Page:Addisons·Flat•Moloney•1923.pdf/13

 For they come from over yonder, just across the Buller River, It’s a team that can lick creation, they are miners from the Flat. When the other fellows meet them, why they fairly shake and shiver, For some champions are amongst them with the ball and with the bat.

was also a great game in 1900, and an asphalt court was laid down in the school ground. All the cricket team were in the Tennis Club, and I understand the pick of the ladies were: Misses Sparrow, Kennedy (2), A. Halligan, and Cates (2), and F. Douglas.

was never played in Addisons. Forty-fives was the favorite game at cards.

In the early days of the Flat were some of the best musicians that ever stepped in shoe leather. Dance music was supplied by Tom McNeight (fiddle), Stern Young and Jim McQuinn (banjos), Patsy Mulqueen (clarionette), Stanton (cornet). An old army man by the name of Cochrane, used to play the Irish pipes, and Cochrane, when in England, was presented by the late Queen Victoria with pipes to the value of £100, and according to old identities he could rattle great music out of them. The dance musicians were paid £9 per night for their playing. Jazzing was then unknown, but step dancing would fill in between the round dances and in those days the late Dan Reedy was the N.Z. champion Irish Jigger, with Pat O’Sullivan (Dandy Pat) and John O’Keefe as runners-up.

The first Member was Tim Gallagher, and he represented the constituency in what was known as the Provincial days. Dr Henry, of Charleston, was the next to represent the district and later, at a General Election, was unseated by Mr Fisher, a solicitersolicitor [sic] at Westport. Then came E. J. O’Connor and John Munro and later O’Conner defeated Munro. Later came Rody McKenzie, P. J. O’Regan, J. Colvin and our present member, Mr H. E. HolandHolland [sic].

In 1868 a couple of doctors and two chemists’ shops were doing business at Addisons. The places of business were up the Skibereen road. I am told that one of the doctors was a demon on the digestive organs, and it did not matter whether you went to him with a bad back, a broken neck or a cut finger, the first thing he would recommend you to take was a pannikin full of hot senna tea. One chemist’s name was McGuiggan, and he imported senna leaves by the sack so as to cope with the doctor’s orders.

In the dark ages of the Flat, when the population was about 4000, there was no provision in the place for a hospital for accidents. Hospitals were erected at Charleston and Westport. Charleston at that time was the principal town in the Buller district. Four resident doctors were at Charleston and two at Westport. If an Addisons miner broke his leg he was carried 8 miles to the Westport Hospital to be treated by Dr. Gruhn or Dr Thorpe, or he was cariedcarried [sic] on a stretcher shoulder high by gangs of his fellow miners, to Charleston to the doctors down in that