"In the month of April, 1864, Nelson was aroused from the most depressed commercial state....to the glittering prospects of a well-paying goldfield...situated in the Province of Marlborough," reported Lucas's Almanac in 1864.¹  At the peak of the gold rush, approximately 6000 gold prospectors were working around Canvastown and 25,000 oz of gold were found in the first year of prospecting.²

Goldmining Companies 1882-1889, transcribed from the New Zealand Gazettes
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In August 1863, the Marlborough Provincial Council offered bonuses for the discovery of gold and coal in the financially struggling province.  In April 1864, John Wilson, Joshua and George Rutland and Hirram Harris, found an encouraging amount of gold at Wilson's Beach beside the Wakamarina River. ³

Looking up the Wakamarina Valley from the Deep Creek area. Marlborough Historical Society - Marlborough Museum Archives Click image to enlarge

Wilson and his party successfully claimed the bonus and are reported to have found 54 oz  (worth £210) in their first few days of prospecting.⁴ Thousands soon flocked to the area from Nelson, the Wairau and goldfields further afield.

Lucas's Almanac⁵ reported the scene on the Maungatapu Track: "As I returned to Nelson yesterday, the 32 miles of road teemed with parties....I saw two young lads, one about 12 years, the other say 10 years old; and at the foot of the hill, I met a man with an umbrella in his hand, and swag at back."

 The Wakamarina was proclaimed a goldfield on 11 June 1864 and the gold rush transformed Havelock into a bustling boomtown in the space of two months.⁶  Tents sprang up at Havelock, Canvastown and settlements up the Wakamarina River.   Publicans and merchants  arrived to assess business prospects and accommodation houses and stores mushroomed.⁷

The All Nations sluicing claim in the Wakamarina, 1900 Shareholders watch the operation in action. Marlborough Historical Society - Marlborough Museum Archives. 2009.067.0013
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The Wakamarina yielded 5000oz of gold in the first four to five weeks.  Gold was steadily recovered from the river claims, mostly using sluice boxes.  However, while miners continued to arrive during the winter, many failed to secure claims, some left disillusioned, and floods drove others away.⁸

On 16 January, 1865, the Havelock Mail reported: "It cannot be concealed that the thousands who visited us in the last eight months have left the province altogether. The people of Havelock are now at their wits end what to do." ⁹

The Wakamarina's easy gold was worked out within a year and the gold rush was soon over. After the rush subsided, mining was increasingly dominated by shareholder companies.  For example, in January 1880, a small local syndicate formed the Wakamarina Hydraulic Sluicing Company which held a lease for 10 acres near Wilson's Beach. However the gold was patchy and the company was sold in August 1881.¹⁰

In the 1890s, dredging mania swept New Zealand.  Although several dredges operated in the Wakamarina River, the returns were generally mediocre.  The most long-lived dredge was the Golden Point Dredge, which was commissioned in July 1901 and worked the river between Muttontown Creek and Quayle Stream. There were some good results from dredging, but returns were variable and the  by 1904, the Golden Point Dredging Company  had lost about £10,000.¹¹

Golden Bar - Walter Fisk's boarding house at the Golden Bar battery in the Wakamarina Goldfield (c.1910), Marlborough Historical Society - Marlborough Museum Archives,  copied 1964 from collection of W.H. Fisk
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From the late 1860s, the search was underway for the quartz reefs from which the alluvial gold had been shed. The Golden Bar at Dead Horse Creek was discovered in 1870, but the reef was not systematically worked until 1910 when a battery was constructed by the Dominion Consolidated Development Company.¹²

Holga Rasmussen and Joe Grigg working on the claim at Cleyne’s Flat on the Pelorus side of the Wakamarina River. There is a tramline behind the race for wheeling out the stones. Marlborough Historical Society - Marlborough Museum Archives

The battery's stampers pulverized the quartz mixed with water into a paste and the gold was extracted using mercury. During World War 1, demand for scheelite  increased the profitability of the mine. The Golden Bar workforce grew from about 12 in 1910, to nearly 100 men five years later, and a small township sprang up near the battery. Over 12 years, nearly 14,000 oz of gold (£55,233) and 440 tonnes of scheelite (£58,458) were extracted.¹³

Nobody knows exactly how much gold came out of the Wakamarina, but records show 44,687 oz were extracted from the alluvial diggings and 17,000 oz  were extracted from the quartz diggings.¹⁴

Some gold mining definitions ¹⁵

• Battery- a crushing device with heavy rods (stamps).
• Flume- a channel usually of wood for conveying water from a stream to a mining site.
• Hydraulic sluicing - using water under considerable pressure to break down gravel, with the gold recovered in cradles and sluice boxes in the tail race.
• Scheelite- calcium tungstate found in quartz, the main source of tungsten used in steel manufacturing.
• Sluice box- a long, inclined trough with ripples in the bottom which trap gold when material is washed through.
• Tailrace- a channel that carries waste water from a claim or mine.

