“Would you like to break bread with us tomorrow?” Mr. Brunton asked.
Florence did not know what to say. She had heard that a person should publicly acknowledge that Christ was his or her Savior and be baptized before taking communion, something Florence had never done.
“But,” she stammered, “how could I? Aren’t I supposed to be baptized first?”
Mr. Brunton smiled. “You do love the Lord, don’t you?” he asked.
As she thought about his question, a surge of confidence flooded through Florence. “Yes, I do,” she replied.
“Then wouldn’t you like to meet with us at His table?”
“Yes, I would, if I may,” Florence said.
The following morning Florence went to the morning service with Emily and took communion. She felt a new freedom like she had never experienced before. A week later Mr. Brunton baptized Florence.
Florence’s eighteenth birthday soon rolled around, and her father arrived with a beautifully bound copy of Bagster’s Bible for a birthday gift. Florence knew she would treasure it for the rest of her life.
It took six weeks to pack up the Deck home. When the job was done, Florence knew it was time to head home again. Spring had settled over the countryside, and lambing season was in full swing. At the end of October, Florence boarded the three-hundred-ton steamer Wanganui for the trip to Bluff. The steamer left on Wednesday morning and would arrive in Bluff at daybreak the next morning—that is, if everything went according to schedule, which it did not.
The trip started out normally enough. The Wanganui was filled with more than one hundred passengers, including many poor Scottish people hoping to make a living off the rugged New Zealand landscape. Florence had bought herself a berth in the ladies’ cabin, which she shared with seven other women and a stewardess. Those passengers who did not have berths slept on the benches and tables in the saloon. But as it turned out, no one slept at all that night.
A furious gale blew up as the ship headed south. The Wanganui pitched and rolled in the churning sea, making most on board sick. When the vessel rounded Cape Saunders, the gale became so fierce that the ship was forced to seek shelter behind a reef lest it be swamped by the roiling waves. It took two anchors to hold the ship in place against the onslaught. The time of their arrival in Bluff came and went, and they were still stuck in the storm. After another day and night, the ship was still huddled behind the reef. By now all the food supplies on board had been used up, and the captain was worried. He had used up so much coal fighting against the storm that he did not have enough fuel to return to Dunedin and wait out the storm in the confines of the harbor there. All they could do was stay at anchor behind the reef and hope and pray that the storm would abate soon.
The next day one of the anchor chains holding the Wanganui snapped, and the vessel began to drift precariously close to the rocky reef. The captain did his best to keep the ship afloat and off the rocks, but the storm still howled.
Finally, the following day, the winds began to abate, and the Wanganui was able to resume its journey to Bluff. But the going was still slow, and they did not reach Bluff until Sunday morning. The voyage had turned into a four-day nightmare, and Florence was very relieved to once again have her feet on dry land.
Arthur was waiting with a covered wagon to meet his sister in Bluff. He explained to Florence that the weather was now so beautiful that he had decided they should make a camping expedition of their journey back to Erme Dale. Florence was delighted, and they set off along the coast.
They set a leisurely pace, and it took them three days to get to Erme Dale. While Florence had been in Dunedin helping Emily pack, her parents and Emily’s two younger children had moved back into the house at Erme Dale, and Horace, Ernest, and Constance, who had returned from boarding school, had moved into the house at Otapiri. Mrs. Young was pleased to see her daughter again. She had been looking after her husband, who was ill with the flu. Within a couple of days of Florence’s return, Mr. Young started feeling better.
No sooner had Mr. Young recovered than an urgent message arrived from Otapiri. Horace was dangerously ill with pneumonia and wanted his mother and Florence to come at once to look after him.
Mr. Young agreed to look after Emily’s two younger children, and the women left that evening. Arthur drove them through the night in the covered wagon to Invercargill, where Florence and her mother arrived in time to catch the morning train to Winton. There they hired horses and rode the rest of the way to Otapiri. During the trip Florence was concerned about her mother, who had never been a strong person. The lack of comfort and sleep made her mother seem especially fragile.
Ernest and Connie were relieved when the two travelers finally arrived. Horace was very ill. A doctor from Invercargill had made two visits and had just pronounced that Horace must be moved into town, where he could be attended to every day.
There was no road at Otapiri, and since Horace was too ill to mount a horse and ride, he had to be carried over the hills on a stretcher. It was the longest thirteen miles Florence had ever walked. The weather turned cold on the first night, and they stopped at the home of a neighboring farmer. Snow fell heavily during the night, and they were totally snowed in. It was three days before they were able to get on their way again.
When they arrived in Invercargill, the family rented rooms in a boardinghouse. Horace’s room was the only one with a fireplace in it, and everyone huddled together around the fire for fear that they too might catch pneumonia from the cold. Florence’s mother did come down with the illness. Mr. Young arrived from Erme Dale with Emily’s two children to visit just before the doctor pronounced his diagnosis.
It was just after eight o’clock in the evening when the doctor left the boardinghouse. After he had gone, Mr. Young took Florence aside. “The doctor has spoken privately with me,” he began. “He says that your mother does not have the strength to fight the disease and that she probably won’t live till morning.”
