After he had been employed in the workshops for about a year, news came that rich goldfields had been discovered on the West Coast of New Zealand. An uncle of his wrote to him from the West Coast, and urged him to come, stating that the New Zealand climate was much better than that of Victoria, and the life of the colonists was freer, brighter, and happier.
Nothing would suit him but to leave his employment at the workshops and go to the new fields, to see if they would be kinder to him than those he had believed would be his making.
He left Melbourne in the “Alhambra,” and arrived at Hokitika, on the West Coast of the South Island of New Zealand, in 1866.
He found that life on the New Zealand goldfields was not a bit less picturesque than life in Victoria. It had the advantage of a more vigorous climate. Apparently, the diggers, on the whole, were as fine a set of men as could be found in any part of the world. That was the opinion formed by Mr. Seddon at the time, and the more he saw of the diggers the more he liked them and their rough-and-ready but manly ways. It may be said that there was none more rough-and-ready than he, and none more manly. As shown in other chapters of this book, he lost no opportunity to disabuse the public mind in respect to the class of men who toiled on New Zealand’s goldfields. In Parliament, on the platform, and in private life, he declared that they were good citizens, and he saw no reason why they should not have the same status in the community as that of any other class.
In the pages of Hansard, and in New Zealand newspapers, he has often recorded his opinion of the West Coast miners. “At Hokitika,” he said on one occasion, “I came into contact with a body of men who, physically and morally, were unsurpassed as men, and who were the pick of the world. They needed great physique to stand the hardships and privations of life in those early days on the Coast. Mentally they stood out as men who not only had an adventurous nature, but also followed the craving to get away from the Old World environment. They wanted something new, and they went where they could find it. We had miners from Otago, Australia, and
