My guess is that the first Sullivan house was built about the same time or after the Williams cottage and that in the intervening years the boys, like the roadmen of the time, may have lived in more simple abodes while they began to get their land into shape.
In any case once the first Sullivan dwelling was built it would have been unseemly at the time for unmarried men to offer accommodation to female visitors even if there had been room which is why visitors to the area stayed with the only married couple, namely Fred and Julia Williams. However when Mick Sullivan’s house was built following his marriage, he and Agnes also provided accommodation when the need arose.
By 1911 all the Sullivans had left Gillespie’s Beach including the parents who retired to Hokitika to live and the girls who by then had married.
On 26 January 1912 the Grey River Argus reported six transfers by the Westland Land Board of big blocks of land from Mrs Ryan & Sons, Gillespie’s Beach, through the agent, W. Duncan, to Fred Williams, Henry Williams, Michael Sullivan, John Sullivan and a Sullivan Jnr. Also the transfer of a pastoral license to Lawrence Sullivan Jnr and others. Although the Ryan holdings had first been advertised in 1903 presumably they had not been readily sold. These purchases resulted in the criss-crossed pattern of ownership at Fox Glacier by the Williams and Sullivan families which continues to this day and which has probably made farming more difficult than when holdings abut each other to form one large area.
When interviewed in 1959, Mick Sullivan (1st generation) said that that the Sullivan boys and Fred Williams decided, when Mr Edward Ryan died, to approach his son, Morris, to buy the land which they eventually did using borrowed money. Fred was reported, in Dr Otley’s account, as borrowing money from the owner of Mandall’s brewery in Hokitika. If this is correct it is noteworthy that purveyors of liquor including the Ryan ownership of one of the Gillespie’s
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