This story provides additional information about early access over Tākaka Hill.

Climber: Tākaka Hill Road by chillicheese (Flickr image). Click to enlarge

George Murray and party left Riwaka 25 April 1844 to climb over the Pikikiruna range (Tākaka Hill) looking for a route for a bridle road. They crossed the range about where Lindsay's bridge is today in the Tākaka Valley.¹ Murray reported back that a bridle road was feasible further "southward" of where they had crossed the range. That is, where the road is today. Thirty-four years later there was a bridle road there.

Pikikiruna track

The first Pakeha track (Pikikiruna track) was formed in 1857, before Upper Tākaka was surveyed. It was made for the goldminers to get to Collingwood, not far from where George Murray had crossed the range. The same year, the Government set the rules for the Collingwood gold fields. The track was too steep for horses; the mailman used a donkey.

For the Tākaka Hill traveller the track ended at Long Ford Crossing (Tākaka River), where the river was very wide and shallow. This crossing was used by both Charles Heaphy and George Murray. From the Crossing, there was a road, of sorts, to Tākaka - the only road to Takaka for fifty years, until 1893.

On the Riwaka side of the Tākaka Hill, the Pikikiruna track followed the ridge from, what is now, the Marahau Road, and only a short distance from today's road (SH60).

The bridle track

Takaka survey district, annotated with routes of Takaka Hill crossings (map supplied by Mac Harwood)
Click image to enlarge

Upper Tākaka settlers Daniel and Henry Bate agitated for a trap track (bridle track). The Takaka Road Board asked the Bate brothers to cut a line of road further south of the Pikikiruna track.²

They accepted the offer and cut a line of road from Upper Tākaka to Kairuru. The 2.1 metre bridle track was surveyed and formed by 1878. Mud in the winter was still a problem.

The coach road

The Bate brothers then wanted a coach gravelled road over the hill.³ In 1886, they went to see the minister of the Public Works Department in Wellington. He told them he had been over the line of road and was pleased with what he saw. The Bate brothers' line of road was used, but the gradient on the Tākaka side was reduced from 1 in 12 to 1 in 16 which lengthened the road, and only about one fifth of the bridle track was widened. The rest was new excavations.

The Tākaka Hill road was finished about 1900. Tenders were still being called about 1895. Bates' bridle track and the new road crossed in several places, so both bridle track and road were used for about twelve years, where it was convenient. The last section of construction was the Eureka bend area.

There is one stretch of the current road (SH 60) which has been used by all routes crossing the Tākaka Hill - used by Charles Heaphy, George Murray, the Pikikiruna Track, Bates' bridle track and the coach road. This is the narrow section of the ridge between the Kairuru Farm turnoff and the limeworks, a stretch of about fifty metres.

Mac Harwood 2009 (Mac published a history of roads and information about the Upper Tākaka area in 2011 - Upper Takaka Pioneers).

The Tākaka Hill Road remains the only vehicle connection between Golden Bay and the rest of the Nelson/Tasman region, and because of its topography and geology it remains vulnerable to landslips. In February 2018 the road link was severed following the regional devastation caused by Cyclone Gita, which resulted in 16 slips between Riwaka Valley and the Summit of Tākaka Hill with two sections of road completely washed away.⁴ 

The road was partially opened by the end of the month with convoys leading traffic, and opened with traffic lights operating in several places where the road remained single lane, in April 2018. The repair work was still ongoing with traffic signals and speed restrictions expected to be in place to the end of 2020, indicating the ongoing vulnerability of the road connection to Golden Bay.

Updated April 2020

A few specks of gold, found in the Aorere Valley by a musterer in October 1856, saw more than 2000 men flood into Massacre Bay over the following three years. The gold rush was short-lived, but the region’s new name of ‘Golden Bay’ remained.

Aorere gold

Rockmen on strike: Collingwood Goldfield, The Nelson Provincial Museum, Tyree Studio collection, 182172/3
Click image to enlarge

Edward James and John Ellis, two of the earliest European settlers in the Aorere Valley,  stopped by a stream while mustering cattle in October 1856 and James found a small amount of gold.

After further prospecting by G.W.W. Lightband, a digger who had been on the Australian goldfields, it was decided the findings justified a "gold rush". Lightband chaired a meeting in February 1857 at which diggers developed a set of rules later used in goldfields around the country.

William Washbourn was one of many to head to the area from Nelson. With his 11 year old son Harry, William spent several months prospecting. Harry described the start of the gold rush as "a large camping picnic with everyone in the highest spirits, optimistically expecting to make a fortune"¹

Prospectors worked the alluvial gravels of goldfields in the Takaka and Aorere valleys, with Ferntown  becoming a boomtown. The Maori settlement at the mouth of the river was known as Aorere, but the growing town there was known as Gibbstown, after William Gibbs who subdivided his land into sections for sale. The Nelson Provincial Government, thinking that a substantial population would develop, had a new town named Collingwood laid out on the plateau. Both names were used for a time but Collingwood prevailed, although Gibbstown was later used as the name of the Rating District.²

Golden Ridge Mine, The Nelson Provincial Museum, Tyree Studio Collection 182052/3
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In 1857 the settlement consisted of just two tents, but by 1858 successive waves of fortune hunters had arrived. There were seven hotels, and the 1858 Census recorded 700 European and 200 Maori inhabitants. The rush proved short lived, and by 1859 the majority of prospectors had moved on to easier gold in the Buller and Central Otago.³ In September 1861, however, the Otago Witness optimistically reported: "...we have much pleasure in stating that Captain Walker of the "Supply" brought with him from Collingwood, during the last week, no less than 206 ounces  of gold....and that accounts from the Aorere state that all industrious men on those diggings are doing well".⁴

The next large gold rush in the Nelson/Marlbrough area came in April 1864, when a rich strike was made in the Wakamarina River. The river gravels were worked out quickly and the rush soon passed, but the greed for gold was to be the cause of the infamous Maungatapu Murders. ⁵

German geologist, Dr Ferdinand von Hochstetter, had estimated in 1860 that about 26,000 acres  of the eastern Aorere Valley were rich with gold, although capital and labour would be required to exploit it. ⁶

Renewed interest was shown in the possibilities of large-scale sluicing and quartz mining from the early 1880s. ⁷

Parapara Sluicing Co, The Nelson Provincial Museum, Tyree Studio Collection, 182351/3
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Several companies built large dams, harnessing water for sluicing. The Collingwood Goldfields Company built a dam at Boulder Lake,⁸ 24 km inland from Collingwood. With eight kilometres of water channels and more than 100 tons of pipes and equipment in place, sluicing began in August 1899. Within a year, however, the company was in liquidation.

The largest of the dams, Druggan's Dam, was developed in 1900 by the Slate River Sluicing Company, which had a large claim between Slate River and Doctor's Creek. Forty men were employed to enlarge George Druggan's original dam. Despite four kilometres of water race, 70 tons of pipe and equipment and three sluicing nozzles, only 1152 ounces of gold were recovered. The company had been wound up by 1909.⁹

2008 

Bishopdale Old Boys

“Young men must be found for the ministry, and they should be fit and proper men. They must be men who feel called to the work, and above all they should be those in whose hearts was the Spirit of God”.  Bishop Andrew Burn Suter.¹

Rev. Arthur Hermon 1854-1932. Nelson Provincial Museum ref, 16564

Arriving with the dawn on the 6th of August 1880, brothers Arthur and Reginald Hermon got their first glimpse of Nelson from the deck of the coastal steamer “Taiaroa.” Their overnight trip from Picton had been the last stage in a journey to New Zealand via Australia that had begun a couple of months earlier when they boarded the S.S. “Garonne” at Plymouth, England.

Alfred and Sarah Hermon. The Hermon brothers’ parents. Courtesy Ronald Hermon

Londoners by birth and orphaned young, they were sons of Alfred Hermon and Sarah née Owtram² early residents of the Berrylands suburban development at Surbiton, on the outskirts of London.  A keen churchman, Alfred Hermon was closely involved with the establishment of the Anglican Christ Church at Surbiton Hill.

Hermon family firm in London (mauve building), flanked by St James Theatre (rt) & Almack’s Assembly Rooms (lt) Courtesy Ash Rare Books, London

Nineteen year old Reginald Hermon (known as Reg), found employment in Nelson as a bank clerk with the BNZ but, having been called to the ministry, his older brother Arthur, then 24, enrolled at the Bishopdale Theological College. The brothers came with social credibility in the form of a distinguished uncle, Edward Hermon, cotton magnate, and Conservative M.P. for the electorate of Preston in Lancashire –  in colonial Nelson much mana was attached to such connections from back "Home" in England.

The Hermon brothers also had an influential connection in Nelson itself – Bishop Suter. After calling upon the Bishop with letters of introduction and recommendation from one of Suter’s “old and tried” clerical friends in London, Arthur Hermon and his brother were warmly welcomed into the Bishopdale fold.³

Arthur and Reginald came from a line of prosperous master tradesmen: builders and home decorators who for nearly 80 years ran a family firm from premises (with workshop behind) at 18 (now 22) King Street, off St James Square in Westminster, London. This business had been set up in 1806 by their grandfather Richard Hermon, a Freeman of the Worshipful Company of Glaziers and Painters of Glass. After his death in 1849, “Richard Hermon & Sons” was carried on by said sons, John and Alfred, both master builders. The building industry in London was a small world and it is conceivable that the Hermons might have had dealings with the Bishop’s father, Richard Suter, an architect based in London at 35 Fenchurch Street.

Bishop Suter

Consecrated Anglican Bishop of Nelson in 1866, Andrew Burn Suter (1830-1895) was a man of energy and evangelical vision. He was a dynamic preacher and his emphasis on simplicity of worship sat well with parishioners suspicious of anything that smacked of High Church leanings. The Bishop revitalised his Nelson diocese. During his tenure he established a number of new churches whose parishes he personally visited as often as possible, frequently taking his students with him on these pastoral tours.⁴

Until Suter’s arrival, Anglican clergy had been supplied from England, but there were never enough of them to go round. As a stop-gap the Bishop brought with him several highly qualified men of the cloth who later helped out as tutors at Bishopdale College.

However, new churches meant a pressing need for even more clerics. The answer lay in home-grown clergymen, and not just any clergymen, but what the Bishop called “missionary clergymen”. Outside the cities, parishes in New Zealand were large and clergymen by necessity itinerant. It required fortitude as well as faith to travel by foot or horseback through difficult country, often without roads or bridges, spreading the Word and doing the rounds of a widely scattered flock.

Bishopdale Theological College

Bishop Suter opened a theological college at his episcopal residence in 1869, initially with three students. At his own expense he had the building extended in 1874 to allow for six resident students and a tutor. A large library and further accommodation were soon added, along with the Chapel in 1877.⁵ Suter was a kindly mentor and inspirational teacher who, with his wife Amelia, created a family home away from home for the students drawn to the College by the Bishop’s reputation as a scholar and theologian. The Hermon brothers were among those who later paid tribute, recalling the “many happy days spent at Bishopdale and the unceasing kindness shown them by the Bishop and Mrs Suter.”⁶

Botany Class at Bishopdale. Bishop & Mrs Suter with students. Botany was one of the Bishop’s many enthusiasms. Nelson Provincial Museum ref. 179295

Reginald Hermon among students with Bishop Suter at the Bishopdale Chapel in 1885. Courtesy Ronald Hermon

Bishopdale also became a centre of social activity for the Nelson community. With many a fund-raiser and garden party held in its spacious grounds, students were able to mix with a wide range of Nelsonians and also meet suitable young ladies;  the right wife being, after all, one of a clergyman’s greatest assets.

The teaching schedule was intensive, so outdoor expeditions led by the Bishop made a welcome break. One such excursion - well-documented by Arthur Hermon’s Bishopdale contemporary Edward Jennings (they were ordained deacons together) - was a camping trip made in the summer of 1880 to Mt Arthur, where the Bishop preached to diggers working their claims on the Tableland. The features around Cundy Creek named "Bishop's Cave" and "Bishop's Pool" are said to date from this time. While in the area the Bishop also pegged out the future site of Ngatimoti’s St James’ Anglican Church, on a hill looking towards the Mt Arthur Range.⁷

Arthur moves to Spring Creek

When he ordained Arthur Hermon deacon at Nelson’s Christ Church Cathedral in December 1881.⁸ Bishop Suter already had a job lined up for him. In January 1882 he was sent to take charge of the newly created parish of Spring Creek in Marlborough.⁹  Arthur’s “faithful and zealous ministry” soon bore fruit¹⁰ and a successful first year in the field won him the tick of approval at the Session of the Nelson Diocesan Synod convened in March 1883. Although he was based at Spring Creek.  Rev. Hermon’s charge also included Tua Marina and Grovetown. There was then no actual church attached to the area and although Arthur actively promoted the establishment of a church at Spring Creek, he himself was three years gone by the time St Luke’s was consecrated there by Bishop Suter on 22 October 1890.

Annie Jane Hermon nee Turner, 1863-1889, Nelson Provincial Museum ref. 20465

The Bishop ordained Arthur to priest’s orders in September 1883¹¹ and on 15 November 1883 conducted the wedding ceremony when Rev. Arthur Hermon was married at St Peter’s by the Strand, Atawhai, Nelson, to Annie Jane Turner, oldest daughter of Wakapuaka settler William Henry Turner and Isabella née Mackay of “Hillmore”, Clifton Terrace.¹² Isabella was a daughter by his first marriage of another early Wakapuaka settler, James Mackay, owner of the “Drumduan” estate and a well-known  political figure. Her brother, James Mackay Jnr, was a notable explorer and Commissioner of Native Reserves.

The newlyweds settled in at the Spring Creek parsonage and their daughter Faith Adine was born there in August 1884.

Faith Adine Hermon, 1884-1898. Only child of Arthur and Annie Hermon. Nelson Provincial Museum ref. 22878

Reginald enters the Church, 1885 to 1931

Meanwhile, Reginald, who was best man at Arthur’s wedding, had also entered the Church. He began his training at St John’s College, Auckland, but completed it at Bishopdale Theological College in Nelson. His brother,  Arthur Hermon, now of Spring Creek, preached the sermon at the service when Reginald was ordained deacon by Bishop Suter in 1885. An assignment soon followed - as curate to the parish of St Mark’s at  Charleston, a gold rush boomtown on the West Coast.¹³ Two years later, Reginald Hermon was ordained to priest’s orders at Christ Church Cathedral, Nelson.¹⁴

Rev. Reg Hermon, 1861-1931, and Flora nee Mackay,1863-1926. Nelson Provincial Museum ref. 178669

Following still further in his brother’s footsteps and keeping it in the family, on 6 January 1887 Reginald Hermon married Flora Mackay at St Peter’s by the Strand, Atawhai, Nelson.¹⁵ Flora was a daughter of James Mackay Snr of “Drumduan” by his second wife, Ann Adney née Shuckburgh. Although they were the same age, Flora was the aunt of her new brother-in-law Arthur’s wife, Annie, who now also became her sister-in-law. Bishop Suter conducted the marriage service, assisted by Reginald’s brother Arthur and Rev. John Pratt Kempthorne, a foundation student of Bishopdale College, later Vicar of Christ Church Cathedral in Nelson and Archdeacon of Waimea. 

Old Christ Church, ca 1884 Artist: Benjamin Branfill,1828-1899. Member of Bishop Suter’s Bishopdale Sketching Club. Nelson Provincial Museum ref AC468

On 27 June 1888  Rev. Reginald Hermon was inducted as Vicar of St James’ Anglican Church at Ngatimoti, a rural settlement in the Motueka Valley, with a pastoral charge extending as far as Stanley Brook. St James’ was a relatively young church, having only been consecrated by Bishop Suter in 1884,¹⁶ and services had till then been taken by local lay readers. The decision to obtain a resident vicar was an ambitious one for a small and not particularly wealthy community at a time when each church had to pay its own way.

Berrylands vicarage at Ngatimoti. Rev. Reginald Hermon and wife Flora, holding baby Noel, on porch. Nelson Provincial Museum 179203

A suitable property in the Orinoco Valley was selected as a vicarage and Rev. Hermon named it “Berrylands” for his birthplace - Berrylands, Surbiton, in London. His second son Stanley was born there in February 1891. The first, Noel, had been born in August 1888 at the Mackay family home in Bronte Street, Nelson. The vicar’s stipend was set at £80 per year and was often in arrears – at one stage for a whole year! - as the congregation struggled to find sufficient funds to pay it. The vicar’s position became untenable and he was unable to stay on. The Rev. Hermon preached his final sermon at St James’ on 8 March 1890, becoming at the same time St James’ first and last resident vicar.¹⁷

St James Church, Ngatimoti. J. McFadgen

His next appointment was to the extensive Whanganui Parochial Missionary District, an area with three churches and so large that it was later divided into four separate parishes to make it more manageable. The Hermons moved north, joined by Flora’s widowed mother Ann Mackay and unmarried sister, Marion. Reginald Hermon was based at St John’s, Matarawa, and it  was at the vicarage in Fordell that  his mother-in-law died in 1898 and a third son, Arthur, was born in September 1899.  After nine years of constant travel on the parish circuit – during just one such pastoral tour around his parish  in 1896 he covered 225 miles on horseback over nine days¹⁸ - Rev. Hermon was given an appreciative send-off when he moved in May 1900 to the smaller, less demanding incumbency of St George’s, Patea.  His last and longest charge was as Vicar of St Peter’s, Pahiatua, in the parish of Mangatainoka.

Once himself a volunteer with the Nelson Naval Brigade, Rev. Hermon had a ongoing interest in the volunteer military training movement. In 1910 he was appointed honorary chaplain to the second-class New Zealand Territorial Force with the rank of Lt.-Colonel, and was awarded the Colonial Auxiliary Forces Officers’ Decoration in March 1918.

In 1921 Reginald Hermon retired to Palmerston North, where he died on 18 October 1931 at the age of 70, his wife Flora and youngest son, Arthur, having predeceased him. He was praised after his death as “A man of wide sympathies and understanding--a much loved pastor in the various parishes wherein he worked during his long life”.¹⁹

Arthur Hermon 1887 to 1932

In the meantime, his brother, Rev. Arthur Hermon, noted as “a plain, bold, vigorous speaker with broad views”, had made the move north ahead of Reginald, having acceded in June 1887 to the incumbency of St John the Evangelist at Feilding, in the Manawatū.²⁰

St Peter’s by the Strand, Atawhai. Now known as Old St Peter’s, located at Founders Park. Nelson Provincial Museum 181967

Tragedy struck two years later when his wife Annie, aged just 26, fell seriously ill and died at Feilding on 5 June 1889. Her remains were returned to Nelson, where St Peter’s by the Strand saw sadder service as the setting for her funeral, followed by interment in the Turner family plot at Wakapuaka Cemetery.²¹

Headstone of Annie Hermon at Wakapuaka Cemetery, Nelson, with inscription to daughter Faith. Courtesy Ronald Hermon

Arthur then took bereavement leave and, accompanied by his small daughter Faith, went back to England. He remarried on 31 July 1890 at Priory Church, Worksop, Nottinghamshire, to teacher Edith Beardsall, with Faith as their bridesmaid.²² Worksop was Owtram stamping ground and it’s likely that Edith, a daughter of surgeon Thomas Langley Beardsall, was a family connection.

There were Owtram relatives on both sides of the family – Arthur and Reginald’s parents, who married at Worksop on 13 September 1849, were cousins. When Alfred and Sarah Hermon both died one after the other, the way Owtram kin rallied around to care for their orphaned children was not forgotten by the Hermon brothers.

Rev. Arthur Hermon, with his new wife and daughter Faith, returned to Feilding soon after the wedding and for a few brief years the Hermon brothers lived close enough to exchange visits with each other. However,  in May 1893  Arthur resigned from his post, citing “urgent personal affairs” as the reason.

The Hermons were farewelled by Arthur’s parishioners in July²³ and on 4 August 1893 they departed on the “S.S. Rimutaka” for England, where they settled permanently. Over the years Rev. Arthur Hermon continued to serve as clergyman at a number of parishes in England. His final incumbency was as Vicar of St Mary’s Church in Swaffam Bulbeck, Cambridgeshire, where he died on 10 February 1932, aged 77, having outlived his second wife and his younger brother Reginald, who had died just a few months earlier in Palmerston North, New Zealand.

On a poignant note, Arthur Hermon’s only child, Faith, died on 16 April 1898 at Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, where her father was at the time Curate of St Edmund’s Church, Walesby. She was 13. Her burial took place at the Priory Churchyard in Worksop three days later and an inscription to her memory was added to her mother Annie’s headstone at Wakapuaka Cemetery in Nelson.

The fate of Bishopdale College and Bishop Suter

Bishop Suter Memorial Art Gallery. Nelson Provincial Museum A630

The Bishopdale College was a great success but revolved so closely around the Bishop himself that it struggled to survive after he suffered a stroke which left him incapacitated and forced his resignation from the bishopric in October 1891. From 1893 on sporadic attempts of varying duration were made to revive the College, but it is only now, nearly 150 years since its foundation, that the Bishopdale Theological College appears in its current form to be once more on a solid footing.

Bishop Suter never recovered. He died on 29 March 1895, remembered as “a scholarly, energetic, generous, public-spirited diocesan, who had won the affection of people of all classes and creeds”.²⁴ Art had always been one of his passions, and as a lasting memorial to her husband, Amelia Suter honoured his wish to gift the people of Nelson with an art gallery, giving land, money and the Bishop’s art collection, including works by Suter’s friend John Gully, as a founding donation for what would become today’s Suter Art Gallery.²⁵

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Ronald Hermon (NZ) for access to photographs and information relating to the Hermon family & Maria Screen (England) for help with research queries.

