GABRIEL READ'S COUNTRY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 22, Issue 557, 24 February 1950, Page 14

GABRIEL READ'S COUNTRY

TUAPEKA: THE LAND AND ITS PEOPLE, by W. R. Mayhew; Otago Centennial Historical Publications. "THE special interest in this Otago ‘Centennial volume is that Tuapeka was the scene of Gabriel Read’s discovery of gold, which was the mainspring of the Central Otago rushes in the ‘sixties. Mr. Mayhew gives a full account of this event, so important for Otago and New Zealand. Read was not .the first to find gold, but he established the existence of the field. It was out of this gold that Otago was able to realise its dreams of education, and take the lead among the provinces. Mr. Mayhew, however, tells the story of Tuapeka from the _ beginning. The sheep-farmer came before the digger, and against the Wishes of the hierarchy, which considered that the Otago settlement should be circumscribed and tied closely to the capital; also that it should be confined to Scots. Mr, Mayhew relates that Captain Cargill told an Englishman he had tio business in Otago, and should go to Canterbury. That province started with the same ideal of exclusiveness, but sheep-men from Australia broke in, just as, in much larger numbers, miners flocked to Central Otago. The story of Tuapeka is sheep-farm-ing, then gold-getting, then general

farming of such a kind that the land was impoverished, and after that, sheepfarming with recognition that the land must be fed. Mr. Mayhew has done an immense amount of research for this book, and tells the story in great detail. In any local history there must be some matter that is of purely local interest. Here the proportion is somewhat excessive. Long strings of names i

of persons in all spheres become dull, at any rate to the outsider, However, in the record of the growth of local institutions, there are patches of real general interest, such as edi-

torials in the local press, so reminiscent of Mark Twain’s "Journalism in Tennessee," and the account of that remarkable head of the Lawrence District High School, John Stenhouse, who, in a declining mining town, "drove, pushed, . flogged, and frightened" so many children through examinations into the public service. Quite apart from the roaring days of the rushes, the student of social history will find much of value in the life of this country community, where’ the average of wealth has been moderate, but that of industry high. The ‘illustrations are many and

excellent.

A.

M.