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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 9, Issue 8 (November 1, 1934)

Early Years

Early Years.

Douglas Maclean was the only son of Sir Donald. He was born in 1852 in Wellington. His mother died soon after his birth. She had been Susan Strang, whom Sir Donald married in 1850; his wedded life was tragically brief. She was the daughter of Mr. Roger R. Strang, who for many years was Registrar of the Supreme Court in Wellington. Douglas was first educated in the Auckland Grammar School; then his father sent him to England in the Sixties—a voyage round the Horn in a sailing-ship—to gain a college education, which in those days New Zealand could not give. After leaving Clifton College he returned to New Zealand, took up the study of law, and was articled to a Wellington firm, Hart and Buckley. He went back to England to complete his studies, and was admitted as a barrister at the Middle Temple. He did not practice, but returned to New Zealand to join his father, who was then Native Minister, and presently devoted all his energies to the work of sheep-farming and stock-breeding on the afterwards famous Maraekakaho estate, which his father had partly broken in from a state of nature.

Douglas Maclean, in his younger days, was a good all-round athelete. He won the first two bicycle races held in Wellington. In the Seventies he rode from Wellington to Napier on his old-style high bicycle, at a period when the roads were very different from the smooth highways of to-day, and when most of the streams had to be forded. There was a good deal of risk in such a journey; he was the first to cycle across the Rimutaka range. Maclean's bicycle of that era is still preserved by the family. He was one of Wellington's earliest Rugby footballers, and in the early Seventies he captained a Wellington team which won a match against the Armed Constabulary, a body of powerful players, and another against the officers and men of H.M.S. “Rosario.”

My old friend often spoke of his memories of stirring days in New Zealand. As a boy of eight he was with his father at the conference of Maori chiefs held at Kohimarama, Auckland, in 1860, in the time of Governor Gore Browne. Young Douglas slept in the same room in the mission buildings as the chief Tamihana te Rauparaha, son of the great warrior chief Rauparaha—the son was as great a missionary as his father was a cannibal conqueror.

Another memory of old-time was a cruise from Auckland to Wellington in H.M.S. “Fawn,” one of the steam frigates of the early Sixties. The “Fawn” was a full-rigged ship, and it was an exciting sight to watch sail and spar drill. The smart bluejackets of that day could strip the ship by sending down every mast and yard above the lower masts in a few minutes, and send them up again as quickly. There was great rivalry between the Navy square-riggers in this seamanly accomplishment, a thing now of the far past.

Sir Douglas had many such pictures of the old sea-life to recall. He knew the sea well indeed; he had made two voyages to England and back in sailing-ships of the grand old clipper class, when sailors were real sailors; and he acquired in those days an enthusiasm for the Navy page 18
Shearing shed and woolsheds at Maraekakaho.

Shearing shed and woolsheds at Maraekakaho.

and the mercantile marine which he retained to the end of his life.