EARLY LIFE (Dick was born in 1904)
‘You ask me what it was like when we were young and had none of the things to amuse us like you have today. I had six brothers and six sisters – there were 13 of us. I was born at Marua Hill in Hikurangi, known as Gum Town.
‘We had a bush farm covered in ti tree, fern and bush, and the cows used to roam the hills – when we wanted to milk them, we had to find them first. That was a good excuse – if we didn’t want to go to school, it was easy to drive them into the bush and make sure that they didn’t come out until it was too late for school.
‘The nearest house was about 2 miles further on with gum-diggers’ shanties near the Northern Coal Mine. The shanties consisted of a framework of poles cut from bush that were laced or nailed together and covered with sacks. Sometimes the roofs would be covered with flattened tins or nikau fronds. There would only be one room with a fireplace made of stones or mud sods at one end – a bunk bed made of sacks and a table made of planks – and that was all the furniture needed,
‘In the summer, the gum-diggers used to set fire to the ti tree and fern to make it easier to get digging for hum with the result that shanties were often burned too – though it did not take long to build another.
‘There were no motor cars, wireless sets or TVs or telephones in those days. We had to walk or use horses if we wanted to go anywhere.
‘I can remember the horses working the mines and pulling the skips on the railways outside, taking the coal from the mines to the main railway. One horse called Tommy that worked on the Northern used to wait when the miners were coming out and wouldn’t let them pass until they had given him a piece of their crib (lunch).
‘There were about 50 shanties scattered around the hill and about 6 families in houses, Dobson’s ran a cookhouse where the single men could get a hot meal. I can remember some of the characters as we knew them. There was Black Sam – a big darkie – his skin used to shine in the sun and we used to think he was oiled.
‘Paddy Whisky used to get full on a Saturday but no matter how full he got, he always bought us kids a bag of boiled lollies and left them on the fence post. Also there was Mad Jack. He would be digging away and would suddenly start yelling “I’ll murder you, you red-headed bitch” and jabbing his spade in the ground. I can remember him doing this one day while digging near the house and Mum taking me and Teddy (his brother Edward Arthur) through the ti tree where he couldn’t see us when we went to Grandma’s in Waro. It was believed that he had killed a girl in England before settling in New Zealand.
‘In those days the hotel used to stay open until 10.30pm and most of the gum-diggers and miners would go to the pubs on Saturday nights. It was 3 miles from the hill to town and they would get pretty full, load up with bottles and start back to their baches (shanties). About half way, they would get in the fern on the side of the road and spend the rest of the night there.
‘On Sunday mornings we would get out of bed and ran down to where they had been sleeping – and would often find money and the pocket knives that they had used to open the bottles. I once found a good watch and my father sent me around to find the owner but no-one claimed it and they told me to keep it. My father wore it all his life and I have it now 60 years later.
‘Another time Cecil (brother Cecil George) and I were riding on the skips and I found a one pound note. The miners in those days would not take notes – they were paid in gold and silver and didn’t know what it was, but Cecil did. Again I took it around the baches but no-one claimed it and we kept it – a real fortune for us then!
‘We had 3 miles to go to school over clay roads rutted by horse and bullock teams carting out big kauri logs and mine timber from the Marua bush. I can remember Dan Murphy’s bullock team – he had at least 5 pairs of bullocks and a wagon with an extra long pole. He would allow us kids to get nicely settled on the pole for a ride home – and then he would turn and wrap the bullock whip around us – but he never hurt us. Later he gave up the bullocks and had 6 beautifully kept Clydesdale horses.
‘The gum-diggers would work all summer, spend their money in the pubs and then resort to dodges to get support during the winter like feigning a cut-throat to be out in hospital or breaking shop windows to get jailed. We used to follow where they had been digging and pick up small pieces that we could sell for 2 pence a pound. They had an understanding together that when they had a good patch and were unable to finish it, they could leave a spade standing in the middle and return to find it undisturbed.
‘When we were kids, we usually had a horse to ride and a dog at home. When we were looking for cattle we would sometimes take the horse. One time Cecil and I had gone looking for cows ‘double-banking’ together on the horse. We had seen a movie picture where Cowboys were running from Indians and a Cowboy had galloped his horse past a bank so that his mate could jump on behind as he passed. We decided to do the same and I threw my coat over the horse when Cecil came galloping up but the horse took fright, jumped over the edge of the road, threw Cecil and cleared out – we had to walk home!
