Open 7 Days 29. Faigan’s Store, Millers Flat

I wrote and illustrated ‘Open 7 Days’. It was published in 1991. It’s a series of freeze-frames of some historic New Zealand general and convenience stores as they were preserved in the last decade of the 20th century. Bit by bit, on this blog, I re-publish some of the entries from that book.

FAIGAN’S STORE

Teviot Road, Millers Flat, Otago.
Manager: Judith Omond

Louis Faigan opened his first store in Millers Flat in 1896 in a one-roomed shop leased from a watchmaker. Three years later he bought the boarding house on today’s site, turned the front into a store and the back into living quarters, and that’s the way it stayed until fire destroyed it in 1936 and the ‘moderne’ store was erected.

In gold-mining days Faigan’s supplied goods by pack horse to remote diggers, and by horse and cart to the dredge workers on the Clutha as well as to local farmers and residents. Sensitive always to customers’ needs, Faigan even imported ginger and rice for the Chinese miners, and this service philosophy was exemplified in his slogan, ‘Everything from a needle to an anchor’.

The old man died in 1910, and Leopold Faigan, who had started work in his father’s shop in 1899, carried on the business until shortly before his death in 1976. The store stayed in the Faigan family until 1980.

Malcolm and Lesley James closed the store in 1989, but within forty-eight hours, $30,000 was raised from about a hundred households to buy the stock and plant. The enterprise has been owned by community shareholders ever since, with Judith Omond as manager.

The ‘Lonely Graves’ are a famous feature of the area and a poignant reminder of the courage and
compassion of the pioneers.

© DON DONOVAN
donovan@ihug.co.nz
.

The Lonely Grave of Somebody’s Darling

‘SOMEBODY DARLiNG
LiES BURiED HERE ‘

In New Zealand’s South Island, if you find yourself driving on State Highway 8 south of Roxburgh make sure you visit the Lonely Graves. To get to them, cross the Clutha River to Miller’s Flat, turn right at Faigan’s store and take the shingle road that leads along the northern bank of the river towards Craig Flat. You can’t miss the graves, two simple stone slabs within a clumsy concrete and steel enclosure which in the season of the year looks pretty in a sea of blooming daffodils. (In my illustration I have moved them closer together).

The Lonely Graves are a poignant remnant of the 19th century Otago gold rush days when young men came from all parts of the world to try for their fortunes. It’s a sad fact that many of those seekers died or disappeared, frozen, drowned, accidentally killed in rock falls or collapsed mine shafts, or even murdered; unknown and uncommemorated by any grave or entry into a register.

‘Somebody’s Darling’ might have suffered the same obscurity had it not been for the compassion of William Rigney. One day at the end of 1864, Rigney was strolling near the tail-race of the gold claim he and others were working on the Molyneux River - the old name for the Clutha - when he noticed, on the river bank, a dog standing shivering over a huddled shape.

It turned out to be the body of a fair young man who appeared to have drowned. Rigney called the police from Roxburgh who investigated but were unable to establish his identity. Rigney attended the subsequent inquest at which the verdict on this unknown man was determined as death by drowning: there were, it seems, no suspicious circumstances.

Rigney, an erstwhile theological student from Dublin, was deeply moved by the sad anonymity of the victim and requested the coroner’s permission to give the body a decent burial. A funeral was arranged for which Rigney dug a grave near Horseshoe Bend in woods close by an ancient Maori track through the bush. Every one of the local population turned out and they brought the body, on a bullock sledge, to the grave where a service was conducted by the schoolteacher.

Rigney later prepared a piece of black pine planking for a headboard: on it he poker-burned the words:

‘SOMEBODY DARLING
LiES BURiED HERE’

For many years, Rigney tended the grave which he’d surrounded by a fence to protect it from wandering stock but, naturally, the timber board became weathered over the years from 1865 so a public subscription was taken up and in 1903, a new, smart, marble headstone was erected at the base of which, in a special, glass-fronted frame the original headboard was incorporated.

Rigney let it be known that he wanted to be buried next to ‘Somebody’s Darling’ and in 1912, forty-eight years after his touching gesture, William Rigney was laid to rest beside the man he never knew.

The story is deeply intriguing because here at these lonely graves, surrounded by stone-littered hills of golden broom, you find yourself wondering just who ‘Somebody’s Darling’ might have been. What was his story? What romance moved him? Was he, perhaps, the heir of a wealthy family in the ‘old country’ here in the colony to make his mark and win the hand of the girl he’d left behind? Was he one of that great band of itinerant diggers who moved from California to Australia to the West Coast and Central Otago? Was he on the run from the law? And could it just be possible that he was a member of your own family?
Who knows... but as William Rigney knew for sure, he was ‘Somebody’s Darling’.

© DON DONOVAN
donovan@ihug.co.nz
.
 

Country Churches of NZ 123. St. James's, Roxburgh, Central Otago

I wrote and illustrated Country Churches of New Zealand. It was published in 2002 by New Holland, Publishers and is still on sale in bookshops. The publishers have kindly agreed to me re-publishing some of the book’s images and descriptions in this blog.

ST JAMES'S, ROXBURGH

Maori hunted moa in these parts long before prospectors found gold, before the soil and climate were found to produce superior peaches and apricots, or before the Clutha River was dammed for its power.

Somewhere in that bunched up history, Christianity came to the area that started life as Teviot.
In 1871 an Anglican building committee was formed and a site was offered. Tenders were let, the stone was quarried from a stone's throw away, and St James's was opened on 11 November 1872, having cost £881.

Its mellow stones - dressed and assembled by stonemason Peter Campbell - require watercolour washed over oil pastel for the right texture. It was a very satisfying subject to paint.

© DON DONOVAN
donovan@ihug.co.nz
.

Country Churches of NZ 118. St. Mary's, Stirling, Otago

I wrote and illustrated Country Churches of New Zealand. It was published in 2002 by New Holland, Publishers and is still on sale in bookshops. The publishers have kindly agreed to me re-publishing some of the book’s images and descriptions in this blog.

ST. MARY'S, STIRLING

St. Mary's, Stirling (near Balclutha) is almost as original now as it was in 1869, with its pit-sawn heart totara boards and fancy bargeboards.

Simply Gothic, it was designed by William Ferguson 'a farmer with some training in carpentry' and stood on Inch Clutha Island until 1904 when it was dismantled, taken across the Clutha River to Stirling, and re-erected with a new iron roof.

In the mid-1960s this inscription was found above the altar: 'This church was built in August 1869 on Inch Clutha by Robert McKinlay. Shifted to Stirling and rebuilt by John Agnew in January 1905...'

© DON DONOVAN
donovan@ihug.co.nz
.