Note - Bishopdale brothers in Holy Orders

Three sets of brothers altogether studied at Bishopdale College under Bishop Suter: Revs. Arthur & Reginald Hermon,  Revs. Alan & Melville Innes Jones and Revs. Charles & Edward Jennings. Melville Innes Jones  later became the Anglican Bishop of Lagos in Nigeria. His brother Alan Innes Jones took over the incumbency of St John’s, Feilding, following Arthur Hermon’s departure for England in 1893.

2018 (updated Nov 2020)

Tuao Wharepapa and the land around it

Mt Arthur and the Tableland have played host to gold prospectors, graziers, botanists, skiers, trampers, tourists, artists, a Bishop, and Henry and Annie Chaffey - who lived above the bush line for nearly 40 years.

Mount Arthur from Tapawera. Tasman District Council
Click image to enlarge

According to Māori legend, a long time ago, a rangatira named Tūrakautahi fell in love with a beautiful woman called Tuao Wharepapa. He was already married so had to leave his pä. As he journeyed to Kawatiri where he settled, he passed the mountain and named it for his lost love Te Ao Wharepapa. The Māori name is also said to refer to a flat whare or house "which this well known landmark slightly resembles"¹ but this is disputed. What is not disputed, is the significance which the maunga and the range have for Māori - the range has always been an important boundary marker. 

Sitting on Nelson's Western skyline, Mount Arthur, named after Captain Arthur Wakefield, is a dominant feature of the range west of the Waimea Plains. The Tableland, a plateau, of rolling tussock country, approximately 1200 metres above sea level, is surrounded by Mount Arthur, Mount Peel and Mount Lodestone.²

For many years, European settlers searched for this rolling tussock land, which they had heard about. There was a desparate need for more grazing land in the Nelson area, and a thirst for mineral land of any kind. In 1856 James MacKay explored the Aorere River and what is now the Tasman Wilderness Area, and the following year  became the Heaphy Track - travelling  from the Buller River mouth and up the Heaphy. He failed to find any flat land. In December 1858, Mackay and Captain Lockett walked into the mountains from near the head of the Cobb River, discovering Iron Hill and the Diamond Lakes, searching for gold and grazing land with prospectors John Little and John Lindsay. They found none, but noted beds of quartz, indicating the presence of gold.³

It was Thomas Salisbury who eventually discovered the Tablelands. Thomas was one of three brothers from Lancashire who settled in Pokororo in 1854.⁴   The brothers ran cattle, disastrously, and then sheep. Searching for pastureland Thomas climbed a hill near his property  from there spied what was later named Flora Saddle, Mount Arthur and Lodestone.  He got lost, made it back home and returned to climb Lodestone from where he saw the rolling tussockland, to be know as “Salisbury Open” -  and evidence of gold.⁵

In 1875, John Park Salisbury (Thomas's brother) drove a mob of 100 sheep from the Graham Valley and turned them out on the Salisbury Open. Later, cattle and another 400 sheep were grazed from Mt Arthur to the Cobb. Stock were grazed in the area until the early 1950s.⁶ Thomas Grooby, a well-known identity, also ran stock on Mt Arthur, riding his horse there, until the age of 80 (in 1932).⁷

Gold

Thomas Salisbury started the gold rush in 1863 by writing about his discovery in the Colonist.⁸ Later, Golden Bay pioneer, Harry Washbourn, described the ground at the Tableland as ‘peat on the top, then decomposed rock, then gold lying on the solid rock, no more than four feet down', with the gold washed into the gullies and hollows.⁹

Sluicing, Tablelands. The Nelson Provincial Museum, F G Gibbs Collection: ¼ 201
Click image to enlarge

By 1868, it was reported that there were 12-14 diggers searching for gold in the shallow stream beds on the Tableland.¹⁰  However, a lack of water to wash the gold was always a problem. Billy Lyons, a neat, dapper little man, was known as the grand old man of Balloon and spent much of his time trying to dig a ditch to bring water from Lake Peel to wash gold on the Tableland.¹¹

Diggers Flume, Baton River. The Nelson Provincial Museum, Tyree Studio Collection: 181937
Click image to enlarge

During the early days of gold activity, a man named Edwards ran a store where the Flora Hut now stands. There was no evidence of this store by 1880.¹²

In November 1870, West Coast gold fields pioneer, Reuben Waite, went to explore the gold prospecting activity and gave the opinion that, with a road to transport provisions, the gold field on the Tableland was capable of supporting several hundred men.  However without a road, he advised ‘that no one will ever do any good there."¹³

Gold reefs were discovered on the Tableland in 1880, which attracted new interest, with mining licences issued to six syndicates between 1881-1885. Again there was talk of a road to transport diggers and provisions.  There is no indication any of the syndicates did any development work  and there were few diggers in the area by the late 1890s.

 In 1909, a licence was granted to the Karamea and Tableland Mining Co. Ltd, which envisaged pumping water to the early workings from Lake Peel. Nothing came of this venture, except for Mt Balloon Hut, which was built by the company.¹⁴

Flora Hut. The Nelson Provincial Museum, F G Gibbs Collection: 3x4 105
Click image to enlarge

Great Outdoors

Tourists to the area included Bishop Andrew Suter, his wife Amelia and  a party of  young people. Recorded in Edward Jennings' journal, the group, guided by Thomas Salisbury, spent several days exploring in January 1880. Their luggage included ladies swags, blankets, six tents, 1 cwt flour, 1 side bacon and a quarter of a chest of tea.¹⁵  Bishop Suter preached a sermon to diggers at Bishop's Cave, near Cundy Creek on this trip.¹⁶

Charles Heaphy. View of the Nelson District. Mt Arthur in the Distance. Alexander Turnbull Library. http://mo.natlib.govt.nz/detail/?id=18653
Click image to enlarge

Until the late 1920s, the only accommodation on the Tableland was the old Mt Balloon Hut and the Rock Shelter, a huge rock outcrop- used to this day, plus a scattering of huts dating from the 1800's built by the Salisbury family.  Teacher and keen botanist, Fred Gibbs, became interested in the construction of a new hut at Mt Balloon in 1915 and the Mount Balloon Scenic Hut Trust Board was formed in 1926. Over the next few years, the Mt Balloon Hut was repaired and new huts built at Salisbury Open and the Flora Clearing.¹⁷

By the 1930s,  the Trust Board's brochure of information for would-be visitors to Mt Arthur described the three huts as bases for ‘many delightful trips' in the area. Mr Jas Heath of Pokororo packed goods for visitors to any of the huts: £1 day for his own services and 10 shillings a day for each packhorse required.¹⁸

John Mulgan was there in the summer of 1930. He later wrote ‘Man Alone' - the classic Kiwi wilderness novel. Artists including John Gully, James Nairn, Mountford Tosswill Woollaston and Enga Washbourn have represented the mountain in their paintings.

Mount Arthur. Archibald Willis [c.1886]. Alexander Turnbull Library. http://mp.natlib.govt.nz/detail/?id=8649&l
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‘Mount Arthur Area a Potential Resort' was the headline in the Evening Post in June 1937.  The newspaper reported three miles of excellent downhill skiing from the summit of Mount Peel to Balloon Hut, with a further 2.5 miles to Salisbury Hut and ‘nursery slopes' near Lake Peel. It was considered that, if extended to the Tableland, a proposed road to the asbestos deposits, would take cars close to the ski fields.¹⁹  The Nelson Ski Club had been skiing on Mt Arthur since 1930, but eventually found the walking distance too great, with Mt Robert, at Lake Rotoiti, offering easier access.²⁰ 

In the early 1940s, it was proposed that 163,000 acres of mountainous country, including Mt Arthur be added to the Abel Tasman National Park.²¹ This did not happen, but Mt Arthur  became part of  the Kahurangi National Park, which was formed in 1996.

2011 (with additions 2017)

A unique and inspirational institution, Bishopdale Theological College is the only college of its kind to ever exist in provincial New Zealand. Its evangelical convictions have remained true and it has adapted through more than 140 years of challenges in a modernising world. It has certainly had its trials, but the fundamental need for clerical training in the church, not just in Nelson but throughout New Zealand, will ensure that this school remains an irreplaceable part of our city's history and future.

Andrew Burn Suter. Alexander Turnbull Library. http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/2s52/1/1
Click image to enlarge

Plans for a theological college began in 1867 with Nelson's first Bishop, Edmund Hobhouse. At the time, clergy were sourced from England. Their supply was unreliable and they were challenged in connecting with an independent, colonial culture they were not accustomed to. Some of the pioneers had a rebellious attitude and were not as willing to conform to church ideals as the English congregations. A systematic endeavour of ecclesiastical education had also begun with the opening of local colleges in the larger cities of Auckland and Christchurch, but Nelson's isolation meant that student access to these schools was restricted. Towards the end of his episcopate, Hobhouse privately purchased timber and the spacious 158-acre property of Bishopdale Estate, with the intention of creating a college.

In England, the incoming Bishop was warned of the desperate need for clergy trained in, and able to engage with, the people of Nelson. Proving himself as a visionary from the very day of his arrival, Bishop Andrew Suter brought with him four well-trained men to serve as tutors for the proposed school. Construction began on the Bishopdale site in early 1868 and was completed in September. In 1869 students moved in to live with Suter and his wife and the college began, sparking a new age of growth for the Nelson diocese.

In 1874 Suter created the Board of Theological Studies which set national exams and provided the Licentiate qualification (LTh). By 1876 the college was fully developed, with six students, and the following year, became affiliated with the University of New Zealand. This provided students with the opportunity for specialist subjects and meant that studying for an LTh could be entirely completed at Bishopdale. The students had seventeen-hour days with much of the time devoted to lessons based on those from England including Evolution, The Meaning Of Hell, Classical Studies, Physics, Structural Botany, Latin, Greek and Hebrew. They were also afforded an intimate look into the life and dealings of the Bishop, who even took the students on his pastoral tours. This would have been a valuable and certainly unique learning experience in their line of study.

Suter was the very soul of the college and set the tone for the first 23 years of its life. He had a strong influence on the students, who were attracted from all over the country. They varied in age, attainment and circumstances, but the college's unique environment forged strong bonds and unity. A peculiar feature of the school was its homeliness. The Suters had no family and so many of the students, admitted by personal invitation, became like sons. This fostered the cordiality and mutual respect necessary for discussions of theology, but also posed the danger of disregard for method and self-indulgence. However, the Bishop was very particular about the sort of student he wished to have at the school and this was the sort who would rise above the perceived shortcomings of such a distinctive institute. He believed that their small size was a disadvantage, but a valuable test of both his and his students' spirit and determination to prove their status among those who had studied at the large local colleges. Some students were justified a place because of academic aptitude, but others, who knew comparatively little, gained entry because of other moral qualifications important to Suter -  like humanity and genuineness of character.

Suter and his friends outside the College. Click image to enlarge.

The Bishop believed that long term and in-depth study was essential. This was because Christian ministers were bound to care for the souls of their congregation as well as their own. He once said, "Shallowness and incompleteness are our great dangers",¹ with reference to both study and person:"We must be on guard against putting on a thin veneer and smattering of learning".² The students had great respect for their mentors and often developed the same evangelical practices and values; part of this being immersion in the community. In 1880 they took these mentors, and others who wished to join them, on a great expedition to Mount Arthur. With their tents pitched, each with a coloured bannerette of the St Andrews Cross, they were described as picturesque and war-like, conveying the camaraderie established between them.

The Bishop supported youth. He admired their exuberance and had an odd appreciation for their colourful clothes, saying they had plenty of time for bland robes in the future. But he was their advocate in serious matters of the church too. He made it clear that he wished to involve the students in the current church issues. He felt that their opinions were to be respected and that to exclude them was doubting them undeservedly, when what they needed most was confidence. He stood up for Bishopdale Theological College against those who preferred a single institute or the study of theology, insisting that it would remove the opportunity for different ways of thinking expressed by his students. He believed that the study of different views was the only way to truly reach correctness. An analogy comparing the understandings of various colleges to different coloured beams of light was used. A pure white light can only be accomplished with the correct combination of colours.

Bishopdale College was achieving some spectacular results. In 1857 there were four clergy in Nelson but by 1886 there were 26, over half from the college. In the same year they provided nearly half the students throughout New Zealand who passed grade four of the Licentiate exam. However, in 1891, Suter fell ill and the school was closed. When Bishop Mules, who had in fact been a tutor, was consecrated in 1892, he planned to continue the college but then decided, due to a lack of funds, that training could be done more efficiently at the university centres. The college came to an end in 1908. When Bishop Sadlier took over in 1912 he began plans to include the isolated districts in ministry. He realised this could not be accomplished with the undermanned staff of the present clergy, so he resolved to reopen Bishopdale College. It was open for a short time from May 1913, but in August of the following year the Great War depleted the diocese of young men and prospective students and the school was forced to close once again.

Between 1914 and 1919 the number of clergy dropped from 37 to 23. There was a nationwide shortage and post-war training was concentrated in Christchurch and Auckland. However, the move to centralise theological training was not the ideal solution they had hoped for, as the intake shortages remained. A financial crisis in 1977 saw some of the remaining clergy forced into early retirement or relocation and a depression took hold of the diocese. Lay people were now relied upon to do the work of the clergy. A survey was conducted to ascertain the best way to help the community, the result of which was the wish of the people for "good quality input to upgrade their understanding of faith and their skills in living and promoting it".³ Meanwhile, Bishop Sutton had visited England and noticed the significant growth of small teaching colleges and groups for lay people throughout the world. He had met many people involved with this educational phenomenon and upon his return, joined those who saw the revival of the college as the best way forward.

The college recommenced on 3 March 1979. It became a link in the Theological Education by Extension programme and aimed to provide Lay training to enrich the whole diocese and offer a basis on which students could build and extend to ordination at St Johns in Auckland if they wished. It was not until 1981 that, at the students' request, a qualification was considered. Bishopdale moved to offer its own optional diploma. For this students were required to study for four years with a majority of compulsory biblical history subjects and either theological, or a combination of theological and elective contextual subjects. The new courses were designed to provide learning (albeit specific) at a level for anyone who wanted it, no matter their academic competency. This sentiment for a tertiary provider was rather unorthodox. They taught people to think theologically rather than to know many facts, in the belief that ‘the handling of knowledge is much more important'⁴ than the knowledge itself. For the first time, group ‘classes' took place in multiple locations around the diocese. By 1983 the college had trained several hundred students as lay people for effective ministry in partnership with clergy. On April 16, the Archbishop of Canterbury presented 22 diplomas and spoke encouragingly of theological education and its future.

In 1984 the college began to strengthen its outreach and extend its influence to the regional areas. Enrolments had been recieved from Greymouth, Kaikoura and Cheviot. The introduction of Open Lecturers was also an important development. These were aimed at graduate students but attended by as many as 50 people. They brought people together from around the diocese in a rare opportunity to hear distinguished speakers on diverse and specialised subjects, providing an insight into the worldwide church. The college was also involved in responsibilities not previously envisaged outside their own domestic interests. These included the discussion of church issues, surveys and research models and establishing bi-cultural educational opportunities. The college was contributing to the wider church concerns and looking beyond the current state into the future.

In 1986, restructuring the curriculum was considered and two years later came a radical change. They decided that the production of local audio and visual study series' was not realistic and instead began purchasing a wide range of study resources at different levels. These were to be provided to the parishes as needed and gave Nelson access to the best materials available. Bishopdale Theological College was now a community resource centre. It gave new life and hope to the diocese and encouraged those involved to have confidence in their faith and the competence to share it in positive ministry. "Confidence without competence is a disaster, and competence without confidence is a waste".⁵ It brought Anglicans together in the changing community landscape and was much appreciated by other theological institutions in New Zealand.

In 2004 Bishop Eaton addressed Synod regarding the reconstitution of the college with a complete campus. In his position, he strived to find the essence of a truly evangelical diocese and church community. He considered it to be one that not only believed and taught the gospel but whose very life and spirit observed it, especially its future leaders. Bishopdale Theological College would train its students both theologically and practically to bring the gospel to, and inspire the world around them.

There were strong links with the past in this ‘new' theological college. Its culture, environment and values continue those expressed by the leaders of the past. When Bishop Eaton resigned in 2006 and Bishop Richard Ellena took over, the diocese found perhaps the most committed figure to realise the vision of the college. As expressed in the official college DVD, parallels can be drawn between these men and Hobhouse and Suter. In 2008 a Memorandum of Understanding was signed with the Laidlaw Bible College for a partnership designed to strengthen theological training in New Zealand.

Bishop Eaton House
Click to enlarge

After several years of planning and discussion, Bishopdale Theological College was re-opened in February 2008. There were three levels of courses offered with similar focuses to those of the initial college. Lay level for part-time interest. Degree level is for students wanting to attain a Bachelor of Theology or Ministries. These contain internship style components for contextual work and require three years of full time study. A one-year Diploma of Ministries can be used towards the aforementioned qualifications. Lastly, in 2011 a five-day intensive Graduate Diploma began. Initially, classes were first held in a single room in rented office space in Halifax St.. However, there was a need for a more settled home to help create the atmosphere desired, so in 2009 Bishop Eaton House in Vanguard Street, became the official campus of the college. It remains small but is well equipped to deliver high quality training and build strong relationships. It is recognised that we live in an environment of instant worldwide communication where the rapid circulation of views can shape the attitudes of those who the church trusts to guide its congregations and communicate the truth of the gospel. For this reason, students are expected to be reasoned and critical amongst other qualities like courage, humility and spirit. These are extremely reminiscent of Suter's early expectations.

In 2010 the roll of the college reached 28, yet it was still heavily involved in outreach. Eaton House is described as the ‘hub of a wheel'⁶ as the school in is the process of extending its classes to host churches in Tauranga, Hamilton, Greymouth and Marlborough. Additionally, the Institute for New Anglicanism initiative was introduced to prepare ‘new thinking in the face of challenges in a diverse and modern world'⁷. With a focus on new modes of ministry, annual schools of preaching and theology were established. The aim of the college was to consider meaningful ways to express the gospel in our simultaneously rural and urban context. It caters to the younger generation who think differently about lifestyle and belief, as Bishopdale always has.

In March an inaugural graduation ceremony was held for the first five graduates of the new college. Nearly 100 years after its effective closing as a campus school, the reopening was a landmark event in the history of theological education in New Zealand and hailed by Bishop Ellena as "one of the most far-reaching and visionary initiatives"⁸ to have come from the Synod in many years. The continuity of trusts like Bishopdale Theological College ‘link us with our past and bind us to our future'.⁹ A future that continues the legacy of passionate evangelical leaders and provides excitement and hope as the new college continues to adapt and expand into groundbreaking avenues of development.

Allie Tonks, Nelson College for Girls. 2011. Updated Mat 2020

On 1 August 2014, a number of new or altered geographic names took effect as a result of the following Treaty Claims settlements:

• Ngāti Apa ki te Rā Tō, Ngāti Kuia and Rangitāne o Wairau Claims Treaty of Waitangi Settlement 2014
• Ngāti Koata, Ngāti Rarua, Ngāti Tama ki Te Tau Ihu and Te Ātiawa o Te Waka-a-Māui Claims Treaty of Waitangi Settlement 2014
• Ngāti Toa Rangatira Treaty of Waitangi Settlement 2014

More information about, and exact location of, these places can be found on Land Information New Zealand's Gazeteer or the GIS maps produced by Nelson City, Tasman and Marlborough District Councils. History, origin and meaning information about the names has been taken from the LINZ Gazeteer. More complete information about the cultural associations iwi have with places and resources, throughout the top of the south, can be found in the Te Tau Ihu Statutory Acknowledgements, 2014 [PDF] (Nelson City Council, Tasman District Council, Marlborough District Council).  A statutory acknowledgement recognises the particular cultural, spiritual, historical and traditional association of an iwi with an identified site/area and is one form of redress [PDF] required by the Te Tau Ihu Settlement Act(s).

Nelson/ Tasman/ Marlborough Sounds/ Marlborough

Nelson (see also Tohu Whenua - Sites of Significance)

• Pikimai/ Church Hill
  Church Hill, Nelson Cathedral. A Ngāti Kōata pa site. Was also locally known as Church Hill.
  Mabel Annesley, after Barnicoat, John Wallis (1814-1905). Early State of Church Hill, 1842. Pencil drawing on paper, with watercolour wash. The Nelson Provincial Museum, Bett Collection: AC449.
  Click image to enlarge
• Horoirangi / Drumduan
  The highest hill behind Glenduan, sitting east of the settlement at 657m, and approximately 14 km northeast of Nelson City. For Ngāti Kōata, which has cultural associations with the hill, the name refers to the ascending from the heavens.  Peart, in Old Tasman Bay (p. 125), follows Ngāti Kuia tradition and  translates Horoirangi as ‘Washing of the sky.” The name derives from the description of when the clouds envelope Horo-i-rangi, which is a sign of bad weather.
• Rotokura / Cable Bay
  A bay adjacent to Pepin Island between Ataata Point and Fall Cove, approximately 16 km northeast of Nelson City. Te Ātiawa and Ngāti Tama note that there is an old pā site at the Pepin Island end of the causeway and Rotokura was so named because it provided ethereal reflections of the tall native trees, great solitude and peace of mind.
• Tasman Bay / Te Tai-o-Aorere
  Ngāti Tama and Te Ātiawa state the following: this is the name the Bay was known by our tipuna; this name is recorded in historical evidence for the Tribunal; sometimes Te Tai-o-Aorere is called Te Tai Tapu, which is a mistake as Te Tai Tapu is Golden Bay; Te Tai-o-Aorere is the ancient name for Tasman Bay and Manawhenua iwi continue to use the name today. According to Ngāti Kuia history: Ko Maungatapu te maunga Ko Mahitahi te Awa Ko Te Tai-Aorere te Moana Ko Whakatū te Marae Ko Ngāti Kuia te Iwi Ngāti Kuia have lived on the shores of Te Tai-o-Aorere and it forms part of our pepeha and identity.
• Te Punawai Pā
  South east of Haulashore Island. An old Ngāti Koata pā site on the hill side and down to the beach to the left of Richardson Street (i.e. towards the Port).

