Five years in New Zealand (1859 to 1864)

by Robert B. Booth

The following evening, after a severe day's journey, we arrived wet and fagged at the next station, Miller and Gooche's. Here a similar scene was being enacted, and here, in common with many other diggers, we were obliged to remain for several days owing to severe weather setting in.

Miller and Gooche's station was situated at the junction of a tributary stream with the Waitaki, at the entrance of a rugged and mountainous gorge. From this point our real difficulties were to begin, as we would diverge from the main valley we had hitherto followed, and work our way over a rough tract of hilly country, up ravines and spurs to the great pass, then pretty certain to be covered with snow.

For the four days during which we were detained at this station it rained, sleeted, and snowed alternately and unceasingly. There were upwards of one hundred and fifty men there, and the station running short of flour, a supply had to be procured from Davis's, where luckily a large store had been collected.

Most diggers possessed nothing beyond the clothes they wore, with a blanket and a kettle, and many had no money wherewith to pay for food, so the squatters were obliged to make a virtue of necessity and give free where there was no chance of payment, and this they did right willingly. As for the diggers, I must say so much for them that, rough fellows as they were, they paid freely and gratefully all they could, and I did not hear of a single instance of robbery or outrage save one, and we were the victims of that. It was merely the abstraction, emptying, and replacing on our dray of a case of "Old Tom," all the spirits we possessed, and we did not discover the loss until too late for any chance of detecting the delinquents.

At Miller and Gooche's we passed four very miserable days. The two small huts and the sheep shed were filled to overflowing, and we lay on the floor of the latter at night, cold, stiff, dirty, and packed into our places like sardines. The rain and sleet, slop, cold, and offensive odour combined would need to be experienced to be appreciated; it was indescribable and the greatest and most disagreeable of anything I experienced before or since of such a mixture.

At length the weather cleared, and in company with another dray just arrived from Dunedin, and got up in imitation of ours, we started for the pass, not without grave misgivings of what might be before us.

The first day we made five miles. Our route lay along the course of a large creek bounded both sides by precipitous hills. The recent rain had swollen the stream, and either obliterated or washed away the rough dray track, which even at its best was not suited for the passage of a horse team. We were therefore obliged to cut a way in and out of the nullah wherever we crossed; so some idea may be formed of our day's work. We were fortunate in being accompanied by the fresh dray, indeed without it, and the assistance given by a number of the diggers who kept with us, and with whom we shared our food, I do not think we would have succeeded in getting over the Lindis Pass, at any rate not nearly so expeditiously as we did. When we came to an exceptionally difficult and steep pull, the drays were taken over one at a time with three horses yoked, and all hands helping them.

On the morning of the second day we were still four miles from the pass, and it took very severe work from men and horses to negotiate the remainder of that fast narrowing, steep and rugged bed, and late in the afternoon to reach the summit. It was, as we anticipated, covered with snow.

The cold that night was intense, and we had difficulty in procuring before dark set in enough brushwood to keep up a small fire for more than a few hours. It was here we discovered the loss of the "Old Tom" which we had meant to save for just such a special occasion as this. Now that we were half-frozen and without means of bettering our condition for the night, it was proposed to open the first bottle, and have a nip round for ourselves and comrades. Our chagrin and disappointment may be imagined when we found the twelve bottles to contain only water.

I often wondered how we got through that night; one or two of us alone must surely have perished. Our safety lay in our number. We rolled our blankets tightly round us and lay down close together on the wet and now fast freezing ground, and lit our pipes, and then we slept. Tired as we were, nothing could keep sleep from us—even if we were to be frozen during it.