PYKE, VINCENT (1827-94) was born in Somersetshire and came to South Australia in 1851. At Adelaide he learned of the discovery of gold in Victoria, and he tramped from Adelaide to the nearest diggings, at Mount Alexander. At Forest Creek and Fryer's Creek, Bendigo, he spent the next two years mining with varying success. In 1853 Pyke opened a store at Forest Creek. He was a staunch supporter of miners' rights, and exercised considerable influence amongst the miners. He was selected to lay before the governor (Sir Charles Hotham) their objections to the exorbitant license fees that they had to pay, and suggestions for the amendment of the mining regulations. When the police, on mere suspicion of sly grogselling, burned down a store at Forest Creek, Pyke curbed the fury of the people and persuaded them to seek redress constitutionally. He was one of the promoters of the railway from Castlemaine to Melbourne.

In 1855, when the goldfields were permitted to send eight representatives to the partially elective Legislative Council, the miners insisted on nominating Pyke. In that Council he presented a petition with 800 signatures in favour of the ballot. The fight on this point was a memorable one. The Government, still appointed by the crown, resisted the ballot stubbornly. Eventually it was carried by the help of the miners' representatives. Stawell, the Attorney-general, refused to draw the bill, and a meeting of supporters of the ballot called upon H. S. Chapman (q.v.) to draft it. In a letter to the Otago Daily Times Pyke claimed that Chapman was the author of the Australian ballot system, but he himself was one of its active originators. In 1856 he was again elected for the Castlemaine Boroughs under the new system. In 1857 he was appointed emigration agent to proceed to England, with the Hon Hugh Erskine Childers, on behalf of the Colony. While there, at the request of the Ballot society, he delivered lectures in favour of the new system of voting. Returning to Victoria at the end of 1858, he was appointed warden and police magistrate at Sandhurst.

Eighteen months later a public meeting demanded that he should re-enter politics, and subscribed £500 for his expenses. Pyke resigned his post and was duly elected for Castlemaine Boroughs. Towards the end of 1859 he joined the Nicholson ministry as commissioner of trade and customs, and a year later he became president of the board of lands and works and commissioner of lands and surveys. Having charge of the administration of the goldfields, he was responsible for sending out several expeditions, under Alfred Howitt and others, which opened up new fields in Gippsland. In the third Parliament Pyke was elected for Castlemaine (1861), which returned him altogether seven times. The goldfields of Otago (1861) attracted from Australia to New Zealand a coterie of men who had made their mark in the parliamentary life of Victoria—Chapman, Wilson Gray, James Mackintosh and Pyke. (Chapman, Mackintosh and Pyke remained for life executive councillors of Victoria.) While still in the Victorian Parliament Pyke paid a health visit to New Zealand in 1862 and inspected the goldfields. He was invited by the provincial government to apply his experience to the organisation of a goldfields department. On 23 Dec 1862 he was gazetted secretary for the goldfields. In the five years during which he held that office Pyke drafted very carefully, and amended from time to time, the necessary regulations; and drafted the acts for the Provincial Council. The office was abolished in 1867 owing to the General Government asserting its right to control the fields. In the following year was held a conference of delegates appointed by the provincial government and local interests of the mining population. Pyke was chairman. The result was an amended code which provided for the new methods of mining. In Victoria Pyke was the author of a mining companies act, which was afterwards used in framing New Zealand legislation. Appointed warden and resident magistrate at the Dunstan, he at first had his home in Clyde, but later moved to Lawrence.

In Aug 1873, after a stiff contest with four other candidates, Pyke was elected M.H.R. for Wakatipu. This district (afterwards extended to Dunstan) he represented until 1890, when he contested Mount Ida against M. J. S. Mackenzie and was defeated. He was a staunch advocate of Central Otago. He was first chairman of the Vincent county council, which was named after him. He foresaw a great fruit industry when the district was irrigated from the Clutha. He proposed a railway to Dunedin, and in 1876 carried an empowering bill. Three years later he turned the first sod, but it was a slow movement. In 1887 he brought in a bill to allow a syndicate to carry out the work, but it was thrown out. Next year he proposed that it be constructed out of land revenues, but the Legislative Council rejected it. In 1889 he piloted Sir Harry Atkinson over the route, but he did not see the fulfilment of his schemes. Pyke was the first chairman of Vincent county council (1877-82). He returned to Parliament for Tuapeka in 1893. His outside interests were active and varied. He took part in the exploration for a pass between the lakes and the west coast of Otago, by way of the Hollyford river. He was a keen volunteer, and held a captain's commission. As a freemason he was grand master for Otago under the Scottish Constitution. A strong churchman, he was lay reader at Clyde until a vicar was obtained. He was an accomplished elocutionist and an entertaining lecturer; but his real profession was journalism. He started the Southern Mercury in Dunedin (1874) to advocate the popular cause, and contributed to it a humorous column signed 'Timon.' A year or two later he gave up control of the Mercury and edited the Guardian for a short term. He was proprietor and editor of one of the publications known as Dunedin Punch. He published handbooks on Otago (1868) and the New Zealand land laws (1893), and in 1887 brought out his History of the Early Gold Discoveries in Otago. Pyke did his best literary work as a novelist. His best-known stories, Wild Will Enderby (1873) and The Adventures of George Washington Pratt (1874), are full of colonial colour and are well conceived and written. Both were published in Dunedin. In 1884 he wrote a prize story, Craigielinn, for the Ayrshire association, and in 1886 a series of old identity stories in the Tapanui Courier. Few men in Australia or New Zealand have had a more versatile life. Pyke died on 4 Jun 1894. His wife (née Miss Renwick) died on 7 May 1898.

Victoria Leg. Assembly debates; Pyke, Op. cit.; Barclay; Gilkison; Ross; Saturday Advertiser, Apr-Jun 1881; Melbourne Argus, 5 Jun 1894; Pyke in Otago Daily Times, 7 Jan 1893; Otago Daily Times 5 Jun 1894, 26 Sep 1930 (p). Portrait: Parliament House.

Reference: Volume 2, page 99

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