Tasman

• Golden Bay/ Mohua
• Wharepapa / Arthur Range
  Ngāti Tama notes that Wharepapa is a sacred ancestor, providing a historical and spiritual link to the natural world. Wharepapa is the highest maunga in the takiwa and a vital link to the spirits. Ngāti Rarua history: the highest peak of these ranges is Tū Ao Wharepapa and is one of the two sacred maunga for the manawhenua of Motueka. Its significance is embodied in the pepeha “Ko Tū Ao Wharepapa te maunga, ko Ngāti Rarua te iwi….”. The range is an important source of the plant Nei Nei which was used to manufacture the wet weather capes worn by our tupuna. Also a number of sacred caves or tomo are situated within this maunga.
• Pourangahau / Mount Robert
  A hill at 1421 m adjacent to Lake Rotoiti on Robert Ridge, approximately 4.5 km southwest of St Arnaud. Ngāti Apa Tribunal evidence says that Pourangahau translates as a standing place for the “posts of research”. From here, Ngāti Apa were able to look over the sacred lake of Rotoiti.
• Mangatāwhai
  Intersection of Tophouse/ Korere Tophouse Road. Ngāti Kuia Tribunal evidence states that Mangatawhai translates as ‘place of many trails’. This area was where many of the trails connecting Nelson, Marlborough, West Coast and Canterbury met.
  Mount Arthur from Tapawera. Tasman District Council
  Click image to enlarge
• Paratītahi Tarns
  Between Mt McRae and Peanter Peak, SE Lake Rotoiti. Ngāti Apa Tribunal evidence states that the proposed names mean ‘Purpose in life’. Ariki children were taken here in summer time to be washed, before presentation to the people in life.
• Pikikirunga/ Canaan Downs
  Off Tākaka Hill. Te Ātiawa and Ngāti Tama state that Pikikirunga is named after a taniwha and the traditions of karanga. Wainui Caves say Ngararahuarau gave the first karanga and when he died he exploded and his scales were embedded in the hills. 
• Pukekoikoi Hill                
  Nr Tapu Bay, SW of Kaiteriteri. Te Ātiawa and Ngāti Tama state that: this is a significant area for Te Ātiawa. The tipuna called the hill by this name (it is recorded in J.D. Peart, 1937, Old Tasman Bay, p. 128). Pukekoikoi was renowned for its use of koikoi (a long spear pointed at both ends) as more practical rākau (weapon) to use when learning the blocks, the attack and the defensive movements of mau rākau.
• Te Araruahinewai
  Confluence of Maitland Creek/ Motueka River. In the headwaters of the Motueka (Te Ara Ruahinewai) the marriages between the hapu were consecrated to enable safe travel. The name e Ara Ruahinewai means "Lead us from the hinterland to Tasman Bay." 
• Hinemoatū / Howard River
  A river flowing from the confluence of Hodgson Stream and Tier Stream into the Buller River, approximately 13 km west-northwest of Lake Rotoiti. Ngāti Apa Tribunal evidence describes Hinemoatū as a Ngāti Apa ancestress; mother of Tama, a great mokopuna of Tarakaipa.
• Maniniaro / Angelus Peak
  A hill at 2075m at the western end of Angelus Ridge in the Travers Range approximately 7.5km southwest of Lake Rotoiti. Ngāti Apa Tribunal evidence states that this is the accompanying lake to Roto Maninitua – both are the footpaths of Ngāti Apa’s dead, as they fly back to touch the shores of Hawaikinui, Hawaiki.
• Maungakura / Red Hill
  A hill at 1791 m on Red Hills Ridge near the upper reaches of the Motueka River Right Branch, approximately 26 km northeast of St Arnaud. Ngāti Apa Tribunal evidence states that Te Huarau was a taniwha, a kaitiaki, and he and she kept the Maungakura safe from harm.
• Motuareronui / Adele Island
  An island north of Fisherman Island separated from Te Waipounamu by Astrolabe Roadstead, approximately 5 km northeast of Marahau. Ngāti Tama and Te Ātiawa state that whānau kōrero says that Motuareronui is the big island of the swift moving clouds. Ngāti Rarua describes this as a large tongue shaped island.
• Poukirikiri / Travers Saddle
  A saddle approximately 1.5 km south of Mount Travers in St Arnaud Range, between East Branch Sabine River and the upper end of Travers River, approximately 19km southwest of Lake Rotoiti. Ngāti Apa Tribunal evidence states that this is the pathway to our sacred mountain of Kehu (Kehu Peak) – a guide to our elders and protector of the last swimming place of our spirits before they return to Hawaiki.
• Pukeone / Mount Campbell
  A hill at 1330 m east of Wharepapa / Arthur Range between Riuwaka River South Branch and Pokororo River, approximately 13 km west of Motueka. Te Ātiawa notes that Pukeone (meaning sandy hill) is where Te Ātiawa carried the sand to the top of the hill to signal to whanau. The brown area today marks where the fires used to be. Pukeone is highly significant to Te Ātiawa. Ngāti Rarua history: there is korero regarding the origins of the name Pukeone and one theory advances that it is a tupuna name from early times perhaps belonging to one of Rakaihautu’s party. The translation of Sand Hill however can be related to the practice of carrying sand to the summit of the maunga where signal fires were lit to tell of special occasions. The fires burning on top of Pukeone could be seen as far as away as Whakapuaka. A fire was lit on Pukeone following Wakefield’s acceptance of Nelson as a settlement site.
• Rākauroa / Torrent Bay
  A bay approximately 10 km northeast of Kaiteriteri. The Anchorage is within the bay. Ngāti Tama notes that, as the name implies, the area was wealthy with trees and Ngāti Tama and Te Ātiawa established ship building operations there after their arrival in the rohe. This name was also recorded in Peart's Old Tasman Bay and other documents. Ngāti Apa Tribunal evidence translated this as a type of tree. Rakauroa was the name of the bay, with many Ngāti Apa occupation areas.
• Riuwaka River (was Riwaka River – also note Riuwaka River North & South Branches)
  A river flowing generally east from the confluence of Riuwaka River North Branch and Riuwaka River South Branch east of Wharepapa / Arthur Range into Tasman Bay / Te Tai-o-Aorere, approximately 5 km north-northeast of Motueka.
  Te Ātiawa states that this is taonga wairua: Puketapu hapū have tribal accounts of relationships with the river; rivers are tapu; the mouth of the river is named after the tekoteko on top of Te Āwhina, which in turn were named after the tipuna who discovered Antarctica (Hui Te Rangiora). Riwaka is a spelling error and the “u” changes the meaning ; Riuwaka is the place that Hui Te Rangiora landed and was named by him because of its natural features.; Riuwaka is documented in Old Tasman Bay (Peart). 
  Ngāti Rarua history: traditionally named the Riuwaka River – Riu is the name for the bilge of a waka or basin where water would gather. In this instance it is a reference to the puna or pools where the river emerges from within Papatuanuku. There are a series of pools below the Riuwaka resurgence and each pool has specific cultural purpose for the manawhenua iwi.
• Rotomairewhenua / Blue Lake
  A lake west of Franklin Ridge and north of Rotopōhueroa / Lake Constance in the Spenser Mountains, approximately 25km southwest of Lake Rotoiti. Ngāti Apa Tribunal evidence states that this name means ‘Lake of peaceful lands’. This lake was used for the cleansing of male bones.
• Rotomaninitua / Lake Angelus
  A lake at 1650 m on Robert Ridge in the Travers Range adjacent to Bristol Pass and Hinapouri Tarn, approximately 6km west-southwest of Lake Rotoiti. Ngāti Apa Tribunal evidence states that: this is the resting place of our spirits. When we depart this life into the next, Roto Maninitua refers to directing our wairua through to be washed, to bathe and to swim inside and underneath the snow, or should it be summertime, inside and underneath the mountain.
• Rotopōhueroa / Lake Constance
  A lake below Franklin Ridge in Spenser Mountains approximately 26km southwest of Lake Rotoiti. Ngāti Apa Tribunal evidence translates this name as the ‘long calabash’. This lake was used for the final cleansing of the bones of our female tipuna, before they were entrusted to be stored in and around Ngāti Apa’s sacred places in the Sabine Valley.
• Separation Point / Te Matau
  A coastal point between Whariwharangi Bay and Mutton Cove, extending into Golden Bay / Mohua approximately 18 km northeast of Takaka. Te Matau is an ancestral name and important to Ngāti Tama and Te Ātiawa, as it is one of the boundary markers between Onetahua and Motueka. The name was changed by D’Urville, but iwi still refer to this name and old title deeds support the name Te Matau. Te Ātiawa Tribunal evidence also recorded this name (see A Riwaka Nga Hekenga p. 117, Tribunal casebook Northern South Island Inquiry). Ngāti Kuia and Ngāti Apa note that Peart in Old Tasman Bay translates the name as meaning the fish hook of Māui. It was the western most point of the tukuwhenua and an occupation area. An older name for this place is Te Matau-a-Māui.  Ngāti Rarua history: This translates as The Hook and represents the Eastern most point of Golden Bay and the Western tip of Tasman Bay. It was an area surrounded by a number of settlements of the local manawhenua iwi.
• Te Horowai / Speargrass Creek
  A stream flowing from Robert Ridge, approximately 1 km northeast of Rotomaninitua / Lake Angelus into the Buller River approximately 8 km northwest of St Arnaud. Rangitāne and Ngāti Apa Tribunal evidence states that Ngāti Apa ancestor, Te Horowai, is buried here.
• Pupu Springs - Karen Stade
  Click image to enlarge
  Te Kauparenui / Gowan River
  A river flowing north from Lake Rotoroa at Rotoroa (locality) into the Buller River, approximately 1 km east of Gowanbridge. Ngāti Apa tribunal evidence translates Te Kauparenui as “The Great Division”.Te Kauparanui refers to the great earth rending that closed and formed the lake we have today and that, in another lifetime, Te Kauparenui shook and shook so hard that it created a huge tidal force that created the river of the Gowan.
• Te Mamaku / Ruby Bay
  Te Ātiawa and Ngāti Tama note that, as the name implies, the black tree fern was once plentiful and provided resources to the iwi. This was a pa site, an occupational reserve, a kai basket, and there was a waka landing site at McKee Domain. This was also a trading beach.
• Te Waikoropupū River
  A stream flowing from the northern end of Walker Ridge, generally northeast into the Takaka River, approximately 1 km northwest of Takaka. There is a spelling alteration from Waikoropupu River (“Te” and macron added to a recorded name). The English meaning for Te Waikoropupū is the bubbling spring waters. Te Ātiawa and Ngāti Tama state that the river is in the sacred valley for Te Ātiawa, outlined in evidence in Te Ātiawa Tribunal hearing at Motueka. Ngāti Rarua translates this name as “Bubbling Waters” and notes that this is the home of the kaitiaki Huriawa, who was responsible for keeping the waterways of Mohua clear and pristine. The waters have been utilised for many sacred occasions, such as blessings, cleansing and revitalisation of the unwell. Manawhenua iwi always offer karakia before entering this sacred place.
• Tokangawhā / Split Apple Rock
  A rock just off the coast of Towers Bay adjacent to Tokongawha Point, approximately 2 km north of Kaiteriteri. Ngāti Tama and Te Ātiawa note that the split is one of the boundary markers.

Marlborough Sounds

• Te Aumiti / French Pass
  A strait between Rangitoto ki te Tonga / D’Urville Island and Te Waipounamu, northeast of Current Basin, approximately 1 km northeast of French Pass (Anaru). Ngāti Kōata states that Te Aumiti is of significance to Ngāti Koata, who have many cultural historical stories and korero associated with Te Aumiti. Ngāti Kuia translates Te Aumiti as “The current that is swallowed.” This was the place where the Shag guardian of Kupe drowned. The story of the naming sets up part of the oral map for navigating the waters and the customs behind it. The full name is “Te Aumiro o te Kawau a Toru”.
• Whareātea Bay (Durville Island).
  Misspelled name of bay/area on the north east side of Rangitoto ki te Tonga / D’Urville Island. Was also locally known as Whareata Bay.  
• Tory Channel / Kura Te Au
  A strait separating Arapaoa Island from Te Waipounamu, extending generally east-west from Dieffenbach Point in Queen Charlotte Sound / Tōtaranui to West Head and East Head in Cook Strait. Te Ātiawa and Ngāti Tama note that this: was an important mahinga kai and settlement site for Te Ātiawa; was the Te Ātiawa main highway; Te Ātiawa continually monitor and defend this waterway today in Environment courts; Kura Te Au separates Arapaoa Island from the mainland in the Marlborough Sounds. Kura Te Au is named because of the red colour of the sea imparted by a variety of plankton and the  multitude of the crustacean krill; Kura Te Au is place where Kupe killed the giant wheke and the blood ran through the channel. Kurahaupo and Rangitāne note that this means “the red current”. When Kupe killed Te Wheke o Muturangi, the octopus bled into the current there, turning it red. The name also denotes the red Krill found all around the outer Sounds which is eaten by octopus and whales (hence the whaling presence) and is part of the Kupe oral map.
• Whakakitenga Bay
  A bay adjacent to Wairangi Bay, at the northeast end of Squally Cove in Marlborough Sounds. Ngāti Koata state that the name Whakitenga bay was a misspelling; Whakakitenga Bay is the correct spelling.
• Matapihi Bay 
  Bay Ikm NE  of Okiwi Bay at the foot of Matapehe.
• Meretoto/ Ship Cove (Queen Charlotte Sound)
  
  Webber, John (1751-93). View in Queen Charlotte's Sound. London : Boydell, 1809 (oils from a sketch made on Cook's Third Voyage). Alexander Turnbull Library. B-098-015
  Click image to enlarge
  Te Ātiawa and Ngāti Tama note that this cove is of significance as it is: of historical importance to previous iwi and Te Ātiawa; Wahi Tapu; a burial site; tauranga waka. This is the original name, with reference to the bloody mere Rangitāne: Meretoto is the place where the first interaction between Cook's crew and Rangitāne Tupuna, such as Te Rangihouhia and Kahura first took place. It was also locally known as Ship Cove and was named Ship Cove (Meretoto) on NZ topographic maps.
• Omhuri
  An isthmus separating Whakitenga Bay and Elaine Bay in Tennyson Inlet. Reported to be where Te Rauparaha and his taua entered into the Nelson region rather than travel around through Te Aumiti (French Pass)
• Arapaoa Island
  An island adjacent to Tory Channel / Kura Te Au and Queen Charlotte Sound / Tōtaranui approximately 14 km northeast of Picton. Te Ātiawa and Ngāti Tama note that this island is the location of traditions of Kupe but highly significant to Te Ātiawa. Kupe finally dispatched whekenui with a massive Arapaoa (downwards blow) to its head. It is the spiritual home of Te Ātiawa, with many Kaimoana sites, many papakaianga, fortified Pa sites, whaling sites, cultivation sites and sites for waka landing, building and repairs. Arapawa is a spelling error. Ngāti Kuia Tribunal evidence notes that Ara means ‘to rise’ and ‘paoa’ is to strike with a weapon. The Island was named after Kupe’s rising stroke which killed the octopus Te Wheke o Muturangi. It features in waiata and stories of the iwi.
• Greville Harbour / Wharariki
  A harbour on Rangitoto ki te Tonga / D’Urville Island extending generally northwest from Wharairiki Bay to between Ragged Point and Two Bay Point. A historical name of cultural association, Wharariki being the name of a particular type of red flax, with minimal fibre, which is an important taonga to Ngāti Koata people.
• Matapara / Pickersgill Island
  An island in Queen Charlotte Sound / Tōtaranui adjacent to Arapaoa Island and Blumine Island (Oruawairua). Te Ātiawa’s close association with Matapara / Pickersgill Island is through ancestry, conquest and customary occupation. This motu, like many others in Totaranui, was a strategic point for warfare, occupation and contains wāhi tapu for the iwi. The foreshore surrounding Matapara / Pickersgill Island was utilised for both offshore fishing and for preparation. Matapara / Pickersgill Island was a roosting and nesting place for the little blue penguin and the shag. It was also known for its kohekohe and tawa forest. During the turn of the century the island was used for harvesting of wheat crops, speargrass and cocksfoot. Matapara is the traditional name for the island and has been used by whanau and hapu since the conquest of Totaranui by Te Ātiawa.
• Pelorus Sound / Te Hoiere
  Ko Matua Hautere te Tangata, Ko Kaikai-a-waro te taniwha, Ko Te Hoiere te Waka, Ko Ngāti Kuia te Iwi. Ngāti Kuia notes that Insull, in Place Names of Marlborough (p. 55) translates this name as a type of tree, and it was the name of the waka, captained by Matua Hautere, which brought Ngāti Kuia to the area. It was guided here by their two kaitiaki, Kaikaiawaro and Ruamano. It forms a substantial part of Ngāti Kuia identity, history and place of occupation. Ngāti Toa history: Te Hoire is the traditional name given to Pelorus Sound by Ngāti Toa; the sound was renamed by Lieutenant P. Chetwode after the ship he commanded: the HMS Pelorus. Pelorus Sound was an area of concentrated Ngāti Toa occupation and control; the iwi were considered to be the ‘direct owners’ of the Sound, as well as the connected valley and river, in the 1830s and 1840s. Ngāti Toa first came into possession of the region following their conquest during 1829 and 1830. According to historian W.J. Elvy, at the time of Te Rauparaha’s raids, Ngāti Kuia held the Pelorus Sounds and the valley. The invaders, however, “cleaned up the districts pretty thoroughly, reducing the survivors to slaves, or forcing them to hide in the mountainous fastness of the hinterland.” Hopai Pa located in Crail Bay, is one famous battle site at which Ngāti Toa were victorious . Two Ngāti Toa pa, the Canon point pa, and Te Akaroa pa, are located at Port Ligar. Another site of significance was the stream mouth at Clova Bay, which was given the name Totaranui. This was a landing site for waka that crossed from Omere on the Wellington South Coast, and was used extensively during the invasion and conquest of Te Tau Ihu.
• Queen Charlotte Sound / Tōtaranui
  Te Ātiawa and Ngāti Tama state that: Totaranui waterways are the veins of Te Ātiawa, each and every bay is highly significant to Te Ātiawa; Totaranui is the original Te Reo name; Totaranui was bountiful in Totara. Following a series of taua 1827–1830, Ngāti Toa established themselves at a number of locations in the Marlborough Sounds, including Queen Charlotte Sound. There were a number of Ngāti Toa pa sites in Totaranui, including Te Rei o Karaka pa at Karaka Point, and Ngakuta Point Pa. Ana-o-koha, located in the Dieffenbach point area, is the site of an historic battle, at which Ngāti Toa successfully repelled and defeated an attempted ambush. Another site of significance is Ship Cove, an important tapu area where the daughter of Te Pehi Kupe is buried. Colonel Wakefield, while collecting signatures for the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840, encountered a large Ngāti Toa group.

