The Poet and the Prospector

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 731, 17 July 1953, Page 4

The Poet and the Prospector

HE impression of William O’Leary ("Arawata Bill") given by Denis Glover in his verse sequence, shortly to be broadcast from YC stations, may be filled out by a poet’s imagination, but listeners are not likely to feel that the man has been made larger than life. There is no lyricism in these poems: they have a bare, laconic diction which fits ‘the vision of a plain man who sees the rivers and mountains as obstacles to be crossed, or as hiding places for the gold he is endlessly seeking. The prospector has been brought into a credible relationship with the country in which he lived and worked. There is enough of the eccentric in Bill to make him interesting in his own right. But this would not by itself put him at the centre of a legend. He also illustrates a phase of New Zealand life which is part of our history, and which even today is not quite ended. A few men are still looking for gold, not vicariously through art union ‘tickets, but in a literal sifting of the river gravel and in journeys to the wilder parts of Westland and Otago. Arawata Bill was an old man when he died. In his youth, and in the decades before him, others were on the same quest. They were true prospectors, not content with pickings from worked-out claims or a few gleams of colour from the river-beds, but searching always for the fabulous lode, deep among the mountains. These men are New Zealand characters who have been waiting to be noticed by writers. Arawata Bill came late into the story: he was photographed, and left traces in the ranges-‘"cairns across the ravines" and "a rusting shovel in the ground." There are others, equally interesting, who live mainly in scattered notes in old newspapers. One of them was William Docherty. This man lived for years at Dusky Sound, where in 1878 he discovered a copper lode.

With George. Hassing, a_schoolmaster of Heddon Bush, he crossed the Southern Alps from northern Otago; and he died in 1896 at Cromarty, Preservation Inlet. He was interested in any metal, but gold above all, A man who knew him told the Southland Times 10 years ago that he remembered him in old age, coming ashore at Cromarty from a dinghy "tied up with wire and string," in which he had come all the way from Dusky Sound. "He knocked about the inlet for the next few years. . . The only gear he had was a miner’s pick and he used to disappear . .. on what he called a prospecting jaunt." Here, too, was a man with the dream of gold, a man who made remarkable journeys, many of them unrecorded. And before him were others, a thin line moving back to the great days of the gold rushes. It may well be that Arawata Bill is destined to speak for all of them. A poet heard of him; and because he knew the country, and had a quick sympathy for simple and rugged men, the vision broadened into words. This may be the beginning of a longer story. A man who has come into poetry with pack-horse and shovel, straight from a life that touches the imagination of every New Zealander who knows the hills, will not easily disappear from our literature. As time goes on he may change a little: the legend will pass through other minds, and receive new elements. The figure will grow. Behind Arawata Bill, and in him, will be traces of men like Docherty of the Soundsmen who looked for gold, not always understanding that it was the searching, rather than the treasure, which drew them on. And perhaps it is more than chance which seems to be making William O’Leary the prototype. If there were few other good reasons, his nickname would make him irresistible. The legend had already started when somebody first called him Arawata Bill.