1917: Don Buck’s Gumdigger Camp Scrapped
July 26, 2019
By AHNZ
August 5th, 1917: The notorious four-year era of West Auckland’s drunken fronter camp died with the man it was named after: Don Buck.
Both of these images show the foot of Don Buck Hill, start of Don Buck Road, bridge over Don Buck Creek; 1978 and now. Not a great deal of change over these past 40 years. The same cornerstone monument has been moved back a bit.
Everyone called him Don Buck but his real name was Francisco R. Figuero, a flamboyant Portuguese Kiwi who set up a ‘camp’ around abouts this spot. The archaeology could be very interesting. In Buck’s time the likes of Mr Swanson and Mr Henderson had felled the great forests and the mucky wasteland was prospected to extract kauri resin for Auckland’s great gum boom. Next, these parts became farms and vineyards. In the 1970s and once again today it is housing subdivisions that are being planted like it’s going out of fashion.
Buck was a failure at business until he negotiated a sweetheart deal with city magistrates to sentence criminals to being a free labour force for himself as an alternative to prison. Court reports are full of such sentences and the inevitable boozing and violence followed, centred on Buck’s Gumdiggers Camp like some government scheme gone wrong.ยน
No local celebrity, no fondly remembered neighbour, Buck died unnoticed as poor man. His modern celebricy is post hoc romanticisation, so is his flash new headstone at Waikumete Cemetery. His name became a landmark for the hill, stream, the corner, the school, and road so we want to believe he was some kind of great Founding Westy.
As of now the site is a decent enough summertime playground but too wet for winter. Here there is a monument to Don Buck. It has one of the few geocatches I’ve actually been able to find. The bridge is one of the regular first places to look for West Auckland Police seeking crooks or dead bodies. The stream becomes navigable about 30m downstream (unless you’re a seal in which case you can apparently make it all the way up to Ranui.)
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1 But I repeat myself
Image ref. The great J.T Diamond’s photo from 1978; Auckland Libraries JTD-14A-05067-2; Digital NZ
Image ref. Don Buck Corner today; AHNZ Files, July 2018
image ref. Buck’s flash new revisionist history grave; Find A Grave
Image. ref. Photo of Buck published by Anthony Flude; http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~tonyf/donbuck.html; Wayback Machine
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