Marlborough

• Waikārapi Lagoon
  Was Vernon Lagoon near Blenheim. Waikārapi refers to the series of channels and weirs (Pa-tuna) built around the wider lagoons area to trap the various species of fish and birds that frequented the wetlands. This was specifically identified in the map of the Wairau drawn by Ihaia Kaikoura and copied by Ligar in 1847. 
• Hikurangi/ Goulter Hill
  4km Southwest of Renwick
• Waikārapi Lagoon. Colin Davis, Department of Conservation, South Marlborough Area Office
  Click image to enlarge
  Kahuroa Hill
  11km NE of Havelock, near Pelorus Sound: Ko Kahuroa te Maunga, Ko Te Hoiere te Awa, Ko Ruapaka te Kāinga, Ko Ngāti Kuia te Iwi. The name means the long cloak and comes from the mist which shrouds it. Ngāti Kuia Tribunal evidence states that this maunga has an urupa on it and forms part of waiata and stories. It is above the Ngāti Kuia land at Ruapaka, and forms part of the pepeha for the whanau of that place. The name means the long cloak and comes from the mist which used to shroud it. It is part of the Ngāti Kuia pepeha for the Ruapaka Kāinga. [Notes for Polynesian Society, Smith; and Ngāti Kuia evidence, Moses.]
• Otauira Pā               
  On the shore of Robin Hood Bay, South of Port Underwood. Rangitāne Tribunal evidence records that this site translates as ‘Water rushes.’ This was an occupation and fishing area. Otauira is the Rangitāne Pa site at the mouth of the Waikutakuta stream where Ihaia Kaikoura drew the map of the Wairau for Ligar in 1847.
• Te Ana-o-Rongomaipapa Bay
  Between Rarangi and Whites Bay. Rongomai Papa was the Rangitāne Tupuna who established Pukatea Pa and ambushed and killed the giant flying Taniwha Ngarara Huarau. The cave that he hid in is still visible to the present day - Te Ana o Rongiomai Papa. [Tuiti Macdonald MP wrote this story for S.Percy Smith in 1906.]
• Te Ope-a-Kupe Rock
  A rock near Port Gore. Te-Ope-a-Kupe was named by Kupe and means the group of kupe. It is a tauranga waka what was used by him for his waka Matahourua and succeeding generations of his descendants. Ngāti Kuia korero states that: this was one of the landing places of Matua Hautere and his waka Te Hoiere, Te Whakamana and his waka Te Ara-a-Tawhaki and Tukauae and his waka Tahatu. There is is a rock at the site which our people says has his foot print which shows where he and his crew got of his waka. This place is still used today as a safe anchorage by Ngāti Kuia.
• Te Pokohiwi / Boulder Bank
  Between Wairau River and White Bluffs. According to Insull, Te Pokohiwi translates as the “shoulder” and this name refers to the shape and position of the Bank. Was also locally known as Boulder Bank.
• Ōhinemahuta River
  A stream flowing from Richmond Range near Mount Sunday into Wairau River, approximately 4 km northwest of Renwick. It is the old Rangitāne/Ngāti Mamoe name of place where Tupuna Hine Mahuta lived hence – Ōhinemahuta.
• Ōpaoa River
  A river flowing from the confluence of the Omaka River and Ruakanakana Creek, approximately 2 km northeast of Renwick, generally east into the Wairau River at Wairau Bar. Ngāti Rarua translates this as Smoking River, which can be described as the mist or fog rising off this particular river giving the appearance of smoke hanging over the water. This awa, along with the Wairau, was an important food resource and integral part of day-to-day life for Ngāti Rarua. Rangitāne notes that Insull, in Place Names of Marlborough (p. 54), translates ‘Paoa’ as smoke – ‘smoky river’. There are several different explanations for the name. This place was very swampy and the river became murky with the appearance of smoke. It is also known as the place of the grey teal. The tupuna Paoa had a pa there and the place was named after him.
• Ōraumoa / Fighting Bay
  A bay east of Te Whanganui / Port Underwood, approximately 17km east south-east of Picton. Ngāti Toa history: Fighting Bay, located on the Eastern Coast of Te Tau Ihu was a very important Ngāti Toa tauranga waka. It was located in close proximity to the concentrated Ngāti Toa settlement at Port Underwood, and provided a site from which Ngāti Toa could travel directly across Te Moana o Raukawa to the South Coast of Wellington. It was the site of a battle with Ngai Tahu and hence its name. Rangitāne history: Raumoa was the name of a Rangitāne ancestor who lived in the Wairau and travelled to this place for special seafood hence the name O-Raumoa, - the place of Raumoa.
• Pukatea / Whites Bay
  A bay approximately 1 km northeast of Rarangi, where Pukatea Stream flows into Te Koko-o-Kupe / Cloudy Bay. Ngāti Rarua records that this was the first landing place of the Ngāti Rarua taua in the fight for Wairau. It was also a former fishing reserve of Rarua, Toa and Rangitāne, and a campsite and mahinga kai site. Rangitāne history: Puketea translates as a type of tree. This was where a Kurahaupo tupuna killed a taniwha. It was an occupation and fishing area.  Pukatea was a traditional tauranga waka and was used by Te Rauparaha and his allies during the invasion of Te Tau Ihu in 1827 (Insull). This site was taken as a reserve in the 1950s.
  Southern end of Cook Strait's telegraph cable - Whites Bay 1871, Marlborough Museum, 0000.900.0735
  Click image to enlarge
• Ruakanakana Creek
  A stream flowing near Renwick into Omaka River (was known as Gibsons Creek). Ruakanakana Creek is the place where weirs were dug to trap Lamprey eels (kanakana) on their annual migration – hence Rua Kanakana or pit of the Lampreys.
• Takapōtaka / Attempt Hill
  A hill at 729 m on Rangitoto ki te Tonga / D’Urville Island, approximately 8 km north-northeast of Te Aumiti / French Pass. This was the name of the hill prior to European settlement.
• Te Anamāhanga / Port Gore
  A bay between Cape Lambert and Cape Jackson adjacent to Cook Strait, approximately 3 km northeast of Endeavour Inlet This name translates as ‘Twin bays’. Te Huataki of Rangitāne landed here. Ngāti Kuia and Ngāti Apa also lived here.
• Te Hoiere / Pelorus River (see Pelorus Sound above)
• Te Koko-o-Kupe / Cloudy Bay
  A bay approximately 15.5km north-east of Blenheim extending from Robertson Point to White Bluffs/Te Parinui o Whiti and eastwards into Cook Strait. Ngāti Rarua history: The scoop of Kupe. The place that was scooped out or formed by legendary explorer Kupe. Rangitāne also translates this name as the scoop of Kupe. Kupe’s waka went aground at Wairau (Vernon) Lagoons. Ngāti Toa history: The wider Cloudy Bay region, encompassing both the Wairau and Port Underwood, was an extremely significant area to Ngāti Toa. Ngāti Toa was acknowledged to have possession of this Bay and it was a location of concentrated occupation. Ngāti Toa had both residences and cultivated lands in Cloudy Bay. Cloudy Bay was also an important centre of the thriving whale industry. The population did decrease in the late 1840s, however Ngāti Toa maintained their occupation of Cloudy Bay. Ngāti Rarua history: This name originates from the time of Kupe and his infamous pursuit of the octopus Te Wheke o Muturangi. The name literally translates as the Scoop of Kupe meaning the place or area that was scooped out or formed by Kupe.
• Te Tara-o-Te-Marama / Mount Freeth
  A hill at 625 m, approximately 3 km southwest of Picton. Te Ātiawa and Ngāti Tama note that this was the maunga used for the whanau in the area; Ko Tara o te Marama – meaning ‘it is the peak of the moon’ (‘tara’ as in Taranaki). Rangitāne note that Insull’s Place names of Marlborough (pp. 47 & 51) translates this as ‘Moonlight mountain’. At a certain time of the year the rising moon follows the gradient of the maunga.
• Te Whanganui / Port Underwood
  Ngāti Rarua: Te Whanganui means the large harbour. Ngati Toa: This was the largest and most concentrated area of Ngati Toa settlement in Te Tau Ihu; their interests in Port Underwood were based upon both conquest and effective occupation.According to Dieffenbach there were approximately 400 Ngāti Toa living in the ‘Cloudy Bay’ area. This community was led by Nohorua, Te Kanae and Rawiri Puaha and was centred on the mission and whaling industry. A pa and urupa were located on Horahora Kakahu Island in Te Whanganui. This is a very important historical and cultural site as this was the location at which a number of Ngāti Toa chiefs signed the Treaty of Waitangi.
• Tokomaru / Mount Robertson
  A hill at 1036 m on the Robertson Range, approximately 6 km southeast of Picton. Ngāti Toa history: Tokomaru is a site of cultural significance. It is recognised as being te maunga o Ngāti Toa ki roto i te Wairau. Ngāti Rarua history: Sacred mountain for Ngāti Rarua within the rohe of Wairau. The name has origins within pre Aotearoa settlement and relates to a peak of the same name in Hawaiki. Translation refers to a toko or pole used within a tuahu or shelter erected on the summit of this peak that gives maru or shelter and protection over the whenua or plains of Wairau. Its significance to iwi is immense and is enshrined within the pepeha “ Ko Tokomaru te pae maunga, ko Ngāti Rarua te iwi…”.
• Tūtūmāpou Hill
  A hill at 319 m, south of Te Hoiere / Pelorus River, approximately 1.5 km west of Canvastown and 10 km west-southwest of Havelock. Ko Tūtūmapou te Maunga Ko Te Hoiere te Awa Ko Te Hora te Pa Ko Ngāti Kuia te Iwi. The Ngāti Kuia translation means the bird snare (Tutu) in the mapou tree. The mountain was a regular food source of kereru for Te Hora Pa, which is still in use today. It is part of the Ngāti Kuia pepeha for Te Hora Marae.
• Waikutakuta / Robin Hood Bay
  A bay southwest of the entrance to Te Whanganui / Port Underwood, approximately 10 km southeast of Picton. Ngāti Rarua describes this as the place of the water rushes. It was a former site of large Māori settlement, and an extensive cultivation site. This was the name used by Ngāti Rarua for Robin Hood Bay. However, the original name may only relate to a feature or natural marker within the Bay. The name Waikutakuta is recorded in a waiata tawhito of Ngāti Rarua titled “Ka kati i te karaka”. Ngāti Toa history: Robin Hood Bay, located in the south of Port Underwood was an area of concentrated Ngāti Toa occupation. The settlements of Cloudy Bay and Port Underwood were predominantly coastal, at locations such as Robin Hood Bay, however inland areas were heavily utilised for various resources. In the 1830s Te Rauparaha had a home in Robin Hood Bay, which he visited and occupied during the whaling season each year. Te Rongo, wife of Te Rangihaeata, is said to be buried at Robin Hood Bay. She was killed at Wairau during the 1843 incident.

2014

Tohu Whenua - sites of significance

A Nelson City Council produced series of videos on landmarks and sites of significance, produced to celebrate Te Wiki o te Reo Māori 2019

• Te Pepeha o Whakatū (Tribal connections to Nelson)

• Maungatapu/Moketapu (Mt Maungatapu)

• Manukau & Omaio (Monaco & Stoke)

• Matangi Awhio & Aorere (Auckland Point & Tasman Bay)

• Whakatū (Nelson)

• Horoirangi (Glenduan)

• Mahitahi (Maitai River)

Updated April 2020

Or Around the World in 100 Years: the WW1 postcard that lost its way

Front of Hector Guy’s postcard. A. McFadgen

Poignant flotsam from the First World War, postcards written by serving soldiers to family, friends and sweethearts can be found in museums, antique shops, second-hand stores and estate sales all around the world, and are much sought after by deltiologists (postcard buffs and collectors). Funny, sentimental, patriotic, photographic or picturesque, postcards first came into vogue in the latter part of the 19^th century. They reached the peak of their popularity during WWI,¹ as the perfect means of communication for servicemen often pushed for the time and opportunity to write letters and limited by military censorship as to what they could actually say.

Reverse of Hector Guy’s postcard. A. McFadgen

Some years ago a colourful postcard at a market stall in his hometown of Barnstaple caught the eye of Trevor Jennings from Devon, England. Trevor has in-laws in Waimea West and has visited New Zealand several times, so the link to the Tasman area also aroused his interest. The card, signed "Hector" and dated 16 May, 1915, had been written at Zeitoun Camp, Cairo, Egypt, to Mrs T. Strachan of Ngatimoti, New Zealand, and clearly had a First World War connection.² Zeitoun was on the outskirts of Cairo and served as a base for Anzac troops during WWI. After arriving by troopship at Alexandria, New Zealand soldiers underwent intensive training in the desert surrounding Zeitoun before being shipped off to Gallipoli, the Middle East and the Western Front.

Company Sergeant-Major Hector Guy (1890-1917) WWI service no 6/244. Tyree Collection/Nelson Provincial Museum Permanent Collection, ref. 97245

The rediscovery of the postcard recently while Trevor was moving house coincided with the centenary of the campaign on Gallipoli and prompted him to see if he could find out more about it and perhaps send it “home” to New Zealand. An online search led him to articles I'd written about the Ngatimoti War Memorial and Frank Strachan, giving him a clue to the identity of the postcard's author - Frank's cousin, Hector Guy. Trevor then contacted me, and soon afterwards the postcard was winging its way to my home in  Ngatimoti, a stone’s throw away from where the Guy family once lived. Thanks to Trevor's generosity, Hector's message finally made it to Ngatimoti, New Zealand, almost exactly a hundred years after he penned it.

Hector Guy's postcard doesn’t appear to have ever been postmarked or franked by military authorities. How it lost its way is a mystery unlikely to ever be solved after all this time, but by whatever means, it had joined that host of mislaid and discarded messages destined to remain unclaimed after the “War to end all Wars” ended.

Transcript of Hector Guy’s postcard

This was written on the 16^th of May, 1915, at Zeitoun Camp, Cairo, Egypt, to his Aunt Ida (Mrs Thomas Strachan) of Ngatimoti, New Zealand.

Zeitoun Camp, 16-5-1915. So pleased to receive your letter two days ago. Time does fly – it doesn’t seem like a year ago I was with you – fancy little David remembering me. He has grown a lot in the photo you sent me of the children. I sent a P.C. [postcard] in answer to that a fortnight ago and hope it will arrive all right.  I have made inquiries about Frank Waghorn but so far have not been able to find any trace of him, he is not in our regiment. I will continue to make inquiries and will let you know if I hear anything of him. I had [a] letter from home on Sunday night and was surprised to hear you knew about the fighting so soon. This is a street scene in the best of the native qtrs [quarters] - the worst are too dirty to remain in long. You would be very amused here at first to see a man with a moustache wearing a long dress like a woman – some places one can’t distinguish the sex. Sorry Uncle Tom hadn’t a better crop of raspberries. Much love to you all. Hector.

Who were Hector Guy, his Aunt Ida and others mentioned in his postcard?

The Guy family at "Sunny Brae", Ngatimoti, pre-War. L-R: Back row (standing): Arthur, Margaret (Daisy), Hector Front row (seated): John A. Guy, Ruth, Elizabeth (Lily) Guy, Walter. Guy Collection/Nelson Provincial Museum Collection, ref. 315235

Albert Hector Guy (always called Hector, or “Hec” by his mates) was born 11 October 1890, the second child of John Arliss and Elizabeth Mouter (nee Strachan) Guy. Their farm ran from Waiwhero Road into the Orinoco Valley at Ngatimoti, a small rural settlement in the Motueka River Valley about 51km from Nelson. The Guys’ homestead, “Sunny Brae”, sat on the knoll of a hill looking down Waiwhero Road towards St James Anglican Church and the Mt Arthur Range beyond and was opposite the first Ngatimoti School, established in 1868. Hector had four siblings – Walter (the eldest), Margaret (Daisy), Arthur and Ruth.³

Walter Alexander Cochrane Guy (1887-1918). WWI serial no 2599. Tyree Studio, Nelson Provincial Museum ref. 97986

John Guy served as Ngatimoti's Postmaster from 1892 till the early 1920s, with the post office and telegraph service operating from "Sunny Brae". The two youngest children, first Arthur, then Ruth, helped out in turn and could be seen dashing down the hill by either bicycle or horseback to deliver telegrams, a distressing job for Ruth during the war years on those occasions when they brought dreaded news from the frontlines. The post office's telephone line was for many years the only one in the Motueka Valley, and because John Guy was the first to be officially notified, he and his son Hector tolled the St James Church bell on 5 August 1914 to announce the anticipated news that New Zealand had joined Britain in declaring war on Germany.⁴ When the armistice was signed, the bell was rung all day long in celebration.

Known to all as “Lily” or ‘Lil”, Elizabeth Strachan had been the girl next door and married John Guy at St James Church, Ngatimoti on 21 April 1886, the Reverend Samuel Poole officiating. Theirs was the first wedding to be held in the small community-built church, sited on land donated by John’s father, Walter Guy of ”Moutere House”, and consecrated by Bishop Suter on October 28 1884.⁵

John’s parents, Walter and Leah (nee Gregory) Guy, had left England as newly-weds on the “Larkins”, arriving in Nelson on 12 November 1849. They settled in Motueka, later establishing a farm at Lower Moutere in the Central Road area where they raised a family of seven. John, born in 1850, was the oldest and their only son. Around 1874 Walter Guy bought a block of former Crown Grant land at Ngatimoti from James George Deck and turned over its management to his son John.

Strachan family gathering at "Manawatane", New Year's Day, 1909. Guy Collection/Nelson Provincial Museum Collection, ref. 315175

The Strachan family were farming neighbours – their Strachan Road property, “Manawatane”, shared a common boundary with the Guys’. Lily’s brothers Gavin, Alexander (Alec), John (Jack) and Thomas (Tom) all had farms in proximity to “Sunny Brae”, with Alec Strachan taking over the "Manawatane" home farm after the deaths of their parents Benjamin and Jean. An older brother, James (Jamie), had died in 1861 at the age of twelve and her only sister Mary moved to Marlborough, then Stoke after her marriage in 1876.

Cousins Frank Strachan & Arthur Guy. They enlisted together in January 1916. Arthur made it home, Frank was killed at the Somme on 12 November, 1916. Tyree Studio Collection/Nelson Provincial Museum Collection, ref. 89476

Benjamin Strachan emigrated from Scotland on the “Admiral Grenfell” in 1853 with his wife Jean Pringle (nee Cochrane) and young son Jamie. They had intended to join Nelson merchant and banker David Sclanders, a relative of his wife’s, but instead took up farming at Riwaka before shifting to Ngatimoti in 1872.⁶ Benjamin was a cooper by trade and passed on his craft to his sons. In addition to running the farm they had a workshop and smithy at “Manawatane” where they turned out for local consumption buckets, butter churns, kegs and the popular casks used for transporting harvested raspberries to the Motueka Wharf for distribution, much of it to jam factories like Kirkpatrick’s in Nelson.⁷ Raspberries served as a vital cash crop on Ngatimoti’s mostly small mixed farms for many years before being replaced by tobacco from the mid-1920s to the late-1990s.⁸ The Strachans also undertook commissions, like the rimu tubs and boxes made to package the finished product at Motueka’s first butter factory.⁹ The youngest of the Strachan brothers, Tom, had an inventive streak and a particular skill in working with tools and machinery which he passed on to his sons.¹⁰

Ngatimoti Territorials practicing drill before setting out for the Military Tournament held in Auckland, January 1914. L-R: Standing: Frank Strachan, Bert Thomason, Ted Burrow Kneeling: Hector Guy, Roy Stafford. Guy Collection/Nelson Provincial Museum Collection, ref. 315157

Guy and Strachan children grew up surrounded by a close and affectionate network of aunts, uncles and cousins, and at busy times all shared tasks like haymaking, shearing and fruit and hop harvesting on the farms of various relatives and neighbours.¹¹ Before the war Hector and his brother Walter both worked as farmers, Hector for his father, and Walter on his own farm nearby. It wasn’t all work – they were also actively involved in local social life; church activities, canoeing on the river, excursions to the beach, the Tablelands and Nelson Lakes, tennis and cricket games and informal concerts and picnics. They went hunting in the hills and trained regularly with the Territorials, formed in 1911. Annual Territorials’ camps were convened at George MacMahon’s farm in Tapawera, and in January 1914, Hector travelled north with the Nelson contingent taking part in a military tournament held in conjunction with the Auckland Exhibition of 1913-4.¹²

London wedding of Cyprian Brereton and Margaret (Daisy) Guy, 5 August,1915. L-R: Standing: Major Cyprian Brereton (groom) and Hector Guy, brother of the bride and best man. Seated: Mrs Kitty Wheater and her daughter Nancy with the bride, Daisy Brereton (nee Guy), in the middle. Nelson Provincial Museum, ref. 2014.72.7

Hector enlisted with the NZ Expeditionary Force immediately after New Zealand declared war on Germany.¹³ He had been a sergeant in the 12^th (Nelson & Marlborough) Regiment of the NZ Territorial Force and was assigned the same rank in the 12^th (Nelson) Company of the newly formed Canterbury Infantry Battalion. He embarked from Wellington for Egypt on the troopship ”SS Athenic” with the Main Body of the NZEF on 16 October 1914, and took part in the Battle of the Suez Canal in early February 1915 and at Gallipoli, where he was wounded at Quinn’s Post four months later. Being on recuperation leave in England at the time, on 5 August 1915 Hector was able to stand as best man at the London wedding of his sister Daisy to his good friend Major Cyprian Bridge (Cyp) Brereton of Ngatimoti, commanding officer of the 12^th (Nelson) Company.¹⁴ Cyprian and Daisy Brereton would go on to have four children and called their first child William Hector. Like the uncle he was named for, he was always known by his second name, Hector.

After rejoining his unit at the NZ Division's camp at El Moascar in Egypt, Hector Guy was redeployed to the Western Front where he went on to fight with distinction, being posthumously awarded the Meritorious Service Medal and a Mention in Despatches, in both cases "for conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty".¹⁵ He held the rank of Company Sergeant-Major by the time he was killed in action below Bellevue Spur at Passchendaele on what is known as NZ’s “blackest day” of WWI, 12 October 1917. He was 27. 

Brothers-in-law CSM Hector Guy (seated) and Major Cyprian Bridge Brereton in France,1916. Major Brereton paid tribute to Hector in his wartime memoir, "Tales of Three Campaigns", praising his fearlessness, and the "serene temper and unselfish good nature which gave him a host of friends". Nelson Provincial Museum Copy Collection, ref. C3722

Hector Guy’s comrade Sergeant Cecil Malthus later recalled:

Hector was great fun, really solid in his fundamental qualities, but liable to go off the deep end just for devilment. He had an amazing courage that looked like sheer recklessness, but I believe he was deeply stirred and stimulated by danger, and that made him a grand leader.He was found with a bullet through the brain, but still on his feet and gazing out over the parapet - a fitting and symbolic end. I still think of Hector’s death with a pang of loss, more perhaps than for any other man who was killed in France.¹⁶

Like so many others, Hector Guy’s body was lost and he is commemorated at the Tyne Cot Memorial to the Missing at Zonnebeke in Belgium.

