George Griffiths and Ray Hargreaves present their compiled historical impressions of life in Otago.
Celebrations
On Making Day our students behaved themselves with remarkable decorum. They manned a dray and joined in the procession, singing and cheering with great lustiness.
In the evening several of the rougher spirits inaugurated a procession, which marched up and down the streets, falling foul of drunken coal-heavers on the way, and taking their drubbings like men when they got them.
Some of the more cunning older hands sought shady seclusion in dimly-lighted rooms, and celebrated the event with no less loyalty than their rougher brethren outside.
One genial soul was informing a room full of people in between his sobs that he had a bruvver in Maffyking. Some kind soul led him out in the silent night air, and I myself saw him next morning. He looked as if he still mourned for his brother.
From Mining School Notes in the Review of 1900, quoted in Otago University Students Association Literary Review 1888-1988.
Gold Rush
For a lad without any particular means, living in an out-of- the-way place like Roxburgh, the chances of qualifying [in medicine] seemed remote. I do not recollect having done much at school, except get into trouble ... Fortunately, a gold-dredging boom broke out in the district, and as I had a capital of about a couple of pounds I took the opportunity to try my hand at high finance.
I found it all very simple, much simpler, indeed, than it has been since.
New shares were continually being issued, and could be bought by putting down a shilling per share on application and the same amount on allotment. In a boom everything goes up, and I was able to sell the shares at a premium subject to allotment.
I was only seventeen at the time, and I managed to make what was quite a lot of money for a boy ... When my father saw how much I had made he was so impressed that he began speculating himself, taking up where I had left off.
At that moment the boom came to an abrupt end, and it was my father's fingers that were nearly burned.
Sir Sydney Smith, Mostly Murder, 1959.
Sport
Our football players mustered strong on Saturday, on the Town Belt, and a spirited match, according to the Rugby Union rules, was played between sides chosen by Messrs A.K. Smith and J.C. Thomson.
The ground proved rough and occasioned some awkward spills, while the new rules manifested themselves in torn garments and bleeding noses.
Otago Guardian, 13 September 1875.
People
Julius Vogel - They have got to be loyal to him on the same principle that in health and sanity a man's body has got to be loyal to his mind.
For the Government to cast off Vogel would be tantamount to the action of a man who deliberately rid himself of his brains under the mistaken notion that he could go about the better with an empty skull.
M.J. Scobie Mackenzie, in The Member for Mount Ida.
