History of poles reveals Victorian drama, tragedy
SO you can’t travel to the Eiffel Tower or the Taj Mahal. Never mind. Better things are closer to hand. The telegraph poles in St Bathans have been saved after a determined campaign by the locals and what a story they tell.
In October 1874, Frederick Bunny opened the St Bathans telegraph office, a building so small that if two people met there on business, one of them would stand outside while the other was served. It was March 1876 before the Mount Ida Chronicle was able to report: “A move has been made into the new building by Mr. Bunny and his telegraphic apparatus. It occupies a commanding site at the upper end of the town, and reflects great credit on the builder, Mr. Wheeler.” (The present handsome post office was erected in 1909.)
Fred Bunny had not wasted time in St Bathans.
Not only had he established a local branch of the Hibernian Society, but also he courted Mary Kelly, daughter of miner Patrick Kelly, and married her at St Patrick’s Church, St Bathans, on Christmas Day 1875. But he would enjoy only three months of married life and a new telegraph office as he died of typhoid fever (a disease which killed 323 New Zealanders in 1875) on April 1, 1876.
He was only 25 and his obituary was typical of its time, “Although a comparative stranger in St. Bathans, Mr. Bunny was respected by all persons of every denomination. He always appeared as if he could not put himself out too much, to serve any man, woman, or little child. On wider grounds still, he was a staunch friend of the people — never losing a chance to advocate and advance local cooperation for general good by every means in his power.”
In 1881, Mary married “the King of the Gold Fields” John Ewing, who was an innovative pioneer in sluicing techniques, as the St Bathans landscape still testifies.
Fred Bunny’s sudden death cries out for more detail and his story reveals drama and even more tragedy.
Fred had arrived in New
Zealand on the Duke of Portland as an infant with his family in 1853. His father, Henry, had left England where he had been a lawyer and town clerk of Newbury, in Berkshire, but left in a hurry as a bankrupt after the scandalous collapse of a property development scheme at Dorrington Square, Newbury. On the voyage, the Bunnys were joined by Henry’s sister and her husband, the Rev Arthur Baker. Henry established a sheep station called Longwood in Wairarapa and was admitted to the New Zealand Bar in 1858 but was soon disbarred when it was discovered that his sponsor was his brotherinlaw.
Arthur Baker himself earned some infamy in 1859 when convicted of improper behaviour towards a girl staying in his home. He was horsewhipped by the girl’s father and, although Baker’s conviction was quashed on a technicality, his congregation at St Paul’s Anglican Church had dwindled and the local feeling was that he should leave the country, a suggestion he soon followed.
Henry Bunny, after whom Bunnythorpe, near Palmerston North, is named (Bunny St in Wellington is named after his son, Arthur), flourished on his Wairarapa estate and became a prominent politician as a member of the Wellington Provincial Council and then MP for Wairarapa.
In 1884, he lost his seat and was twice more unsuccessful until 1891 when he ended it all by shooting himself in the Road Board office in Featherston. (His daughter, Eleanor, who had married into the wealthy Riddiford family, joined the list of tragedies when she died in Lower Hutt in 1938 after being hit by a butcher’s van while crossing the road).
Back to the 1860s. Frederick Bunny started work in the Dunedin telegraph office at 17 in 1868. He was a popular staff member, so much so, that when he left for St Bathans, about 25 of his colleagues gathered at the now longgone Star and Garter Hotel in Albany St and praised Bunny’s “considerateness and gentlemanly conduct”.
On the news of his death, the telegraphists of Otago raised funds and erected a headstone in the Dunedin Southern Cemetery but he was buried in the St Bathans Catholic Cemetery. That a headstone for him still exists at Dunedin’s Southern Cemetery suggests he may have been reinterred.
Thus, the telegraph poles preserved in St Bathans can be seen as yet another memorial to a young man who appeared briefly but positively in the story of the old goldmining township.