‘One time Joe and Addy (brothers Joseph and Adam Edward) had been looking for the cattle and on the way home they had to pass Blacklock’s house. They were hungry so Joe said: ‘If we ask Mrs Blacklock for a drink she might give us something to eat’. When they were talking, Mrs Blaclock showed them her parrot and said it could talk. ‘Can it say “cup of tea”?’ asked Addy – and they got tea and some cake.
‘Roy Wangford, a cousin, used to stay with us a lot and would go with me looking for the cattle. His father used to look after the mine horses and we would take them from the stables into the paddocks, so we always had a horse to ride. Roy would go to school with me. He lived in Waro and we arranged a meeting place on the Marua Road. He was supposed to put a stone on a post if he arrived first – and if I arrived first, I was supposed to knock it off. We wondered why the arrangement never seemed to work.
‘He was an expert at making excuses to the teacher if we were late. We would take a short cut as he called it, through the bush and he would pick a bunch of dog daisies to give to the teacher. One time we didn’t arrive at school until lunch-time and he told the teacher that we couldn’t cross the creek because the flood was up – it hadn’t rained for weeks but we got away with it.
‘When I was coming home from school I would meet the miners coming home from the Northern Coal Mine. They would say: ‘Hello son, whose father are you?’ I would say ‘Mr Cunningham’s’ and wonder why they laughed.
STARTING WORK
‘When I was going to school, I had a job after school delivering groceries for Bob Lomas. Then after leaving school, I worked at a butcher’s delivering meat on horseback. I would be riding all day, several days a week. I would take the meat to bush camps with a basket on my knee and pack sacks at the side. Sometimes I would lead a pack-horse also loaded with tins of tallow for greasing the skids that they used to shoot logs into the river.
‘There was always a good feed waiting at the bush cook-house. One time the cook offered me some soup – it was real good. Afterwards, I asked him what the white pieces of meat were and he told me ‘Hu Hu bugs’. Another time when I arrived, the cook was lying in his bunk. He said he was sick and got me to put some corned beef on to cook. Then he said: ‘Have some home-made beer’. He gave me several mugs full and then a bottle to take home. I didn’t know it was the real stuff so I drank the lot. George Doel took me and the horse home but the cook was less lucky – the bush men threw him in the creek.
‘One time the Reverend Connelly, a church minister and our scoutmaster said that he would like to go with me to get some pictures of the bush workings and the bullocks working. After delivering the meat I took him into the bush to watch the felling of a large kauri tree. Instead of skirting the bush above the crew, I called out to them when we were near and they went out of their way to abuse me. They always called me Maggots the Butcher Boy but this time they used all their bad language. When I introduced Reverend Connelly there were some red faces!
‘Reverend Connelly was a good scoutmaster and we had a fine troop that won many rugby, cricket and athletic competitions in the North. We would go to Russell at Xmas for a combined camp with several hundred boys, with plenty of swimming, fishing and games. Sometimes we got to go on the Cream Trip with Mr Fuller picking up cream for the butter factory. Cecil was a patrol leader and had more merit badges than anyone else but I loved football and all sports.
‘At 14 I followed my grandfather Girvan and my brothers into the coalmines. I remember my grandfather saying: ‘Get some of your Grandma’s potatoes and we’ll roast them in the fire-box of the steam boiler’. I think that those potatoes were the best that I’ve ever tasted.
‘I used to drive a horse taking the skips of coal from the bottom of Tauranga and Foote and Doel mines’ jig to tip it into the rail wagons. It was along the old Northern Coal Mines tramway. These mines also had fireclay. Before the Northern closed, they had a steam loco on the tramline. I can remember Dick Trimble and Bob Dickson driving the loco. We used to go riding on the skips with them when we had school holidays.
‘At that time there was a chap called Jimmy Hall who used to hook the skips on at the bottom of the Northern jig. Sometimes a rope or coupling would break and the skips would run away. Jimmy would have to run up a steep bank to get away from them so he decided to dig a hole in the bank and get into hat when there was a runaway. Not long after he finished the hole it happened but he forgot all about the hole and ran up the bank. They called him Little Hero from then on!
‘You asked me to tell you some of the things that happened in the mines. After working in the mines on the Marua Hill, I went to work in the Shaft Mine at Hikurangi. It was on the edge of the Hikurangi Swamp and there were two vertical shafts – an intake or haulage shaft and a return airway, The coal, men, horses etc. were hauled up and down in cages.
