Antonio Joseph was a remarkable man who led a life filled with adventure and change. He began as a seafarer from the Azores Islands near Portugal and ended up as a respected elderly farmer in Otago. He was born Antonio Joseph da Conde in 1828 at Flores, a tiny Portuguese island in the Atlantic Ocean. When Antonio was 17, he ran away from home to join an American whaling ship, the Favourite, and his next few years featured daring exploits and dangerous experiences that eventually brought him south to New Zealand. On one such instance in the early 1840s, the crew had speared a whale, and while the rope was racing through the ship’s hawsepipe, a loop caught Antonio by the legs and flung him overboard. Securing the whale was deemed more important than Antonio, so despite his injuries he was forced to keep afloat for over an hour before the ship came back to rescue him.
In 1847, much taken by the beauty of the Otago landscape, he decided New Zealand was the place for him. Under cover of darkness he and another deserter lowered an empty oil barrel over the side of the ship, and then jumped overboard themselves, clambered onto the barrel, and paddled to shore. They raced to the bush to hide, and ventured out two days later when they thought the coast would be clear. Unfortunately, the captain of the Favourite had sent the first mate to capture the deserters, and they were chased through the dense bush. The two deserters managed to avoid capture and the Favourite sailed away, leaving Antonio to begin his new life here.
Antonio began trading up and down the coast of New Zealand, which proved to be nearly as dangerous and eventful as his time as a whaler. At one point he was even given up for dead but he persisted with coastal trading for over eight years. In 1851 he married Ann Campbell. They went on to have 12 children. For about two years the couple ran the Bush Inn and Taieri Ferry tollhouse before the Otago gold rush stirred Antonio’s adventurous spirit. His brief stint as a miner was not very successful though, so he returned to farming at Taieri Mouth, where he remained until his death on 10 July 1913, aged 85.
Mr Antonio Joseph