Wandering muddy streets of history

In the years immediately following the Otago gold rush, readers of the Otago Daily Times and Otago Witness were treated to a series of lively accounts of "rambles" around Dunedin and its hinterland by Peter Thomson (1823-79), an Otago Daily Times proofreader and pioneering naturalist. Writing under the name "Pakeha", Thomson’s detailed reports of botany, vegetation, clearance rates and suburban development are regarded as among the best contemporary records of Dunedin. Today he invites the reader for a wander up the slopes of Signal Hill, but first he has to negotiate the streets of "Mud-edin".

Well, my dear reader, what do you propose to do with yourself this fine afternoon? Nothing particular. What do you say to taking a walk to the top of Signal Hill over Pelichet Bay yonder. It is not too far. Let us see; it is now nearly two o’clock, and I will undertake to have you back here again before six, in plenty of time for tea. Agreed.

We are now in the Octagon; let us get out of town by Stuart and Cumberland streets. This last is quite a busy place now; saw mills bizzing away on the one side, and foundries hammering away on the other. But our progress in this direction is soon stopped by a wide slough of deep mud, quite impassable. Verily the Town Board have some work to do here before a practicable road can be made. It is wonderful how the natives of this part of the town manage to live; it must be quite a hot-bed of fever.

We must turn down by St Andrew street towards the beach, and then along by the Superintendents to Albany street, and so by Forth street to the end of the Town Belt. Here we have a little difficulty in making much progress. The fine weather of the past few days has had little influence on the mud under the thick bush, so we must pick our way as we best can. Notwithstanding this drawback this is a very pretty place, and is quite romantic all the way along the margin of the bay. There are no large trees hereabout, I suspect the timber has all been cut down and carried away, leaving little but the usual scrub, such as the fuschia, broad leaf, eini eini, mapu, ti tree, fern, all bound and interlaced by no end of supplejacks and lawyers. But we have no great length of this to scramble through, and we speedily arrive at the daylight at the side of the little creek draining the valley which enters from the head of the bay. The track now leads us through some rather thick ti-tree scrub, with here and there a miki-mik, still bearing some of last year’s berries. They are harmless, but not very pleasant to eat. As we proceed on the flat, we have to cross the creek several times as it winds about, but we gradually draw near the leading spur up which we have to go to get to the top of the ridge.

Now comes the tug of war. This will try your wind and bottom. We have over a mile of this to do. But "setting a stout heart to a stiff brae," is a very good motto for our guidance, and we will find it easy enough.

This hill has been covered with scrub, which has been burned at no distant date, the dead stems of the bushes being everywhere apparent. It is a rather singular thing that this, the western side of the hill should be entirely destitute of timber, while the eastern side is very heavily timbered. Only here and there on this side are there any trees, and they are all in patches on the sides of some of the gullies. Some others of the hills around partake of the same character. I suspect there must be something in the soil not favourable to their growth. The soil seems fertile enough if we may judge by the quantity of flax, fern, and other plants growing all around, and is of a rich dark brown colour. Some parts of it, as you will see presently, are very stony.

We have now obtained a pretty good elevation, and are on the first terrace; as you seem rather warm, and are perspiring pretty freely, we will here cry "Spell, oh!" and have a rest among the long fern.

There is nothing like a smart walk up a hill, for expanding the chest and opening the pores of the skin. But five minutes is quite long enough. We must not allow ourselves to cool too much, else the result might be rheumatics.

But take a look round before we start again. We are about 600 feet above the bay, and all Dunedin lies at our feet, set like a picture in a frame, by the water and the hills around it.

As we make our way upward and onward we obtain some charming views of the harbor and the wooded hills of the Peninsula. Our way lies along the edge, as it were of the ridge, rising all the time; through thick clumps of flax and other bushes, interspersed with patches covered by a sort of heath, but never so thick as to prevent free walking.

Civilisation is working its wonders up here too. Here is a man busy breaking up a piece of fenced ground, off which the timber has been all cut and cleared away. He expects to get a good crop of potatoes as the first fruits of his toils. Leaving him to prosecute his labour, we now incline to the left a little, over a long tract of rough ground, covered with stones of all sizes, and producing very little vegetation, except the ubiquitous Phormium-tenax, which seems to grow anywhere. Here and there, however, are to be found towards the close of summer, abundance of the delicate snowberry, and a small berry which grows on the heath mentioned before. These are the only ones out of the numerous hillberries of New Zealand which are worth eating; all the others being very insipid. The snowberry is very pleasant to the palate, and cooling to the mouth and throat.

