Dick Cunningham's Story - from Butcher Boy to Mine Manager

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!’

The Cunninghams of Hikurangi - A Happy-Go-Lucky Town

INTRODUCING THE NORTHLAND CUNNINGHAMS

For some time I have felt that there is an imbalance in the stories that I have prepared for my younger two sons Sam and Theo and my almost complete silence on the family background of my two older sons Matthew and Peter. The following stories aim to correct this omission by providing insights on their Cunningham and Joll families, both of which have been long established in northern New Zealand.

In the absence of preceding family histories based on oral history and family records, researching New Zealand families is challenging because it is not possible to search decennial census entries – either manually or online - as the records have been destroyed. This meant that I had little information about the Cunningham family readily to hand.

Fortunately, a speculative inter-library order from Whangarei has more than filled the gap, with the receipt of the fine local history by Madge Malcolm ‘Hikurangi: The Story of a Coalmining Town’ (1997).

I had known a little of the Cunninghams long association with the Hikurangi-Kamo-Whangarei area having spent a wonderful day touring the Northland family heartlands (or ‘turangawaewae’) with my father-in-law Denis back in 1981/82. As Denis was at pains to point out along the trail of Northland pubs that we visited, the family was now well represented in every field of endeavour from policing to horse breeding to other less worthy pursuits.

But Madge’s wonderful book includes oral history interviews with two of the old-timer members of the family, Harriet and Dick and this gives me a real handle on the past. I trust that Madge (who died in 2008) would have approved of me making this material more widely available. And I have added to it from my own research.

The write up is also dedicated to Denis who died in 2005. I hope also that he would have approved. Looking at the photograph that Madge provides of Denis’ uncle Dick, I see a better likeness of Denis the man than is given by the personal photographs that I have been able to put my hands on. Both were hardworking, hard-living but generous and warm-hearted men – the very stuff of all that is best about New Zealanders.

So let’s start.

The founder of the family in New Zealand was Joseph Cunningham who was born in Jamaica in 1828 and came to New Zealand in 1844. He was obviously highly educated for the times and in 1855 he was appointed Clerk of the Magistrate’s Court at a yearly salary of two hundred and forty pounds. In 1869 he was appointed Clerk of the Petty Sessions.

His marriage is recorded as follows:

Joseph Cunningham Esq., R M C (Registered Magistrate’s Clerk) was married to Annie Elizabeth Witherden on the 11th August 1864 by the Right Reverend Bishop Pompallier, at his Chapel, Hobson Street, and by the Rev D Jones, at St Matthew’s Church. Annie Elizabeth Witherden was the daughter of the late Henry Witherden Esq., of Hythe, Kent.

My family connections are through my two elder sons Matthew and Peter Johnson through first wife Dianne Glenise Cunningham [born Whangarei 1955].

Dianne is the daughter of Denis Edward Cunningham [1930 – 2005] and Noeleen Joll. Denis was one of the four children of Edward [Adam Edward] Cunningham and Lillian A’Claire Rouse [the others being Glenise, Keith and Maxwell]. Edward who was born in 1900 was the son of Edward Arthur Cunningham [b 1872] who in turn was one of the 9 children of the original ancestors Joseph and Annie Elizabeth Cunningham.

SETTING THE SCENE IN HIKURANGI

The small town of Hikurangi is 17 km north of Whangarei nestled on the flanks of Mount Hikurangi which rises to 365m to the west of the town. The population was 1,422 in the 2006 Census, unchanged from 2001. Hikurangi is now largely a service centre for the local dairy industry and a residential outlier for commuters to Whangarei. There is also a limestone quarry that has been operating since the early 1900s.


An area of 12,000 acres (49 km2) of land at Hikurangi was purchased from local Maori by the District Commissioner of Lands, John Rogan, in 1862.

The land was considered desirable because it contained mature timber and high quality flax, and when a road south was opened in 1875 the area became a timber milling centre, with kauri gum-diggers soon following.

Coal was first discovered by Maori gum-diggers in 1863 but it was not until 1889 that the first mine was opened. By 1890, two small mines were operating and a 5-horse team was used to cart the coal to Kamo. Things changed rapidly when the railway was extended from Kamo in 1894.

Hikurangi had between 60 and 70 mines in its heyday but, as will be shown, the Great Depression, seam exhaustion and flooding gradually killed the industry. In all about 4.2 million tons of coal were extracted with the Hikurangi Coal Company, the Wilson Colliery Company and the Northern Coal Mine Company being among the biggest.

The town was held in great affection by its residents. But, as described by Dick Cunningham: ‘In the early 1920s more than 300 men were employed in the mines. There were good rugby, soccer and league teams but after the mines closed, Hikurangi ebbed away’.

HARRIET CUNNINGHAM/LAYBOURN’S MEMORIES OF LIFE IN HIKURANGI

Harriet Laybourn [born 1908, died 1997], who was Joseph’s grand-daughter and one of the daughters of Edward Arthur Cunningham [b 1872] told her family history in the following interview with Madge Malcolm, as written up in her book ‘Hikurangi: The Story of a Coalmining Town’ (1997):

‘My Dad Edward Arthur Cunningham [b 1872] was one of nine children and after attending business college, he became manager of the Taheke Hotel near Rawene, as well as the store and Post Office. My two eldest sisters were born there.

