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Legends of Wattie Thompson

By TOM ISERN

© Plains Folk

The man they called "the last gold miner" of Central Otago, New Zealand, who perished in the Mount Erebus crash in Antarctica in 1979, the legendary Wattie Thompson - he reminds me of so many country characters from my own Great Plains. Stories stuck to him. It seems everyone in the district has one to tell.

Local histories tell how Wattie, returning from service in the Second World War, built himself a poured-concrete hut on Camp Creek, a tributary of the Lindis River, and there began working old gold diggings of the 1860s. Later he shifted down to Bendigo Gully, and after that he worked near Luggatte, where he was a pool-playing regular at the pub. The histories record his tragic death in the Mount Erebus crash as the punctuation of a curious life - "Legends grew around him," writes the affectionate historian, Dawn Davidson.

The stories that come by word of mouth, though, are the best and most vivid. In the first place, when you ask someone about Wattie, the immediate response is either a bemused and happy "Ohhh!" or else a belly laugh. People tell about his irascible moments, like when he threw the radio out the window because he didn't like the news, or when he threw a pair of shears at a fellow shearer who angered him, or when he and his brother fell out over the division of gold they had found, wrestled a while, and finally just threw the gold back in the river.

The best stories we heard came from Claire and Ross Mackay, long-time proprietors of the apiary, Lindis Honey, who got to know Wattie, described by others as a hermit, rather well. Ross explains that Wattie had a veteran's benefit, which he lived on, modestly, but was not disabled. In fact, "He was an amazing walker. He had a long stride and he covered a tremendous amount of country." Claire adds that he also had an amazing face: "I always wanted to sketch him, but I never quite had the courage to. His face was like a wrinkled map, because he was always in the sun."

He often said he had no use for money. According to the stories Ross heard, Wattie worked for local farmers, and he had a dozen or 15 checks for wages tacked up on the walls of his hut - never cashed. He was shy around women, but he liked the young ladies who served in succession as postmistress in the village of Tarras, where he picked up his pension checks. At least three of them, Ross says, he gave enough gold to make a wedding ring.

Then there's the story of how Wattie converted to Christianity (although he never could pronounce "Ecclesiastes"). Ross says, "One night when he lived up the Lindis, he had a very vivid dream that he sat on a cliff looking down into Hades, and he heard all the terrible noises coming from Hades." The next day Wattie strode into town and bought a Bible. After that some Jehovah's Witnesses came by and converted him, and after that he bought a sandwich board, painted a message on it (with misspellings, but something like "Repent and Believe in the Sabbath"), and walked the whole length of the country, south to north, except for taking the ferry across Cook's Strait.

Wattie never struck it rich, probably didn't care if he did. A flood washed out his most promising diggings on Bendigo Gully. The stories left behind, though, are as rich as any treasure ever mined from the fields of Central Otago.

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