Our way now lies across a small saddle, and then we have the last ascent before us. The land here is much better than any we have yet gone over, and might all be ploughed and cropped with very little preliminary clearing. We are now near our goal, and I promise you one of the most magnificent views to be got anywhere in the neighborhood of Dunedin. Get up on the top of that heap of stones, and seat yourself on the peg of the Trig station. There. Is not that glorious? It would require a much more powerful pen than mine to do it anything like justice, so we will just content ourselves with a bare enumeration of the various hill tops and places now visible from our elevation of 1030 feet above the tide in the bay.

Looking straight down the harbor, Taiaroas Head, with the new lighthouse works, and a strip of ocean with a solitary sail in sight, bound the view; to the right there is the white sand and the wooded eminences of the Maori Reserve extending up to Portobello Bay; over the saddle there you can see the surf breaking on the rocks at the south end of Wickliffe Bay. Then we have the high wooded ridge of Mount Charles, 1870 feet high; the symmetrical Harbor Cone, bush to the summit, 1028 feet up, only a couple of feet lower than we stand; the top of Sandymount, 1054 feet, is just visible over the highest part of the Peninsula, the ocean being visible at intervals all the way along.

The Peninsula looks very grand from this point, sloping so regularly up from the smooth water of the harbor. To the south the Ocean Beach may be seen in nearly its whole extent, bounded by the bluff at the Forbury; the waves, as they come in to the beach, breaking clearly and regularly.

Beyond that we have the ocean again, with a long stretch of the coast down as far as the Nuggets, beyond the mouth of the Clutha. In clear weather Stewart’s Island can be seen, but at present the horizon is dim towards the sea. Turning inland, we have Green Island, Saddle Hill (1414 feet), and the ranges in the far interior losing themselves in the distance; and midway the whole town of Dunedin seems to lie at our feet, the streets and road-lines distinctly marked. From this side the city has a very fine appearance indeed.

Looking westward, the Water of Leith valley is seen opening out, the high ground beyond bounding the view in that direction. Then there is the whole of the Flagstaff range (2190ft) out to Silver Peak (2514ft), the highest eminence in the Town District. To the north, we have the forest of Mount Cargill (2235ft), and the other wooded hills; to the east, part of the Blueskin Road towards Mihiwaka (1842ft).

In front of us lies the town of Port Chalmers, beautifully placed on the neck of land dividing the two bays. The islands between the Port and Portobello Bay look lovely from this elevation; dividing, as they do, the upper from the lower harbor, they seem placed by nature for the site of works of defence. The whole harbor lies before us laid out as if on a chart, every channel and every bank perceptible, from the sandspit at the Heads to the Middle Bank off Brewery Bay. A large steamer is running down the Cross Channel, and part of the shipping at anchor is seen under the lee of the high ground beyond the Port.

But we must not forget that the days are short, and that we have a pretty stiff walk before us yet; however, it is nearly all downhill, and we will soon rattle it over. For the sake of keeping out of the high flax growing so thickly here, we will keep a little to the right, where there is a long clear strip, and so be able to strike the head of a large paddock, off which last season was got a good crop of oats. At the other end of this a road begins which will take us along the north side of the ridge. The ground here is covered with large stones, which must make the cultivation of it rather a laborious task. Beyond this again, the ground is too steep to be good for any other than mere grazing purposes. Our way lies pretty high up for some distance but we soon begin to descend, and then a fine view of the North-east Valley lies before us. We turn to the right again and skirt the edge of a patch of bush with two or three paddocks in cultivation, and a fern tree house on a knoll opposite. Still descending, we cross two or three fences, pass a nice stone house, surrounded by a fine garden, and then we get into a district road, which takes us direct down the hill to the Main North Road, about a mile from the Water of Leith Bridge. This is a rapidly improving locality, a great many fine houses having been erected lately. We are soon at the Toll Bar, noticing that the Acclimatisation Society are having a tall fence put up on the piece of the Town Belt lately granted them. Crossing the bridge we arrive at Woolley’s where I propose a refresher and to wait a little till a cab come out, as it will be very dirty walking in to town. We have not long to wait, and are soon bowling into town, arriving in the Octagon at half-past five, at the time I promised; in plenty of time for the evening meal, which I hope you are not too tired to enjoy.

But before we part, what do you say to us trying Flagstaff for our next walk, say some day next week, if the weather keep up. You will. So, au revoir.

PAKEHA. 26th August, 1864.

• Original spellings have been retained. A collection of Peter Thomson’s published articles has been compiled by his great-granddaughter, Mary Skipworth, and can be viewed at genealogy.ianskipworth.com/pdf/peterthomson.pdf