A New Life in our History: The Settlement of Australia and New Zealand: Volume III Crimson Ties (1890s to 1940s)

Preface

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This is the third part of A New Life in Our History. It brings my account of the European settlement of Australia and New Zealand, two of the most extensive social experiments in history, down to the 1940s. It also continues my experiment of presenting those events through the eyes of ordinary people - that vast majority who are often left out of the history they helped to make. Whether either experiment succeeds remains to be seen. Multi-cultural societies such as Australia and New Zealand will only endure through individual acts of faith and trust. John Hirst, the Australian historian, put it best when he observed "…the marrying and partnering of people of all sorts across all boundaries is the greatest unifying force in Australia."

While interest in telling history ‘from below’ has grown here, it has not yet reached the same level as in England. There are no full-length accounts to compare with John Harrison’s The Common People, an account of the English from the Norman Conquest to the early 1980s, or Michael Woods’ The Story of England, which recounts English history through the eyes of the people of Kibworth. There is Burgmann and Lee’s A People’s History of Australia since 1788. But it is a disconnected, multi-author and avowedly Marxist work. Alan Atkinson includes ordinary people in his The Europeans in Australia, including Sarah Bockerah and John Laurie. But volume III, his final volume, ends in 1918.

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Crimson Ties tells how the families I have followed in A New Life built a new community from scratch at Croydon Bush and met the challenges of World War I. It originally ended with the passing of the original pioneers. But the death of my grandparents in 2007 reminded me their generation, the ‘Greatest Generation’ which lived through the Depression and the War, was passing on and that I should include their history too.

The War seems, to me at least, not that long ago. It ended only about 25 years before I was born. The ‘Cold War’ it spawned dominated world affairs until 1989, when I was at high school. Its lessons, particularly the dangers of appeasement, continue to resonate in foreign affairs. The institutions established after the War to maintain world order, including the United Nations and International Monetary Fund, are still in place as I drift into middle age. So while I did not live through the War, it was well within living memory.

That memory is fading quickly. When I was a child, World War II veterans dominated the Anzac Day parades. Whole battalions and regiments are now represented by only a few men in their 90s. Living in a world that again seems about to plunge into crisis, I find myself wondering what I would have done in their time.

While I had extended A New Life to include their story, it has taken longer than I expected to finish the research and writing necessary to do them justice. To avoid further delay in releasing Crimson Ties, their history will now appear separately.

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When Edward Gibbon finished his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire he felt "…joy at the recovery of my freedom…. But then …a sober melancholy was spread over my mind, by the idea that I had taken an everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion…". I am no Gibbon and this is no Decline and Fall. But work on A New Life has taken about twenty-five years work. I began before starting university and finish most of it part way though my working life. While I understand how Gibbon felt, I experienced more relief than melancholy.

Over such a long time, my approach to writing history has changed. I mean nothing fundamental: I’ve always believed we can use our sources about the past to show how it essentially was. What I mean is how I present it. Other, far more distinguished writers than I have seen our past as reflecting some epic theme - the growth of liberalism, class conflict over the means of production, the struggle between conservatives and radicals, the ‘tyranny of distance’ or our origins as ‘the fatal shore’. Once, I did too. Now I only see the contingencies and conflicting interests from which causes emerge and events occur. I have learned, slowly, not to paint in black and white, but in more opaque shades. Occasional brighter splotches may have survived from earlier drafts. But where I once rushed to judgment, I now hope to convey how life is often untidy.

Why this change ? Almost twenty years working in the law and raising my own family has given me greater insight and, I hope, empathy. During that time, I kept thinking about the nature of history and became more experienced in practicing it. I’ve come to appreciate the extent to which surviving sources do not tell the whole story and can provide only an approximation of the past. The very nature of those sources often makes it impossible to completely reconstruct what actually happened. A document or photograph cannot, for example, record a scent or how something felt.

Most ordinary people pass away and are remembered only by their family and friends. That memory fades and then disappears when their grandchildren and great-grandchildren pass on. Even if they leave some journals or letters, they describe only a small part of what they thought. The whole context in which they were written is gone and there is no-one left to explain any ambiguities. I’ve tried to describe eminent people I knew and respected. Abundant source material and scrupulous objectivity help. But the result is largely a figure you created. "Reading over what I have just put down Robert Grave’s Claudius worries I see that I must be rather exciting than disarming suspicion…as to my integrity as an historian…". Ultimately, we hope to have convinced our readers that we did our best.

