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Henry Lawson Among Maoris
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tion is quite well known, as also is the fact that he wrote verse. Evidently too he was fond of sport but I have come across no reminiscences of him and there are no records of him in the district.… I have been told that Mrs Lawson was here and a child was born in the district but this information is by no means reliable.25
Harry Jacob was the adopted son of Ratima's second marriage, and was not taught by Lawson. His son was unable to give me more information than that he had heard his mother say that Lawson taught at the school. Mary Jacob I am told, died years ago, though I have not been able to trace the entry of her death; (as Mary Josephine Poharama Waruhe) died in Kaikoura Public Hospital in 1945, her age given as 70. Ratima had died in 1929 in the same hospital, as Ratima Ihaia Waruhe, aged 77. Maraia Poharama (Mrs Harry Jacob) died of tuberculosis in 1939. I have not found any surviving ex-pupils besides Mrs Walsh.
1993 footnote: The teacher's residence was vacant when I visited it in 1970, standing in waist-high cocksfoot. The residence had been considerably altered and expanded since Lawson's day, and was last occupied by a family of milk suppliers. Two or three years later I learned from a member of the Kaikoura Historical Society that it had been used as a refuge by surfies from the neighbouring Hapuku beach and vandalised and burned down. In the late 1970's the area was visited by the Australian historian Manning Clark, for whom I provided a sketch map. I do not know it he left any record of his visit.