All three of John and Lily Guy’s sons – Walter, Hector and Arthur – served during WWI, leaving their parents and two sisters struggling to run the two family farms as best they could. Walter (named for his paternal grandfather), was born 20 August 1887, and attended Nelson College between 1903-4. He was a keen amateur photographer and many of the scenes of rural life he recorded at Ngatimoti can still be seen in the Guy Collection held by the Nelson Provincial Museum.  Walter enlisted on 29 May 1916 and served as a private with the 19^th Reinforcements, 12^th (Nelson) Company, Canterbury Infantry Battalion. Holding the temporary rank of corporal, he spent ten months at Sling Camp in England as an instructor before being deployed to France where he reverted to the ranks as a private.¹⁷ He was killed in the field at the age of 31 while trying to rescue a wounded man at Colincamps on 27 March 1918, one of over 500 fatalities suffered by the NZ Division at the Somme during a last-ditch stand to hold Allied lines against a German offensive of unprecedented scale labelled “Operation Michael”. He is commemorated with other members of the Canterbury Regiment at the Grévillers (New Zealand) Memorial to the Missing at Pas de Calais, France.

Raspberry pickers at Ngatimoti. Cart loaded with filled casks of the type made by Strachan Brothers. Guy Collection/Nelson Provincial Museum Collection, ref. 315085

With both Hector and Walter now dead, under the exemptions permitted by the Military Service Act of 1916 John Guy was able to have Arthur, as his sole surviving son, recalled home from active duty in July 1918, on compassionate grounds.¹⁸ Arthur, a sergeant with the NZ Cyclists Corps at the time of his release from service, was born 18 May 1895 and grew up helping out on the family farm, but had plans to follow a different career path which were thwarted by the war. He had been working as a clerk at the Otaki Railways branch of the Bank of New Zealand before he and his cousin Frank Strachan signed up together with the 12^th (Nelson) Company Reserves at Trentham on 12 January 1916, but the changed family circumstances meant he spent the rest of his life as a farmer, running both his father's and brother Walter's farms as a single unit. On 1 August 1923 he was married in Vancouver, British Columbia, to Helen Friesen, a Canadian schoolteacher who came to Ngatimoti on a summer raspberry picking holiday, and one of their grandchildren still farms the remaining Guy land at Ngatimoti today. 

Walter, Hector and their cousin Frank Strachan, only son of Alexander and Mary (nee Bowden) Strachan of "Manawatane", are commemorated in New Zealand at the Ngatimoti War Memorial, erected in front of St James Church on land donated by the Guy family and unveiled on Anzac Day, 25 April 1921. The War Memorial project was spearheaded by Walter and Hector's sister Daisy, who served as chairwoman on the highly effective local Ladies’ Committee set up to oversee its completion.

David & Helen Beatson with their ten children at "Woodland Terrace". L-R: Standing at back: William (Willie), Ida, Walter, J. Guthrie, George Middle: Cecil, Helen (nee Griffin) Beatson, David Beatson. Front: Charles, Ethelind (Ethie), Helen (Nellie), Henry (Harry). Courtesy Mr E. Stevens

The intended recipient of Hector’s postcard was his Aunt Ida, wife of his mother's youngest brother, Thomas Pringle Strachan (1868-1941). Ida Helena Strachan nee Beatson (1872-1953) was the oldest daughter of David Guthrie Beatson, one of three sons of Nelson architect William Beatson who took up land in the Orinoco Valley around 1864 - David, Arthur Henry and Charles Edward (an architect like his father). Her mother, Helen (nee Griffin), was a member of the family who established the Griffins’ biscuit factory in Nelson. Their connection to Ngatimoti dated back to 1860, when Helen's father John Griffin set up a farm called "'Lawrencedale" in the Waiwhero area, where they were part of a idealistic community of like-minded friends including the families of Appleby schoolteacher Lewis Bryant¹⁹ and charismatic Plymouth Brethren preacher James George Deck. Due to poor land and lack of practical farming experience this proved a short-lived and financially disastrous venture, soon abandoned by the Griffins for a return to the city of Nelson by 1863. "Mr Griffin lost all he had invested and Father came out a broken-down old man," remarked Lewis Bryant Jnr later.²⁰ James Deck also suffered; both his first and second wives and his youngest son died in the Waiwhero Valley.

David Beatson and Helen Griffin married on 11 March 1869 and raised ten children at their Orinoco home, “Woodland Terrace”. Ida was related by marriage to nearly all of the players in this story. Another of her father's brothers, John James Beatson, married her husband Tom's oldest sister, Mary Sclanders Strachan; her uncle Charles E. Beatson married John Guy's sister Mary Alice; her brother John Guthrie Beatson married Cyprian Brereton's sister Helen, and her sister Ethelind (Ethie) married Cyprian's brother Allen Brereton. Just to add to the matrimonial tangle, before he married Mary Strachan, Ida's uncle John J. Beatson had previously been engaged to her mother's older sister Alice Griffin, who died early at the age of 20 in 1864.²¹ A cousin, Arthur Griffin, may well have been influenced by the Beatson family connection to become a well-known Nelson architect in his own right.

Frank & Kate Waghorn’s family at the Guy family home, “Sunny Brae”. Guy Collection/Nelson Provincial Museum Collection, ref. 315174

Tom and Ida’s marriage on 4 November 1902 was followed by a wedding party held at “Manawatane”, an enjoyable social occasion for friends and family, many of them from the local community.²² They had three children, Vida, Douglas and David Pringle Strachan (1912-1983). David would have been about three at the time he was mentioned in his uncle Hector Guy’s postcard. In 1906, following the subdivision of the large “Woodstock” estate formerly owned by Dr Johansen of Motueka and managed by Gavin Strachan, Tom and Ida bought a block of land on Greenhill Road which became their farmstead, “Glenburnie”. This was right next to the five acre retirement property belonging to John Cornwall and Penelope (nee Wallis) McGaveston, known then as “Rathgar” and today the site of the third Ngatimoti School, built in 1954. Around the same time Frank and Catherine "Kate" (nee Perham) Waghorn became near neighbours to the Strachans. Their farm was on the flats between the Motueka Valley Highway and the Motueka River, opposite Ngatimoti School on the corner of Greenhill Road.

Members of Frank Waghorn’s family were amongst the earliest European settlers at Little Akaloa on Banks Peninsula in Canterbury. His great-uncle Arthur Waghorn arrived at Lyttelton in 1850 on the “Randolph”, one of the First Four Ships. He was joined by his brother David (Frank’s grandfather), who came out on the “Sir Edward Paget” with his family in 1856. Before moving north, Frank Waghorn worked as a bushman in the Ashley Gorge area near Oxford, North Canterbury, where his wife’s brother Richard Frederick Perham had a sawmilling business. In 1904 Richard Perham became partner in a major timber-milling operation known as Perham, Larsen & Co., based in the Rangitikei and later bought out by Francis Carter. It was eventually incorporated into the firm Carter, Holt, Harvey.

After running his own portable sawmill at Pangatotara for a time, Frank Waghorn became involved in many construction, roading and bridge-building projects in the Motueka district. From 1911 to 1913 he was employed as foreman on the Ngatimoti Peninsula Bridge build.²³ It got off to a shaky start in September 1911, becoming a suspension bridge by default after floodwaters swept down the Motueka River and demolished the new central pier, watched in shock by Kate Waghorn from the window of her dairy.

Believed to be Hector Guy's Aunt Ida (Mrs Thomas Strachan) at her Ngatimoti home, "Glenburnie", with Green Hill in the background. uy Collection/Nelson Provincial Museum, ref. 315198

The subject of Ida Strachan's anxious query was Frank and Kate’s oldest son Frank George Waghorn Jnr who was born in Christchurch on 3 April 1893, but grew up at Ngatimoti and attended the local school. Formerly living in Blackball, Westland, and working for the Blackball Coal Company as a miner and seaman on colliers operating out of Westport, he was serving as a private at Gallipoli with the 3rd Reinforcements, Canterbury Infantry Battalion, when Hector wrote his reply. Unfortunately Frank Jnr, who was wounded in action at Gallipoli on 6 June 1915, died as a result two days later on 8 June 1915 while being transported to Malta on the Hospital Ship “Sicilia”.²⁴ He is also commemorated at the Ngatimoti War Memorial and in Turkey at the Lone Pine Memorial on the Gallipoli Peninsula. A younger brother, Arthur, served during the war as well, but survived to return home. The two Ngatimoti Waghorn brothers are listed among the large contingent of Little Akaloa Waghorn cousins who also served during the First World War.²⁵

A hundred years on, Hector Guy's postcard now has a new home - it is safe in the archives of the Nelson Provincial Museum, where researchers and descendants of the families associated with it will be able to access it should they wish to do so.

Note

The action of which news had, to Hector's surprise, already reached home was probably the Second Battle of Krithia, 5-8 May 1915, a fruitless operation which cost the Allies 6,500 men, 800 of them New Zealanders. The 12th (Nelson) Company was in the vanguard of a charge on 8 May, and suffered several losses. Its commanding officer, Major Cyprian Brereton, received serious head injuries during this action and was evacuated from Gallipoli, first to Alexandria and then to the Royal Free Hospital in London, England. He was still recovering there when he married Daisy Guy in August 1915.

I watched the 12th Nelson Company make an advance over open country called the Daisy Patch. There was absolutely no cover for them. They lost their commanding officer and several men were casualties. Our turn to go across came next and we went over the top in good order. At once we were greeted with a terrible fusillade of rifle and machine gun fire, which was deadly. Eye witness account, Walter (Bill) Leadley, Canterbury Infantry Battalion.²⁶

2016 (updated Aug 2020)

The Police Act 1886 established New Zealand's first national, civil, police force. Sergeant John Nash of Nelson was the first non-commissioned member appointed to this Force on 1 September 1886. He had the number '1' displayed prominently on his headgear. 

Sergeant John Nash, July 1887. Nelson Provincial Museum, W.E. Brown Collection 16898. No.1 prominent on his headgear.

Nash was born in Killarney, Ireland, in about 1822. He arrived in New Zealand in 1845 as a member of the 65th Regiment of the British Army, stationed in New Zealand. He received a medal for his “hot work” with the “Maories  in Horokiwi valley” in 1846.¹ On leaving the Army in 1857 Nash joined the Nelson Provincial Armed Constabulary (ACF) as a constable. In 1859 he married Sarah Newport of Brook Street.²  He was promoted to Sergeant in 1863 and by 1866 he was Second Sergeant and third in command of the Nelson Provincial Police Force, under Seargeant-Major Robert Shallcrass.

In 1863 John Nash was stationed at Westport during the goldrush. Local businessmen regarded him as an "excellent officer" and a "very steady man", but diggers were disgusted that he actually tried to enforce 10 o'clock closing.³ Press comment made his rigid disciplinary approach to policing notorious.

By 1866 Sergeant Nash was back in Nelson, as Second Sergeant and third in command of the Provincial Police Force. In 1867 he played an important role in finding and arresting the Burgess Gang, responsible for the Maungatapu Murders, which shocked the Nelson Province. The gang was hiding out in Nelson waiting for a ship to New Plymouth. Nash also recovered the firearms used in the crime partly by creating “sundry obstacles” to the large number of people who went out to recover them when they heard the confession of one of the murderers. Nash was awarded a gold watch for his work, now held at the Nelson Provincial Museum, and was promoted to First Sergeant of the ACF.

In 1875 Nash complained of his policeman's lot to the Superintendent of Nelson, saying that his 160 pounds a year was inadequate because "At the present time I am on duty from 7pm to 7am and in addition to this I have to Summon Jurors for Coroners Inquests, attend the same and also the Criminal sittings of the Supreme Court without any remuneration".⁴ His application was denied.

His wife, Sarah, died in 1876 “after a long and painful illness”.⁵ Nash later remarried, to Selina Goddard of Motupipi.

In 1886, the Police Act was introduced, creating New Zealand’s first national civil police force, replacing the ACF and the Armed Police Force (APF). The APF, of which Nash was allegedly a member, was a colony-wide paramilitary style police force formed in context with the Land Wars to defend against attack and was made up of both Pākehā and Māori members. Unlike the APF, the newly formed New Zealand Police Force focused on crime prevention and keeping the peace rather than maintaining defence.

On 1 September 1886, Nash became a member of the national police force as Sergeant, becoming New Zealand’s first con-commissioned Police Officer. 

Gold Fob watch awarded to Sergeant John Nash. Thomas Russel and Son, August 1887. Nelson Provincial Museum

Nash was discharged on superannuation in 1887 after 30 years’ service with the police, in its various forms. Aged 59 he was deemed too old to continue working. He was given the newly struck New Zealand Police Long Service and Good Conduct Medal.

After leaving the police Nash didn’t retire, but became 'Inspector of Nuisances' for the Nelson City Council, a much sought-after position which he won against 29 other applicants. As the ‘Inspector of Nuisances’ and ‘Registrar of Dogs’ for the City of Nelson, Nash was responsible for ensuring that the town streets were clean and free of horse dung and rubbish, and that businesses were sanitary and street lamps were working.  He also had to make sure dogs were under control and that the dog tax was collected.

Nash died in 1893, survived by four children of his first wife, Sarah (nee Newport), his second wife Selina (nee Goddard) and their six children. He had named the youngest - born in the year he became 'policeman number one' - Sargeant John Nash.⁶

2020

Unwanted, Unneeded, Unremembered: The Life of the Nelson Gaol 1850-1898

The Nelson Gaol built in Shelbourne Street, in 1850, is little known or remembered as part of modern day Nelson society. But at its prime it gained a lot of social attention, from the controversy surrounding its introduction, to the Maungatapu Murderers right through to its destruction in 1898. The Gaol was constantly put under the spotlight.

In 1846 money was approved by the Provincial Government to build a Gaol  on Shelbourne Street.¹ The Gaol however wasn't opened until 1850. It was made out of wood to prevent earthquake risk and the structure had six cells and one juvenile cell.

Click  image to enlarge

The Gaol wasn't exactly needed in the area at the time, the crime rate was quite low as people busied themselves with creating the colony. Gaoler William Rogerson was mostly left to look after himself, but the government believed it was their duty to have a building suitable for housing people who offended;  this was essential to the foundation of a city and further development of the colony.²

The European settlers of Nelson were nervous about theft of their new found land and possessions as well as fearful of the Māori tribes in the area, as they were unsure of their values and beliefs. A civil prison relaxed the nerves of the citizens of Nelson.

In 1854 a Commission of Enquiry was set up by the Provincial Government Select Committee to examine the gaol conditions and they found it "unsuitable in every respect"³. It was, according to the Commission: "Badly designed, badly constructed and destitute of many of the conveniences requisite for the health of the prisoners. Its accommodation is so wretchedly inadequate that it is impossible to attempt any classification of prisoners. Debtors, lunatics, felons, prisoners awaiting trial and runaway seamen all mix indiscriminately together"⁴.

Prisoners were paid 10 shillings per week to watch the "lunatics", as the Gaolers were unqualified.⁵ Most of the prisoners were Māori and the language barrier proved a problem.⁶ Law and Order was good in the region and the Gaol proved a major embarrassment for the Provincial Government.

The fact that the lunatics and the prisoners were held together become a matter of issue for the Enquiry and in 1855 the Provincial Government responded. Tenders to alter the gaol and provide a separate wing for a lunatic asylum were commissioned.⁷

This did little to help though. By 1864 the Gaol was notorious for the extreme ease in which people who were incarcerated could escape.⁸ Any dangerous criminals were sent to the far more sturdy Wellington Gaol, which was made of stone. The Nelson Gaol, however, held its fair share of dangerous criminals, ones that would be remembered.

The story of the Maungatapu Murders is a legend in Nelson. In 1866 three of the gang of murderers were housed in the Gaol awaiting sentencing and on 5 October 1866 they were hung in the prison yard on scaffolding built by the prisoners themselves. The hanging drew a large social crowd to the Gaol, which had never seen more people, and the death of three criminals became the social event of the year. After they were hung the bodies of the murderers were buried in the prison yard and remain there to this day.

They were not the only victims killed on this scaffolding. A little over a year later on, 20 December 1867, Robert Wilson was hung after being found guilty of murdering his mate James Lennox. His hanging is less well documented but his body is also buried in the same yard alongside those of the Maungatapu Murderers.⁹

Many great policemen were appointed Gaolers in Nelson including the first, William Rogerson followed by Henry Clouston and, in 1874, Sergeant Major Robert Shallcrass.  Shallcrass was the head inspector in the case of the Maungatapu Murderers.¹⁰ The Gaolers were considered by The Colonist (Nelson's Local Newspaper) at the time to be "lame and aged" and would meander around the Gaol in a leisurely fashion. The prisoners suffered an exceedingly gentle form of punishment. The Gaol was not up to scratch and public opposition to it began to grow.¹¹

Nelson Gaol Tragedy. Observer, Volume 6, Issue 151, 4 August 1883, Page 6 [Papers Past]
Click image to enlarge

On 28 July 1883 Warder Samuel Adams was killed in the line of duty by convicted killer John Davidson. Davidson was due to be moved to Wellington prison, and the fact that he was still in Nelson several months following his sentencing was a bureaucratic oversight. Davidson stabbed Adams with a butcher's knife from the kitchen and then stole a revolver. Gaoler Robert Shallcrass was awoken by a scream and a gunshot and went down into the Gaol to find Davidson pointing a gun at him and ordering him to open the barrier gate. Shallcrass talked him down for 50 minutes before convincing Davidson to kill himself, Davidson carried out the suggestion and shot himself.

Davidson was buried in the Gaol Yard and Adams was buried in neighbouring Hallowell Cemetery. Shallcrass was criticised for his role in the tragedy and he resigned later that year.¹² The tragedy brought the attention of the community to the prison once again and caused the Provincial Government to rethink the situation of the Gaol.  

In 1898, after the completion of the building of Rocks Road, there was no longer any labour for the inmates of the Gaol to carry out as punishment, and it was decided that the Gaol be closed and the inmates and  warden would be transferred to Wellington.

Plaque marking the site of the gaol
Click to enlarge

Nelson now only contained a Police Gaol at the John Street Police Station.

In 1906 The Nelson Education Board secured the Shelbourne St site for a Girls School and the Gaol was demolished. The school building opened in 1908. In January 1927 all area schools became co-ed and the building became the Nelson Education Board Office until 1996 when it was sold.¹³

The Shelbourne St Gaol site is now a tan coloured town house and only a plaque marks the spot where it once sat. Nelson Gaol is not the city's proudest facility but it has marked its place in Nelson history as a place best known as unwanted and unseen, but a necessary part of the community.

Gemma Winstanley, Nayland College, 2011. Updated May 2020

The trial of the notorious Burgess gang caused a sensation in the small town of Nelson in 1866. Murder was a rare crime and this one involved not just one, but five victims, and everyone was desperate to know all the grisly details.... 

Murder on the Maungatapu

The story began with the mysterious disappearance of five men on the Maungatapu track between Nelson and the Wairau in mid June1866. The first victim was travelling alone from Pelorus, and then it was the turn of a group of four from Deep Creek, on the Wakamarina goldfield.

The perpetrators were Richard Burgess, Philip Levy, Thomas Kelly and Joseph Sullivan, hardened criminals who had served prison time in England, Australia and Otago for robbery and burglary. Collectively known as the Burgess gang, they had arrived in Nelson via the Otago and West Coast goldfields on June 6, 1866 and decided to rob a bank in Picton.

The four murderers,The Nelson Provincial Museum, Museum Collection, LS9.3.7
Click image to enlarge

A change of plan saw the gang returning from Canvastown to the eastern side of the Maungatapu track. The new strategy was to lie in wait for men heading for Nelson from the Wakamarina goldfield and rob them of money and gold.¹

On June 12 they strangled and suffocated James Battle, a 54-year old whaler who had been working as a farm labourer at Pelorus. The robbery netted them a mere three pounds and seventeen shillings.²

Murderer's rock plaque at the Maungatapu saddle (Peter Lowish, Feb. 2009 - this has been noted as damaged 2011)
Click image to enlarge

The following day, the gang hid behind a large rock and ambushed a group of four men travelling from the Wakamarina to Nelson with a packhorse. Led off the track into dense bush, storekeepers John Kempthorne and James Dudley, innkeeper Felix Mathieu and miner James de Pontius were variously strangled, stabbed and shot. Having removed a quantity of gold and money, the gang loaded their victims’ swags onto Old Farmer, the horse, led him into the bush and shot him.³

The men were missed almost immediately by their friends, and a large search party, including men from the Maori community, was soon on the hunt for them.⁴   

Meanwhile the gang had slunk back to Nelson, where they spent money cleaning themselves up and buying new clothes.⁵

Local newspapers were full of the story of the “goldfield rogues” and the “supposed case of sticking up”.⁶

The failure of the search to find the missing men fed fears that they had been murdered. Suspicion fell on the free spending gang members and they were all in custody by the evening of June 19.⁷

The death masks of Kelly, Burgess and Levy, The Nelson Provincial Museum, Museum Collection, M539
Click image to enlarge

Sullivan took advantage of a Government offer of a 200 pound reward or a free pardon  for any accomplice and turned Queen's evidence. He told police he was only the lookout, while the other three were responsible for the murders of all five missing men.⁸

Information from Sullivan led to the location of the bodies of the Mathieu party on June 28, following the finding of Old Farmer by Hemi Matenga from Wakapuaka.⁹ The bodies were carried to Nelson and were viewed by thousands of people in the engine shed, which acted as a temporary morgue. This building still stands in Albion Square. Two days after the funeral the body of James Battle was found, and he was buried in the same grave. Nelsonians paid for a five-sided monument to stand over the shared grave at Wakapuaka Cemetery.¹⁰

Burgess wrote his confessions while in gaol.¹¹  All four men were convicted of the murders, with Burgess, Kelly and Levy being hanged at the Nelson Gaol on October 5, 1866. Their bodies were buried in unconsecrated ground behind the gaol. Sullivan's death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, and he served time in Dunedin before being pardoned in 1874 and returning to England.

