The battle with the forest for
possession of the land had started. Trees which had grown undisturbed for hundreds of
years began to be felled with only the axe. The BOHEMIAN settlers laboured from dawn to
dusk, clearing, felling and cutting the timber up into shingles for roofing, fence posts,
railway sleepers and wharf piles. These would be sent to Auckland, (NZ) to be sold.
Presumable Captain Krippner had
opened negotiations with the Auckland markets for during the next few years hundreds of
thousands of roof shingles were split in PUHOI and sent to Auckland.
While the men swung the axes, the
task of the women was to tie the shingle timber in bundles with supplejack and carry the
bundles on their backs down the gullies, over the ridges and across the creeks to the
river down which they could float the bundles of roof shingles.The river had rough and
irregular banks, and with the ti-tree and reeds growing across it, created the job of
floating the timber shingles intensely difficult. The women had to wade in the water,
sometimes breast-deep in their attempt to float their pitiful bundles down to the round
landing stage, which had been built at the clearing at which they had originally arrived.
Paul Straka had built a punt. It was
propelled by Kauri (native NZ timber) poles and they were put to use to transport the
shingles, palings and firewood to the river mouth where they were stacked to await the
arrival of the coastal boat. The punt was described as a "grumpsie sort of
thing", but it could transport ten tones and was the lifeline of the settlers.
Shipping schedules were non-existent
and it was essential for one of the settlers to walk to the river mouth every morning to
see if the ship had arrived. Often it had been, picked up the cargo and departed again.
Then it was necessary to hurry over the hills and through the bush to Auckland which was
thirty miles away, to try catch up with the precious cargo before it was dumped on the
wharf - to be either looted or sold to strangers.
The cost of the freight was half the
price realised and many families, for a month of arduous work, only received a few
shillings.
It was fortunate indeed for the
settlers that, at a time when Maori and Pakeha were always at war in other parts of the
North Island of NZ, the Maoris in the proximity of PUHOI were always friendly. They were
also well disciplined and prosperous.
The surveyors for the proposed
near-by Albertland settlement described their pa at the PUHOI river mouth in these terms.
"The richness of the soil
exhibited itself in the profusion of peaches which literally covered all the trees.
Interspersed with these were fig trees in full fruit, patches of maize and pumpkin, water
melons, potatoes, kumara and other vegetables all grew in vast profusion".
The chief of the tribe was a one Te
Hemera Tauhia. He was a man of honour, intelligence and of great capacity for friendship.
He learnt English very quickly and adopted English ways to the extent of wearing a dark
suit and bowler hat on all important occasions. He was six feet tall, of fine features and
was a noted public speaker. He kept a firm hand on his people and never tired of lecturing
them on the evils of drink.
Te Hemera knew of the wretched
situation of the PUHOI pioneers and that they were on the verge of starvation. Time after
time he loaded their punts with peaches, vegetables and kumara. Without his gifts and the
knowledge that while he was their friend they need not fear repercussions of the Maori
War, or subsequently, by hau-hau, the predicament of the struggling settlement would have
been even worse.
One resident of PUHOI remembered to
old chief and said of him: "When he said a thing, he meant it..... and he did
it". It was a quality the BOHEMIANS understood for they shared it with him!
In spite of this mutual respect,
there was little contact between the Maoris at the pa and the BOHEMIAN settlers up the
river, and no inter-marrying took place. It is possible that a wise man like Te Hemera
preferred this type of Pakeha to the others who hailed the Maori enthusiastically as a
romantic savage, them blamed him for not measuring up to their idea of civilisation.
Although living amongst kauris,
there seems to have been little effort to sell the kauri gum. The men used to climb the
tall trees on spikes to look for it in the forks of branches, but mainly it was used as a
good cheap lighting system when they had no money for candles.
One or two tried their hands at
digging the gum fields of Northland of NZ and a few followed the gold rush to Thames, but
most of the BOHEMIANS were oblivious to the lure of the will-o-the-wisp temptations. Basic
things like crops, stock and timber were to be their wealth and they knew it! They had
little confidence in the chance of striking it rich overnight.
The hardest felt abandonment came,
not from the men seeking fortune but from the settlement's contribution of manpower to the
Maori War.
Captain Krippner, having settled the
BOHEMIANS in and seen them start work, had himself no inclination to swing an axe with
them. Instead, he embanked on another campaign. He was off to fight the Maori War. The
government offered him a commission and asked him to form a company of militia out of his
newly arrived countrymen. He recruited all the single men and five or the married men and
led his company off to the Waikato Wars.
Only one, Joseph Paul ever returned
to live in PUHOI.
At the end of the war, theses
families, the Karl's, Bukowskys, Krippner's, Heerdegens, Kohiesses, Papeschs and Kusabs
were each given a grant of fifty acres of land in the Ohaupo, Waikato district. This land
was confiscated from the Maoris and it was on condition that they gave a few days of every
week to military duty at the redoubt that they received their grant.
They found the land was poor and
unproductive. They lived in constant fear of attack from the Maoris who were the true
owners of the land. They also probably thought when they left PUHOI that nowhere could be
worse, but they found in Ohaupo their new home, that there was no timber and not even a
nikau palm to lop off and consume.
Their lost was a severe setback to
the PUHOI settlement. To be deprived of so many of the youngest and strongest men was a
great discouragement, but once again when there is no alternative, they had to carry on as
best they could.
The struggle went on but finally it
was beginning to show results. Potatoes and wheat were grown in the cleared patches. It
took as much as a week's exhausting work to dig out the stump of one of the forest trees,
but gradually small patches were regained and prepared for sowing. There was still very
little money but the settlement was starting to provide its own food and the BOHEMIANS
thought that perhaps the worse had passed.
