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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 15, Issue 1 (April 1, 1940)

[section]

Major William Jackson, M.H.R. Major Jackson's first military service was the command of the Forest Rangers, In 1863, with the rank of Lieutenant. After the Waikato War, he commanded the Waikato Cavalry. He became M.H.R. for Waipa, and in 1889, when on his way to attend Parliament he was lost overboard from the s.s. “Wanaka,” between Onehnnga and New Plymouth.

Major William Jackson, M.H.R. Major Jackson's first military service was the command of the Forest Rangers, In 1863, with the rank of Lieutenant. After the Waikato War, he commanded the Waikato Cavalry. He became M.H.R. for Waipa, and in 1889, when on his way to attend Parliament he was lost overboard from the s.s. “Wanaka,” between Onehnnga and New Plymouth.

On his news-hunting rides from Drury to the military posts in the district in the winter of 1863, Von Tempsky frequently called at a solitary house on the edge of the bush, between Papakura and Wairoa. This was a farmhouse and roadside inn combined; it was a halfway house on the dangerous road to Wairoa (now the township of Clevedon), and it was called the Travellers’ Rest. All the other settlers had left their homes in that part of the frontier, for there was always fear of attack from the dense bush that extended to the Hunua and far over the ranges. But sturdy squarebuilt John Smith—“Old Smith” he was popularly called—laughed at all the injunctions of the Army patrol officers that he should lock up the place and take his family to Auckland. “What! Clear out? Not me!” he said. “I'll hold my castle against all the Maoris in creation.”

His resolute, self-reliant spirit was shared by his family. His cheerful wife, his three big sons and his three daughters, with a man servant, were the garrison of the Travellers’ Rest. They were armed with half-a-dozen rifles, two double-barrel guns and a good supply of ammunition. Old Smith made his house bullet-proof by strengthening it inside with seven-feet-high sawn timbers and slabs, and by cutting loopholes on all flanks. The stables were well-covered by loophole fire. Smith had been a sailor, and Von Tempsky soon discovered that he had been in California also, trying his fortune on the diggings; that rough school of adventure always seemed to have developed to the full a spirit of independence in those who breathed its heady air. Thick through of chest and shoulders, firm-set as a rock, resolute of air, this bushy-bearded borderer looked just the man to make a stout fight for his rights. Von Tempsky liked him at first sight, and his talks with him increased his admiration for this first-rate specimen of a frontier settler.

Here under the hospitable shingled roof of the Travellers' Rest he met for the first time the young officer in command of the first corps of Forest Rangers, enrolled as the result of the attractive invitation to arms in the “Southern Cross.” Lieutenant William Jackson—we were to know him well in after-years as Major Jackson, commanding the Waikato Cavalry Volunteers—had chosen Smith's inn as his headquarters on account of its contiguity to the great Hunua Bush, the hunting and hiding place of the war parties. There was good dry barn accommodation for Jackson's fifty lively Rangers; and old Smith was very willing to receive the company of carbineers in his quarters. He now reaped the benefit of his courage and self-reliance in the form of protection and profit.

Jackson, presently to be promoted from Lieutenant to Captain, had been selected by the military heads to command the bush corps formed by way of experiment at first, to scout the bush on the flanks of the Great South Road, and especially to chase the native defenders out of the Hunua Ranges. A difficult task, still a persistent plan of campaign on those lines would at any rate keep the main military road free from ambushes and sudden volleys from the gloomy bush. The young commander was the right man for the rough work. He was a Yorkshireman whose family had taken up bush sections between Papakura and the Hunua and his labours in bush-clearing and pioneer farming had toughened his frame and developed his powers of endurance. He was one of those backblocks men who could trudge all day under a heavy swag. He had had no military training, but hard experience was presently to supply that need.