Daniel James McKenzie, (1871-14/11/1952). "gentlemanly conduct"

GLENORCHY NOTES

(Own Correspondent) Valedictory. 

A pleasant social evening was recently held at Campbelltown when a number of friends called on Mr Daniel McKenzie to bid him farewell from the district. Mr McKenzie, who was born in Hokitika came to reside at Glenorchy some forty years ago. Prior to his arrival in Glenorchy he was engaged in cattle farming with his two brothers at Martin’s Bay and from there came to the Skippers district where he worked for the Bullendale Company and at the famed Monk’s Terrace gold mining claim. A hardy pioneer, Mr McKenzie took part in much of the early road and track construction at the Head of Lake Wakatipu and with Mr W. G. McPherson, of Glenorchy, constructed the ropeway over the Graves-Talbot pass which gave access to Milford Sound from the head of the Hollyford Valley. He was closely associated with the scheelite mining industry during the greater part of his residence in the district and at one time was manager of the old "Boozer” mine. A man of sterling character, respected and admired for his generous nature and gentlemanly conduct, Mr Daniel McKenzie will be missed by his many friends throughout the district. Mr McKenzie left on Friday’s steamer for Invercargill where he intends to reside.  -Lake Wakatip Mail, 7/12/1944.

HEROIC VENTURE

PIONEERING IN MARTINS BAY 

REMINISCENCES RETOLD 

Pioneers of Martins Bay, by Mrs Peter Mackenzie, published by the Southland Historical Committee. 10s 6d net. 

The Pioneers of Martins Bay is one of the most human, most authentic and most engrossing narratives of pioneer endeavour that the literature of this country has produced. This first complete description of the attempt to settle the lonely West Coast outpost comes, fortunately, from one of the survivors of the venture, Mrs Peter Mackenzie, a woman who received no formal schooling, but is gifted with powers of description that a professional historian might envy. It is an intensely personal story, moving in its record of the heartbreaks that accompanied the attempts to found a new settlement, and joyous in its descriptions of an untrammelled childhood in the wilderness.

Mrs Mackenzie is the daughter of the late Daniel McKenzie, who took his family to Jackson’s Bay in 1865. Later the family moved to Jamestown, the Martins Bay settlement on Lake McKerrow, and then to a new home on the coast. In these surroundings, far from what amenities civilisation had to offer, a few families attempted to wrest a living from a beautiful but forbidding country. Cut off even from medical assistance, they were forced to rely on their own efforts in sickness or danger, or on the little help that their far-scattered neighbours could give. Tragedy in such circumstances became doubly poignant, and tragedy struck often. The dangers of exploration, the perils of travel in open boats around the inhospitable coast, and the threat of serious illness were constant hazards in a precarious and lonely existence. 

For many years the only contact with the outside world was by the steamer which called every three months at the bay. A track had been blazed from Queenstown, but few people ventured over it. The author, on her first trip to Queenstown, spent ten days in the rain-swept forest with her father, and on their arrival they learned that two men were then missing somewhere along the route through the Hollyford. She was then 13 years of age. Although well educated by her parents with the help of the Bible, Sir Walter Scott, Hansard, and the old Otago Witness, she knew nothing of life in an organised community, and in Queenstown she saw her first horse, her first band, and — as the result of her experiences on the trip — made her first acquaintance with a hospital. 

So faithful is this record that the enjoyment of reading it is tinged with regret that Mrs Mackenzie had not enlarged her memoirs into a book of larger size, expanding, for the benefit of future historians, her descriptions of this fascinating chapter in the history of Murihiku. The value of the work loses nothing, however, through her being given the opportunity of telling her story in her own way, and the Southland Historical Committee, which has sponsored the publication, is to be congratulated on its enterprise in making available to the public such an important contribution to our early history. 

E. A. A.  -Otago Daily Times, 22/10/1947.

The Daniel McKenzie referred to above is the father of the author and of Daniel James McKenzie buried in Dunedin.

Andersons Bay Cemetery, Dunedin. DCC photo.