Rush is on: story time in Cromwell
THE rush to Cromwell is on this week. Not goldminers or Queenstown workers desperately seeking a roof over their heads but the cream of mining historians are hitting town.
It’s the 24th annual conference of the Australasian Mining History Association, so it’s hardly ‘‘lock up your daughters’’ time but exciting all the same.
I’ve been invited to say a few words, or in conferencespeak ‘‘present a paper’’, and the topic is the social history of a goldmining town. In my case, Sowburn (Patearoa these days).
I’ve long been captivated by the stories of the miners who came to Sowburn, so retelling them will be a pleasure. The first wave of miners waded through the Sowburn in the early 1860s in their rush to get to the Dunstan, along the way giving the runholders a jolt or two.
Lachlan Langlands, the manager of Patearoa Station, remembered it this way. ‘‘One evening after dark I heard a cooee from the direction of the ford of the Taieri River leading to the station, and presently there was a tramp as of an army marching, with the accompaniment of all the tinware in creation, and from 250 to 280 men put in an appearance with their swags, and the inevitable tin dishes and shovels. ‘In the name of wonder,’ I said, ‘what is this?’ A tall man came forward. ‘It’s a rush,’ said he, ‘and, look here, mate, we’re hungry, and want something to eat.’ ‘But,’ I said, ‘it is impossible to find tucker for such a crowd.’ ‘Look here, mate,’ he replied, ‘we know you New Zealand squatters don’t want us Victorian diggers, but we’re here, and have come to stay. We’re hungry, and must have something to eat. We’ll have it, but we’ll pay for it fair and square’.’’
Soon gold was found in the Sowburn by William Pearson and a small rush set in in 1863 with at first 600 hopefuls lining the creek. Those who stayed on provide the human interest stories or hint at stories which should be told. Drinking caused the first and only Sowburn murder when a drunken John Russell made some disparaging remarks about the wife of
John Myles, one of the few women on the goldfield.
Myles grabbed a knife and killed Russell. The sentence was lenient, the jury sympathising with a man hearing his wife so maligned. The trial witnesses painted a picture of a lawless landscape where mining and drinking filled in the days.
What of the tragic tale of Bavarianborn Henry Schrick, miner, butcher and baker, who set up in the township with his Irish wife and six children?
His wife took to drink and died at the Seacliff Lunatic Asylum at the age of 46; then his 23yearold son Henry died from miner’s phthisis; a daughter died at 23; his son Andrew died at 29; son James drowned when he fell from the bosun’s chair across the Clutha River at Halfway House in the Cromwell Gorge; son Fred died in a shooting accident.
In the midst of all this Henry Schrick himself took his own life. ‘‘It appears that he had been drinking heavily lately,’’ said the Otago Daily Times. Who could blame him? Not all is bleak. Henry’s daughter Ellen married the legendary ‘‘Crockery Bob’’ McSkimming, the Sowburn storekeeper, and the couple founded a Patearoa farming dynasty.
The aristocratic Spaniard Don de las Careras played chess like a champion and ended up on the Westland County Council. Henry Loader sent 80 ounces of Sowburn gold to Melbourne and got married on the payout of $40,000 (in today’s money). ExTasmanian convict Tom Lewis would show off his flogging scars to the local lads and pick up hot coals in his bare hands to light his pipe. To the end he lived in a stone shelter by the creek, which can still be seen. As can the shelters of Chinese miners, whose stories may never be told. Even though farming took over, there are stories of gold being taken from the sluicingpocked Caledonian claim on Patearoa Station as late as the 1940s.
Henry Scherp grew the biggest cabbages in Otago and at cricket the parson took the catch which saved the match — a feat immortalised in verse by David McKee Wright. All the while these miners were building water races, which still irrigate the countryside.
Plenty of stories to tell. The only snag is I’m scheduled for the first session after lunch, traditionally a time when delegates to any conference nod off in the afternoon heat and doze their way through the impassioned address by the earnest scholar determined to have his message heard. But I have a plan. Now, they can read about it in the paper. Cunning, eh?
❛ Drinking caused the first and only Sowburn murder when a drunken John Russell made some disparaging remarks about the wife of John Myles, one of the few
women on the goldfield