Page:Gillespies Beach Beginnings • Alexander (2010).pdf/19

 negotiable having been fenced off by the Department of Conservation due to sea erosion at one end.

Laurence Sullivan and Margaret Vaughan married in June of 1870 - more details of which appear later - and began their married life at Gillespie’s Beach, so the following selected extracts from the Grey River Argus established in 1866 give an insight into life and some of the family names at Gillespie’s at that time. In Hokitika, the West Coast Times had begun a year earlier in 1865 and ceased publication in 1909. Despite extended delivery dates to remote areas, settlers relied on newspapers to advise details of postal deliveries, electorate rolls and elections, government proclamations, as well as news items of local interest.

1873. A Report from the paper’s Okarito correspondent published on 4th September: “I hear nothing out of the way from Gillespie’s but I hear no complaints. This in itself is so far cheerful and some of the squatting diggers have taken to planting early potatoes which looks like staying in the same place another year and the man with a family to have his little plot of potatoes, his cow, pig etc seems to me to be a happy digger. Anyhow for being well put on, being clean and always cheerful he can compare most favourably with a class that hardly spares 8 hours for digging out of the 24 hours but often can spare 10 to 12 hours out of 24 for the company of barmaids and billiards.”

1873 - 4 September - Grey River Argus - a report from Okarito. “I hear there is talk of shutting up Okarito as a port of entry. This looks like going backward. I think that our member in the Council for this district should let his voice be better heard on such subjects. At the election time, his friends held him up as a very great man. He was learned like a doctor, learned like a priest etc. A man may be all these and more and be a right man, but not in the right place. Patience to see what may turn round I hold to be a great virtue but it is a virtue of a 4-legged ass as well as of a man. We all know that the animal named can roar and by so doing it can both attract and