Page:Tales-of-Banks-Peninsula Jacobson 2ed 1893 cropped.pdf/217

There have been few casualties in the Bay. In the very early days a boat belonging to Mr John Roberts was capsized, and two men drowned. A boat, also, coming from Le Bon’s was lost, and two men met their fate. Those who have passed through Little Okain’s in late years may have noticed the wreck of a small vessel lying half buried in the sand. She has now been completely broken up. Her name was the Sea-devil, and she once belonged to Mr. Thacker. Soon after he sold her she was driven ashore during a gale, and became a total wreck.

Messrs. Moore, Sefton, Gilbert, and others were also very early settlers in Okain’s. They took up land on the same principle as Messrs. Webb, Mason, Fleuty, and Harley, three or four of them buying up a fifty-acre section and going into partnership.

As the bush was cut down fires became frequent, and a great deal of damage was done at times. The great fire which started in Pigeon Bay about five and twenty years ago, spread to Okain’s. The fire lasted for a long time, and for weeks the sky was scarcely seen through the thick volumes of smoke. There have been several bush fires started in Okain’s, but none as bad as this one. The summer had been a dry one, and the wind was favorable to its spreading. The whole Peninsula was ablaze, and after it had died out many wild pigs were found burnt to death. The native birds, besides, were never so plentiful afterwards as they were before the fire.

As in Le Bon’s, the creek swarmed with eels of a great size, and in the bush, pigeons and kakas were plentiful. It was no difficult thing for a man with a gun to live in the bush in those days.

About three years after they came, Messrs. Mason and Fleuty commenced dairying, their old partners, Messrs. Webb and Harley, having left them and sold out their interest in the property. Messrs. Ware and Thacker soon started other dairies, and year