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Foxton, Manawatu
1870–1872
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1870
Daniel trudged his way up the newly opened Paekakaariki Hill Road from Trentham, thinking about where life had taken him so far. There were many things he wished he’d never seen or done in the seven years or so since he’d arrived in this country.
Somehow, he survived the battle of Orakau Pa without a scrape; others had not been so lucky. In the final reckoning, the British casualties amounted to seventeen killed and fifty-two wounded. On the other side, over half of the 300 Maori they had estimated were in the village were killed. And half of those who survived long enough to be taken prisoner, also died.
The next two years as orderly to Colonel Lyon at Cambridge had, for the most part, been quiet so why he’d signed up for the Armed Constabulary once he’d got his discharge, he couldn’t explain, not even to himself. He’d made a silly decision, one that put him back in the middle of conflict again, chasing Te Kooti up the Ureweras and into battle in the Whakatane Gorge. He shook his head in bewilderment at his own stupidity. But he was glad to be out of the AC now, especially after that last drunken brawl which ended him up in detention. He had a knack for getting into trouble.
Now he was out and with nowhere to go, Daniel decided to try his luck in Foxton. He’d heard there could be work there in the flax trade, and he needed work. It took the better part of a week to cover the sixty-five or so miles. For much of the journey he walked, first following the road, then along the beach in the wake of the weekly coach service. Sometimes he slept rough on the side of the road; other times he took cover in a hay barn or stables, doing odd jobs to earn some food and a roof over his head. He had no idea where life was leading him, but he was relieved to be out of uniform. In his twenty-eighth year, his time of being in the midst of combat was over.
On day five, around three in the afternoon, Daniel came to the river that flowed down to the sea where the pontoon-style ferry was tied up. “Hello, there,” he called. “You going across the river today? Can I help pole it across?”
“Hello, stranger. Yes, come aboard. I’m about to go back over. Another pair of hands will be welcome.”
Within a short time, the ferry landed Daniel on the Foxton side of the Manawatu River.
“Where’s the best place to find work?” Daniel asked.
“Try the big house on the outskirts of town,” said the ferryman, pointing in the direction he should go. “That’s the Robinsons’ place. I heard he’s hiring at the moment.”
Daniel followed the river road until he found the place he was looking for. He walked up the long driveway and knocked on the door at the back.
A kindly looking woman in a mop cap and apron answered the door. “What can I do for you, young man?”
“I was looking for a job and wondered if this is the place I should ask.”
“Yes. You’ve come to the right place. This here be the home of Captain Francis Robinson,” she announced with pride.
Daniel smiled back at her.
As he later found out, Captain Robinson was the major landowner of the area, with some 400 acres known as ‘Herrington’, and the largest employer in the district, as well as being chairman of the Roads Board responsible for the road leading south towards Levin. Captain Robinson was an important figure in Foxton.
From the look on her face, Daniel figured she’d made up her mind he was a decent-looking sort of fellow. He had, after all, approached her first, as was right – in her eyes, at least.
“My name is Maisy. I’m housekeeper here. I heard the cap’n say just this morning he were going to need more help to keep the drains and riverbanks clear so the boats could get up to the wharf. Wait ’ere.”
Standing on the stoop, Daniel looked at the expanse of land surrounding the house. Although green, the lower levels were obviously prone to flooding. He could see where the work needed doing. He didn’t have to wait long before Maisy was back.
“Come with me.” He followed her through the kitchen into the hall with its high ceiling and sweeping staircase. “Stand there and don’t move.” She knocked on one of the doors opening off the hall.
“Enter,” said a voice from within.
She opened the door enough for her to see in. “Sir, the man I told you about. He’s waiting in the hall.”
Daniel heard the sound of a chair scraping on the floor. A man dressed in a dark suit and cravat emerged from the room. “I hear you are looking for work.”
Daniel stood straight, clasping his cap and hands behind his back, automatically striking a military pose. “Yes, sir. If you’ll have me, sir.”
