Below is a selection of historical stories from the Whanganui Herald (1908) and the Central Hawke’s Bay Press (1946).
Boys Fire on a Swagman.
Wanganui Herald, February 20, 1908
Whilst camped on the bank of Vale Creek, near Bathurst, a few nights ago, a swagman was attacked by two boys, one of whom was armed with a pea-rifle and the other with a revolver.
The old man says he was peacefully partaking of his evening meal beside a cheerful campfire when two striplings of fierce aspect approached him and demanded a share of his larder and any spare cash which he might have about him.
Their demand being refused, they abused him, and after walking away about twenty yard turned round, and saying, “Let’s give him a broadside,” deliberately fired in his direction.
Both bullets went wide of the mark, a circumstance which the swagman attributes to either bad marksmanship or a desire on the part of the budding bushrangers to merely frighten him.
The pair took to their heels after firing the shots, and from this it is evident their conduct was born of sheer bravado.
Fast Vanishing Race of Swagmen on Country Roads in Hawke’s Bay
Central Hawke’s Bay Press, May 20, 1946
A familiar figure on farms and roads for more than two generations, the swagman is fast disappearing from the New Zealand rural scene.
Prosperity and social security have rung his death-knell.
There was a time in Hawke’s Bay and Poverty Bay when station shepherds reckoned a swagman to the square mile, as distinct from rabbits, which ran one to the acre.
The estimate was exaggerated, but in a 1500-mile tour of North Island outback areas a reporter was hard-pressed to find even two active members of the self-styled “old-timers’ brigade.”
Like the old soldier, the swagman is just fading away.
Both the swagmen encountered were bound from Hawke’s Bay to the East Coast, where the wanderers’ “grapevine” had reported empty whares and kind people among whom there was the prospect of a comfortable winter or perhaps a life that a man could lead on a pension.
They were in their sixties and they expected to walk the 160 miles in about two weeks.
Until social security was introduced, the swagman was an accepted institution on almost all large stations.
Whares were provided for his accommodation, and on most holdings provision was made for him to draw rations sufficient for two meals and, in some instances, to receive a small issue of tobacco.
More recently, with the general application of pensions and benefits and the abolition of the cookshops which once victualled the cadets and station hands, the practice of feeding the visitors has been discontinued.
Although the whares remain in their original use, instead of perhaps 20 swagmen bedded down in the huts, they now accommodate only an occasional solitary traveller.
Unless the Dominion again suffers the disaster of a slump, this is the last decade of the swagman.
There are no young men on the roads.
Age, rheumatism, and social security have combined to persuade “old-timers” that they have passed their zenith.
Of those that remain, celebrities of the road are fast reconciling themselves to becoming nonentities on pension, living either in the towns or, as permanent residents, paying a nominal rental for the station whares which were once the overnight shelters for scores of their kind.
- Source: Papers Past