 2009

Landscape and studio photographer, James Akersten spent many years living and working around Havelock and Nelson and many of his photographs are in collections at the Nelson Provincial Museum and the Marlborough Museum.

James Raglan Akersten. Marlborough Historical Society - Marlborough Museum Archives

James was born in London on 8 August 1855. His family travelled steerage on the Water Nymph, arriving in Nelson on 16 December, 1865 to join his uncle William.

Around 1869, James began working as an assistant to William Davis, a Nelson photographer. Photography was very new in the 1860s but evolving rapidly. James owned his own photography studio in Nelson for a short time in the early 1880s and then went to work for William Tyree.  Here he received excellent training, particularly in outdoor and scenic photography.  In 1898 Tyree set up a moveable studio in Havelock and James became its local manager.  However he was fired in May 1890.

With his wife Catherine and four children, James decided to try his luck in Wanganui, where it seems he got a job with a local photographer. The family moved to Auckland and then back to Blenheim where James and Catherine broke up and eventually divorced in 1908.¹ Catherine said James had had a serious alcohol problem for many years, going on long drinking binges. 

Akersten's studio in Havelock. Marlborough Historical Society - Marlborough Museum Archives

His problems with the demon drink continued: 

Magistrate's Court. Vagrancy. Fred de Lisle and James Raglan Akersten each pleaded guilty to charges of being vagrants and were each sentenced to a month in Picton gaol, with hard labour.²

J. R. Akersten was charged with procuring liquor during the currency of a prohibition order. He pleaded guilty, and was convicted and discharged, and on his own application was ordered to be committed' to the Inebriates' Home at Rotoroa for twelve months.³

An Akersten photo of Havelock, 1912. Marlborough Historical Society - Marlborough Museum Archives

While he had ongoing problems with alcohol, James’ career progressed well. He was based in Blenheim from 1900 to 1912 and then moved to Havelock permanently where he was manager of the ‘Macey Photographic Studio’.  He was to undertake a commission to photograph Brownlee’s Carluke sawmill, with about 30 of those photographs surviving and still in the Marlborough Museum. In 1913 he won the Auckland Weekly News competition for the best collection of ‘New Zealand views’.  His work also featured in books and calendars which were published as printing technology developed.

James died on Christmas Day 1928 and was laid to rest in the Havelock Cemetery.   It is thought that two or three thousand of James’s photographs may still exist and about 400 of them can be found online.

This story comes from material written by Harry Dutton in 2011. For the full story, see: http://www.familytree.john-attfield.com/James_Raglan_Akersten_Story_FINAL.pdf

2011 (edited 2015)

A Long Lost Brunning

Tucked away at the bottom of a page in a Motueka community newspaper was a small item headlined "Long lost Brunning". It featured the intriguing mystery of a Great War Certificate of Service with the NZ Expeditionary Force found in the shed of a Motueka resident, who had no idea how it ended up there, or who it should now belong to.¹ Just visible was the name of Rifleman John Brunning, serial no. 5422, who commenced his duty on April 30th, 1917, and died in France in 1918. Who was this forgotten young man who never lived to claim his certificate?

John William Brunning’s Great War Certificate of Service, looking a bit worse for wear after years spent lying around in a Motueka shed.
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Rifleman John William Brunning. Portrait Auckland Weekly News, 1918. Auckland War Memorial Museum Cenotaph Database.
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John William Brunning was born at Canvastown, Marlborough, on the 4^th of August, 1897, the first of ten children born to Richard and Betsy Brunning.²  However, his story really began on the other side of the world, 54 years earlier, when a young German couple from the province of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern made the momentous decision to emigrate to New Zealand in search of a better future.

