Alexander McKenzie (1854-1945)
Alexander McKenzie, the fifth son
and youngest child of Alexander and Ann, a whisky-drinking,
Gaelic-singing, dogmatic and somewhat taciturn Scotsman; drover,
Master Mason and Presbyterian, lover of Gaelic poetry and teller of
tales, was perhaps the most colourful member of his generation of
the McKenzie family. According to entries in his Bible he was born
in Strathkanaird on 12 July 1854. This was one year before the
registration of births became compulsory in Scotland.
In 1861, 11 of the 22 children in
the village aged between six and fifteen were listed as scholars,
but Alexander was not one of them. Maybe that was a hard year when
the cost of sending him to school was more than the family could
manage. There are stories of him having developed the elementary
techniques of stalking and poaching deer and perhaps it was during
this time that these skills were developed! No doubt he spent time
roaming the hills and the streams of the area, but he would also
have been expected to help in the work of the croft. He may have
spent some of his time with Donald who was working as a shepherd,
probably on a nearby sheep farm. One task would have been the
seasonal cutting and stacking of peats and the seemingly endless one
of carting them home.
At the age of 12 he joined a
fishing vessel captained by an uncle and the next few years were
spent at sea working out of Ullapool, sometimes as far afield as the
coast of Europe. Once caught in a storm the boat had to take shelter
in a German port. From his uncle he got some of the education that
he otherwise lacked and it was he who taught him to read and write
in the Gaelic.
In New Zealand Alexander knew
many droving routes intimately, but unfortunately left no written
record of his experiences on the road. From his base farm at
Mangaweka he drove routes out of Taihape and knew the people of the
area well, Maori and Pakeha alike. He had his special `watering
holes' and places where he stopped overnight. Sometime in the early
1930s he found himself in the home of the well-known base singer,
Oscar Natzka. With Gaelic ballads from the one and grand opera from
the other it must have been quite an evening! A photograph of a
Maori double wedding in Hawkes Bay has two Europeans among the
guests. These are believed to be Alexander and his wife Mary. Their
presence at such functions would would attest to his friendship with
Maori families along the routes he travelled.
He had married Mary Walker in
1887, thirteen years after his arrival in New Zealand. She was from
Upper Tutaenui and the elder sister of Euphemia who had married
Donald McKenzie a few months earlier. By this time he had bought
some property in Feilding and the couple settled there, probably on
one of the sections in Marlborough Street. In 1888 their only son,
Edward Walker McKenzie (Ted), was born there.
In 1896 the family, which by then
included their niece Euphemia Alexandrina Walker McKenzie (Effie),
and at times her sister Euphemia Anne (Pheme), had moved to a farm
at Mangaweka, near the site of the old railway station. When the
decision was made to leave Feilding it may have been influenced by
Donald's move to South Africa and the fact that at Mangaweka they
would be within a day's visiting distance of the Walker family at
Hunterville as well as the MacLeans at Silverhope, although of
course at Feilding they had been close to the Robertsons at Awahuri.
Maybe the thought of another block of virgin land being opened up
with the consequent opportunity of fresh droving routes was a
challenge.
In 1890 the site of the township
of Managaweka was still standing bush although there was some
activity in the area. Within the next four or five years business
boomed, much of it centred on the needs of travellers and
contractors - blacksmiths, wheelwrights, a boarding-house, a
post-office and a school with 23 pupils. Land in surrounding blocks
was also being opened up. One of these was the Te Kapua and Manui
Road area where one of the original settlers was Paddy O'Keeffe whom
Effie was to marry in 1914. In 1895 the sections in the Managaweka
township were sold. Alexander McKenzie's name does not appear on the
map of block ten of the Hautapu Survey District which shows the
original purchasers, so it must have been sometime after 1895 that
they took up residence there.
Life for the family in the years
up to the time of World War I revolved around the farm, droving
cattle, the Church, the wider family, and the Masonic Lodge.
Alexander kept about 100 cattle on his farm. He also grew oats and
made a feature of calculating how many sheaves he would need for his
own stock so that he could sell the remainder. In his later years he
bought land in Cussin Road, Tatuanui and in Piakonui Road, Richmond
Downs.
After the death of Mary in 1914,
followed by that of their only child Ted, killed in action in World
War I, Alexander must have been a sad and lonely person, yet still
romantic in his habits. He was known for turning up unannounced at
various homes throughout the Central North Island asking "Have you a
bed for me?"
For many of his grand-nieces and
nephews their memory of him is as an upright, "straight in the
saddle" stern gentleman who nevertheless stopped to talk while his
horse grazed. He had a beard which had the fascinating habit of
waggling as he spoke. If a child was currently in favour out from
his pocket would come a special tin of threepences. The especially
favoured would get sixpence. Bobby Taylor still today has one of his
threepences. Phillip Gibbs can recall his willingness to play ball
with a small boy and Elsie Campbell remembers how her brother Dennis
used to follow him around on the O'Keeffe farm at Taihape where they
were constant companions. Others such as Lulu Paton and Barbara
McKee can still hear his Gaelic singing floating up the valley at
Richmond Downs as he rode home from a day at the club in Matamata -
contrite and carrying gifts. He was known to cross the reins of his
roan horse and leave it to walk home while he himself drifted in his
mind, lost in the Gaelic world of his songs and memories.
Family legend has it that at
Masonic gatherings he had sat next to Lord Bledisloe, the
Governor-general. Whether it is true or not, the story is common
knowledge among several branches of the McKenzie family. Other
stories were told to many on his travels. Out poaching, it was said,
on Ben Mor Coigach, he lost his knife, one with a distinctive carved
antler handle. Years later when judging the piping contest at a show
in Turakina he saw the familiar carving on a knife being used by one
of his neighbours. As already mentioned it turned out that the knife
had been found on Ben Mor and brought by the finder to New Zealand.
There are other memories. After
the crisis point in an illness during which he nearly died, his
niece Kate who was nursing him, bent over and asked "Do you know who
I am?" "Yes," replied Alex, "you're Methusela!" In Mangaweka it was
said that around the farm there were many strategic, but secret,
places where he hid bottles of whisky for when they might be needed.
He must be remembered too, for
what he and Mary did in caring for and bringing up Effie when her
mother died shortly after her birth. It also says something,
particularly for a Presbyterian in his day and age, that he accepted
with equanimity her marriage to Paddy O'Keeffe, an Irish Catholic,
and made his home with the O'Keeffes for some years before moving
north.
For some time he stayed at Ngarua
with his sister Catherine and her daughter Kate, and then for a
number of years with his niece Annie Scott at Richmond Downs,
Walton. At Ngarua he and Alexander Robertson would sit outside for
hours talking in Gaelic. Curious young boys without an understanding
of the Gaelic, were none the wiser for creeping up to find out what
the old men were talking about.
Although he was much sought-after
as a judge of the bag-pipes at country shows, he did not play them
himself.
He died in a nursing home in
Cambridge and is buried in the Mangaweka Cemetery. With his passing
a treasure-trove of Gaelic lore was lost forever.