Digging on the Dunstan

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 790, 10 September 1954, Page 25

Digging on the Dunstan

OLD-MINING adventures on the Dunstan and Arrow diggings, and amusing sidelights on life in Dunedin a century ago, are presented in two programmes culled from the diary of James Gillies, an early Otago pioneer. Under the title Reminiscences of James Gillies, these programmes will be heard from 4YC, starting at 8.0 p.m. on Friday, September 17. The extracts are tread by Basil Clarke, impersonating | Gillies himself, and the narrator is William Austin. Gillies was one of a large Scottish family which has played a distinguished role in New Zealand life. He emigrated from London in 1852 with his brother Thomas (afterwards Mr. Justice Gillies, of Auckland) and seven other relatives. When he arrived in Dunedin, he noted in his diary some of the town’s oddities, and was much impressed when some of the drunken seamen from his ship were put in the rickety gaol, where the easy-going gaoler used to threaten to lock his charges out at night as a punishment. After working as a clerk, James Gillies set out for the goldfields, exchanging his "well-polished boots, black bell-topper and kid gloves" for "hobnailed bluchers, moleskin trousers, blue woollen.shirt and soda-water hat.’ After various adventures he left New Zealand for New Caledonia, where he settled down as a pioneer, coffeeplanter, trader, and British Vice-Consul. His diary, long forgotten, was discovered there recently by an Australian journalist named Lew Priday, in the possession of Gillies’s grand-daughter. j