The Web Site, ‘Ghosts and other Haunts, New Zealand’ manages to find a P*RR*TT and describes him thus:
“Totaranui. Another hut with an eerie sense of history can still be found in Awaroa. “Runaway sailor” Jimmy Perrott died more than 70 years ago but his presence lives on in his tumbledown cottage at Silver Point. Visitors to the tiny two roomed hut can’t help feeling they are the uninvited guests of a man
who lived a remarkable life.
Born in England, Perrott ran away to sea at the age of nine and, jumped ship at 14 in Nelson, where he hid out among the Maori at Cable Bay. He was a gold miner at Collingwood and Wakamarina, and worked as a flax cutter and hop drier before marrying a Ngatirahiro woman and having a child, both of whom died. He spoke fluent Maori and knew the legends of the area including the tale of the goblin who terrified Maori in the Canaan area with a fearful rumbling noise. Perrott’s legacy is the avenue of plane and macrocarpa trees he and Hanna Gibbs planted in 1856 in Totaranui.”