Maungatapu Murder Memorial (Karen Stade)
Click image to enlarge

In a grisly twist, the dead men's heads were removed from their bodies and plaster casts made from them. This was done in a bid to support the theories of phrenology, a pseudo-science that sought to determine personal characteristics by examining the shape of an individual's head.¹² The casts are displayed in The Nelson Provincial Museum.

Additional note

The bodies of the hanged men were not afforded the dignity of a proper burial. On the night following the executions the bodies were buried in the gaol yard. Over time some of the remains have almost certainly been dug up and possibly mistakenly reburied as Maori remains. ¹³ 

About the Maungatapu Track. ¹⁴ 
The unsealed 40-kilometre Maungatapu track is currently closed to vehicles but can be walked or tackled on mountain bikes. It runs from the Maitai River Forks up to the Maungatapu Saddle and down into the Pelorus Valley. The infamous Murderer’s Rock is 4.3km from the summit on the Pelorus side.

2008 

Updated: Apr 3, 2020

There was a time when Picton was a busy industrial town, with the fishing industry, sardine cannery, freezing works, railway workshops, whaling station within reach, wharves serving overseas shipping, and a cement works on the Elevation.  Pugh Brothers of Picton built the works for the Wellington and Marlborough Cement Coal and Lime Company Ltd in 1904.  The corrugated iron building (450 by 90 feet) contained kilns, mills, a 225 horsepower Haslam engine, and two large boilers.                                                                                        

The Cement Works on The Elevation above Picton. Courtesy of the Picton Historical Society

The site was chosen due to a quarry a few hundred yards away, where suitable marl (a type of rich clay soil) could easily be obtained.  The Company’s water supply came from a reservoir constructed in a watershed on Mount Freeth. The supply of limestone came from the Tata Islands in Golden Bay, and was shipped to Picton using two scows, the nucleus of a private fleet. One of these scows was the Magic. It was then trucked direct to the private siding at the Elevation Works.  It is not known where the coal supply came from, but as there was a seam of coal at the Elevation as well as in Shakespeare Bay, it was probably local.

Over fifty men were employed at the islands and the Elevation, forty of whom were engaged at the plant in three shifts to keep the machinery constantly going, and many of the hands lived in the Company’s Elevation boarding House.  Twice there was a fire in this residence, but only bedding and some papers were destroyed thanks to the efforts of the men fighting the flames.  For a few years there was a Company brass band which gave local performances.  The Manager of the plant was John Alexander Hart Kelly, from Lancashire, who lived with his family in a house in Wairau Road between the Crow Hotel and the Service Station; this house was later bought by the Crow Hotel.  There was one fatal accident at the Works, when 23-year-old Albert Kilpatrick from Dunedin fell off a wooden ladder and never regained consciousness.  At the inquest it was recommended that a fixed iron ladder be installed for future use.

In November 1906, the Company were granted permission to lay down a light tramway across the main road at the Elevation from Mr R. Cragg’s property to the kilns on the works site, probably to transport the marl.

The works cost £15,000 to build, and the first shipment of cement to Wellington was made in the year of construction. The output from these works reached in excess of 300 tons a week. This venture failed after a few years and the Company went into liquidation. As limestone forms about two-thirds of the ingredients in the manufacture of cement, it would have been a better proposition to take the marl to the limestone.  As usual in small towns there were months of speculation before the final closure in January 1907.  The Government had taken ownership of the Tata Islands so there was no further limestone supply.  Two years later after a Court hearing the Crown was obliged to pay compensation of £1400 but by then the Company had been liquidated.

2012

Golden Bay, now known for its pristine coastline and National Parks, was once home to a wide range of industries, many of which have now gone. The Tarakohe Cement works is one these industries.

Cement works at Tarakohe, 1911 [Sydney Charles Smith] Alexander Turnbull Library. 1/1-019754-G. http://mp.natlib.govt.nz/detail/?id=26826
Click image to enlarge

Early surveys in Golden Bay showed there were abundant materials for the production of Portland cement¹, witha 30 metre thick belt of tertiary arenaceous limestone extending over about 24 square km at Tarakohe.²

While there had been attempts to get a cement factory up and running in the late 1800s, it wasn't until 1908 that some Nelson and Wellington businessmen established the Golden Bay Cement Company with capital of £60,000.³  No doubt they were keen to profit from the building and public works boom in New Zealand at the time.⁴

A timber wharf was built in 1910 and cement production was underway by November 1911.⁵ The first cement was loaded onto a small boat by men standing up to their waists in the sea, then rowed out to the SS Kaitoa.⁶ In strong onshore winds, vessels departing Tarakohe wharf hauled themselves out to sea by passing a rope through a ring on a buoy.⁷

A close knit community formed around the cement works. Initially a boarding house, office and manager's office were built and single men and a few families lived under canvas. The Pohara Hall, funded by the Cement Workers Union and built in 1924, was a popular venue for movies and social events and the Nelson Education Board built a small school in 1956.⁸

The cement works struggled through the Great Depression: "The Golden Bay cement works, after a period of idleness of nearly two years is once again in full swing at Tarako'he. The ever-increasing demand for cement in the erection of modern buildings finds the Dominion prepared with three payable deposits, one in the north, one in Otago, and the other at Golden Bay," reported the Evening Post in 1923.⁹

Group in front of buildings at Tarakohe Cement Works, Tasman District, [ca 1939]. Alexander Turnbull Library. 1/2-009144-F http://mp.natlib.govt.nz/detail/?id=41194
Click image  to enlarge

In June, 1929, the Murchison Earthquake ripped limestone from the cliffs which crashed onto the cement works' powerhouse and killed an engineer.¹⁰

The company was still not up to full capacity by the start of World War 2 and, in 1949, the New Zealand Government exhorted the cement industry to greater production to help the country get back on its feet.¹¹

Transporting cement around New Zealand was expensive and, in 1955, the M.V. Golden Bay was launched and bulk shipment of cement began.¹²  The slightly larger Ligar Bay was commissioned in 1964, and the two vessels carried their heavy cargo to Deep Cove, Fiordland, where it was offloaded for the Manapouri Hydro Scheme.¹³

Wharfside depot installations were built at Wellington, Wanganui and New Plymouth to receive the bulk cement. The Golden Bay Cement Co also had its own fleet of bulk cement trucks, the largest of which could carry 23 tonnes.¹⁴

Sales of cement reached a peak in the mid-1970s and the company expanded production to 400,000 tonnes. The new port was very busy for more than eight years¹⁵ until the end of the 1970s when the country's Think Big projects, hydro dams, high rise buildings and huge sewerage schemes were completed. ¹⁶

In 1983, the company gained a contract to supply 96,000 tonnes of cement to the huge Clyde Dam project.¹⁷  However the writing was on the wall and The Golden Bay Cement Company merged with Wilson's Portland Cement in 1983.  By 1985, redundancies saw the staff of 400 employees reduced to 150 workers.

New owners, Fletcher Challenge, closed the works on 13 September 1988.¹⁸ The small Lee Valley plant was closed in 1998. The company is still operating as Golden Bay Cement today, but its manufacturing operations have been concentrated at Portland, 8km south of Whangarei.

After working 80 years around the clock, the Tarakohe works fell silent. Demand had been falling since 1974 and the loss of import protection was the last straw. The closure of the factory was a major blow to Golden Bay.¹⁹  

Man loading a railway truck at Golden Bay Cement Works, Tarakohe,[Thelma Rene Kent, ca 1939] Alexander Turnbull Library 1/2-009146-F http://mp.natlib.govt.nz/detail/?id=41198
Click image to enlarge

The port continued to operate and in 1994, the Tasman District Council bought the harbour facilities for $275,000, expanding them to meet the needs of recreational boaties, commercial fishermen and operators.²⁰

Industrial Golden Bay

At one time, it seemed that Golden Bay would develop into a significant industrial area. "With improved roads and modern motor traffic, coupled with the introduction of large numbers of public works and industrial workers, the whole future outlook of Golden Bay is rapidly undergoing a complete change. The coming of the iron and steel works, the opening of large asbestos deposits and the introduction of hydro-electric power must certainly provide the district with an industrial complex in place of the present farming one," The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 14, Issue 7 (October 2, 1939)

• The Onekaka Iron Works opened in 1922.
• Marble from Takaka Hill used in the construction of the new Parliament Buildings in 1911 may have been taken out over Tarakohe wharf 
• Asbestos first surveyed in the Cobb in 1882, was worked from 1940 to 1964
• The short-lived Aorere gold mines of 1856

2011

The highs and lows of goldmining

Graveyards have an international reputation for being 'spooky', but when you are standing in the graveyard of a deceased town, 'spooky' takes on a very different connotation. Lyell attained a population of over two thousand and was the chief producer of gold in the Buller district. It created opportunities for aspiring miners and accommodated to the needs of their families. However, all that can be viewed from this once bustling community are decaying headstones, landslide-ridden dray roads and remnants of buildings.

Lyell Cemetery. Jason Blair, 2009.
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The discovery of gold
Julius Von Haast explored the South West area of the Nelson region during the mid 1800's, and in his travels named the "continuous rocky chain ... with magnificent needles and points"¹ the Lyell Range. Sir Charles Lyell was a British geologist who was the "father of modern geology.'² Sir Lyell is attributed with the theory behind mountains forming after plate movement over hundreds of years, and scientists, such as Charles Darwin, built much of their work on Lyell's three volumes of 'Principles of Geology'. It is commonly accepted that Sir Lyell did not know of the settlement's existence, nor of its rich surroundings, and although Haast also never visited the town, his admiration for Sir Charles Lyell, and the consequent naming of the area, perfectly highlights the rugged and mountainous environment that contained the town.

Māori prospectors were the first to obtain gold from the Lyell region, and potentially sparked a prosperous gold rush for the area. Native Māori knew of the gold's existence in the Lyell area, but due to their fascination with greenstone, they did not prize it. However, after Eparara, a Māori prospector, and four other miners, discovered a 'dumbbell' shaped nugget weighing 19½ ounces, 'up the creek named Lyell, by Haast',³ pakeha began to recognise Lyell as a potential gold mining area. Eparara and his team fossicked for gold in a tunnel through solid rock, one mile upstream from the bridge today. This discovery resulted in the desertion of other gold mines, and the establishment of the town know as Lyell.

As reports of significant gold discoveries in Lyell infiltrated the mining community, miners from all over the world made their way to the isolated settlement. By 1863, 100 miners from other gold fields had set up camp along the creek and benefited greatly from the nuggets found which weighed between 17 and 52 ounces. In one report, five Irishmen claimed to have uncovered 500 ounces (1.4 kilograms)⁴ in five days. Twelve men organised themselves into a 'Vigilance Committee', to regulate the claim sizes and prevent Australian gold miners dispossessing Māori prospector's findings; on two occasions they threatened the Australians with lynching. However, they did not need to enforce it on either occasion. As well as Australians, miners came to Lyell from Greece, Italy, Switzerland, England, Scotland, Ireland, India and America. Prosperous mining reports kept international excavators interested in the Lyell area and consequently the population began to rise.

Scene in the vicinity of Lyell Township [1880's] Alexander Turnbull Library.
http://mp.natlib.govt.nz/detail/?id=13838
Click image to enlarge

Transport
Transport to and from Lyell was treacherous as the Buller River was the sole contact with exporters and other settlements. Lyell was described as 'the most inaccessible goldfield in New Zealand'⁵, with Māori the only canoeists strong enough to paddle against the powerful rapids. William Stuart, one of the first residents of Lyell, depicted his journey up the Buller river in his journal and explains 'canoes are poled and paddled, towed by ropes... then pulled by all hands'⁶ until they finally reached their destination. Early horse roads were created as well as tracks but they were often rough and unstable for carts, so in 1870 a road was laid down called Cliff Street - which became the main, and only, street of Lyell - and was extended in 1877. Soon after, a road was made along the Buller River, which made travelling to Lyell significantly easier. Consequently, as the transportation system developed, women and families were able to venture into Lyell as they centralised the mining community.

Access to Lyell became somewhat easier for the wives and families of the miners during the late 1860's and early 1870's and they began to move to Lyell. In the early 1870's, the arrival of women encouraged the miners to move from their tents which lined the creek, into a more civilised home. As the population of the town grew, more shops were quickly erected. Previously miners had only come to town at the weekends. Numerous general stores, as well as a butcher, a cordwainer, a news agency and a hotel, lined Cliff Street, behind which were several houses and tents. As more females arrived in Lyell, prospectors from the Lyell Creek moved in to the town, and soon a community was created.

Expansion of the town
As the town expanded further and became more settled, a newspaper was established in 1880 known as the 'Lyell Argus', only to be changed later to the 'Lyell Times'. The 'Lyell Argus' consisted of four pages, with international, local and mining news as well as advertisements and general notices. Sold every Saturday for sixpence, the equivalent of five cents today, the 'Lyell Argus' held important information for Lyell's residents, from touring circuses to the opening of The National Bank. The establishment of the towns' newspaper allowed the residents of Lyell and other members of the community who lived up the Lyell Creek, to keep informed about the town, country's and world's news.

Buller River Valley with Lyell School House[1878-1994] Alexander Turnbull Library
http://mp.natlib.govt.nz/detail/?id=13859 
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As children were born in Lyell, or were brought there by canoe, the demand for adequate education rose. The journey down river to Westport was a dangerous and tiresome one, so Lyell residents erected a school to educate their children, in the year of 1874. Photographs show the school was situated on the Nelson side of the town, on a small flat piece of land. The roll rose from 52, when the school opened, to 86, in Lyell's heyday, the period of greatest success. Complications with the hiring of the school's teacher proved a difficulty, and in 1892 the school opened late due to the absence of one. Although problems arose for the Lyell school, its existence ensured that the education of the miners' families would not be affected by their isolation.

Lyell citizens were predominantly of the Roman Catholic and Anglican faiths, which both required their own separate churches in which the residents could attend. Erected in 1874, the Saint Matthew's Church of England allowed the Anglican residents of Lyell to continue to exercise their faith. It was a regularly used church which held a donated organ, from Mrs Sadlier, and was the church of A.E Ashton, the only clergyman to live in Lyell. Reverend Father Cummings was the Reverend for the Saint Josephs Church. He travelled from Reefton to Lyell once a month to hold mass. The Saint Josephs Church was built in 1876 due to the large population of Irish and Italian miners who lived at Lyell and wanted to show their faith for the Roman Catholic beliefs. Both Saint Matthews and Saint Josephs Church were an important part of the Lyell community as they allowed its residents to practice their faith in a dignified and honourable way.

Township of Lyell 1880s. Alexander Turnbull Library. http://mp.natlib.govt.nz/detail/?id=13840
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Health care
Health care was poor in Lyell, with scurvy and other diseases common due to the extensive journey from Murchison. Illness often resulted in death as there was no doctor that lived in Lyell, and by the time he arrived up the Buller River, it was often too late. However, in January 1886 the Lyell Times published an advertisement for 'George Levien, Surgeon Dentist, Chemist and Druggist... to attend patients at the Commercial Hotel'.⁷.Unfortunately he did not stay long, but his visit was greatly appreciated among the Lyell people. After his trip, residents attempted to fundraise for a Lyell hospital, but the amount raised, £109 and nineteen shillings, was not enough to begin this endeavour. Consequently, the townspeople of Lyell often died young due to the lack of medical care in the area.

Lyell's heyday
As the town thrived, quartz was mined by companies from the reefs behind Lyell, supplying the many miners with more stable jobs. The quartz had to be bashed by a battery, a piston powered by water which fell on the quartz, to obtain the gold inside - this form of mining was the main income for Lyell during its existence. Machinery was brought from Melbourne via Westport and was then allocated to the various mines in the area. The largest mine in Lyell was called the United Alpine, which opened four miles up the Lyell Creek in 1874. Its establishment brought much success to Lyell with its twenty head battery, which 'crushed fifteen tons of quartz per eight hour shift,"⁸ and also the employment of up to two hundred men at one time. Although the town itself was growing, wealth was brought into the area by the surrounding mines which obtained quartz from the hills behind Lyell.

From 1880 to 1896, Lyell experienced its heyday. Lyell had grown at an efficient rate due to the presence of gold quartz in the neighbouring reefs which created a stable and successful atmosphere within the town. Cliff Street was lined with banks, hotels, a post office, courthouse, police station, brewery and newspaper agency, which all of Lyell's residents benefited from greatly. A small farm across the Buller River supplied much of the town with milk and vegetables which were transported across the river in 'a box... that was propelled across the river by pulling on ropes.'⁹ This device enabled the residents to cross the Buller River, although there were often complications resulting in death. During this time, regular contact with neighbouring communities began, with a regular coach travelling from Lyell to Nelson. However, this prosperous period was short lived.

Biddy of the Buller¹⁰
Bridget Goodwin, or "Biddy of the Buller" as she was known, was possibly Lyell's most famous resident. A formidable woman, even though she was only four feet in height. She left poverty in Ireland for the lure of the Australian goldfields in the mid 1800's. There she befriended two men, and left with them for New Zealand in the 1880's, where they worked the Collingwood goldfields. Fossicking their way down the Buller, they arrived in Lyell in the 1890's - Lyell's heyday. There she lived with the two miners in a one room hut where the iron bridge crosses the Buller. The community may have been scandalised by her living arrangements, and her drinking, but she did not care - and worked alongside her two men, eventually outliving both, working up until she was 80. At that age she decided her body was worn out and she settled into a two room cottage in Reefton, where she died in 1899 aged 86.

Decline
Several large, disastrous fires encouraged Lyell's decline after its successful, gold mining heyday. Water was well supplied in Lyell, with a reservoir on the spur above the town and a water tank above the Post Office Hotel; however there was not enough to extinguish the fire of 1896, so it was left to freely demolish the National Bank, three hotels, several stores as well as residents' houses. Although there was no loss of life, some townspeople, such as Mr John Fennell, lost up to £8,000 when six buildings he owned were burnt to the ground. People began to rebuild and six months later Lyell was 'beginning to look like it used to.'¹¹

Cliff Street Lyell, c. 1900/. Alexander Turnbull Library.
http://mp.natlib.govt.nz/detail/?id=13840
Click image to enlarge

However, prospectors and their families began to leave Lyell after the New Alpine Mine closed in 1906. The mine was the largest employer in the area and supplied the miners of Lyell with a regular income. Its failure meant the families in Lyell would no longer have sufficient income or employment, so many residents moved to the West Coast or to other mining towns, such as Wakamarina, to find employment.  The closure of Lyell's biggest Quartz mine led to the desertion of their once thriving town. Another fire in 1926 saw the destruction of the Lyell post office, court house, library and school and this resulted in the further abandonment of Lyell.

On the 17 June, 1929, the Murchison area was struck by a magnitude 7.8 earthquake, which left Lyell completely cut off from the rest of New Zealand. No buildings in Lyell were severely damaged; however, the roads leading into the town had numerous landslips along them.  The slips isolated Lyell as no one was able to leave or come into the town; this resulted in numerous people dying as doctors were not able to get to Lyell in time. The Buller road was closed for 18 months and until it was cleared the townspeople had to walk out to get their supplies. The earthquake encouraged more people to leave, as it reinforced how isolated they were from the rest of the country.

By 1951 the only remaining building in Lyell was the Post Office Hotel; however it too was destroyed by a fire in 1963. The Post Office Hotel had been built in 1874 by a man called Mangos. It had seen the establishment, heyday and decline of Lyell, and held the majority of Lyell's historic artefacts. Mr Cox, the owner of the hotel, hopelessly watched as his hotel, home and history, was engulfed in a 'mass of flames'¹² and burned to the ground in less than half an hour. By 1963, few remnants of Lyell remained after the last Hotel was burned to the ground.

A historical reserve
Lyell is now a historical reserve with walking and biking tracks surrounding a grass camping ground. The Department of Conservation and the Department of Lands and Surveys, established Lyell as a historical reserve to remember Lyell's existence. Today, visitors are encouraged to pan for gold, in the ‘gold fossicking reserve' on the Lyell Creek, and are able to camp at the site of the old town. Historic boards and plaques have been erected by both departments to show visitors what life was like for the residents of Lyell and how much the area has changed. These boards also show the few remaining pieces of evidence of the town.

Dray roads and walking tracks from the camping site lead to significant areas in the town's history. One such site is the United Alpine mine and Croesus mine, whose battery is still there. Other paths lead to the neighbouring towns of Zalatown and Gibbstown, old building sites, and the tunnel in which gold was first discovered by Māori in 1862. Yet the most popular walk is only five minutes from the camping ground and leads to the old cemetery of Lyell. Surrounded by dense bush, this cemetery has a handful of headstones enclosed by iron railings. Although much of Lyell's history and buildings have been destroyed, the cemetery has been preserved in an attempt to remember the lives of those who lived here.

Lyell today is a very different place to what is was 100 years ago. It is hard to imagine, when standing in the historic reserve, that people used to live here, amongst the blackberry and gorse there were houses, shops and hotels. Surrounded by forested hills, it is a beautiful place to be. Yet when you are standing graveyard of an abandoned town, it does seem 'spooky'.

