Chapter 5

Mrs McGuckin (Fan) continues to speak:

‘I think that Mr Fulton it was who gave him some blue gums  to plant. They grew tall
and strong and although the original trees have cut down, the second growth is still
in evidence and can be seen for miles. Mother put in peach stones, and planted
gooseberries and currants and cuttings of all sorts, but by the time that the plants
were bearing, we had left that house, and gone back to the one at the creek, but
we had many a bucket full of gooseberries and currants from them before we
left for Heriot.

The old house had seen a lot of rough life in its day. There was the mark of a
revolver bullet in the front door, and the tale was that when some of the men were
getting lively, and the head of the house was trying to steady things, one of them said:

“What would you do anyway, you do not keep firearms.”

“Don’t I?” He replied

“But it is not loaded”, said the man laughing.

Someone picked it up fired down the passage and things were quieter from then on.’

It was at this time that Mrs Renfree came to visit us. She was a first cousin to
T.W. Kempthorne of Kempthorne Prosser & Co. She was married at Falmouth,
Cornwall when she was 21, she and her husband came to New Zealand.
Mr Renfree got into a steady job at once, and did very well. She told us that she
did not dread coming out here to a new country because was not Edward
Kempthorne he already there, and his wife also? She had heard her mother
often talk of them.

On coming to Dunedin, she made enquiries, and found Edward Kempthorne 
was a carrier with a team of horses. She also knew that the teams from up country
camped at Caversham in a paddock were the school is, but this was well out of town
in those days. However she walked out, and asked the first man if she saw if a
Mr Kempthorne was there. They took it as a joke and but she persevered, did any
of them know a man by that name?

“Yes”  they said,

“He was away with his team, and would be back in a week or two”, and they
named a likely day.

What a teasing father got having a dark eyed young lady inquiring for him. He had
no idea who it could be.  She went out again soon after, and on this occasion found
him, and shortly afterwards, father brought her out to see us to spend a few days.

In the old house, to get to the spare room you had to pass through the dining room
and kitchen. The blinds were not always down in those days, and Mrs Renfree was
nervous at being so far out in the country. Father was away again, and only mother
and us children were at home, and the nearest neighbour was a mile away. She could
not sleep and thought you heard a scratching at the window and and thought she
heard a watch ticking. She crept out of bed, across the two rooms, afraid to light the
candle, and got into Mother's room and woke her up.

“What's the matter?”  she asked.

“I’m  not sure, but  a man is trying to get in the window.” Mrs Renfree replied.

“Nonsense!” said mother  “Go back to your bed do.”

“But I can hear his watch ticking” said Mrs Renfree.

“Nonsense” , again said mother, as she shut her eyes and pulled the blankets up.

“There is nobody else about or else the dog would be barking.”

Mrs Renfree told me years later that she wanted mother to ask her to get into bed with
her, and she shed tears as she crept back across the two rooms again, and then she
made up her mind never to come and see the Kempthorne’s again.

She almost wished that the dog would bark so that she could be proved right.

However she came back many times and laughed, and told the story against herself.
She was a good friend to all of us. The ticking was done by spider that infested the
houses in the early days.

We have in our house at the present time, the old rocking chair that Mrs Starbuckle
gave mother. Father bought some other things from her when she was leaving.

There was no water on the 75 acres that father bought from Mr Fulton on top of the
hill, and the horses had to be taken nearly a mile to drink, so when Mr Briggs offered
to sell the old accommodation house of eight rooms, father bought it, and some land
with it, and we shifted back into it after being in the house on the hill four or five years.

This is a quotation from Mary’s, otherwise known as Mrs Sim dated September 1880:

‘I had been at Heriot for four years and was visiting old scenes. I went up the hill to
Cookson’s, and while there went down to the Flat to see our old house. Everything
had grown wild. I thought things looked desolate and uncared for. Old doings came
to my mind as I looked into every corner, the willows growing over the stream,
the big rock and the calf gully seemed altered and small to me. Martha Cookson
was with me, and we went in by the front window and looked through every room.
The floors were damp, the rooms empty, the hedges had grown wild. ‘

Now Nell, otherwise known as Mrs Blakie now takes up the tale:

‘I remember going to Sunday school at West Taieri, just a few times and also going
to church. Mr Stewart, later of Dunrobin, had a seat near ours.

Once some boys brought a matchbox full of grasshoppers to Sunday school and
let them loose. When we walked through the ferns, from our place, instead of
keeping to the road, the grasshoppers used to hop away in front of us in great
numbers, but that was before the birds came to be so plentiful’.