Diggers, Hatters and Whores: The Story of the New Zealand Gold Rushes by Stevan Eldred-Grigg

Author:Stevan Eldred-Grigg [Eldred-Grigg, Stevan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Gold Rush, History, Non-Fiction
ISBN: 9781869797034
Google: QGjEuAAACAAJ
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2011-07-14T23:00:00+00:00

Andrew Bools found such a tract in his tent one day. He was struck by what he called ‘unutterable anguish’. His sins ‘stood out in dread array’. He fell to his knees ‘and began to cry for mercy’. A mate, looking on with alarm and not seeing ‘the arrows of the Almighty sticking fast’, thought that the young man was sick and wanted to fetch a doctor or make him some coffee.107

Otago Protestant diggers during later years began to worship in what they called union churches, built thriftily. Horseshoe Bend, for example, prayed in a chapel walled with earth, thatched with rushes and ‘filled to overflowing with a bright-face and intelligent’ digger flock.108 Diggers throughout the province were known to give money to further their faith and its works. Donald McLeod pressed £5 on a Methodist minister near Blacks.

‘My gift,’ he said, ‘may help to take to others the Gospel which has done so much for me.’109

West Coast diggers also numbered among their rank earnestly observant Christians. Methodists built wooden chapels. The first minister to preach at Kaniere stood on a river terrace one Sunday in the spring of 1865 singing ‘Rock of Ages’. The stores and taverns were all busy, but a small crowd gathered for hymns and prayer.

‘Will You go to the Eden above?’ asked the minister.110

A Methodist tea meeting the following autumn drew about one hundred diggers to sing hymns, pray and sit down to a ‘sober repast’ at Ross.111 The same season saw a Methodist flock raise on tent poles a calico chapel at Welshmans Gully. A Welsh digger, Owen J Owen, was the preacher and services were spoken and sung in Welsh. Anglicans were slower off the mark, which was odd given that the goldfields lay in their richest realm, the province of Canterbury. A ‘large rough wooden church’ when built at last lacked a bell, leading a bellman to walk the streets and cry the services.

‘Roll up, roll up, boys — Church service — roll up!’ he sang out. ‘Roll up! Roll up! His Riverince! the Archdeacon! His Honour! His Grace! will preach to-day — roll up! roll up!’112

A priest and a surveyor stepped one night into a drinking den at Canoe Creek. Wrote the surveyor:

Irish diggers were having a spree. They were half drunk and fighting, some in the bar, and some outside. Father Larkin walked into the bar-room, took off his hat, and exclaimed in a loud voice, ‘Peace be to all here.’ Instantly every man dropped to his knees and there was dead silence. Father Larkin then pronounced a blessing, and the men rose.113

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