The Old Ghost Road
Lyell is now the starting (or finishing point) for the Old Ghost Road, which has increased interest in, and visits to, the site since it was completed in 2015.  The old gold miners’ road has been revived as a mountain biking and tramping trail – connecting the old dray road in the Lyell (Upper Buller Gorge) to the Mokihinui River in the north. The 85km-long Old Ghost Road traverses native forest, open tussock tops, river flats and forgotten valleys, after following the dray road to Lyell Saddle Hut.

Steph Russell, Nelson College for Girls, 2011. Updated May 2020.

Seaview Cemetery Block 24, Plot 480

Richards’s first wife Jane was buried at Fairfield Cemetery in 1855.

Headstone of Richard Ching. Seaview Cemetery

Richard Ching¹ was born on  11 July 1811 in England to Cornish parents - William Ching and Mary Vague. Richard was aged 12 when both his father, aged 40 years, and grandmother, aged 78, passed away within a year of each other. He married his first wife Jane Harris in April 1841 and they later had one daughter and six sons who passed on the family name.

Headstone of Richard Ching. Seaview Cemetery

Nine days after their marriage, Richard was on his way to sail to New Zealand on an expedition under the direction of Captain Arthur Wakefield to survey and choose a settlement site for emigrants coming from England. They sailed out on three ships; The Whitby, the Will Watch and the Arrow. The first two vessels sailed on the 2nd May, 1841 but the Arrow did not get away until the 21st. All three vessels arrived in Nelson where there was some argument over the site for settlement. The expedition crossed Cook Strait to explore the district, when it was finally agreed after much debate that the settlement would be located in Wakatu Bay.

The wives and children followed in February 1842 on the Lloyds, where 65 children died giving it the worst record of any immigrant ship in New Zealand for deaths on a journey.
Richard was one of the first Englishmen to set foot in Nelson and he soon established an orchard and a farm on Nayland Road, Stoke which his sons helped him to run for many years, making the family prominent in the Stoke area. After his first wife, Jane, died at the age of 43 in 1855, Richard remarried to Elizabeth Pearce in 1857 and they had 12 children together.
Richard passed away in 1883 at the age of 72 with the respect of all that knew him.
His children with Jane were²:

• John Harris born 1844
• William -  born 1845, married Elizabeth Doidge in 1868. Their daughter Isabella married William Chisnall whose grandfather was Edmund Buxton of Broadgreen House.
• James born c1849, married in 1871 to Mary Ann Doidge.
• Charles born c1849, married in 1879 to Sarah Jane Norgate. Their son Leslie Ching was one of three brothers who served in the New Zealand Expeditionary Force (NZEF) in WW1. Herbert Charles and Mostyn Roy both survived the war, but Leslie died of influenza in 1919.
• Henry born c.1851. He married Elizabeth Hannah Jellyman in 1877.

The children of Richard and  Elizabeth were²: 

• Mary Jane, born.1858 and died 1860.
• Michael born 1859 and  married in 1892 to Lucy Emma Lovell
• Mary Jane born 1861 and married in 1881 to Thomas Holdaway.
• Elizabeth Ann,  born1862, married in 1880 to William Jellyman.
• Eliza born1863, married in 1894 to James Guger Rankin.
• Richard born1864, married 1899 to Elizabeth Kate Jenkin Ballard.
• Emma Louise/a,  born 1865, married in 1884 to Edwin Arthur Edwards.
• Thomas born 1866, married Agnes Jellyman.
• Philip born 1868, married 1891 to Ellen Martha Best.
• Grace Pearce born 1870, married in 1902 to Job Meads.
• Sarah born 1872, married in 1901 to Ernest Cawthron Bright.
• Minnie born 1875, married in 1913 to Samuel George Bridgeman.
• John Louis born 1877, married Alice Louisa Hammond.

Henry and Elizabeth Ching nee Jellyman

Seaview Cemetery Block 15 Plot 289 & 290

Elizabeth Hannah Jellyman was born 19 March 1858 in Stoke to Ann and Enoch. Henry and Ann married 21 June 1877 at the Wesley Church, Stoke. Henry, the fifth son of Richard, and Elizabeth, the fourth daughter of Ann and Enoch, both of Stoke.

Henry and Elizabeth had 12 children. Elizabeth died 1 May 1924 aged 66 and Henry died 7 November 1929 aged 77.

The children who were officially registered³ were:

• Wilfred Henry born 1878
• Francis William born1879
• Percy Enoch born 1880 and  married in 1908 to Annie McCormack and probably remarried in 1918 to Elsie Olive Scott (although this may have been the son).
• Francis Richard born 1882 and married in 1927 to Violet Ann Thompson.
• Raynor Ashton born 1883 and married in 1918 to Francis Mary Bashford.
• Hilda Mary [May] born 1887 and married in 1913 to George Vincent Dee.
• Myrtle Ruby born 1889
• Cyril Victor born 1892 and married in 1911 to Kathleen Burke
• Allen Lee born 1893
• Bertie Louis born 1896 and married in 1921 to Ruby Grace Ricketts.
• Hector Keith born 1903 and married in 1921 to Pearl Albmena.

Thomas and Agnes Ching nee Jellyman⁴

Seaview Cemetery Block 15, Plot 296

Agnes Charlotte Jellyman, daughter of Enoch and Ann Jellyman was born 22 July 1864, had her schooling at Stoke School and  by 1895 she was organist at the Stoke Wesleyan Methodist Church. Agnes married Thomas Ching 12 April 1893, who was described as a farmer.

Thomas, or Tom, born 16 October 1867 and died 10 September 1948.  Tom was initially a farmer probably in the Stoke area, then an orchardist in Chings Road, Lower Moutere. The couple returned to Stoke when they retired from the orchard where Agnes died aged 73, 6 June 1938. Tom survived her by another 10 years. They had no children.

The discovery of an outcrop of copper ore in the upper Aniseed Valley by Fred Stratford in 1881 led to the development of an industry that saw a 30-year flurry of activity, both on the ground and in the share market. No fortunes were made; plenty were lost. However, most of the people behind the succession of companies that worked the copper mines were eternal optimists who believed the next outcrop would repay their efforts. They have left us places to explore with an associated collection of relics and stories.

1898 Champion Mine Copper Smelter, Aniseed Valley, The Nelson Provincial Museum, Brusewitz Collection, 434
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Mine Operations

Following the discovery of native copper, most of the Mineral Belt in the area was soon taken up with prospecting licences.

Leaseholders were entitled to investigate the economic potential of the ore, but they all had two problems in common. One was finding capital, the other was the isolation of the lodes.

However, companies were formed and took their names from the lodes they were to open up. While company politics sought deals to gain finance, workers sweated on the ground. Access was established; exploratory drives were tunnelled. Ore was packed out and shipped to Newcastle for testing. Promising results and the discovery of the rich Doctor's Lode prompted the directors of the Champion Company to cease exploration in favour of more permanent works.

‘Losing' the lodes early did not create enough suspicion about ore quantities to dampen investment in plant. At the Champion Mine, a shaft was sunk in 1884 to a depth of 150 feet and another nearby in 1886. A main United Mine drive was begun; the wooden rails for this were hand-sawn on site. Tramways were built to move ore from both mines to the newly-built smelter, and these were up and running by 1886. In hindsight, the company would have been wiser to spend money establishing the extent of the ore, rather than investing in plant.

Over time, the upper Aniseed Valley was eventually worked as a single property. The main sites of operation, which you can explore via walking tracks and routes today, were the smelter, the Champion Mine and the United Mine.

Mining peaked around 1886. However, only eight days after molten ore flowed at the smelter, all operations shut down. Low copper prices and insufficient funds were cited as the reason. Various caretakers tried to look after the plant, but bush fires during periods of dry weather proved costly, damaging the smelter and tramways.

In 1903 work began on reopening the mines under the Maoriland Copper Company. By 1907 the United Mine's underground levels had been re-timbered and were open, with underground ore chutes operating. At the Champion, the tramway was overhauled, the North shaft dewatered, and new headworks and winding gear installed.

Work did not last long however. Both mines were abandoned by 1909. The end of operations was blamed on the impassable condition of the road, but subsequent geological reports show that ore reserves were insufficient. At, or close to, the surface the copper ores were  almost pure copper, or copper compounds consisting of mostly the green-coloured carbonate malachite. However, below the surface the rich ores gave way to lean iron sulphide pyrrhotite containing only a trace of copper. It appears that the main purpose of reopening the mines was to enable share-trading in a highly speculative venture.

Over the years many people and contracting businesses were employed in the industry - at the mines, the smelter, on ore haulage, road-making and engineering design; on making and supplying machinery, timber-milling, inspections and company business. For a time a mine manager lived in relative comfort in a house at the smelter, while workers lived in tents and shanties on the United Creek river flats Access was sometimes cited as a reason for failure of the copper mines, but although funds had to be repeatedly put into maintaining the road, failure was actually due to the sporadic occurrence of the ore which did not match with the ambitious investment in plant.

Today's Historic Walks

From the early days of farming and mineral prospecting, a series of walking tracks and later pack tracks networked the hill sides.

A system of horse-drawn and gravity-fed tramways transported the ore to the smelter. These tramways allow us access to the mines today. The walking track to the United Mine along United Creek is well-formed, but is steep and of route standard to reach the mine levels. The old tramway formation to the Champion Mine is of tramping track standard. The steep link over the ridge between the mines is a route, with excellent views from the ridge top.

Champion Road in Richmond is named after the mine, following the formation of a pack track from there in 1883. The journey took 3 hours, probably longer when packing out heavy ore. The Barnicoat Track to Nelson took 2 hours in 1884, following several upgrades. The Aniseed Valley Road was extended right up to the mines by 1885, but tracks remained a direct way for miners to get to town for a weekend. Other ideas for mine access, such as a Barnicoat Road over the range or a railway tunnel under it, were deemed too ambitious and expensive.

The mines - a history in pictures

Champion Copper Mines, mine entrance, c.1885. The Nelson Provincial Museum, Tyree Studio Collection, 176375/3 .
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c.1885 Champion Copper Mines, mine entrance:

The Main or North Shaft showing the horse-operated whim that raised or lowered materials and miners in the shaft. A wire rope, encircling the horse-drawn drum, was connected via a pulley system to a cage in the shaft. The direction of the horse was reversed to change the direction of the cage. The Champion Mine was finally abandoned in 1908 and in general its yields were richer than those of the nearby United Mine.

However, the United remained open for a fraction longer. During 1909 ore from the United Mine was taken to the Globe smelter near Reefton for experimental use as a flux in gold extraction, but the exercise was unsuccessful

Champion Copper Mines, Incline, c.1885. The Nelson Provincial Museum, Tyree Studio Collection, 176372/3
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c. 1885, Champion Copper Mines, Incline

Engineer Henry Hughes designed this incline to transport ore between the United Creek and the United Mine. It illustrates the steep terrain of the upper Aniseed Valley which presented constant challenges for the engineers and workers. Hughes' incline was abandoned but the lower section was later utilised to truck ore from the United Mine as part of its tramway journey from the mine to the smelter.

1885 Doctors no.2 level entrance  Champion Copper Mines. The Nelson Provincial Museum, Tyree Studio Collection, 175347/3
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1885 Doctors no.2 level entrance 1885, Champion Copper Mines. 

This was on the west side of Champion Creek and reached the ore rich Doctor's Lode of the Champion Mine. It was named after Dr Irvine, an enthusiast and one of several directors of the first Aniseed copper company, the Champion Lode Association. Dr Irvine died around the time the lode was discovered, a time of great optimism for the industry.

1886 Champion smelter Gibbs Collection Nelson Provincial Museum, 1/2 330
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1886 Champion smelter 

This was the high point of copper mining in the Mineral Belt with the Champion Company's smelter sited on a hillside beside United Creek, with the mine manager's house on an opposite knoll. The smelter was built in late 1885 and early 1886, after the Aniseed Road reached the mines, enabling machinery, timber, bricks and coke to be carted in by dray. The tall brick chimney discharged fumes from the roasting stalls where the ore was treated before smelting. The final process was to pour copper into an ingot. The first molten metal flowed on 26 April 1886. The road to the smelter is well formed and makes for easy walking; the river needs to be crossed in three places. Site relics provide fascination. There is a picnic table, toilet and information panel on site.

1898 Champion Mine Copper Smelter Aniseed Valley. The Nelson Provincial Museum, Brusewitz Collection, 434
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1898 Champion Mine Copper Smelter, Aniseed Valley

The Champion smelter had two instances of bad luck. The first destructive fire occurred on 5 February 1898 following a 3-month dry spell. The smelter had not been in use since 1886, but was looked after by a caretaker who lived in the old manager's house. A second fire swept through the area in March 1904. Between these fires the buildings were boarded up. When the Maoriland Company reopened the area for mining in early 1900 they rebuilt the smelter.

Maoriland Copper Co Smelter, 1908.  The Nelson Provincial Museum, Copy Collection, C3041
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1908 Maoriland Copper Co Smelter

This was the second smelter on the site. The original chimney of the roasting stalls was demolished. The new chimney had an inclined flue connected to the smelter building (the open-sided building). The closed-in buildings are a new engine house, workshop.

This text was written for the Nelson City Council heritage panel at Aniseed Valley, 2008

Cutting a Swathe

SS Rakaia entering harbour April 1909 . The Nelson Provincial Museum, Print Collection: 308041
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Nelson had a significant centenary in recent years. April 19th 2009 marked 100 years since the SS Rakaia steamed through the Cut. It was Nelson's first major overseas cargo ship and the biggest ship to come through the Cut since its completion three years before. The Rakaia's visit dominated the news in the Nelson Evening Mail for three days, with headlines that told of the crowds visiting the wharf, a social function for the officers, a dance for the crew, and the loading of frozen meat, wool, tallow and horns. The arrival on the ‘crisp early morning of a beautiful autumn day' would long be remembered in the annals of Nelson.¹

Because the vessel was the first big ship to come through the Cut, there was a certain amount of relief that the manoeuvre was completed successfully. The Harbour Board had no tug at that stage, so the Anchor Company's coastal steamer Alexander helped the Rakaia make the turn towards the Main Wharf:

‘The curve was gracefully negotiated, the slew was perfectly made and the great vessel swung and rested quietly against the wharf without even a bump. Bystanders remarked that even if the fenders had been made of eggs they would not have been crushed,' said the Mail.²

The Harbour Board Chairman, Mr J. Graham, addressed the crowd on the wharf from the deck of the ship, and called for three cheers for the pilot, Captain Collins. He said Nelson was now on a par with the other important places in the Dominion and spoke of the advantages to farmers and importers in not having to pay an extra pound per tonne to freight via Wellington. Later in the day, the Rakaia officers were hosted by the Nelson Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber President Mr H.R. Duncan said the arrival of the Rakaia was 'a harbinger of increased prosperity for Nelson', making it viable to open up ‘some thousands of acres of idle land' and to increase rail connections to the port. Mr L. J. Frank from the shipping agents E. Buxton and Co. said the ship's visit endorsed the vision of the people who had worked to build a freezing works in Nelson. He said already more farmers were turning to breeding lambs for export,and he noted that the manufacture and distribution of ice in the summer months should help to make the works pay.³

Over the two days of the visit crowds thronged the wharf, coming from as far as Golden Bay. The Mail reported:  ‘...motor omnibuses and cabs did a roaring business. The officers and crew were most obliging and showed visitors all over the ship. The engines etc. were a special joy to the younger folk.'

Port Nelson today prides itself on its speedy stevedoring services: what our crane and forklift drivers don't know is that this tradition dates from the Rakaia's visit. Trained stevedores were brought from Wellington, but the Nelson men soon became acquainted with the work. By 6 pm on the 20th, 14,000 carcasses had been loaded, which the Mail reported was a great credit to all, especially as freighting frozen mutton was new to both the local railway officials and the wharf hands. The Rakaia took stores on board, and 6200 gallons of water, seen as a potential money-maker for the city council if Nelson were to get more visits from large steamers. 

On day two of the visit the officers of the Rakaia entertained the city fathers on board. Captain Bone, the Marine Superintendent of the New Zealand Shipping Company told them he would be giving a favourable report on the port, but suggested the wharf should be enlarged, more storage was needed and there would have to be further work outside the Cut to make it easier for ocean-going steamers to come in ‘without anxiety'. Almost 100 years on, and after millions of dollars worth of development, the issues remain much the same!

Finally the Rakaia left Nelson, farewelled by a crowd of several hundred, with tug duties this time performed by the Koi, which had just arrived with passengers from Motueka. Three cheers from the crowd were returned by the crew and the excitement was over. The Mail's final note was that the crew had taken away gifts of peaches, apples, pears and grapes - the 'first direct fruit shipments from Nelson'.

Local photographer F. N. Jones had photos mounted by 3 pm on the afternoon of the Rakaia's arrival, (commended for ‘quick work; by the Nelson Evening Mail) and postcards went on sale from a Hardy Street shop on the same day.

This article first appeared in Port Nelson Report, June 2005.

Updated May 22, 2020.

The Church Steps - centre of the community

"Meet you at the church steps" is often heard in Nelson and the steps, from the bottom of Trafalgar Square at its intersection with Trafalgar Street to the top of Church Hill and the Cathedral, have been the rallying point for gatherings of every occasion in the city since its early colonial days.

Nelson Cathedral. Nelson Provincial Museum, Bett Loan Collection: 314710
Click image to enlarge

Maori themselves had long used the hill they referred to as Pikimai as a fortified pa. But, unaware of its use by Maori, the New Zealand Company recognised the hill's strategic position when it arrived in 1841 and claimed it for its own administrative base. Before long the hill was the centre of the newly emerging colony, housing not only immigration barracks for the newly arrived settlers, but also the Post Office, the hospital tent, the courthouse and the offices of the Examiner newspaper, with various paths worn as settlers moved about their business on the hill. 

However, the most direct path from Trafalgar Street at its intersection with Selwyn Place (Trafalgar Square) to the top of the hill was formed following the 1843 Wairau Affray in which local settlers and iwi were killed during a dispute over land at Wairau in Marlborough.  Fearful of reprisal attacks by local Maori, a fort was built on top of the hill and settlers quickly formed a path as they scrambled up the hill to take refuge at night.

In 1848 the hill was transferred to the Church of England, which had held services on the hill since 1842. Wanting to provide easier access to the steadily expanding Christ Church (later Christ Church Cathedral), the Nelson Board of Works (the precursor to the Nelson City Council) and the church wardens co-operated to build three flights of wooden steps over the dirt path in 1858.¹

Governor’s Reception, 1899. Nelson Provincial Museum, Tyree Studio Collection: 182099. Click image to enlarge

The new steps quickly became the preferred gathering point for the growing colony and many of the events held there were captured on camera. One of the earliest images of an event on the steps was taken in 1863 when Nelson celebrated the marriage of Edward, Prince of Wales (later Edward VII) to Princess Alexandra of Denmark.²  Later, the successful rescue of passengers and crew of the ill-fated immigrant ship, the Queen Bee, was commemorated with a thanksgiving service on the steps in 1877 and in 1887 the 50th jubilee of Queen Victoria was marked by a procession and gathering, at the top of Trafalgar Street and on the steps, of an estimated 8000 people.³

'Returning thanks to those who had been instrumental in rescuing the survivors of the Queen Bee' [c.1877] Nelson Provincial Museum, Copy Collection: C5418
Click image to enlarge

At the turn of the century, the city both farewelled and welcomed back local troops from the Boer War and in 1905, photographer F.N. Jones drew a crowd when he drove his horse and buggy up the steps, a feat he later repeated so it could be captured as a moving image, which was subsequently shown in cinemas around the world.

However, the wooden steps had quickly became dangerous, growing slippery in wet weather, being overgrown with weeds and rotting in places.  Ongoing improvements and repairs over the ensuing decades since their construction failed to alleviate continuing calls for their replacement with new steps in permanent materials.  But it wasn't until Nelson philanthropist Thomas Cawthron stepped into the debate in the middle of 1911 that plans for new steps were finalised.

It had been suggested for several years that new steps would be suitable as a public memorial to one of two recently deceased Nelson notables - Albert Pitt, who had been prominent in military, government and local affairs, had died in 1906, and Francis Trask, a former city mayor legislative councillor who died in 1910.  However, in both cases it was eventually decided to erect memorial gates at the northern and southern entrances to Queen's Gardens.⁴ 

Acknowledging the need for safer and more durable steps and the opportunity to combine them with ongoing efforts to tidy up and beautify Church Hill and enhance the Cathedral, Thomas Cawthron offered to cover the costs involved himself and to present the steps to the city,⁵ and to help pay for the removal of trees on either side of the steps and the planting of flowering shrubs their place.  At the same time he also undertook to continue the stanchions and chains along the unprotected sections of the Rocks Road seawall.⁶

Work began on the steps in August 1912.⁷ Light cream Tonga Bay granite, New Zealand's only true granite, was specially quarried from a newly commissioned quarry in what is now part of theAbel Tasman National Park, and shipped to Nelson.  At the time it was thought the granite hardened with exposure to the atmosphere and sunlight, though this was later shown not to be the case.  Two other known structures  of Tonga Bay Granite remain standing : the Trask gates at Nelson's Queens Gardens and the former Public Trust Building.⁸

Old Cars at Church Steps [c.1907] Nelson Provincial Museum, Copy Collection: C1087
Click image to enlarge

The steps were designed by Arthur Reynolds Griffin and constructed by Messers J. and A. Wilson Ltd of Wellington.⁹ Griffin was a Nelson architect who was also responsible for designing theNelson Institute building in Hardy Street (later the public library and then the New Zealand School of Fisheries) and the Plunket and Rest Rooms in Trafalgar Square (currently the glass studio Flame Daisy).¹⁰

They were unusual in that their design represented elements of Gothic church architecture, not usually seen in a public walkway,¹¹ were described by the Colonist¹² as "a massive and imposing structure' which "will be in every way in keeping with the beautiful eminence it is to adorn'. They consisted of three double and three single flights of steps, separated by five formal landings and decorative gardens (long since filled in and made into viewing balconies) and rose 11.5m from Trafalgar Street to the top of the hill.  The steps were flanked by low stone walls with balustrades (now gone) and stone pillars topped with decorative metal fleur-de-lis capping.

