Page:Gillespies Beach Beginnings • Alexander (2010).pdf/43

 nesting. But, as they grew older, they would, both before and after school, be allotted tasks suited to their gender, easing the work load on their parents but also training them for what would be expected of them as adults.

A report by A.P. Harper, in 1893 described Gillespie’s Beach as having “a pub and two stores, perched just behind the top of the beach, amongst the sandhills - the most god-forsaken place imaginable.”

The explorer cum writer, Charles Edward Douglas, whilst working for the Survey Department, later Lands & Survey in the years 1889 to 1903 said of Gillespie’s: “This was never ever a proper township but entirely a digging one and has supported a fluctuating population for many years. It passed the calico era, and almost attained the dignity of the weatherboard but not quite. It now contains a few diggers’ huts, a store and schoolhouse, with of course the usual pub, but its life cannot last long as the beach is nearly worked out. It has however lasted longer than any of the other diggers’ townships of Southern Westland and contains a chapel, still standing, a building none of the others ever possessed.”

The church, incidentally, suffered the indignity of being razed in the early 1930s to allow the second gold dredge to move through the site.

The families who eventually settled inland made their way back to Gillespie’s for many years for church services there whenever a priest visited. Once all the Sullivan and Williams families had moved to Weheka, church services were held in the front room of the Williams home, their second home, the first being the totara walled bark roofed hut where they started their married life.

From 1895 onwards there had been a flying fox, then cage over the Cook and Fox rivers to assist travellers across. The bridge over the Fox river opened in 1937 and the Cook’s river bridge in 1938. It