“Ex-army, are you?”
“Yes, sir. 3rd Waikato.”
For what felt like an eternity, Daniel stood there being appraised by this man before he spoke.
“All right. I’ll give you a try. Report to the shed tomorrow morning at seven sharp. Maisy, you see to him.”
“Yes, sir,” she bobbed.
The captain returned to his office, shutting the door behind him.
Indicating that Daniel should follow her, Maisy turned towards the kitchen. “Lucky you. Got anywhere to sleep tonight?”
“No. Not yet. I’d hoped to find a suitable barn.”
“For now, you can sleep in the lean-to at the back of the stables. I’ll show you where to report tomorrow.”
For some reason he couldn’t quite put his finger on, he’d decided he would have a new name to go with his new life. Next morning, he introduced himself to the foreman. “Name’s Charles. Charlie Adin,” said Daniel.
From then on everyone in Foxton knew him as Charles, Charlie or sometimes Chas. Only a few were to know him as Daniel.
“Welcome, Charlie. You can start work digging the ditches along the side of this road,” said the foreman. “The plan is to drain the swamp land and channel the water into the river and away to the sea.”
Digging drains was hard work, but Daniel soon built up a great camaraderie with his fellow diggers. There was no easy way. On bad days, the men were forced to stand in the water to get to the bottom so they could build up the banks on either side to deepen and widen the channel.
The coastal scows sailing up from Wellington would pull into the bank further down the river, near the homestead, to unload goods. When they arrived all hands were put to work, since the goods needed to be offloaded as quickly as possible. The boxes and crates would be hauled up to the top floor of the barn by pulley. Daniel would sometimes be given extra work helping stack everything into the two-storeyed barn. Whatever was asked of him, Daniel cheerfully obliged.
Soon, he found a better job in the flax mill and settled into the way of life in his new community, making new friends and becoming a regular at the local pub.
1871
“Yeah, I was up the Ureweras after Te Kooti for a while,” answered Daniel, emptying his tankard of beer. The men drinking with him were all hardened campaigners, having fought in many battles, but these were new friends he’d made since coming to Foxton. “Why d’ya ask?”
“Just wondered,” replied Tom, a tall, lean man around forty who worked alongside Daniel in the flax mill. “I was in Gisborne back in ’65 when he fought with us, on the government side. He weren’t a bad bloke then. Just a bit wild.”
“I heard he got religion,” said Harry, the man who handled the horses and wagons. “Didn’t he have this trick of lighting a match so it looked like his hands created fire?”
“I heard that one too,” said Daniel. “Never saw it myself, though, but it sure helped build up the stories around him.”
Amos, the despatcher, who was the odd ball and most educated among them, kept up to date with the news, jotting things down in a notebook kept in his shirt pocket.
“Chas’s right,” said Amos. “There are a lot of myths about Te Kooti. He fooled many of his own people as well as some white folk with that trick, Harry. He set up his own church called Ringatu by taking bits of old Maori custom and some of the Old Testament and mixed it all up.”
“Yeah, but that was years later,” Tom said. “Back in ’65 he was Christian.”
“Yes, yes, I know,” said Amos, “but about the time the Pai Marire an’ Hauhau lot got started, Te Kooti was fighting with the government. He didn’t like either of ’em.”
“I ’eard them Hauhau were a violent lot,” said Harry.
“They were. Took their revenge wherever they could,” answered Amos patiently. “But the Pai Marire were trying to work things out with Governor Grey in a peaceful manner.”
“But ain’t that how Volkner copped it?” argued Harry, always a little behind in the conversation.
Tom rolled his eyes. “Well, he were a bit daft, going in knowing his converts had gone over to the Hauhau. Volkner was spying on them at the same time as he was trying to sell them Grey’s policies. How daft is that?”
“What’s that? All that politic stuff is beyond me,” said Harry. “I thought Te Kooti was working the coastal shipping routes, not fighting.”
