James Adam could be seen as the ideal Otago colonist. Born in Aberdeen in 1823 he was a lowland Scot, a staunch member of the Free Church, and someone of modest means who was very successful as a farming settler in Otago. He was subsequently chosen to represent Otago as an emigrant recruiter in Scotland in the 1850s and again in the 1870s. Basically he was told to go and get more people like himself and that is what he did, recruiting thousands of lowland Scots farmers and their families to come to Otago.
One of the notable things about Adam and other successful colonists was their attitude. While many of the first arrivals were disconcerted by the conditions they faced – especially the lack of preparations on the ground in Dunedin for the very first arrivals in 1848 – Adam was full of optimism and enthusiasm. We have, for instance, his own account of building his first primitive house in central Dunedin in 1848 – on the site now occupied by the Southern Cross Hotel–Dunedin Casino.
‘On my ground in Princes street there was a clump of mapau trees, but before cutting them for the ground plan of the house – trees which coincided with this line I left standing, merely cutting off the tops; and those which were out of the line were cut down and put in line by digging holes. By this plan the walls were made strong in one day. The natives then put small wands or wattles across the uprights about 123 inches apart, fastening them firmly with strips of flax, and over all they had laced the long grass to the wattles and did the same to the roof, and at the end of four days my house was habitable ….’
He then went and got his family from the boat and brought them into this little colonial ‘palace’. Looking back 25 years later he wrote this memoir of that first night in their own home in Dunedin:
‘The entrance was through a leafy archway from Princes Street, and at the first sight of the rustic cottage a cry of joy burst from my little girl in my arms, and from the rest of my family. Here was a sweet reward for all my labour and toil, for I was anxious that their first impressions should be favourable. Tea, the never-failing beverage in the bush, was proposed. A fire was kindled outside, and the kettle hung upon a triangle of poles, while the frying-pan was doing duty lower down. That was the finest repast I ever had. The cottage, apparently in the centre of an impenetrable bush, the shades of evening closing over us, the gipsy encampment around the fire, the happy countenances of loved ones, the light and shade – turned a plain cup of tea into a delightful picnic not easily effaced from the memory.’
James Adam died at his farm ‘Bon Accord’ near Milton in 1908, aged 86.
James Adam