Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

New Zealand 1845-66, reverse undated (Pt. J. Cameron, Mauku Rfl. Vrs.), officially engraved naming, edge nicks, very fine and extremely rare £400-500

One of just 3 such Medals to the Mauku Rifle Volunteers, one of several local units which were amalgamated into the Mauku Rifles (British Battles and Medals refers).

John Cameron, who was born in Castle Calgary, Loch Maddy, Mull, in October 1817, a scion of the Camerons of Fassifern, subsequently settled in Melbourne, Australia, and is verified as having served in the Mauku Rifle Volunteers during the course of the Waikato War, not least in the actions at Lusk’s Clearing on 8 September 1863 and at Titi Hill on 23 October 1863.

On the latter occasion, the local Militia forces suffered heavily ‘in a desperate close-quarter battle’ in which some 150 Maori warriors made repeated charges. A reconnaissance party which returned to the battlefield on the following morning discovered the slain militiamen stripped and laid out in a row - ‘they had all been tomahawked and a white haversack on a stick had been erected to mark their location’ (Australians in the Waikato War 1863-1864, by Leonard L. Barton, refers).

Remaining in New Zealand after the close of hostilities, Cameron died at Matangai, Wanganui, in November 1892.