“At one time, yes, he did,” said Tom. “He was a good seaman, too.”
“So how did he get to be such a rebel, then?” scoffed Henry.
“Managed to upset his own folk as much as some of our toffee-nosed lot, that’s how. He didn’t want the land sold off, and said so. He must’ve upset someone important – real bad. Got accused of being a spy and sent to the Chathams with some Hauhau for his troubles,” replied Tom. “That’s when he set up his church thing. Then a couple of year ago he escaped with nearly 300 followers, both men and women.”
“I arrived in Poverty Bay not long after his boat – um, what was it called again?” mused Daniel.
“The Riverton?” suggested Harry.
“No, but close ... it’ll come to me. Hey, Harry, how about you get some more beer, and I’ll tell you all about it.”
More beer was brought to the table. The men settled down to another of Daniel’s tales. They had all been in many battles themselves, but Daniel was a great storyteller. He had a way of painting a picture and changing his tone, which added excitement to the dullest account. Anyone listening could imagine the story and be a part of it. They loved listening to him.
“I was in the 6th Armed Constabulary at the time. It was midwinter of ’69 when we arrived in the bay. Being east of the hills, that coastline gets an odd climate – brilliant one day, lousy the next – but the day they landed was fine and calm,” began Daniel. “Gets lots of sunshine that coast, but it’s still wet as hell up in the hills. Slippery as hell, too, with mud that sticks likes glue. Takes it out of yer just climbing a few feet. Anyhow, Te Kooti and his mob ...” he paused, gazing into the distance, searching for a memory. “ ... the Rifleman – that’s what the boat was called, the Rifleman. They were an ill-assorted bunch – all rebels and convicts, yet somehow Te Kooti managed to earn their respect. They did as he told them, anyway. So when he made his escape from the Chathams he captured the whole boat without wounding or killing anyone. That’s how clever he was. One sergeant was killed on shore out of revenge for something, so I was told, but no one else was hurt. This is all from a first-hand account, so I knows it’s true.”
Daniel took a swig of beer and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “Anyways. All went well till they approached Cook Strait. The crew tried to divert the ship into Wellington but, as Tom said, Te Kooti was a skilled sailor and knew what they were trying to do. He soon changed the ship’s course back to Poverty Bay. They landed to the south of the bay and, load by load, discharged all the supplies. They manhandled everything in a human chain, stacking it on the beach out of reach of the tide, ready to be repacked. Everything had to be carried or dragged along on makeshift sledges. Finally, the whole band, several hundred of them, headed off, taking refuge in one of the gorges high up on the cliff so they could see what was coming at them. Must have been sheer hell and taken ages.”
“So what happened to the ship and the crew?” asked Harry.
Daniel winked. “Never mind that those sailors had tried to deceive him, like, and take him back to the authorities – after they’d unloaded he let them all go, just like that. The sailors told us all about it later.”
Harry looked confused. “That was a bit soft of him, considering everything. So why did he get such a reputation for being a warmonger then?”
“I’m getting to that,” said Daniel. “Te Kooti tried to persuade ol’ Biggs the magistrate to let them go and said he would go peaceful like, up to the King Country. He wanted to become a spiritual leader, he said, whatever that meant. He didn’t want to fight, but Biggs wouldn’t have it – once a rebel, always a rebel, as far as he was concerned. So after Te Kooti left, Biggs marshalled his soldiers and chased after them. Attacked them without warning, he did, so Te Kooti fought back. Wouldn’t you, in his position?”
“Did you ever meet him?” asked Tom.
“Nah. The likes of me never get that close, but I knew he were a clever battler. I have to say I admired his skill. He fooled us every time. Over the next few months he won a lot of the clashes, gaining control over most of the Poverty Bay area. Our officers got really mad. But then Te Kooti’s mob must’ve run out of food, or something changed, ’cos he went on a killing spree. But he went too far when he killed those women and children. Men dying in combat is one thing, but killing innocents like that ain’t on. He made some serious enemies with both the Maoris and British over that. Sometime later more natives joined him – goodness knows why. Out of fear, I suppose. It was around November by then, and the government put a price on his head. Guess how much for?”
