More Info →Page 14: 50th Jubilee Commemoration supplement

Description

1) "You will carry a swag if you stay here."
Some mill-hands thought town would be doomed when timber "cut out".

Many of the men who were among the first to trek into this new territory of virgin bush, not to establish farms or businesses, but as paid "hewers of wood and carriers of water," did not have the same faith in the future prosperity of Levin as did the pioneer settlers.

2) Mail boy.

"I was the mail boy in the old days. At that time the station was at Bartholomew's Mill and the mail was thrown off at the crossing. The engines were fired by matai cut into four-foot lengths and stacked in double rows on both sides of the track to a height of about four feet. Matai worked out at about 8/- a cord and it stretched from Weraroa for about a mile. It was a hard job finding mail bags among it when the driver misfired." Mr. R. S. Kent, now of Riccarton.

Identification

Date

March 1956