Walking To Onehunga.

When the gold rush started at Hokitika, on the West Coast, steamers, including the Aldinga, Gothenburg, and Albion, used to bring over thousands of miners from Melbourne to Hokitika. These boats invariably brought a mail and late papers from Australia. The boats running between Nelson and Manukau would then bring Australian papers on to Auckland. That was why the steamers coming up the West Coast had to be watched by the shipping reporters as keenly as the boats from overseas, and when the signal was hoisted at the Manukau Heads for a steamer arriving the reporters made their way to Onehunga.

In those days there were no motor cars or motor bikes, the only communication being by bus, which ran twice or thrice a day from Hardington's stables, situated near the fine building now occupied by John Court, Ltd. Reporters frequently had to walk either to or from Onehunga, and on more than one occasion when steamers arrived late I walked to Onehunga and back again. In those days, however, we thought nothing of a fourteen-mile walk. A marine reporter had to be always alert and the only safe plan to follow was to board everything and leave nothing to chance.