“Five hundred pound,” guessed Amos.
“Two hundred,” from Harry.
Daniel shook his head, “No, higher.”
“A thousand, then,” countered Amos.
“No. Much more. More than ever before – five thousand pounds!”
There were gasps of astonishment at such an unheard of amount. Tom nodded, remembering. Amos stared open-mouthed. Harry whistled in disbelief.
“It’s true. Honest,” said Daniel. “Never before had such a large sum been offered as a reward. After that it was full on, nasty stuff it were, I can tell yer. I got caught up in one of the ambushes in the gorge. One time, I was standing there next to my mate getting ready to load our rifles, and then there was a loud bang right next to my ear. Louder than anything else I’d heard before. I turned around and my mate was lying there beside me, dead. The top of his head was missing. Our guide was killed, too, and another bloke wounded, but our division got off light overall.”
Daniel shuddered. He stared out through the open door, visions of the past drifting across his mind.
Tom took another swig of ale. “I was back over in Taranaki in ’68, so heard nothing of this.”
“I was never over that way. Mostly in the Waikato when I was in the army. I tell you, there were forces everywhere chasing Te Kooti’s band, capturing all the tribal leaders who supported him. There was no way they were letting him go. Then not long before I got out in January of ’70, we managed to beat him at Ngatapa, but Te Kooti and some others got away. The rest of his men were caught and executed at point-blank range. There would have been a hundred or more. Not pleasant, I can tell you,” he finished, eyes downcast, shaking his head.
With a final swallow of his beer, he emptied another glass. “I had the chance to get out then, so I took it. I’d had enough. Headed back to Trentham and got my discharge. I heard Te Kooti disappeared up into the King Country and has been lying low since.”
After that long speech, Daniel bought two more jars of beer. The conversation drifted to the more menial tasks of draining the swampland and gathering flax, before they were kicked out of the tavern and sent on their way to their homes and dinners.
Walking along the track to his room at the big house not far out of town, he had time to think back over the last months since he had got out of the AC. Life was looking up. He’d made some drinking friends, and had a good job, which paid well enough and included comfortable rooms. He was happier than he’d been for some time.
The lamps of the house gleamed out as orange beacons in the night, calling him. With a satisfied sigh, Daniel strolled into the kitchen where Maisy would have some dinner for him, a simple fare of roast meats and potato with lashings of gravy. Sometimes, some in-season parsnip, or kumara, the native sweet potato he’d grown to like, or maybe carrots, were to be had. His stomach rumbled.
“Evening, lad. You’re a bit late tonight. Where you been?” Maisy picked up a tea cloth to lift the lid off the plate of food sitting on the steamer pot. Wiping the bottom of the plate she set it down on the large, scrubbed wooden table, almost white with age. She took up the bread knife and sliced off a couple of slabs of bread, placing them on the side of his plate.
Daniel hung his hat and coat on the pegs behind the door and sat at the table with anticipation.
“Go wash yer hands before you sit at my table,” she ordered.
“Oh. Yeah. Righto. Sorry.” Getting up again he went into the scullery. He poured some water from the ewer into the bowl and scrubbed his hands clean with a bar of Maisy’s soap, then tossed the used water out of the window. “I stopped at the tavern an’ we got into telling stories about our time in the army. There’s lots of stories. Too many really,” he called out.
He came back into the kitchen and sat down. “Time passed too quick. Thanks for keeping this for me.” He grinned, putting his hand out to pinch her bottom as she passed him on the way to put things away in the food safe.
Maisy was both too old and too experienced to be taken in by him, and pushed his hand away. “Behave yourself, young Charlie, or you’ll get more than you bargained for.”
They both laughed and Daniel turned his attention to the meal in front of him.
