Written By Robert Messenger.
Expat West Coaster, sports historian and writer Robert Messenger, shares this amazing story after his wonderful research.
Harold Louis “Bunny” Abbott, a well-built, speedy winger on the 1905-06 Original All Blacks tour, was so keen to serve with New Zealand Forces in the Boer War that he sailed to South Africa twice – in 1900 and again in 1902. On the first occasion, he lied to authorities about his age, telling them he was 20 when he was in fact still just 17. Abbott was born at Cameron Town south of Pukekohe on June 17, 1882, and when the Fifth Contingent (No 11 Company, Auckland Section, Volunteer Reserves) left Wellington on the Maori on March 31, 1900, he was still 10 weeks short of turning 18. He returned on the Tagus in mid-July 1901. Abbott sailed again as a Farrier-Sergeant with the Eighth Contingent (North Island Battalion, Squadron C, Auckland), leaving Auckland on February 1, 1902, on the Surrey. He returned on the Britannic on August 4, two months after the Boer War ended.
It is claimed that it was on this second tour of duty in South Africa that Abbott’s rugby playing ability was first noted – by no less than another famous rugby-playing NZ soldier-farrier, the country’s first native-born Victoria Cross winner Billy Hardham. This occurred, apparently, in a match played at Worcester in the Western Cape. The story emerged from a match at Hawera on August 10, 1904, in which Taranaki beat Wellington 11-3. Abbott – who scored two tries – and Hardham were the outstanding players that day and much was made of the fact that Abbott (“the man from Egmont Village” “galloped like a racehorse”) had only been playing rugby for two seasons. He had “come on in leaps and bounds” since starting representative football. Hardham captained Wellington from wing forward and before the Hawera match is said to have told his teammates not to kick to Abbott’s wing (based, seemingly, on his knowledge from South Africa of Abbott’s ability).
Extensive reports of this match also suggest Abbott’s performance would have had him penciled in for the NZ team to play Great Britain. He still wasn’t in the team which went to Australia in July 1905, but played for NZ in the loss to Wellington Province later that month. On the Originals’ tour, Abbott grazed his leg while scoring three tries against Hartlepool Clubs on October 11 – the injury turned septic and he was out of action for six weeks. He returned against Munster in Limerick on November 28, again scoring three tries, and made the Test team against France in Paris on January 1, scoring two tries. On the return trip he played against the All Blacks for British Columbia in San Francisco on February 13, standing in for injured Canadian Ed Marshall and scoring a try. Irish-born, Auckland-raised William Greer Harrison had succeeded in persuading the All Blacks to play a second match, but BC were a man down. Abbott played against the All Blacks a second time, in 1907 for Wellington Province, while representing Wanganui, but his leg injury bothered him for the rest of his long career.
Abbott returned from Auckland to Taranaki and bought a hotel in Whangamomomona in July 1907. At the time he was still competing as a professional sprinter. But suggestions he was keen to tour with the professional rugby All-Golds in 1907-08 were firmly dismissed by him when he said that month that he did not have “the slightest intention” of switching codes. He had played alongside the great Lance Todd for Parnell in Auckland in 1906.
Bunny’s younger brother Frederick Edwin (“Ted”) Abbott was a handy footballer too and Ted’s son Edwin Frederick Abbott (usually known as Foo, but also as Bunny) played rugby league for Ngaruawahia and South Auckland (Waikato) and for New Zealand on a 1930 tour to Australia and in two Tests against England in 1932. Foo’s nephew, Bunny’s great-nephew, was Kiwi Test forward Bill Deacon.
Another of Bunny’s nephews was Otahuhu-born, Toowoomba-educated, Randwick-based Major John Noel Abbott, son of Bunny’s older brother William George Abbott, who was awarded the DSO for his part in the Libyan campaign in 1941.
One of Bunny’s sisters, Marion Catherine (“Cis”), became Mrs George Gosling and for many years run hotels such as the Metropol in Toowoomba, the Belle Vue and Cecil in North Ipswich, and the Standard in Gympie, at which touring New Zealand football teams of all three codes were always made especially welcome. Another sister, Ethel Maud Abbott, was for many years, starting as a young teenager, a champion in circus and showjumping events around NZ.
Prematurely written off as a has-been by a NZ Truth critic in June 1908, a month later Bunny (then with Pirates) captained Wanganui against the Anglo-Welsh, and kicked a penalty goal in the 9-6 defeat.
He was still playing senior club rugby union for Stratford (where his English-born father William owned a hotel; he died in 1912) in 1910, for Marist in Auckland in 1911, for Clifton (Waitara) and for Taranaki in 1914, and for Kaponga in 1918, aged 36. He coached Clifton in 1919. In the mid-1920s he owned a handy racehorse, a gelding called Thunderclap. His last rugby match was for Waitara in an “old-timers” clash with Inglewood in September 1925, when he was 43. He was farming in Waipukurau in the Hawke’s Bay in the 1930s.
Abbott was known to his family as Harry, but post-1905 he was, to the rest of the sporting world, Bunny. Although it was thought Bunny came about because of his pace (he was said to be particularly quick over 220 yards), in fact it was a very common nickname for people with this surname (rhythms with rabbit), and many NZ and Australian sportsmen called Abbott, including in league and Australian football, were thus nicknamed.
Photos include Abbott among a group of NZ Boer War veterans at a reunion in 1951 and with other Original All Black survivors Billy Wallace, George Nicholson and Alex McDonald in 1965. Abbott was the second last survivor.
He died in Palmerston North on January 16, 1971, aged 88, and Wallace died in Wellington on March 2, 1972, aged 93. Another photo shows Bunny’s sister with his nephew John Noel Abbott DSO.
