. Every so. often

he would have a yen to revisit the scenes of his happy childhood where the babies had drunk in fabulous stories of gold with their mother’s milk. The thought of re-visiting the past always filled father with enthusiasmhe would broach the subject, usually, at dinner-time. "How about a run in the car this Sunday, Ellen?" he’d say to mother. "Get a bit of a blow and a change. What do you think? We could go to Andersen’s Flat." (Or Wellington Terrace or Wallacetown or French Cross-ing-they all held vanished glories for father.) Our spirits would begin to sink right away-often we would have to refuse a second or third helping of pudding we would be feeling so low. But father would be as happy as a lark and he would begin reliving the exploits of the past without loss of time. As we listened to story after story our depression would increase until, when Sunday came, you would think we were going on an expedition to bury the future instead. of uncovering the glories of the past. But we knew what we were in for. The road to Andersen’s Flat was in a hideous state of disrepair, and heavily carpeted with fern and blackberry, but father would set the old Model A at it with a confidence born only of ignorance, and on we would plough with our teeth near jolted from our heads. "Road’s a bit rough," father would comment. "It wasn’t like this fifty years ago." But mother wouldn’t notice a bit of it--with eyes ‘only for the beauty around her she would suddenly stretch out her arm across father’s line of vision to point out some fancy bit of scenery. Dad would swear as the car swayed across the road like a drunk man. But mother would never learn any bettercars were just cars to her and her confidence in dad was sublime. To the two of us in the back seat, though, it seemed that death was after us with a thousand arms. Often the second growth would be so thick that father would have to stop the car and get out with the slasher to clear the way. Either that or he would

spot a nice patch of dry bracken to fire. Father could never resist a good fire. It was in his blood, like gold. Our path was always marked by burnt out scrub. "Can’t leave that,’ he would say. "Fern’s the ruin of the country around here." Out would come the matches and up would go a great tongue of flame with a roar. We would blunder away from it in the car, blinded by smoke. * %* * E would know when we had reached Andersen’s Flat because the second growth would be a little thinner, the blackberry a little more lush and there

would be the mossy remains of a few scraggy apple and pear trees here and there. "Look at them,"

father would say proudly of the fruit trees. "You don’t get the fruit I had as a boy any more. Apples the size of your head-hundreds of ’em on a tree. . ." Aching and hungry we would decant on to the grass and hang around mother while she organised us for lunch. We always cut. our sandwiches on the spot because mother said it was more ‘economical, and she would soon have us spreading the bread with this and that as she sliced it. Father would drift away and we would hear the slasher going in the scrub. With the lunch spread out and the sandflies down in thousands to help us eat it, mother would .call out to father. He would appear, hot and happy. "Just been looking over old Joe Fiddler’s place-damn little left of it now but I found the old plum-tree that grew in his garden. They were wonderful plums on that tree-too much for us kids they were. I wouldn’t mind sixpence for every lamming I got going after those plums..." Full of happy memories father would sit down to eat while the rest of us tried to keep our minds off the sandflies. Sandflies never worried father. With lunch over mother would have us busy clearing away while father would saunter over to a’ nice bit of level grass he had marked out. "Think I'll just have a lie down," he would remark casually, sinking on to it. For 40 years father hadn’t missed his afternoon nap but he never referred to it directly. Each time he merely meant to lie down while the slaves got the chores done. Left to himself though he would have slept through to the next morning. * = * \V HEN we were finished we would sit down and look at each other and grumble, and after a while mother would become restive. . "We'll be sitting here all the afternoon waiting for your father. DadDad! It'll be time to go home soon . ." . Father, who always slept on his back with his arms folded and his mouth open, would grunt and give a sort of a shiver. (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) Going over to him mother would dig him in the ribs. "Dad-Dad! Wake ap! Aren’t you going to show us around?" "Oh! He’s terrible,’ she would say to us. "Sleeping away like that. We’ll never see a thing.’ Mother was a great one for keeping us all on the move, and she always believed in doing what we came to do. We didn’t want to see anything particularly. We just wanted to be on the road home. Then with a snort dad would wake up. He woyld stare around wildly with the whites of his eyes showing, and then he would take us in. "Can’t a man have five minutes’ rest without you pushing at him," he would demand. "I don’t even get stretched out before you're at me to do something" . ." * Dad was always a little livery when mother woke him up in the afternoons. "You'll be sorry, Ellen, waking me suddenly like that... One of these days I'll just go off-it’ll be too much for my heart." He would rise slowly to a sitting position and slide one hand inside his waistcoat. "It’s racing now." ‘Dad always liked to think that he might go off suddenly. : "Oh, nonsense, Dad. Your heart’s as sound as a bell. If you didn’t sleep the sleep of the dead there wouldn’t be all this fuss. I thought yoy wanted to have a look around." : "Well-so I was. So I was. I was dreaming of the good old days!" With an exclamation of disgust mother would get to her feet. "Well-you might show us around a bit before it gets.too late." And off we would tramp. At least the sandflies weren’t so bad when we were moving. * + * FATHER would lead the way, plying the slasher, with the rest of us bringing up the rear, in perspiring Indian file, threading our way through the blackberry. Then dad would halt and begin examining the skyline for landmarks. He would take elaborate crossbearings off the hills and mutter to himself. "This’ll be Graham Street, where we are-the bank’d be over there now . His mind would slip back 50 pene,

Pushing his hat to the back: of his head he would look around musingly. "Old Johnny Green," he would murmur. "That’s his place over there . . . Old Johnny. He was a queer old cove, now ... us kids were scared stiff of him. He only had one eye, and every evening you’d see him sitting on guard outside his hut with his gun." We would feel some slight interest in this. "Did he shoot anyone, Dad?" "Not old Johnny. He was so shaky he couldn’t aim a gun if he tried. But he used to sit there every night ... He’d had the deuce of a row with an Italian down at the diggings and a few

nights after, the Italian broke into his hut and old Johnny’s eye was .gouged out in the fight. The Italian got off with all of Johnny’s gold-the gold that Johnny’d been stacking away to take him back to the Old Country. Johnny never got over that-every night he’d be out there guarding the gold he didn’t have anymore. And we kids were frightened to walk past his hut after dark I can tell you... * * % W E stared at the tangled skein of second growth where Johnny’s: hut had been, and tried to imagine the poor crazed old digger sitting there in the dusk with the loaded gun by his side waiting for the thief who would never come now. We ever began to feel a little of the past in the melancholy scraps of wreckage left around us. Then, dad, who had been taking another good look around, would suddenly throw us off balance. ‘Tll_ be damned if it is! That’s Graham Street over there.... That’s it. This must be Jack’s Corner where the old boarding house was that old Jenny Samson kept. An old corker she was, too..." Father would chuckle at the thought of Jenny Samson, but mother, who had been carefully following the fortunes of old Johnny, would fail to see any joke. "Oh, Dad," she would say in exasperation. "I don’t think you know where you are." "Anyway," father would continue, "we'll go on and have a look at the old Palais de Venice where the dancing girls were. I was never allowed in there in my young days-it was one thing my parents were strict about. We used to creep around and look in through the windows sometimes, though. . ." Here father would affect a mildly lecherous look as though it was expected of him, while we would be amazed that anyone who had always seemed as old as father could ever have been interested in dancing girls. We were interested to see the remains of the notorious Palais de Venice though. Once again father would take his bearings, then, with us in tow, would strike off through the scrub. (continued on next page)