‘At the top and bottom of the shafts a man was stationed to ensure that the cages were properly loaded and controlled. We would often knock off early and get away from work – so to stop us, the manager told the man at the bottom not to let us up unless we had a note from the deputy. The chap on one shift couldn’t read or write so we would write a note ourselves saying ‘Jack you silly b... let them up’. He would take the note, pretend to read it and let us up.
‘we had a number of horses working in the shaft and as a cage would only hold one at a time, the horses would race each other to get up first. They would stand one behind the other, the same as the men, and go up in turn. One night ‘Snowy’ a horse that was working on the west side was coming up when he saw another horse coming up McKenzie Dip. He set off to race him to the shaft bottom.
‘The onsetter hadn’t covered the flat sheets with brattice (a wooden fence put around the machinery) and when Snowy tried to stop, he slipped and fell down into the sump at the bottom of the shaft. We had to go with ropes, hook him onto the cage and pull him up to the bottom of the shaft again. Snowy was later killed by a roof fall.
MY CAREER
‘Joe, Addy and I were in a trucking contract. There were 18 men in the team and they were all good men. I remember one day hearing a great commotion from town when I was driving a horse on a bush tramway. Train whistles, bells ringing and horns blowing – it was 11th November 1918 – Armistice Day, the end of World War I.
‘In the early 1920s more than 300 men were employed in the mines – with many being English, Scots and Welsh miners. There were good rugby, soccer and league teams but after the mines closed, Hikurangi ebbed away.
‘One big event that we always looked forward to was Labour Day Sports. This was a big affair with chopping and sawing, cycle races, tossing the caber and catching a greasy pig. Besides these, there were decorated bicycles, prams, carts and buggies as well as events like nail driving and the King of the Mountain Race.
‘Perry’s Popular Pictures came once a week to show silent movies. One or two schoolboys would carry water from the creek to fill the cooling tank of the petrol engine that provided power for the arc light. For this job they got a free ticket to the pictures. The only other amusement was when a circus would visit us now and then. They were not very good as the best never came past Whangarei. In this case the schoolboys would provide water for the animals.
‘The railway then reached Hikurangi. When the men that worked at the open cast mine saw the train arrive with a string of wagons, they would hurry up to the mine – and by the time the train returned the would have all the empty wagons filled ready to take away.
‘I mined coal in Hikurangi and Kamo until the early 1940s when Joe and I went south to Ohura in the King Country to open and work the Tatu State Mine for a few years. Then I returned to become deputy and under manager of the Kamo Mine.
‘There I had to examine all the work places twice a day besides examining the old workings for possible gas accumulation or fires. Once we found a plaited rope used to pull men and coal up an old haulage shaft. It had lain there for 50 years but crumpled to pieces when it was exposed to the air. It also seemed uncanny when I broke into No 2 Mine, where 60 years before miners had set timber to hold the roof and work the coal – some tools and planks were still in good condition.
‘Once, a visit by a mining company director and business associate almost ended in tragedy. Brother Joe had just found a pocket of explosive gas and pipes were put in to carry it out. Then he looked up the drive to see two men coming towards us striking matches to light their way. It was a race to reah them before they got to the gas and blew us all up. Joe and I won!
‘I mined for the new Kamo Company until 1955 when Kamo No 3 flooded and closed own. When the water broke in it didn’t come with a rush but increased in volume every day until the pumps couldn’t handle it. Extra pumps were installed but the water increased and flooded the mine. An estimated 4.5 million gallons was being pumped out each day and pumping continued for a year without progress.
‘I believe that around 4 million tonnes of coal remain in the Kamo field in pillars and coal that could not be opened up. But these large reserves are often under buildings and roadways or are also submerged under water.
‘I remember arguments and strikes but no-one held grudges. Once there was a conference on wages with the Coal Mine Council when Dave Miller was Union Secretary. I was Under Manager and C.B. Benny, Under Secretary of the Mines Division was the Chairman.
‘For the entire morning Dave Miller and I called each other choice names because we were on opposite sides. Came lunch time and I asked Dave to have lunch with me. Mr Benny seemed surprised and said; ‘I thought you hated each other’. But when we told him that we were brothers-in-law and the best of friends he replied; ‘Well, you could have fooled me!’
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