Johann Matthias August Heinrich Brüning (1830-1901) a shoemaker by trade, and his wife Magdalena (Lena) Catharina Maria (née Lange) made the trek with their one year old son Friederich (Fritz) from their home in the village of Glashagen to the city of Hamburg. From there they sailed steerage to New Zealand on the ship Skiold, in company with around 130 other hopeful German emigrants, led by the Kelling brothers.³  They arrived in Nelson on the 1^st of September, 1844, just in time for Lena, who barely made it to the NZ Company immigration barracks at Fort Arthur on Church Hill before giving birth to a second son, named Heinrich (Henry).⁴

They were greeted by the bad news that arrangements made in advance for the German settlers were in disarray, due to the financial collapse of the New Zealand Company. A number of the German emigrants chose to go on instead to South Australia, where prospects looked more promising,⁵ but Matthias and Lena stayed in Nelson. They squatted on an unclaimed section, where Matthias built a cob cottage. In 1846 they shifted to the tiny settlement of Schonbach in Waimea East, where Matthias built another cob cottage on a smallholding of 4 acres.⁶ Schonbach was close to the village of Ranzau (now Hope), established earlier by the Kellings for the Skiold immigrants, and named for their sponsor, Count Kuno zu Rantzau-Breitenburg. Under the terms of a prior agreement made with the New Zealand government, the German immigrants from the Skiold were all naturalised en masse as British citizens on April 3, 1845.⁷

Moutere Church: Sketch of a country church. The first St Paul’s Lutheran Church at Sarau/UpperMoutere, built by Cordt Bensemann in 1865. It was replaced in 1905 by the one we’re familiar with today. Miscellaneous Collection/Nelson Provincial Museum Permanaent Collection ref. no 9728

In 1856 the Bruning family moved yet again after Matthias was granted sixty acres of Crown land (Sections 174 and part 173) at Upper Moutere, where a nucleus of German settlers was forming around Lutheran pastor, the Reverend Johann Heine, and his resourceful father-in-law Cordt Bensemann. A carpenter and former Hanoverian guardsman, Bensemann had arrived in Nelson with his family on the St Pauli in 1843. This new settlement was called Sarau after a northern German village of the same name.⁸ Like its counterpart Ranzau, it was renamed during the First World War and is today known as Upper Moutere.

Matthias & Lena Bruning, Nov. 1875. W.E. Brown Collection/Nelson Provincial Museum Permanent Collection, ref. 12590
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By the time Matthias and Lena’s sixth son was born at Sarau, space must have been at a premium in the Brunings’ third and final small cob cottage. Baptised Dietrich Johann Christopher by Pastor Heine on 23 May, 1863, he was their ninth child. Dietrich’s closest siblings were Lena (3), Johann (John) (5), Anna (7) and Christopher (9). His older brothers Carl (Charlie) (12), Henry (19) and Friederich (20) would have been out working, and his sister Louisa (16) married Franz (Frank) Schwass when Dietrich was just five months old. The Schwasses later moved to Marlborough. A younger sister, Eleanora, was born three and a half years later.⁹

A school was built at Sarau in 1856, followed by the first St Paul’s Lutheran Church in 1865. Young Dietrich would have attended both. Like most boys, he probably finished school at the age of twelve or thirteen and started work around the district as a farm labourer, or at one of the Central Moutere flaxmills and sawmills.¹⁰ As families expanded, the children of the Sarau settlers had to look further afield for work, with many spreading out towards Motueka, Golden Bay and Marlborough, particularly as the Long Depression took hold in the 1880s and jobs became harder to find.

The majority of these children chose to anglicise their christian names so as to better fit into their predominantly British communities. Dietrich became known as both Richard and Dick, and may have deliberately changed his surname to the more English spelling "Brunning” which he and his descendants adopted. The Bruning family had long since abandoned the umlaut (ü) in their surname.

At some point Richard Brunning left Sarau behind and headed for Marlborough. Having a particular affinity with horses and an aptitude for handling horse-drawn coaches and waggons, he found work as a groom at a stables in Blenheim. His sister Louisa and her family lived nearby – her husband Frank Schwass was working as a bushman at Grovetown. By 1888 Richard and his 21-year-old nephew Larry Schwass were both at Onamalutu, an early settlement sited on the northern side of the Wairau River, fifteen miles north-east of Blenheim.¹¹

Mid-day halt for a Cobb & Co coach, in the Pelorus Valley, [between 1878-1894]. Alexander Turnbull Library. Reference No. 10x8-1015-G The groom feeding the lead horse is thought to be Richard Brunning.
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Richard was working as a bushman and waggoner, handling waggons carting timber and the heavy horse teams used to drag logs from the bush.  It’s likely that he was employed by sawmiller Charles White, who in 1901 donated a block of native bush for the Onamalutu Reserve, a small reminder of the days when the coastal Pelorus valleys were densely covered with lush, mixed broadleaf-podocarp forest. Horses were a source of pleasure as well as work, and Richard found time to make a good showing with his horse  “Midnight” at the Marlborough Trotting Club races in 1894.¹²

Loaded timber waggon crossing the second Wakamarina Bridge, 1906. The first bridge was swept away on March 19, 1904, during a violent storm, which also swept away the Newmans’ coach on its Nelson-Blenheim mail run. The coach driver, George Richardson, was drowned. Credit: Marlborough Historical Society – Marlborough Myuseum Archives
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In 1896 Richard, at age 33, was listed as a residential settler at Kaituna.¹³  Around this time he met 19-year-old Betsy Aroa, who became his common-law wife. Betsy assumed the surname Brunning, but although at one stage she gave a wedding date of May 27, 1897, it doesn’t seem that any such marriage actually took place.