“You want to try and forget those stories, Charlie, me boy,” Maisy advised. “Or ye’ll never settle to anything. Always on the move and forever looking over your shoulder in case someone is sneaking up on you.”
“Not me, Maisy. I like telling stories but you won’t see me moving again. I like it here.”
“We’ll see.”
Maisy opened the door to the coal range and added some more wood, stoking up the fire to heat the flat irons. Her work hadn’t yet finished. Laying a blanket across the table she set about wielding the heavy iron back and forth, changing irons as one cooled: a hot iron on the bed linen, a cooler iron or an ironing cloth on the more delicate cotton and fine linen shirts.
“Time yer got yourself a horse to get around, young ’un.”
“Been thinking about it, but need to save a bit more money yet.”
“That man Proctor further downstream has a couple he wants to move on.” Maisy folded the sheets, setting them to one side.
“You mean Harry, the one who handles the horses at the mill?”
“No, no. Not him. His father,” said Maisy.
“How much do you think he’ll want?”
“Can’t say for sure, but cheap, he said. Wants to get heavier working animals to pull the ploughs an’ wagons and such, and he can’t keep feeding them as can’t do that heavy work no more.”
“Thanks for the tip-off.”
After sharing a late-night cup of tea, Maisy cleared away the dishes. “Now, get away to bed with yer. We both have an early start in the morning.”
She damped the fire down for the night, setting a slow burning log on it, and pushed Daniel out the door.
“Thanks, Maisy. Goodnight to yer, then.” Collecting his hat and coat, he picked up a candle and passed through the kitchen garden to the lean-to.
The days were long and the work hard, and after a full meal he could barely keep his eyes open. Tossing his shirt and trousers over the lone chair, he blew out the candle. No sooner had his head hit the pillow than he fell into a dreamless sleep.
1872
The weeks and months slipped by; a whole year passed. During that time Daniel settled into his own place down at Wiro Kino.
Once a year his sister Elizabeth would write to him with news from home. He was a poor letter writer and rarely sent more than a few lines back, but he liked to receive her letters.
From them he learnt that she had given up teaching and become a full-time companion to Aunt Mary after the death of Uncle John. They now lived at 70 Old Road, Brampton, in Chesterfield, near Brocklehurst Piece. Daniel thought Uncle John must have had some private means, too, since he had left Mary with more than enough money if Elizabeth was no longer working.
His mother and stepfather, John Winter, had turned their hands to being publicans some ten years since and were now living in Shelton, Newcastle-under-Lyme. She said they were thriving. That, at least, was an improvement on working as a slate layer on the railways, which John had been doing when Daniel was a boy, while his ma took in lodgers to help pay the bills. There was little else, other than some general news of what was happening locally, which didn’t interest him. He had his own life here now and didn’t relate to what was going on in the old country.
Whistling as he made his way along the road that morning, he waved out to the flax cutters who had already started work. Poor blighters. The land was a swamp and continually flooded. The men often worked in mud and water up to their knees, getting serial infections and rotten flesh because their feet were always wet. Even contending with the mosquitoes breeding in the swampy land was a trial. At certain times of the year, they found themselves covered in itchy, infected bites to add to their misery. He was far better off in the factory.
Daniel called out to one of the men. “How’s it going?”
“Getting better,” the man yelled back. “Starting to dry out now; should be able to use the wagons this afternoon.”
“Goodo. See yer later then.”
Daniel carried on, watching as the cutters swung their sickle-like reap hooks back and forth in a continuous motion, or hacked at the flax with machetes. By the end of the day, an efficient worker would slash up to three or four tons. Further along, another man had stopped his scything to gather his trimmed flax into bundles.
Cupping his hands to his mouth, Daniel called out, “Looks like a good stand.”
“Yeah, not bad,” replied the man, moving closer. “There’s some decent long lengths hereabouts. Makes it easier, I can tell you.” Expertly tying up the bundles with short strips so they could be stacked, he asked, “Would you be able to drag this one over to that pile there for me? Save me one trip – my back is playing up something awful today.”