I’m grateful for the help I received along the way. The many people I have to thank and the sources I used are detailed in the references. As they are lengthy and relate to all of A New Life, I will publish them with the final instalment. Those who helped me and who have passed recently include Bessie Lynch, Violet Lynch, Belle Ross, Peter Alexander Petersen, and the historian Paula Dickie, whose books on Croydon Bush and Croydon Siding are crucial sources for my account.

Lindfield, 16 April 2016

1. Croydon Bush Village Settlement

"Land for the people and people for the land."

- motto of the Mataura Ensign, when it commenced publication at Gore in May 1878.

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Up until the 1860s the British government was able to clear out the gaols, thin the ranks of the unemployed and disperse a growing population by transporting convicts and relying on various emigration schemes. Although much intellectual effort, time and money had gone into ensuring these solutions had long-term results, they threatened to only move Britain’s problems somewhere else.

This threat was felt in New Zealand. The prospect of owning land had drawn many to the new social paradise. Edward Gibbon Wakefield had hoped manipulating the price of land would give anyone prepared to work a chance to own it. But practical considerations, including whether the areas settled were more suited to grazing than agriculture, meant that some aspects of systematic colonisation had to be set aside - even in Wakefield’s showpiece at Canterbury.

As large parts of the South Island were suitable for grazing, many of the first Europeans who settled there hoped to make their fortune from sheep. This resulted in huge tracts of land being taken up by pastoralists, known as ‘run-holders’, for sheep runs under leases or licences from the Crown. Low rents and licence fees allowed the run-holders to accumulate large holdings. As Wakefield anticipated, they often held more than they could use, tying up large amounts of surplus land and placing it out of reach of later emigrants.

Successive waves of emigrants swamped New Zealand with unemployed settlers, especially after the discovery of gold in 1861. Many of these later arrivals had been forced off the land to make way for sheep by enclosure or the Highland Clearances. They had not come to the other side of the world only to be faced with the same problem again. They pressed the government to break up the runs into small, affordable farms to allow closer settlement of the land. But there were competing interests. Increasing demand raised the price of land, sparking a land boom in 1875. Also, while the run-holders did not own the land they held, many considered it unjust to pre-emptively deprive them of their homes, livelihood and any improvements they had carried out.

The issue of access to Crown land had already been addressed other colonies. In New South Wales it had led to a struggle between the wealthy pastoralists, or ‘squatters’, such as William Charles Wentworth and the Macarthurs, and the ‘selectors’, the ordinary settlers who wanted farms. The colony’s Prime Minister, John Robertson, was determined to break up the squatter’s estates and open up Crown land for free selection to give more people access to land and increase the State’s agricultural development.

Ultimately, the selectors triumphed, with the Robinson Ministry pushing the Crown Lands Acts through Parliament in 1861. The Act provided that unsurveyed land in designated areas could be selected and purchased freehold in 320 acre lots for £1 per acre, on payment of a deposit of 5 shillings per acre. The government provide interest free loans of three quarters of the purchase price and the balance was payable in three years. Alternatively, at the end of the three years, the balance could be treated as an interest-free loan so long as 5% interest was paid annually. Selectors were required to live on their sections for three years and to make improvements worth £1 per acre. The Acts protected the squatters by granting them leases and options to purchase parts of the land they occupied.

In New Zealand, the government responded to this issue with the Land Act of 1877. It provided that any person could select an area of Crown land to purchase, provided they lived on it and carried out improvements, such as clearing it of bush. Where pastoral runs were put up for auction, the run-holders were given the right to the land around their homesteads. More importantly, the Act also permitted settlers to defer paying the whole purchase price and to re-pay it in instalments over a number of years.

Most run-holders opposed the Act, fearing they would be forced to break up of their estates. Some quickly devised ways to protect their interests. The most popular method was ‘grid-ironing’, in which run holder bought freehold title to key parts of their run, making the rest unattractive or inaccessible to other prospective purchasers. Another trick was ‘dummyism’, in which the run-holder contracted someone, the ‘dummy’, to buy the land and fulfil the residence requirements. But some run-holders saw potential in the closer settlement of their runs. They included George Meredith Bell, who held the Croydon Run.