‘When he 22 year old Dad married my mother, 19-year old Fanny Girven. Fanny had been born in Kawakawa and had worked for the missionary Revered Williams and for the Salvation Army.

‘The family then moved to Kaihoke and again to Hukerenui before settling in Hikurangi in about 1903. Dad ran a hardware store in Hikurangi but when the local coal met fierce competition from Huntly coal, his trade contracted and he had to close the store. He then went ‘farming’ up Valley Road – but he was not a farmer – and it became basically a place to live when he was employed by the Northern Coal Company.

‘We milked about 25 cows and always had plenty of milk, cream and butter from what was left over from deliveries to the dairy factory. Altogether there were 13 children in my family (I had 7 brothers and 5 sisters). [NZ DIA Birth Records have Annie Edith 1894, Annie Evelyn 1895, Elizabeth Jane 1896, Joseph 1898, Adam Edward 1900, Cecil George 1902, Richard William 1904, Edward Arthur 1906, Harriet Rebecca 1908].

Times were hard but we never went to bed hungry – partly because throughout the year Dad used to gather kauri gum and clean it for sale.

‘With the kauri gum money he would buy us Xmas presents. However, one Xmas he was so disgusted seeing all the toys lying around the place, he said to our mother: ‘that’s the finish of buying Xmas presents – in future we’ll go to the beach in Whananaki instead’. And that is what we did. He would buy us hats etc. as Xmas presents but we really loved going to the beach. It used to take anything from 8-10 hours to get from Hikurangi to Whananaki in the old chain-driven truck. Dad built a bach there - and I have one there still and have never missed a Xmas at the beach for over 80 years!

‘Dad was pretty strict with us - his people were very strict. I remember how he would call out to us when we went to bed. There were 3 girls in our room and Dad would call out: ‘You girls said your prayers?’ ‘Yes, Dad’, we would answer as we stuck our heads under the blankets and said our prayers. Then: ‘You girls put light out?’ ‘Yes, Dad’, we would say – when we hadn’t at all – but we’d soon blow out our candle!

‘We didn’t have much with 13 kids but we had a great life really. We had a marvellous mother. She used to play the piano for us singing, and on Sundays we would have hymns. Her parents lived up at Waro where the lime-works are. Grandma Girven was the midwife at Hikurangi. She delivered a lot of babies amongst the women, including me. They used to have their babies at home in those days.

‘Himkurangi was a mining town – a happy-go-lucky town with lots of houses and kids and we had a great time. All the boys played football (Rugby). There were dances, socials, pictures on a Saturday night, and church on Sundays. All the churches were full – Anglicans, Methodists and Presbyterians. The Catholic Church wasn’t built as early as the others and the Catholics had to use the Hall. One of my friends said that for confession they had to go to the back of the stage. Then there were Scouts and Girl Guides – one of my brothers was assistant scout master.

‘I remember the pictures (movies) and how we let the poor kids in – those who couldn’t pay. There was a hole under the stage and they used to come up through that and we would let them in through the trap door.

‘After about 14 years or so, Dad left the Northern Coalmine Company – and with some mates Dick and Joe Hamilton, Tom Dunn, Jock Rogers, R. Cherrie and Jim Boyd acquired the rights to work leases abandoned by the large coalmining companies (mainly in the Marua hill area). They called themselves the Valley Syndicate. Dad also mined with some of his brothers using the opencast method. They didn’t make a fortune but they did make a living.

‘All my brothers worked as miners and all left school early, usually when they were 12 years old but one brother Cecil left school at 11 – and also stopped smoking at 11!

‘In 1928 I married Treston Laybourn who was a miner from Kiripaka. He was born in Waihi where his father was a gold-miner, We built this house here in View Road but when the mines flooded and he was out of work, we lost it because we couldn’t keep up the payments. For four months we had to live in a tent at Whananaki before we could rent a house. Eventually, some years later, we were able to buy our house back again – and here I am still living in it!

‘Treston was mine deputy at the Shaft and the Kamo Mine but later became a truck driver – and then, before he died, in the Hikurangi Dairy Factory. My sister Mabel and I started the ‘Hikurangi Caterers’ and we ran the business for 33 years. My brother Edward and his wife Clair ran another catering business ‘Cunningham Caterers’.

‘We had four children but they are not miners – the mines have been closed around here since 1937. This is still a happy town for us who were born here. We seem to be related to everyone and to know everyone. We all help each other and now that my husband has died I am never lonely as friends and family are dropping in all the time’.

FOR DENIS CUNNINGHAM (1930 – 2005)

REMEMBER

You cannot say the fire is out, while there is still an ember,
And nothing can be really lost while we can still remember.
Ties are broken, and along strange paths we are led
But while a friend returns in thought, no friendship can be dead.

While the lavender of love retains a faint perfume,
While one rose of recollection from the past can bloom,
While one note can still be heard, one echo linger on,
The song is not forgotten though the singer may be gone.

Whilst the names of those whom God has called are written
In our hearts, they cannot pass, they cannot die.
Though death turns laughter into tears, and June into December
Our dear ones walk here at our sides, as long as we remember.

Anon (quoted by Madge Malcolm)