An “Octagon” That Was Not To Be.

“The best laid schemes … gang aft agley.” The Big Flood in the river in 1878 broke two new mouths through the sandspit—one at the Kaitangata end and one in the centre. The water scouring out these two new outlets caused the silting up of the old mouth. About the same time the railway to Balclutha from Dunedin was opened. So the glory of Port Molyneux diminished. In the few scattered buildings and the open paddocks of to–day it is hard to realise the old township, all laid out in small sections just as for Dunedin, with Pendennis Street as Stuart Street, and up at the top of Pendennis Street a Port Molyneux Octagon. To–day cows graze on a paddock which was designed to be the centre of a busy town. And the piles of the old jetty now stick up boldly enough just about two feet higher than the level of the dry land.

To–day Port Molyneux is neither a port nor a town. But a little farther on is Kaka Point, a summer resort which grows in popularity.

And the sports meeting held on New Year's Day at the Willsher Bay Domain is perhaps the oldest and most successful function of its page 69 kind in New Zealand. Generation after generation has gone there on New Year's Day—first in sledges, then in drays and traps, and now in motor cars. Here, where in 1841 Willsher and Russell spent a very lonely New Year, one hundred years afterwards a thousand motor cars arrive from fifty miles away, and get home again that night. One wonders what John Tuhawaiki would think of it all. But most likely his thoughts would be with the soldier boy in Egypt.