As soon as he and his brothers were big enough to manage a rifle they were let out to roam around shooting rabbits for the pot - and they often 'wagged' classes preferring the bush to the classroom. Aged twelve he ran off from school for the last time and was set to work about the small home farm - there was wood to be chopped, a garden to be worked, cattle to be cared-for and the house cow to be milked.
After his mother moved to Dunedin, Bill made his way working with gold mining, clearing bush, rabbiting and cattle drafting throughout his home territory of Southland, Westland and Otago.
- This is sandfly country.- Much as I love these parts of NZ - I am banished to the drier areas by the female sandflys that relish my sweet blood & sense me coming from afar - the instant I get-out of my car! Arawata Bill coped with sandflys by laying still until they were thick on his blanket - and then rolling-over to crush them all - or so the story goes!
( this strengthens my long-held theory about females in general)
-Bill is said to have lived for a few years by shooting 3,000 wild rabbits with a muzzle-loading gun and even to have once competed in Australian rifle shooting championships in Sydney.
Over the next sixty years Bill worked different labouring jobs such as maintenance on the Haast Pass bridle track, and ferryman on different West Coast rivers. He would from time to time also seek buried gold coin treasure and a "lost ruby mine".
- But it was his exploration of the remote back country as a gold prospector that earned him his long term name of "Arawata Bill". He would disappear into the mountains for many months at a time, packing-in supplies on foot - or where possible with his long term packhorse 'Dolly'.
Aged thirty he started seriously fossicking for gold in unmapped parts of Otago and Westland and came to the publics notice when he packed through the Dart Valley above Lake Wakatipu - crossing over the mountains into the Arawhata Valley - and was later interviewed by a Queenstown paper. To this day this precipitous mountain pass is known as 'O'Learys Pass' or 'Learys Pass'.
He was reputed to sometimes be found living on porridge cooked in his three-legged camp oven - both hot, and later through the day - cold. But he also became well known for his stews made from native pigeon mixed with assorted flightless birds (incuding kiwi) and parrots, rabbit or any other fair-game he could shoot or throw a rock at.
He perfected a method of using a "Mobile Hangi" whereby he would pack freshly killed game into his saddle bags together with stones heated red hot in a fire - wrapped in sacking - and hours later on arriving at his campsite - dinner would be well cooked, ready for eating.
"On his horse he would carry his mining equipment of pan, pick, and improvised short-handled shovel, made by hacking most of the handle off a conventional shovel. Later he would take to sluicing with hose pipes, and sluice boxes made from ponga or tree ferns. He would also carry a small axe or slasher for track clearing, a tent, blanket, billy, tin plate, and sometimes a rifle. There was no need for tent poles. A frame could easily be fashioned from the surrounding bush."
" Food consisted of the barest essentials of oatmeal, flour, rice, split-peas, or beans, sugar, tea, salt, treacle or syrup and hard ships biscuits. Oatmeal was the staple .. with maybe a bit of black treacle."
- From: 'Arawata Bill: The Story of Legendry Gold Prospector William James O'Leary'
by: Ian Dougherty ( I have the Kindle edition - very worthwhile insights into NZ history)
I regularly come across "on-line survivalist" and "off-grïd" sites debating what to have in a "grab-bag" or "shtf-bug-out bag" - well the above lists would make a good basis (- provided the "bugger-outer" knows how to live rough - and can cook!)
There is a fine sheltered and beautiful campsite in the Dart Valley, under Chinamans Bluff at the top end of Chinamans Flat - that is known as Arawata Bills Campsite.
Arawata Bill himself later admitted that his prospecting (and searching for a rumoured cashe of gold coin - and a 'lost ruby mine') were really the means of justifying his back country way of living.
- When close to his eighties he became unable to continue going bush, - he was taken-in to The Sacred Heart Home by the Catholic Little Sisters Of The Poor in Dunedin - who looked after him well for some years until, after being admitted to hospital he died in November 1947 aged 82.
Marty K
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