The bird song of a volume and brilliance not heard in England arose in a continuous, fluid melody. Deep within the dense, damp bush came the soft sound of falling water—a secretive stream making its musical way through the impenetrable undergrowth.
Ferns, moss and leaf-mold gave way to flax, tussock and snow grass as the traveller climbed higher. Mountain tops gleaming with snow and ice, rock scree and shingle fans tumbled rocks into glacier gouged valleys and gorges.
Canterbury high country
Snow and rain fed braided rivers disgorging countless tons of stones across the broad plains. Rivers tumbled seaward with treacherous turns and undercurrents many times more powerful than English streams and their languid glide, proving to the inexperienced when they came tramping over the mountains hauling their swag and shovel that death came simply by a miss-placed foot slipping beneath the surface or over a bluff in this raw, wild new world.
Upper Waimakariri River and the Main Divide
Arthurs Pass
In the west, beaches roared with the relentless pulse of waves raking and rearranging great cobbles and boulders into polished pebbles. The bleached bones of dead trees piled haphazardly on black sands that flashed with bright fine gold.
Gold also fissured the quartz rocks deep within the mountains, lying in wait for men with time and money, iron machines and toxic mercury to set it free. An ‘empty’ country, rich for the pickings lay in wait for its newest inhabitants. Shotguns and ships, pick and shovel, axe and saw, shepherds crook and bullock whip, ploughshare and barbed wire. The land would be changed forever in a few short decades.
Slab Hut Creek
Over the deepest and wildest seas known to man, lay this group of mountainous, green islands in the South Pacific. Bound on one side by the tempestuous Tasman Sea and the misnamed Pacific Ocean on the other, New Zealand had been ‘discovered’ and named by the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman in 1642. Tasman mapped part of the coastline and had a brief but violent encounter with the local Maori. It was the last place in the world to be found by western civilization and the last land to be settled by Europeans.
Looking south towards the Southern Alps, GreymouthBeached at Hokitika
[excerpt Chapter 2 pg 57 – To Live a long & Prosperous Life]
James ‘Jack’ Lawn (1837-1928) was two years younger than Dinah Hansen, yet when he finally decided to settle down and marry in 1882 he chose her daughter Rachel Hart. James Lawn was then 45, his bride a month shy of her 22 birthday. James was of Cornish mining stock and had spent almost twenty years goldseeking in Australia, New Zealand and around the globe . He had already returned to Cornwall at least twice to bring some of his hard-won earnings to his elderly parents.
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I’m alright, Jack. James ‘Jack’ Lawn was a tiny man by our modern standards: he stood less than five foot tall and most his siblings also appeared to be small of stature. He was always fit and energetic, and keen to try anything new—‘a real firecracker’ as his daughter Eva Lillian Lawn described him. As a dapper young man, James posed for a photograph in Redruth—possibly just before he left home for the first time. Standing between an excessively fringed chair and an ornately carved table he nonchalantly crosses one leg and puts one fist to his hip as he leans against the table. Clean-shaven except for a pale droopy moustache and sporting a parting on each side of a rather dashing quiff; he looks quite the young man of the world. He wears his finest clothes, a white shirt and a small dark floppy bow tie and what looks like a new double-breasted frock coat which sits snugly around his muscular shoulders. His boots aren’t new, but they shine with polish. He was small, but not a skinny, hollow-chested wretch. The frock coat comes down to just above his knees. [p199 To Live a Long & Prosperous Life]
Cornish miners were a valuable addition to the gold and mineral fields in the empire, with their specialist knowledge of mining, engineering and an affinity to being underground. As a result these tenacious ‘Cousin Jacks’, as they were known, establishing communities in Australia and New Zealand and they brought their culture with them: foods such as the famous Cornish pasties for their ‘crib’ or lunch, the Methodist religion and a love of song. As many as 20 per cent of the Cornish population emigrated in the years 1861-1901; far more than English, Scots or Irish. Quarter of a million Cornish men and women took their culture and technology to the developing world, including South Africa and the Americas.
Why “Cousin Jack”? Explanations vary as to the origins of the nickname “Cousin Jack”. Some say that Cornish miners became known as “Cousin Jacks” because they were always asking for a job for their cousin Jack back at home. Others think it was because the miners used to address each other by the old greeting of “cousin”, and Jack was the most popular Christian name in Cornwall.
Among the goldseekers and immigrants to New Zealand and Australia came the Cornish Lawns – brothers and cousins who were seeking not only their fortune but a better life.
The oldest (and according to him, the first) Lawn to come to New Zealand was James Lawn. James first went to Australia James Pryor, arriving in Melbourne from London in September 1857 on the Commodore Perry, a wooden full-rigged clipper, along with 640 passengers.The two friends went with hundreds of others to the gold diggings around Bendigo and Ballarat.
The Commodore Perry
When news came in 1861 of gold discovered in Gabriel’s Gully, in the southern province of Otago, James and his brother John Lawn (1840-1905), along with many others, left Australia for New Zealand as soon as they could find passage. They arrived at Port Chalmers, Dunedin on the Aurifera on September 14, 1861. James and his brother John (and possibly brothers George and Henry) and a couple of friends made up a party of six. They were well equipped, and had bought mining gear and a handcart in Melbourne. When they arrived in Otago they set off by foot to the goldfields at Gabriel’s Gully, wheeling the cart. They did well, and found enough gold to make themselves comfortable if not rich. The party spent several months in the Gully before going their separate ways.
Gabriel’s Gully
John Lawn, Nelson c1870
Many years later an account of their time at Gabriel’s Gully was published, under the name of John Lawn, for the Gabriel’s Gully Jubilee in 1911, six years after John’s death. This has also formed the basis of other accounts published by descendants. The exact origin of this interesting account is unknown – did John write his memoirs for his family before his death, or was it an account penned by one of his family from stories he had told them? If it is a secondary account, some of the details may have become confused, although James Lawn’s own memories later in life confirmed some of John’s account. It is not certain whether James Lawn attended the Gabriel’s Gully Jubilee. By 1911 he was 74 years old, but he was still reasonably fit and probably still working. If he did attend the Jubilee no account of this was passed down through the family, although this snippet indicates he at least corresponded with the Jubilee committee – perhaps it James who sent John’s story to be published?
"1 Dish 4 The Road".. Fusing food writing with whatever else I find on the road - fiction, history, poetry, humour, diversity, family stories & London.
Written in Ink and Stone 
