The Runaway Settlers Read Online Free PDF

They looked bare and dull. The new town of Christchurch in the distance showed only a few buildings dotted among the flax and cabbage trees and patches of swamp.
    Two small ships were sailing across the estuary of the Avon and Heathcote Rivers; and in the distance the great Waimakariri River shone silver.
    After Berrima, which had always been colourful with its oranges and gum-blossom, its bottlebrush and rolling pastures, Christchurch was desolate. Mrs Phipps looked back at the blue water where the Armenian lay, very small in the distance, against the wharf; and the green patches around the bays where grass or crops had been planted.
    ‘I’d sooner be there,’ she said, ‘on a sunny slope, with the breeze coming in from the sea!’
    But they had to go down the hill to the Heathcote River, and, missing Christchurch out entirely, follow along the edge of the plains to a lonely valley and a few station buildings scattered around—Cashmere, which meant employment, and a roof over their heads.
    It was not really much of a roof, although in those times a station-hand would be lucky to find anything better. They were taken to a big, draughty barracks, with rough bunks slung with sacking, and given a meal of mutton and potatoes. Dusk had set in before the donkeys and the jackass were safely housedin a barn. They could not be left out in the chilly southern evening after coming from Australia; but for their attendants there was neither fire nor light.
    The cook was an Indian who had come with Mr Cracroft Wilson on his first journey. He had a way of coming and going among the bare walls and the shadows in perfect silence. This was too much for Emma, who had been beautifully behaved on board ship. She stood by her bunk and screamed. Nothing would make her stay in it: she wanted to jump out, to run and find her own cot which had been left behind at Berrima.
    When all other soothing failed, Mrs Phipps had a regular answer: to sing. Now, tired out as she was herself, she laid the rag doll Bibi in the bunk and sung to it:
‘Up and down the city road
    And into the Weasel;
    That is how the money’s spent
    POP goes the weasel!
    The ‘POP’ was said with a comical face and soon the screams died away and Emma was singing to Bibi, too. Then Mrs Phipps took Emma in her arms and rocked her, still singing, until Emma had no ‘POP’ left in her, for she was fast asleep.
    The next morning work began. It had nothing to do with the donkeys or the jackass, which to Archie’s great disappointment were left in the barn. They were cutting the tough, stiff blades of the flax. The fertile, sunny valleys were heavy swamp where the flax grew tall enough to hide a horse and his rider. Before they could be drained, ploughed and sown with grass, the leaves must be cut by hand, tied in bundles and rafted down the Heathcote River to a mill.
    Mrs Phipps, Bill, Jack and Archie were kept busy while Jim had to take care of Emma. It was not much fun in the swamp. The children soon grew tired of playing hide-and-seek, or of trying to catch the bright blue pukekos who stalked all over the place. But they could not be left at the barracks either, for Emma was afraid of it even in daylight, and the farmhands chased them away from the barn and the stables.
    Cashmere was a cruel disappointment. Backs were sore, arms were sore, hands were blistered, and Jack’s bruised shoulder began to ache all over again. Bill grumbled that the goldfields could not possibly be worse. Mrs Phipps encouraged them by saying cheerfully that in six months the contract would be finished, with enough money to begin a home; but at nights, lying on her bunk she calculated that with wages so low it would be more likely to take five years of saving.
    What troubled her most was that she could not watch the children properly. When in the second week Emma began waking with nightmares, she decided that it was time to talk to Mr Cracroft Wilson, ‘The Nabob’ as people called him in this little