Born in Kaituna, Marlborough, in 1878, Betsy Aroa was the last of ten children born to James Robert (1830-1879) and Ann (née Shaw) Aroa.¹⁴  She was only one year old when her father died at Picton Hospital during an operation to straighten a leg badly damaged in an accident some years earlier.  Betsy’s parents emigrated from Yorkshire, England on the Maori in 1855, and made their home on Crown grant land at Tuamarina. James Aroa sold this land in 1865 and moved to Kaituna. His surname was originally “Airey”, but made a change to “Aroa” sometime after his arrival in New Zealand, thanks to officials confused over the correct way to record it.

Betsy had a connection with two well-known Marlborough pioneer families, the Popes and the Climos, through her sister Elizabeth Aby Aroa, who married James Climo, son of James and Jane Climo. His oldest sister, Elizabeth Catherine Climo, married George Pope, and in 1860 was the first person to discover gold at Wakamarina, gleaming in the gravel as she rinsed her washing in the river near the sawmill her husband and his brothers had set up there.¹⁵

Coach pulling in at the Pelorus Hotel in Canvastown c. 1906 Cyclopedia of New Zealand (1906) The original of this photograph (now lost) once hung behind the bar at the Pelorus Hotel (known today as the Trout Hotel). The coach driver is believed to be Richard Brunning.
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Richard and Betsy moved to Canvastown, where their first child, a son, was born 4 August, 1897, and registered five days later on 9 August, 1897, under the name John William Brunning. As was the custom of the time, because his parents weren’t married, his status was recorded as “illegitimate”.¹⁶

Just a few miles down the Pelorus Valley from Havelock, Canvastown was originally a tent city, founded during the Wakamarina gold rush of 1864 on the spot where Elizabeth Pope first saw gold.  Although the easy alluvial gold was soon exhausted, the settlement survived, and in the 1890s was an active service centre for a growing population of farmers, gold-miners working the nearby quartz reefs, and the extensive timber milling operations in the surrounding area, dominated by Brownlees & Co.  Many of Brownlees’ workers settled in Canvastown so their children could attend the school there, and travelled daily to the felling areas by jiggers along the tramway systems set up to transport timber.¹⁷

Richard took work driving waggons carting timber. A waggoner’s life was not an easy one, with each trip to Blenheim taking up to two days depending on the load and conditions. Halts were made at Havelock and Renwick, where up to a dozen waggon teams could be seen at any one time outside favoured hotels, the horses topping up from chaff bags while their drivers shared a meal and a beer or two. Several timber companies kept huts along the route where waggoners could stay overnight, though some chose to carry on by the flickering light of thick candles set inside carriage lamps. Each heavily loaded waggon was drawn by a team of six horses, and as many as eighteen waggons and over a hundred horses could be on the move at any one time, jostling for room along the deeply rutted Nelson-Blenheim road.¹⁸ When it rained the road turned into a quagmire, and loads of timber often shifted or were lost while crossing the Wairau River, which remained unbridged until 1913.

Young John William rapidly acquired seven brothers and sisters, born during the family’s years at Canvastown. They were: Herbert Christopher (Herb) (b.1899), Frederick Ernest (Fred), who later took the surname “Brown” (b. 1901), Leonard Nisbert (Len) (b.1903), Lindsay George (b. 1904), Margaret (Mona) (b. 1906), Noel (b. 1909) and Ella Magdalene (b. 1913).¹⁹ All four grandparents had died by the time he was four, but John had several Aroa aunts, uncles and cousins living nearby.

Canvastown School, mixed class photo, 1908. Credit: Marlborough Historical Society – Marlborough Museum Archives
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John was nearly seven when his father enrolled him at Canvastown School on 6 June, 1904, a small boy with reddish hair and blue eyes. He attended this school until he was fourteen, his last day there being 8 September, 1911.  He was joined by his younger brothers; Frederick in 1906, Leonard in 1908 and Lindsey in 1909.  His aunt Mary Jane Robinson (nee Aroa) also lived at Canvastown with her family and there would have been Robinson cousins at school with John and his brothers. Many children either walked long distances or rode horses to school.

