repel. Members of Council should be reminded they are public property and it is in the public welfare that I write.” (Note: Closure of this port at this time would affect supplies to Gillespie’s.)
An editorial in the West Coast Times on 5.1.1875 highlighted the lack of personal hygiene on the Coast. “It is much to be feared that it must be said that the quantity of water used in outward ablution and in alliance with soap is, considering the respective surfaces to which it is applied, sadly disproportionate to the quantity taken in alliance with whisky for the stomach’s sake, so we must consider ourselves to be a good drinking and dirty community in the absence of social provision for the free personal use of that which contributes so essentially to the good sanitary condition of the population. We possess elaborate schemes for the introduction of water for the purpose of sluicing the soil but are prone to forget how much the human system may also be benefited by periodic sluicing assisted by soap.”
1875 - 12 October - Grey River Argus advised that Gillespie’s Beach has now quite a busy appearance. They quote from the correspondent of the West Coast Times.
“There are about eleven extended claims taken up and most of the shareholders in the different claims are busy stripping and otherwise preparing to test the lead north and south of the prospecting claim. Opening out one of these claims is no holiday task as no paddock can be bottomed or properly tested without a water-wheel and pumping gear, in fact it will take at least 3 months to prove whether this is a properly defined lead of gold and where it runs in length along the beach.”
1877 - In September the West Coast Times reported that there were 5328 European and 817 Chinese miners working in Westland. Australian pastoralists brought indentured Chinese to work for them and many began to drift across to the goldfields from 1866 onwards. Census of 1880 show 1260 Chinese in Westland but restrictive
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