# Charleston: Its Rise and Decline/Chapter 26

Chapter XXVI.
CHARLESTON TO-DAY.
OF Charleston to-day, what can be said save that it is no longer Charleston but only a few scattered remnants of it, that scarce suffice to locate the sites of bygone busyness and gaiety?
It had its booming, heyday times; its times of meditation and regret; still, after all, “’tis better to have boomed and burst, than never to have boomed at all”; the boom-tide leaves so very much to look back upon and dream about “when to the sessions of sweet silent thought” we “summon up remembrance of things past.” Charleston is dead—yet, long live Charleston; as it ever does in many hearts and minds.
The Police Station still stands, also the Courthouse, now serving as the official garage. There are the State School, the Church of England and two cottages on Darkie’s Terrace Road; the Post Office; two cottages in Camp Street (Sections 145 and 354) and the European Hotel in Prince’s Street—these are now Charleston. There are three houses at Broomielaw, two up the Nile River near the Back Lead, one on Nile Farm, and two north of the river—these represent its suburbs. Lovable Charleston is lovelorn, forsaken.
A few stalwarts remain, buoyed with a hope that dies hard; they are of those who, everywhere and under all conditions, give fading faith “another go”; like “spotters” whose next drink is always going to be the last. No repining, no grousing about fate, no despondency.
Charleston lived to the full for a score of years; lived moderately for another score; and then gradually faded away; was once a land of promise and golden visions.
“But now the sounds of population fail,
No cheerful murmurs fluctuate in the gale;
No busy steps the grass-grown footway tread,
For all the blooming flush of life is fled.”
To-day it is but a name, a mark upon the map to indicate where once the town was; a waste of bramble, gorse, and tailings, affording few signs of previous occupation, and none of past prosperity and romance—like Nineveh, a desolation. A tourist highway has replaced the Buller Road and Camp Street; and motor cars and motor lorries have taken the place of the four-in-hands and covered waggons of earlier days. The drivers of these cars, like the coachies of old, tell strange tales to passengers; which although true, sound unbelievable and are disbelieved. They point to a bramble patch where, they declare, once stood a large hotel; to a larger patch and tell that it once bore a block of business premises; that in another gorse-clump stood a busy bank dealing in thousands of ounces of gold each week; point to the outline of some hardly distinguishable water-course from which they state came gold in bucketsful; to a brown flat where once thousands of miners toiled. Small wonder that such facts are received with doubting smiles; even those who knew the old place stone by stone find difficulty in locating once familiar resorts, even when able to penetrate the tangled growth that hides most of them from view.
Only one tangible proof of past history remains, the old European Hotel, which has defied the years and circumstances, and stands a lonely reminder of what was, and whose landlord, Mr. J. H. Powell, possesses quite a museum of relics, and delights in regaling passing sightseers with oral pictures of times that were.
The great batteries have long since ceased work, are silent for ever; their machinery but scrap; their giant water-wheels fallen and in decay; their miles upon miles of water-races dry and crumbling. Of the free and easy-going life of old Charleston much could be written, and of its people much more. Suffice it to say that they were such as we, their descendants, are; but may be a sturdier and more self-reliant race than we of this easier and more favoured age; a people ​that disregarded many conventions and recognised few social distinctions, noted for warm heartedness and hospitality—a true democracy.
A fitting tribute is given them by Richard Allan, who has for over thirty years been Police Officer-in-Charge at Charleston—from 1909. He recounts his arrival at Charleston with his wife and two children, after a 4½-hours’ journey from Westport in Bill Hanna’s coach, a trip which is now made in thirty minutes by motor car. One of his first impressions was the wonderful physique of the elderly miners, many still engaged in arduous work—samples of the pioneers, men of whom any country could be proud. He came to know these men and women intimately, and has seen them pass away, one by one. Taking the names of twenty of them, in sequence, from the register of deaths, he finds that the average age at death was about 78. Their names were: James Curle, 77; Daniel Sullivan, 78; Catherine Whelan, 85; William McIntosh, 79; Max Knudson, 81; Elizabeth Foley, 75; Samuel McClatchie, 72; Patrick Fleming, 79; J. B. McAffe, 80; Bernard Shepherd (of accident), 72; Mary Smith, 80; Daniel Shine, 74; Alex. Peters, 72; William Henry, 78; Bridget Dwyer, 74; Patrick Dwyer, 77; Johanna Sutherland, 70; Alfred Leggatt, 82; Job Gregory, 88; Nicholas Sweeney, 85. He pays a well-deserved eulogy to Charleston’s people: “I have now,” he writes, “completed 31½ years’ service as Police Officer-inCharge at Charleston, and the integrity of the old pioneers and their offspring is proved beyond all doubt by the fact that, during the whole of my service here, I have never had to arrest one of them for any offence.”
Little more regarding the old town can be put into words, though memory retains many pictures. One may sit at eve, while the setting sun lightens up the snow-clad Paparoas and casts tinted gleams over old Darkie’s Terrace with its long Back Lead and over the tailing-covered brambly pakihi that once was Charleston; one can sit and muse upon the mutability of man’s schemes and efforts. The wilderness was brought to life and flourished, but is again a wilderness. Yet, as we old ones sit and muse, our minds’ eyes see many familiar scenes of long past; see shades of men and women ​again parading the busy streets; of young folk meeting and linking arms—we who then were young can see and live it all again. We hear voices that tell of life as it was; of love, and sorrow, hear voices lifted in song, or tinged with regret—voices that many of us would give our all to in reality hear again, and, in faith, believe that we shall hear again—some day.
Te Mutunga.