THE GUMFIELDS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 525, 15 July 1949, Page 19

THE GUMFIELDS

THE GUMDIGGER: The Story of Kauri Gum.; By A. H. Reed. A. H. and A. W. Reed, Wellington. 15/-. ‘THIS review is coloured by nostalgia. Like Mr. Reed, I have had a gumspear in my hand, though I was only playing with digging in school _holidays, and it was at the southern limit of the kauri, in the Bay of Plenty, and not in North Auckland, on the gumfields proper. But I remember the camps af Maori diggers, and the excitement of finding pieces of gum, Then in Auckland city in the ’nineties. and early nineteen-hundreds, gum was important. You could sniff it in the city, as you could freshly cut timber. I used to pass a store at the corner of Customs ‘Street where they sorted gum for export. The gum-dust came out in a fine cloud, and you couldn’t escape its sweet resinous smell, At one time kauri gum was fifth in New Zealand’s exports. Yes, times were better, I heard. a lawyer say early in this century, but it was a pity that all three of Auckland’s chief products were exhaustible-gold, timber and gum. No mention of the coming possibilities of butter and cheese. Well, in 1947-48 the export of gum was 1,156 tons, valued at-.€115,000, In the previous '

year export of butter from New Zealand was 119,000 tons, of which 91,000 tons came from the Auckland district. North of Auckland were the mysterious gumfields, that Northland in parts so remote, with its patches of railways and execrable roads-or no roads at all -the cradle of New Zealand, but | (continued on page 21)

BOOK REVIEWS. (Cont'd)

(continued from page 19) apparently by-passed by prosperity The gumfields were regarded as the refuge of the destitute. A man could make a living with a minimum of capital:.a tent or whare, a spade and gum-spear. Remittance men ended up there, including scions of noble English houses, "Duke’s son-cook’s son-son of a hundred kings." Magistrates were known to dischatge men on the understanding that they went to the gumfields. "Poor Smith!" a friend would say, "he’s-on the gumfields now." That was the end of Smith. Of North Auckland, particularly beyond the Bay of Islands, the more southerly parts of New Zealand knew as little as England did of the Highlands in the eighteenth century. The Far North is much less isolated than it was, but there is still plenty of ignorance about it for Mr, Reed’s excellent book to dispel. He says himself that the literature on kauri gum is very limited, and the publishers claim that this is "the only available comprehensive account" of the industry. The gumfields, however, have produced one notable book, which may even be called a classic, This is William Satehell’s novel Land of the Lost, the first chapter of which, depicting the gumfields landscape, is good enough to recall Hardy’s: Egdon Heath. Mr. Reed mentions this book very briefly, without naming the author, and apparently does not think much of it. But Mr. Reed is extraordinarily well fitted to write a book about the gumdigger. He comes of a family whose modern fortunes were founded on gumdigging, and he himself was a digger in the ’nineties. His father and mother whose story is contained here, came from England in the "eighties to better themselves, but struck the depression. Reed, senior, took to gum-digging, and from his earnings bought a farm section near Whangarei. There he fought a

twenty years’ successful war for a home, digging gum now and then to keep things going. From that home came the founders of the publishing house of Reed, and Frank Reed, of Whangarei, probably the world’s foremost authority on Alexander Dumas, who has been twice decorated by the French Government. At the age of seventy-two, the Reed of this book returned to the gumfields of the Far North in 1947 to see what it was like to dig gum again, He borrowed a lonely musterer’s hut on Houhora harbour and set out to keep himself for a short while by digging and picking up. His account of his day by day wanderings over the hills is fascinating. Not only the search for gum interested- him, but the whole natural and human history of the district. I must say the same of the rest of his journeyings. The tang of teatree; landscape, billy-fire, and the characteristic mud flats of Auckland province, is in these pages. He fossicked for gum right up to Spirits’ Bay, and got quite a harvest. On the way he met many people, European and Maori; hotel keepers, lighthouse keepers, postmasters, teachers, farmers, gumdiggers. He even travelled with a football team in a bus. Everyone he met told him something, directly or indirectly. Between whiles he tells us the story of gum, how it was dug, what kind of people the diggers were, the different kinds of gum, its preparation for market, and uses. The story of gum is like that of gold; the industry has been largely mechanised. He is sure theregis plenty of gum still to be won. His account of the industry is illustrated by a collection of photo graphs that could hardly be bettered. Some readers may find the general history and descriptions of this faraway region even more interesting than. the story of gum. There are the Subritskys, of Polish noble stock, who. were at first probably the farthest north settlers, and built a stockade against the Maoris as part of a homestead large enough to house several families. Théir descendants, European and Maori, number hundreds, There was Samuel Yates, "King of the North," whose holding of 150,000 acres at the tip of the island rivalled in size the great back country runs of the South, and who presented the Government with the little island on which the Cape Maria van Dieman lighthouse originally stood. Material for history and fiction? Here is God’s plenty. Mr. Reed writes so well ~in a straightforward but picturesque way, which suits’ his subject, that one may easily forgive him his occasional clichés and old-fashioned phraseology. The many pen and ink sketches of landscape and people by the author and "Pat Fenton" enliven a notable

book:

A.

M.