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Updated: May 11, 2025
Gentlemen-immigrants usually think they may find work of a congenial sort, such as clerking, assisting in a store, or some occupation of the kind in the city. That is a mistake; while yet they are new-chums there is but one thing for them to do to go away into the bush and labour with their hands.
New-chums are able to notice some of the peculiarities of Auckland street-life, wherein it most differs from an old-country town. These arise principally from that absence of conventionality, which, certainly in many external things, is the prerogative of colonists.
In order to bear out one of the received theories regarding new-chums, namely, their utter want of frugality, we, some half-a-dozen young "gentlemen," who have come out in the cabin, go to put up at one of the leading hotels of the city.
A cheerful, amiable lady bids us welcome, with a heartiness as though she were only too glad to see us, although it would appear as if her hands were full enough of housework already, without the additional care of looking after a couple of helpless, unready new-chums.
Yet when we make some remarks, as new-chums will, about the apparent richness of the land down there, a settler, who sits behind, takes us up rather shortly. He appears to consider Mr. Lamb's estate as a positive offence. "Bone-dust and drainage!" he says with a snort of contempt.
The skipper of the Gemini notices the action, and grins sarcastically, while he tells a subordinate in a stage-whisper to "just look at them new-chums." English readers must not suppose from this that colonial manners are discourteous. Far from it. Colonials will not touch their hats, or use any form that appears to remind them of servility, flunkeyism, or inequalities of station.
What we see most of here is the light bush; dense thickets of shrubs, and smaller trees, resembling our remembrance of the denes and copses of England, or Epping and the New Forest. To us new-chums it seems absurd to call this bush "light," but we can see that it is so by comparison with the primeval forest, where the tree-trunks run from ten to forty feet in girth.
The whole station seemed to centre in these yards, and indeed they were of chief importance, and were the real reason for everything else being there. At first the mass of yards, races, pounds, wings, and gates seemed just like a maze to the new-chums, but they were soon to learn how perfectly everything about that rough strong stock-yard was arranged for the quick handling of cattle.
But don't you go planning to settle in one of those horrid little tin-roofed towns, Bobby, for I should simply hate it." "Certainly, ma'am," said Bob cheerfully. "We'll get out into the open. I can always run you about in an aeroplane, if you feel lonesome, provided we make enough money to buy one, that is. Only new-chums don't always make heaps of money, do they, Jim?"
Of new-chums, only artisans are absorbed into the city population as a rule; all others have to look to manual labour of some kind, and generally up-country, for a means of subsistence. All the clerks, counter-jumpers, secretaries, and so on, are either old colonials, or colonists' sons.
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