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Anyone who has stopped at the rest area along State Highway 6 where Lyell once stood will have read the information board about Bridget Goodwin, or ‘‘Biddy of the Buller’’ as she was known.
Undeniably this once-thriving gold mining town’s most famous resident, Biddy was defined by two things – her diminutive stature and ‘‘questionable’’ morality.
Exactly four feet nothing (1.22 metres) in height, and weighing only seven stone (45 kilograms), she shocked the rough but still essentially Victorian standards of the goldfield by living and working with two men at the same time. These men she referred to as only her first or second mate, and she was married to neither.
She didn’t see the slightest thing wrong with her romantic arrangement, a menage a trois, and she didn’t give a damn what anyone thought or said about them all either.
She loved both of her men, although many suspected that one was her clear favourite. Not hurting anyone, toiling away at their claim and not preaching any immorality, the trio came to be highly respected.
They worked hard, always up to their waists in water with a shovel, and in all weathers. And the way they alleviated their wearisome lives became just as predictable.
Whenever they earned enough gold from their claim, they would go to the store and trade it not only for supplies, but also enough whiskey to get them all rolling drunk for several days. They would live it up to the very last drop, leaving them utterly broke again. Sobering up, they would get back to work and save up for the next splurge.
It all worked well while they were healthy. But Biddy’s first and favourite mate took ill with an undiagnosed complaint some time in the 1880s. She took him to hospital in Quartzopolis (now Reefton), where he eventually died and was buried.
It is said that the little woman wept sorely at losing her companion, and in later years the memory of him and all his kindness to her would often bring tears to her washed-out blue eyes.
Her second mate, ‘‘Old Bill’’, didn’t last much longer. When he fell sick a couple of years later, he stopped helping Biddy altogether. In her words: ‘‘He just took to loafing around.’’
So Biddy had to fossick for the gold herself, buy tucker and hump it on her back to their little hut situated just downstream from Iron Bridge. She looked after Bill until he got worse, then took him to the little hospital at Quartzopolis, where he too died. ‘‘I wasn’t sorry a bit . . . for I felt my days were numbered,’’ she was recorded as saying later.
Some time around when she turned 80, Biddy gave up her hut and settled into a cottage in Reefton, and was admitted to the hospital on two occasions for unrecorded conditions.
Old Biddy, as she became known in her older years, died peacefully on October 19, 1899, aged 86, and is buried in the Reefton cemetery.
By then, she had become an Anglican, no doubt encouraged by the practicalities of being supported by the social services associated with that church in the town. Her loyalty, generosity and wry humour earned her many friends, particularly amongst the ladies of the parish, who regularly visited her.
No-one would ever think of arriving empty-handed, and Biddy used the opportunity to procure the strongest tobacco, which she smoked in a pipe until the very end. From the time she woke up in the morning until she went to bed, the pipe stayed firmly in her mouth. The only time she ever removed it was when the vicar visited, in which case she would slip it under her cushion.
Many of the details and sentiments of Biddy’s life would have been forgotten had it not been for Reefton writer William Henry Scott Hindmarsh (a distant relative of mine), who only ever wrote under the pseudonym ‘‘Waratah’’.
Much of his account of Biddy came from an unnamed church member he refers to only as Biddy’s ‘‘lady confessor and tobacco conspirator’’. To this trusted confidante, Biddy revealed her whole life, although it must be said that the word ‘‘confessor’’ was entirely Hindmarsh’s – Biddy to her last days was utterly convinced that she had no sins to confess.
Biddy came from Ireland, although which county and even which village totally escaped her in later life. She left her country of birth in the massive wave of Irish emigration of the mid-1800s, and ended up in Australia, where she found herself in Bendigo looking for gold.
One scene she never forgot was the morning after a storm which had raged all night and uprooted a huge tree – seeing nuggets of gold hanging off the roots and a huge crowd of men, women and children frantically panning the ground all around. Biddy got gold fever real bad after that.
She met her two men, both miners, in Ballarat, and came out to New Zealand with them, landing at Nelson some time in the early 1880s. The worked-over Collingwood goldfields proved a disappointment for them, and they trudged with their swags over the hills to Tadmor, eventually making the headwaters of the Buller River.
From there, they systematically worked their way downriver, fossicking every stream bed and tributary down to Murchison and Inangahua Junction. It was no easy life, but together they worked like a well-oiled dredging machine, with Biddy always at the helm, organising them. Eventually, they settled in a one-room hut immediately downstream from where Iron Bridge crosses the Buller.
When her second mate Bill died, Biddy was half relieved. Her body was worn out, and she barely had the strength to look after herself. She was encouraged to admit herself to Reefton Hospital, but opted instead for a two-bedroom cottage whose rent was guaranteed by a church benevolent society.
On the occasion of Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee in 1897, Biddy was visited by numerous ladies of the parish. The first brought a half-bottle of the finest port – for her pantry, with strict instructions to not partake of more than two teaspoons a day. An hour later, a second kindly parishioner dropped off a wee ‘‘drap’’ of Scotch, of which Biddy was particularly fond. When they all left, she consumed the lot.
Later that afternoon, the vicar called by unexpectedly on his bike and did his usual bit for her, chopping her some wood out front before inquiring inside as to how she was. Finding Biddy sprawled out and looking comatose, he presumed she was in the final stages of passing.
Jumping on his bike, he quickly fetched the town doctor – who, after a quick examination, roared with laughter, pronouncing her nothing more than ‘‘dead drunk’’. The vicar promptly delivered strict instructions to his parishioners – no more alcohol for Biddy, no matter how small the quantity.
It was another two years before Biddy did finally pass away. The little lady gold miner of the Buller was laid to rest in the quiet new Reefton cemetery, one of the first to be interred there. The church register simply reads:
No 126
Bridget Goodwin
Died 19-10-99
Buried 20-10-99
Age 86
May she be remembered for the true way she lived her life, unfettered by Victorian standards. Hers was not an easy life, but she bucked the system and lived how she thought was right, not hurting anyone.
RIP Bridget Goodwin – you remain one of our inspiring historical characters.