Florence stared at her father. She heard the words he said, but she could not believe them. She and her mother had come to nurse Horace. If anyone was near death, it was he, not her mother!
Mrs. Young had been ill many times before, and Florence was convinced that she would make a slow recovery as she always had. However, she did not. Florence’s mother died two hours later.
Florence stared into the lifeless face of her mother. She could hardly think about what had happened, much less what to do next. A quiet family funeral followed three days later. Horace did not attend, as he hovered between life and death himself.
Following the funeral Florence returned to nursing her brother. It was a lonely vigil without her mother at her side. Two doctors confirmed that Horace was indeed dying. But this time the doctors’ predictions proved incorrect. Horace began to make a slow recovery, and six weeks later he returned with the rest of the family to Erme Dale.
Florence found that the house at Erme Dale was now filled with sad memories for her. It was difficult for her to imagine a bright and happy future without her mother around. She grew depressed and became even more so when a year later Emily and John Deck arrived back in Invercargill. While in England Emily had given birth to a fifth baby, a son whom they named Northcote. With their return, Florence knew it was time for her sister’s family to be reunited. But she had grown to love her two little charges and hated to see them move back into town to be with their parents. Constance left Erme Dale at the same time to finish her education in England, and Mr. Young moved to Invercargill to pursue a business scheme. With Horace and Ernest now back at Otapiri, only Florence and Arthur were left at Erme Dale. And when Arthur was away visiting the far reaches of the farm, Florence found herself alone at Erme Dale for up to two weeks at a time.
For any nineteen-year-old girl this would be a lonely existence, but for Florence, who was still trying to recover from the death of her mother, it was almost intolerable. And when she learned that Emily, John, and their five children were moving to Sydney, Australia, she could hardly bear to think about it. One thing, however, managed to turn Florence’s attention from her own loneliness: rabbits, hundreds of thousands of them, perhaps even millions. Rabbits were not native to New Zealand. Early English settlers who thought it would be nice to go rabbit hunting had introduced them into the country. Regrettably, they did not realize until too late that the rabbits had no natural enemies in New Zealand, as they did in England. As a result the rabbit population in New Zealand was soon wildly out of control. Rabbits grazed on the grass, the same grass that was meant to feed cows and sheep. Often they came through like locusts, eating every blade of grass and causing erosion on the hillsides.
Florence watched in frustration as her brothers tried everything that they could think of to rid their farms of the pest. They poisoned the rabbits, shot them, and made traps for them, but nothing seemed to have an impact on the rabbit population.
Like many other homesteaders, Florence’s father and brothers had no option in the end but to send their livestock away to be slaughtered and walk off the land. With all the grass gone, there was no point in staying at the farms.
A family conference was held in Invercargill, and it was decided that both Erme Dale and Otapiri should be sold and that Florence, her father, and her three brothers should all emigrate to Australia once again.
Florence hoped it was the right move. She was tired of living in different countries, but she was cheered by the idea of being on the same continent as Emily and John and the children.
In 1878 Florence moved to Invercargill while Arthur and Horace went on ahead in search of a suitable investment in Australia. She eagerly awaited each letter her brothers wrote and followed their journey through New South Wales and Queensland. They had been gone just over a year when Arthur wrote to say that they had bought land near Bundaberg, about two hundred miles north of Brisbane in Queensland. It was ideal land for growing sugarcane, which was a very profitable crop.
Florence was relieved to know where she was finally going to settle in Australia. However, her father had some business to attend to in England, and so in early 1880 he and Florence and Ernest set out for England together. They traveled aboard the liner Deccan. On the way, the ship docked in Bombay, India, for seven days. Florence was excited about the stop. All her life she had heard her father’s stories about his childhood in India and his years as a judge. Now, finally, she got to explore her father’s old haunts.
They started by visiting the Hill Station of Matheran, where Florence and Ernest borrowed horses and galloped around the trails. Then they went to Kar-li Caves on the Bhor Ghauts and to Khandala, to the spot where Mr. Young had shot his first tiger.
By the time Florence reboarded the Deccan, she felt she understood her father’s past a lot better.
The ship sailed on and reached Plymouth, England, in May 1880. Constance was waiting at the dock for them. Florence was thrilled. It had been over three years since Florence had seen her younger sister, and the two of them had a lot of catching up to do.
Florence was not sure how long they would be staying in England, so she made the most of every opportunity to sightsee and visit old friends. She accompanied her father to Edinburgh, where they ordered machinery for the sugar plantation. Then in the autumn Ernest, Florence, and their father went on a tour of France and Italy.
During the summer of 1881, both Florence and her father became ill with typhoid. After a week of raging fever, Florence began a slow recovery. Her father, though, became more ill and dehydrated and died of the disease on October 14, four days after Florence turned twenty-five and he had turned seventy-eight. Florence was well enough to attend the funeral and watch as her father was laid to rest in Cookham Churchyard. She could scarcely believe that both her parents were now gone, and she was thankful for the wonderful times she had had with her father on this trip.
