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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 9, Issue 1 (April 2, 1934.)

The Adventurous Years

The Adventurous Years.

Edward Tregear came of a Cornish family, as is indicated by his name. In the land of “Tre, Pol and Pen” his forbears had dwelt over many generations; his pedigree went back to the dim faery days of Britain. When he was just over seventeen he landed in New Zealand. The Waikato War was then beginning (1863), and in South Auckland young Tregear had his first schooling in the military life and the hazards of the bush and frontier. He took up surveying as his life calling, and there was peril enough in that profession in the Sixties to satisfy the most adventurous of young colonial hands. By the time he was nineteen he was assisting in the survey of the land confiscated from the Maoris of the Tauranga district for their rebellion against the Government. This land, on the hills in the rear of Tauranga, in the direction of the forest which covered all the ranges separating the seaward slants from the Rotorua region was partly owned by the Ngai-te-Rangi tribe, the defenders of the Gate Pa in 1864, and the bush-dwelling tribe called the Piri-Rakau, the “people who cling to the forest.” Outlying settlers were attacked, and survey parties had their instruments seized. The Government sent out armed forces, and there was a bush campaign in 1867 in which many fights took place, at Whakamarama and other places occupied by the Piri-Rakau and their allies the Ngati-Raukawa from inland. The Ngai-te- page 18 Rangi for the most part remained neutral; they had surrendered to the Queen's forces after the battles of 1864. The surveyors and their parties, being temporarily blocked in their work, formed a special volunteer corps and served as scouts and advance skirmishers. Mr. Goldsmith was captain of the corps, whose members were armed with carbine and revolver, like the Forest Rangers in the Waikato War. Tregear was one of the carbineers, and served on many a rough hard march and several attacks on Maori villages and camps. The two Mair brothers, William and Gilbert—the subject of a recent biographical sketch in the present series—were on the war-path in that bush campaign, and it was there that Tregear first saw the gallant brothers, who became his friends in after years. Peace came at last, with the dispersal of the Piri-Rakau, and the cutting-up of the confiscated blocks for settlement was completed. For his services in the Tauranga expeditions Tregear received the New Zealand war medal.