Cawthron wrote from Australia in 1912 that the ornamental work on the steps should be first rate.  "I want a real good job, bold, massive and ornamental."¹³ He had insisted the original design be modified so the landings were of granite rather than asphalt as originally planned.

The Governor, Lord Liverpool, officially opened the steps on Dominion Day, 20 September 1913 before a large crowd.  Cawthron was thanked by the mayor, William Lock, who referred to him as "Nelson's grand old man".¹⁴ His generous gift was recorded on the first landing in a slab of dark polished Aberdeen granite with the wording: 'these steps were presented to the city by Thomas Cawthron Esq.. A.D. 1913'. 

Less than a year later World War I broke out and over the next five years the church steps featured prominently in a succession of gatherings.  Nelson farewelled troops, welcomed injured servicemen home, decorated a soldier for bravery at Gallipoli and held many fundraisers for the war effort that centred on the Church Steps.  The annual Daffodil Day and Flower Queen festival culminated at the steps and provided the war-weary city and province with a splash of brightness for a few days each year.

Welcome to Our Heroes, Bishop Sadlier Speaking (1916). Nelson Provincial Museum, Print Collection: 287823
Click image to enlarge

The first Anzac Day service was held in 1916 to remember the fallen of Gallipoli and subsequently all those who died in the various theatres of war, before the armistice of November 1918 allowed a mass celebration.  This was followed in July 1919 with a gathering to mark the signing of a peace treaty, the Treaty of Versailles. 

The war over, the region made good use of the steps to celebrate throughout the 1920s.  Highlights were two royal visits, the first in 1920 by Edward, Prince of Wales (later Edward VIII who abdicated in 1936), who was in New Zealand for a four week tour, and the second in 1927 by the Duke and Duchess of York (later George VI and Queen Elizabeth, parents of the current Queen, Elizabeth II).

The Prince of Wales charmed the crowd gathered at the steps to welcome him but wrote home in less than complimentary terms of a dance held in his honour in the city in which he had to "lug those wads of ham faced women around, altho' (sic) we were all feeling very weary and thoroughly peeved".¹⁵  The much-loved Duchess of York fell ill shortly after the royal reception on the steps and spent several days in the city recuperating while her husband continued his tour.  In 1921 the Governor General, Viscount Jellicoe, addressed a large crowd on the steps with stirring words about the country's loyalty to the Empire during the war.

When the dark clouds of war again broke in 1939 the church steps drew large crowds once more to farewell troops and, in 1942, the Victoria Cross was presented on the steps to Sgt Alfred Hulme for a series of heroic acts during the Battle of Crete.  The end of hostilities in Europe (VE Day) in May 1945 saw thousands gather on the steps and along Trafalgar Street but it was VJ Day (Victory over Japan) in August that year that saw joyous scenes as the city celebrated peace in the Pacific.  An equally ecstatic crowd, estimated to be 8,000 in number, welcomed the visit by the hero of the Battle of El Alamein, Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery ('Monty'), during his tour of Australia and New Zealand to visit the soldiers he fought alongside.¹⁵

In 1942 the province's centennial was celebrated, albeit in a somewhat muted fashion.  In preparation, the two decorative gardens on the steps were replaced with viewing balconies.  The plaque commemorating Thomas Cawthron was moved to the face of the second landing and the lower viewing balcony was fitted with a sculpted marble centennial memorial depicting the early European settlers.¹⁷

Royal Visit, 1954. Nelson Provincial Museum, Miscellaneous Collection: 319545. Click image to enlarge

The 1950s saw Nelson celebrate the 150th anniversary of Trafalgar Day on the steps, as well as the visit of the Governor General, Sir Bernard Cyril Freyberg, a hero of WWI and commander of WWII.  It was also the decade in which the first reigning monarch visited New Zealand.  The newly crowned Queen Elizabeth II and her husband, Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, carved a swathe through a large and enthusiastic crowd on the steps as they walked from a service held in the cathedral to their hotel on Trafalgar Street in January 1953.

However, the 1950s were also when the steps became the focus of widespread public protests.  Between 1952 and 1955 numerous public rallies were staged there in an ultimately unsuccessful bid to save Nelson's railway.  The protests continued through the 1960s and 1970s and on into the 1980s.  Huge crowds congregated in 1962 to protest at the Government's abandonment of the cotton mill at Stoke, while a decade later anti-apartheid marches up Trafalgar Street culminated at the steps.  In 1981 police riot squads clashed with crowds during anti-Springbok rugby tour demonstrations and in 1982 Nelsonians again marched to the steps to demonstrate their desire for a nuclear free world. Today, the church steps continue to be the rallying point for public demonstrations on a wide range of societal, political and environmental issues.

But it wasn't only protests that were staged on the church steps.  They are still used for celebrations, receptions, commemorations and discourse.  From official receptions for dignitaries and political rallies, to services to mark military anniversaries and occasions, including Trafalgar Day and Anzac Day, the steps are the perfect backdrop for formal occasions.  They're also a popular meeting point for friends, young and old; a place to sit and eat lunch or simply to rest weary feet, a vantage point from which to show visitors the city, and they remain the most direct route from town to the cathedral. 

From brass band competitions, arts and music festivals, and the start or finish of sporting events, to the highly popular Carols by Candlelight sessions held since at least the 1960s; the spectacular Piki Mai audio visual light show in which Nelson's history was projected onto the steps and cathedral during the 2011 Arts Festival; and the mass haka resoundingly performed by Nelson College students on the steps at the start of the 2011 Rugby World Cup along with the recreation of the first game of rugby, the Church Steps remain the city's most prominent and popular landmark.

Ownership of the Church Steps was transferred to the Nelson City Council in 1922  by the Nelson Diocesan Trust Board.¹⁸  Over the years various modifications have been made to them, including the removal of gardens and trees from various locations, the addition of the Nelson Centennial Memorial, the removal of a flagpole and standard lamps on a number of pillars, and the provision of two 'street' lamps.  However the steps generally retain their original planning, scale and design¹⁹ and are an integral part of the public walkway up and around Church Hill and northern access to Christ Church Cathedral.²⁰  From a historical point of view the steps are a strong visual symbol of the ongoing use of Church Hill - Pikimai - by both Pakeha and Maori.

The steps have an 'A' classification in the Nelson City Council Resource Management Plan, according them the highest classification as an object of major significance to the district and whose protection is considered essential.²¹  They are also registered by New Zealand Heritage as Category Class 1, a status given to places of special or outstanding historical or cultural heritage significance or value.²²

The quality of their construction remains evident today, although the granite used did not prove to be as hardy as intended, containing large crystals of transparent quartz that does not weather well.²³  The steps are vulnerable to deterioration from storm water runoff, ground movement, vandalism, graffiti, and wear and tear from foot traffic and the use of wheeled transportation such as skateboards.  The Nelson City Council commissioned a conservation plan for the treatment and ongoing maintenance of the historic structure in 2009 in order to develop a strategy for the conservation, future use and development of the steps.²⁴

The centennial of the Cawthron Steps will be marked in 2013 with the launch of a photographic history book celebrating the central role both the granite steps and the earlier wooden steps have played in Nelson's social history.²⁵

2013

Pauline (Susie) Alice Bennett was born in 1906 to Ida and Dr. James Freeborn Bennett. She attended St. Mary’s School in Blenheim.

Pauline Bennett, pilot. Image supplied by author

Flying was a family passion with Pauline gaining her Commercial Pilot’s licence and taking her first flight with a passenger in 1930. She was the first woman to gain this licence with aero club training in New Zealand.

Pauline Bennet, with fellow pilots. Image supplied by author

She often took passengers on sightseeing flights as well as attending air pageants all over the country.

Her brother was also a pilot with the RAF.

She married Flight Lieutenant Kenneth Knocker in Calcutta in 1934 and later remarried RNZAF pilot J.M. Buckeridge in 1955.

History of the house

Dignitaries, eminent scientists and many more, have passed through the doors of Fellworth House since it was built in 1876. The opulent 620 square metre home was designed for one of Nelson's early European colonists, John Sharp, by architect/builder John (Jimmy) Scotland who went on to design many of Nelson's Victorian buildings.¹ The house is named after an old English family residence. 

John Sharp. The Nelson Provincial Museum, Tyree Studio Collection: 176507
Click image to enlarge

Born in Kent, England, John Sharp (1829-1919) emigrated to New Zealand in 1843 and was initially clerk to New Zealand Company agent, Frances Dillon Bell . By the 1850s, John was resident magistrate and he was also Nelson's sheriff at the time of the infamous Maungatapu Murders  in 1866.²  John Sharp married Emma Bonnington in 1853 and they had four sons and two daughters.

Fellworth House. The Nelson Provincial Museum, Copy Collection: C2481
Click image to enlarge

He resigned from his official positions in 1871 and began trading as Sharp & Sons, real estate agents and auctioneers. The following year he bought into Kent Brewery and, by 1876, had a controlling interest in the brewery.³ John Sharp was clearly a successful businessman, paying £3000 - a considerable sum in those days - for the construction of Fellworth House.⁴ 

Further civic and political duties followed, with John representing Nelson on the Provincial Council from 1874-1876 and as MP for Nelson City from 1975-1879. He retired from business in 1886 and served as Mayor of Nelson from 1888-1890.⁵

John married Emma Bonnington in Nelson in May 1853, they had four sons and two daughters.⁶ Sadly Emma was thrown from her carriage and killed in February 1886 and later John remarried.⁷

Fellworth House. The Nelson Provincial Museum, Copy Collection: C340. Click to enlarge

It is difficult to find out what kind of man John Sharp was. In his youth he was a fine cricketer. Later, he was a Freemason and served with the Nelson Volunteer Fire Brigade and the Nelson Volunteer Rifles.⁸ One record of his ‘voice' can be seen in a letter he wrote when Mayor, in 1889, to the Governor of New Zealand, Lord Onslow, in which he says "I cannot state more feelingly than is expressed in today's papers how much our anxiety, and that of the whole colony, had been relieved by news of your son's convalescence.⁹ Whether that was mere social form, or written with true feeling is impossible to assess at this distance in time.

On 4 June 1919, the Evening Post announced that: Mr John Sharp, is dead, aged ninety.¹⁰

After John's death, Fellworth House was bought by the Cawthron Trust using funds bequeathed by Nelson merchant and philanthropist, Thomas Cawthron, who left nearly the whole of his estate (£230,000) for the establishment  of a scientific institute.  The Cawthron Institute was opened by Governor-General, Lord Jellicoe, in April 1921.¹¹

Nelson City. The Nelson Provincial Museum, Tyree Studio Collection: 9912. Click image to enlarge

Between 1920 and 1970, Fellworth House accommodated a series of laboratories, a library and a museum.¹² Over the decades, it was visited by many dignitaries, including Nelson-born Sir Ernest Rutherford and HRH Prince Philip.¹³ Nowadays, the Cawthron Institute is New Zealand's largest, independent, community-owned research centre, with more than 180 scientific and technical staff.¹⁴

After the Cawthron Institute relocated to nearby Halifax Street, Fellworth became a wedding and events venue and a backpackers' hostel, until it was bought by Dave and Jill Harvey in 1999. By this time, the house was in a poor state and it took seven years of hard work to restore Fellworth House's faded glory.¹⁵   

Fellworth House is currently under the care and ownership of a family trust consisting of Aleksandra Markicevic, Miro & Valmai Djukanovic  and their baby son Sylis Spasoye Djukanovic; who share their slice of colonial history with travellers and as a centre celebrating learning and promoting health and well-being - echoing its journey to date.

The Architecture: Victorian Italianate

Fellworth House (2011).  Courtesy of owner.  Click image to enlarge

Fellworth House is a two-story Victorian Italianate-style historic house set in 7445sqm of gardens. Built entirely out of native timbers, rimu, totara, matai and kauri, the house has 52 Italianate roll topped sash windows providing virtual floor to ceiling views.¹⁶

The Italianate style of architecture was a distinct 19th-century style based on 16th-century Italian Renaissance architecture. First developed in Britain in about 1802, the style of architecture continued to be built in outposts of the British Empire long after it had ceased to be fashionable in Britain. The homes were typically two to three stories in height, with flat or hip roofs, bay windows with inset wooden panels, corner boards and two over two double-hung windows.  Thestyle became a popular choice for the small mansions built by the new and wealthy industrialists of the era.¹⁷

Built in 1879, the house is named after an old English family residence.  Fellworth House is a Category 2 registered property with the NZ Historic Places Trust .

Written for http://www.fellworthhouse.co.nz/ by Joy Stephens, 2012

Marlborough's East Coast earthquakes

Marlborough’s East Coast is cross hatched with fault lines so the large earthquakes of 2013 and 2016 should not have been surprising, although it is thought the 7.8 Kaikoura earthquake ruptured a record 21 faults.¹ The region sits on a set of major faults:  the Wairau, Awatere, Clarence and Hope faults; and has recorded a number of significant quakes over time.²

Marlborough Fault system by Mikenorton - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10742220

1848

The first European settlers in the Awatere region had just started to make themselves at home when an estimated magnitude 7.1 earthquake woke them at 1.40am on Monday 16 October, 1848. Thomas Arnold was visiting Frederick Weld at Flaxbourne  and reported being woken up as his bed shook violently from side to side.  “….every plank in the house creaked and rattled, the bottles and glasses in the next room kept up a sort of infernal dance…..When the shock was past, there came a few spasmodic heavings like long-drawn breaths, and then all was still,” he wrote to his mother in England.³

Henry Godfrey Gouland, early settler and magistrate. N. Brayshaw. Marlborough Museum and Archives. From his diary: October 16, 1848 - Awoke at 2.30a.m. by the great earthquake. House thrown off piles.

The earthquake lowered the bed of the Wairau Lagoons by 1.5 metres which increased tidal movement of water and provided better boat access into the Wairau and Opawa Rivers.

There has been some disagreement about whether the quake was a rupture of the Awatere or Wairau Fault,⁴ although modern scientists favour the Awatere Fault.⁵ However we do know that the initial 7.1 shake was felt throughout the Awatere and Wairau Valleys and was followed by a long sequence of aftershocks.

Con Dillon’s new house and dairy in the Waihopai Valley were levelled to the ground and Te Rauparaha, who was sleeping at the Wairau Pa (or near Picton), was thrown from bed and sprained his hip. The whalers of Cloudy Bay were so alarmed, they took their women and children across Cook Strait to Wellington, which was also badly affected by the quake.⁶ Nelson’s resident magistrate, Major Mathew Richmond , noted in November 1848, that ‘a crack quite straight crossed the country for miles'; in some places he had difficulty crossing it with his horse; in another, the crack passed through an old warre [whare] dividing it in two pieces standing four feet apart.⁷

1855

But worse was to come. At 9.17 pm on 23 January, 1855, a magnitude 8.1 earthquake triggered by the Wairarapa Fault struck.⁸ Early Kekerengu  pioneer, Frederick Trolove described shocks continuing through the night until ‘a most awful shock the imagination could conceive forced us once more out of the house in the greatest confusion and alarm’.⁹

Kekerengu pioneer, Frederick Trolove and his sons Peter and Willie. Frederick described the 1855 earthquake in which he lost his first home. Marlborough Museum & Archives

Trolove recorded that 16 houses, all built that summer at Flaxbourne, were either flattened or beyond repair.¹⁰ From the woolshed, he watched the house he had built tottering with every shock. Next morning, he woke to see his ‘neat New Zealand cottage with a garden full of veges ruined beyond repair.”¹¹  It is interesting to note that Trolove descendents still live in the same area and were impacted by the November 2016 earthquake.¹²

Aftershocks continued throughout February, March and April. Alexander Mowat and his family fled their house at Altimarloch in the Awatere Valley. Their house was so badly damaged, that they had to live in a tent while it was repaired.  In the lower Wairau Valley, the Redwood family were living in the woolshed.¹³ The January quake saw the seaward end of the Wairau Valley subside by more than a metre.¹⁴ William Budge and other settlers on flat land in the lower Wairau Valley had to move to higher ground to avoid being flooded.¹⁵

1966

Seddon lies south of the Awatere Fault and is built on silts and coarse gravels overlaying mudstone.¹⁶ On 23 April, 1966, a magnitude 6.1 earthquake centred 35 kilometres from Seddon in the Cook Strait caused damage in the township and minor damage in Blenheim and Wellington.

John Bargh surveys the chaos in his Seddon grocery store after the 6.1 earthquake centred in Cook Strait, 35 kilometres from Seddon on 23 April, 1966. Fairfax NZ.

Practically every chimney in Seddon came down and there was considerable household damage.  At the Cape Campbell lighthouse, a guide roller to the 2.5 ton prism was sheared off, hit the prism and bounced through a window. By the end of April, 41 shocks in the Seddon sequence had been recorded.¹⁷

2013

The Seddon/Flaxbourne area was once again a centre of seismic activity in 2013.  A quake struck on 21 July,  centred about 20km east of Seddon, measuring magnitude 6.5 at a depth of 17kms. It caused minor damage in the region, with more significant impact in Wellington, but was followed by a series of aftershocks.  On 16 August a second quake hit. This is now known as the Lake Grassmere earthquake, and measured 6.6, with an epicentre 10km south east of Seddon.¹⁸

The chimney fell through the ceiling of the Heritage 2 listed Ugbrooke Homestead in the Awatere Valley as a result of the 2013 Lake Grassmere earthquake. Owner Alex Stowasser sits amidst the rubble. The property continues to operate as boutique accommodation. Fairfax NZ

State Highway 1 between Riverlands and north of Kekerengu was closed and businesses and houses in the region were badly damaged.¹⁹  Salt production at Lake Grassmere's saltworks was stopped for four days as they had no water or electricity due to the earthquake.²⁰

The Marlborough District Council instigated its emergency management plan when there were fears that the Haldon dam  in the headwaters of Starborough Creek above Seddon might be breached.²¹

2016

On November 14, 2016 residents in Kaikoura, Marlborough and Wellington were jolted awake just after midnight by a magnitude 7.8 earthquake which, GNS scientists say caused a record 21 faults to rupture.²² Thousands of aftershocks were recorded after the initial twin earthquakes which appeared to start just northeast of Culverden on the Kekerengu Fault, before rupturing the newly discovered Waipapa Bay Fault, the Hundalee Fault, and ending its massive vibration at the western end of the 230km-long Hope Fault, which connects to the South Island's main Alpine Fault.²³

The 7.8 Kaikoura earthquake shook Marlborough, Wellington and Canterbury. Photographed in North Canterbury by University of Canterbury geologist Dr Kate Pedley. Fairfax/ Pedley.

Data, including satellite radar imagery, shows that parts of the South Island moved more than five metres closer to the North Island, and that some parts were raised by up to eight metres. GNS scientist Ian Hamling said the land from Kaikoura to Cape Campbell moved north-west by up to six metres.²⁴

There was extensive damage up and down the East Coast.   Homes and businesses were damaged and destroyed, there were fissures and slips on farms and hillsides, roads cracked and twisted and train tracks buckled and broke.²⁵

Railway line flung across State Highway 1 north of Kaikoura by the 7.8 earthquake 2016. Fairfax NZ

About 110 km of  coastline from Oaro to Lake Grassmere was uplifted. Geonet described the uplift as ‘a phenomenal tectonic event…  causing numerous problems for local residents, fishermen, boat operators and coastal users’.²⁶

The magnitude 7.8 earthquake caused nine major slips north of Kaikoura which was cut off for days until the inland Kaikoura Highway and, eventually SH1 south of the town, were reopened.  It was thought it would take at least a year to clear the highway to the north of the town, with the alternative route between Picton and Christchurch via the Wairau Valley and Lewis Pass seeing a large increase in traffic volume.²⁷

Kaikoura’s Takahanga Marae fed and sheltered hundreds of people stranded by the 7.8 earthquake 2016. Fairfax NZ.

Crayfish was on the menu at the Takahanga marae, which fed 900 people on the first night and hosted tourists and locals alike. Other visitors slept in churches or were welcomed into local homes   Defence Force helicopters flew people out of the town.²⁸  Navy vessels, the HMNZS Wellington and the HMNZS Canterbury arrived the next day to bring in supplies and rescue stranded people.²⁹

To the north, Ward was also badly affected, with farms, homes and a crayfish factory badly damaged.³⁰ Three weeks before the Kaikoura earthquake, a premier of the movie Light between the Oceans, which was filmed around Cape Campbell, was held to kick off a fund raising campaign for the Flaxbourne Heritage Centre .  It will feature exhibits about earlier earthquakes, the large Flaxbourne pastoral station, the Cape Campbell lighthouse and the multi-million dollar fishing industry based in the area.  The building where many historical items were stored was badly damaged and has been red-stickered. A group of locals³¹ still hopes to achieve their dream and build a centre which will tell the stories of this historic region.³²

2017