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Croydon lies about 10 km north-west of Gore, a town on the lower reaches of the Mataura River in Southland. As the Mataura flows south from the Eyre and Garvie Mountains it passes a range of hills, then through the wide plain on which Gore was built. When the Māori arrived they named the highest point among the hills Hokanui, meaning ‘large point’. They named the lands west of the Mataura Haumuri, meaning either ‘place of favourable winds’ or ‘wind from the rear’.

Originally, the land was under water. The fossils of ammonites, named after their rams’ horn-like shells, are often found here. Part of an ichthyosaurus’ jaw, complete with large, sharp teeth, was found nearby at Otamita Stream. After the waters receded, the hills were cloaked with forests and tussock covered the plains. The Moa, a tall, flightless bird now extinct once browsed around Haumuri’s swamps. The Māori say another marvellous animal once lived there - the rocky outcrops at the top of Hokanui are said to be the petrified remains of Matamata, the dragon owned by their chief Te Rakitauneke.

When the Europeans came, they changed the Māori place names. ‘Hokanui’ became East Peak. The word ‘Hokanui’, re-spelt ‘Hokonui’, was used to describe the whole range rather than a single hill. Much of the land was cleared for farming. But remnants of the forests which once covered the Hokonuis survive. Ratas, rimus, miros, matai and totara tower over tree-ferns and pepper bush. The cool darkness is broken only by the waters of Whisky Creek splashing over its falls, the sharp ringing of Bellbirds and the earthy smell of crumbling vegetation. The Moas are long gone, but the sharp-eyed can still find the stones they swallowed to aid digestion: highly polished mementos from the gizzard of a vanished species.

The district’s farming land was locked up in Run 116, known as the Mataura West Run. It was first occupied by Alexander McNab. Born at Knapdale, near the Mull of Kintyre, in 1809 McNab left Scotland for Sydney on board the Portland in 1839. He spent about 15 years working in New South Wales and Victoria. During this time, McNab worked for John McKenzie as a drover. McNab found the Australian climate did not agree with him and left for New Zealand in 1855. After arriving at Lyttelton, he heard that McKenzie, who had also left Australia, was in gaol for stealing sheep and went to visit him. McKenzie told McNab about the agricultural potential of Southland and advised McNab to go south and pick a run near the Hokanuis facing the Mataura River. After spending several months exploring the district, McNab and Catherine, his sister and the first Pākehā woman to live in the district, took up two runs in 1855, the Matuara West Run and the Knapdale Run. McNab later re-named the Matuara West Run the ‘Hokonui Run’. He pastured sheep imported from Sydney there in May 1856.

In 1858 McNab sold the Hokonui Run to Nathanael Chalmers. Chalmers re-named it ‘Croydon’ after the place in Surrey, England where he grew up. In April 1861 Chalmers sold Croydon to Richard Hill, who gave it to his sons William and Henry. They sold it to George Meredith Bell in 1869.

That year, Otago Provincial Council intervened. It hoped to promote closer settlement by cancelling some of the pastoral holdings in Otago and dividing them up into farms to lease or sell to settlers. It also wanted to try a new approach to rural development, the ‘village settlement’. Village settlements were an attempt to assist the families of seasonally-unemployed agricultural workers and the urban unemployed by providing them with small farms so they could support themselves during lean times. The village settlements were established in rural areas, where the villagers could earn a living by shearing, timber-cutting or labouring for local farmers. They could supplement their wages by growing their own fruit and vegetables and sheep and dairy farming. As many of the potential villagers could not afford to buy land, the Crown would either lease it to them for an annual rent or sell it to them under the deferred payment system.

In 1869 the Otago Provincial Council drew up plans to establish the Croydon Bush Village Settlement on the Croydon Run beside the Hokonui Hills. Further, in 1871 and 1872, Crown grants were issued over parts of the Run which lay north-east of the proposed village settlement. The area designated for the village settlement later became known as ‘Croydon Bush’. The area to the north-east where the first Crown grants were issued later became known as