“Sure thing.” Daniel hopped over the fence and hauled the bundle to the edge of the paddock near the track before pushing on.
If the ground was too wet to use the horses, the men would have to drag their bundles all the way to the mill. The work was back-breaking and time-consuming, and took them away from the cutting for too long, but today it looked dry enough for the horses to be put to good use.
The stripper made a strange sound that carried a great distance. The high-pitched whine, almost a screaming noise, was easily distinguishable from the other factories and signalled it was time to start work. The demand for flax for rope making was high – often outstripping the supply – but the processing was much easier and quicker now, since Charlie Pownall had designed and set up his new machine a year ago. Daniel liked to watch it operate when time allowed. Little conversation could be had above the deafening noise. Yelled instruction was the best on offer as 750 gallons of water a minute washed over the fibre during the process. The green leaf was beaten between a revolving metal drum and a fixed metal bar. Beaters on the surface of the drum struck the leaf at great speed, stripping away the non-fibrous material and releasing the strands.
“Hey, Chas, where you been? Come give us a hand here,” yelled Tom.
“Just stopped to say g’day to a couple of the cutters,” he shouted, putting his back into lifting the wet fibre, then taking it out to the waiting wagons for moving to the drying paddocks. The tow, as the fibre was called, would be laid out in the sun to dry and bleach. Once dried, the scutchers took out all the short fibres and polished up the flax between two wooden surfaces to give a smooth finish. The processed tow could then be pressed into bales and tied with flax ropes for transport to market. Each man had his own role in the process.
Outside, the noise was less so the men could talk as they worked. “Maisy tells me Harry’s pa, old man Proctor, has a horse for sale. Want to come with me after work and see if it’s any good. I’m sick of walking all the time.”
“Sure, lad, I’ll go with you, but you know more about horses than me.” Tom removed his cap and wiped his brow.
“That’s as may be, but you can spot when someone’s pulling the wool.”
After his shift, often as not, Daniel could be found sitting in the sun learning from old Hemi how to strip the flax by hand using a mussel shell. The process was much slower. One machine could produce about a quarter of a ton of fibre per day, whereas hand stripping would produce around two or three pounds, but the old Maori still preferred to do it by hand, never mind how long it took.
“You people are all in too much of a rush,” said Hemi as he sat stripping a piece of flax between his hands. “We’ve always used flax. The skill has been handed down through the whakapapa – down through the generations. Slow it might be, but I can make something much softer and finer than that fancy, noisy machine of yours.”
“Can you show me how?” asked Daniel.
“Get the edge of the shell, like this.” Hemi picked up the shell and showed Daniel how to hold it, resting the flax leaf on a piece of wood. “Now push down, long and hard, and keep doing it until you only have the strands left.”
“So how do you make this stuff into something useful?” asked Daniel, fingering the stripped fibres.
“Not me – wahine, the women,” answered Hemi. “Weaving is the essence of our spiritual souls. There are many legends about flax, how and when it should be collected and how to process it. Weaving it into fabric for our bedding, clothes, for kete, rourou, our kahu and lining our whares, our maraes.”
“What are those things? What did you say – kiti? Ruru? And what was the other word?”
“A kete is a carry basket, rourou is a basket for food and a kahu is a cloak,” Hemi explained.
“Why are there so many superstitions about flax collecting?” asked Daniel. “It grows wild. What’s so special about it?”
“We do things the old ways. Nothing like what you do. You Pakeha are laying bare the land without care. You will regret it, let me tell you,” said Hemi.
“What would you do, then?”
“Not harvest it in the rain, for starters. It’ll rot. And always put the trimmings and waste back on the plant to feed it and encourage it to grow again. Everything taken must be given back to Papatuanuku, the earth mother.”
Daniel found the arguments interesting, but now the flax industry had arrived, only the most modern methods would provide the work and the rewards.
He rose to his feet and stretched. “Thanks, Hemi. Gotta go now. Off to buy me a horse.”