Outside of school there were always chores to be done; gathering and splitting firewood, hand-milking cows, feeding poultry, plucking chickens for the pot and caring for horses. Entertainments were simple - playing marbles and blind-man's buff in the school playground, bird-nesting and gathering wild mushrooms and raspberries. Boys learnt to ride and shoot early, and as they grew older would go hunting for wild pigs, goats and deer in the remaining stands of bush. A fireworks display held at Havelock to celebrate the coronation of King George V on June 22, 1911, would have been a memorable occasion for local children.²⁰

Richard Brunning continued to work with horses at Canvastown in various capacities, as groom, waggon-driver, teamster and stage-coach driver, until late in 1913. The family then moved to Rai Falls, not far from Canvastown, with Richard working as a stableman for the Newman Brothers, who ran a tri-weekly four-horse coach service carrying passengers and freight between Nelson and Blenheim from 1887, adding a mail service in 1891.²¹  From Blenheim there were five stages, with stables for changes of horses at Okaramio (next to Edward Hart's blacksmith’s shop); Canvastown; the Collins Valley “Half Way House”, and at Hira. The coach always stopped for lunch and a change of horses at the Rai Falls Accommodation House, mid-way point between Blenheim and Nelson.

At the Newmans’ changing stables at Hira, two separate teams were kept. The team used for the haul over the Saddle was composed of a strong heavier type of horse, while the team used to and from Nelson city was made up of light stylish horses picked as a show team. People in Nelson used to line Trafalgar Street to see the coach come in precisely at 6 o'clock. Drivers who couldn’t maintain the schedule didn’t last long in the job.²²

A NZ Rifle Brigade platoon sheltering in the lee of a bank while pausing during their advance near Achiet-le-Petit in France during World War I, 22 August, 1918. Alexander Turnbull Library. Reference No. 1/2-013529-G. Part of Royal New Zealand RSA: New Zealand official negatives, World War 1914-1918. Photographer: Henry Armytage Sanders
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John Brunning trained with the 12^th (Nelson and Marlborough) Regiment of the NZ Territorial Forces and, before the war, was working as a labourer for a Havelock business styled E.O. Bensemann & Co., Blacksmiths, Wheelwrights and Coachbuilders. Edmund Oliver Bensemann was an Upper Moutere connection. His father, Johann Diedrich (Dick) Bensemann, was well known to Richard Brunning as one of the “five tall sons” of German pioneer Cordt Bensemann, first Sarau settler and owner of the Moutere Inn.

When he enlisted in Blenheim on the 13th of February, 1917, John Brunning gave his date of birth as 10 February, 1897, probably fudging so as to bring his age up to the minimum 20 years required for recruits. Although fit, at 5ft 4½in (164 cm) he wasn't a big lad and probably only just scraped through, with the minimum height requirement being 5ft 4in (162 cm). He would then have been sent to one of the military camps at Trentham or Featherston for training. He was one of ten men from Marlborough for the 27th Reinforcements who paraded in Market Place, Blenheim, on the 1st of May, 1917, and were farewelled by a large gathering, no doubt including John's family. Speeches were the order of the day, with speakers including the Mayor of Blenheim, John J. Corry, the Rev. Knowles Smith of the Wellington Methodist Mission, and Richard McCallum, M.P.  A rousing rendition of the National Anthem (at that time "God Save the King") concluded proceedings and rather ironically, each departing man was issued with a book of tickets in the Marlborough Art Union lottery. The odds for this little group were better than most - of the ten who were fêted that day, eight survived the war to return home.²³

The Marlborough men embarked on the troopship Athenic on 16 July, 1917, arriving 16 September 1917 at Liverpool, England. They were then deployed to the Western Front, with John Brunning being posted to A Company, 2nd Battalion, 3rd NZ (Rifles) Brigade. He came down with a bad case of German measles and was admitted to hospital at St Omer. Once he was well enough he went back to the firing line and was wounded at Étaples on November 26, 1917. Upon recovery he continued fighting until July 1918, when combat stress perhaps caught up with him. He went briefly AWOL on 29th July, turning himself in to the Military Police the following day and forfeiting a day's pay in consequence. He rejoined his unit, which during August, 1918, was involved in fierce fighting to retake the German-occupied French villages of Pys and Miraumont during the Second Battle of Bapaume. John was seriously wounded on the 30th of August, 1918, and died later the same day while being treated by No 3 NZ Field Ambulance.  He was buried at Grévillers, with Army chaplain, Rev. T.F. Connelly, conducting the committal service.²⁴

A New Zealand dressing station near the front, Grévillers, 24 Aug. 1918. Grévillers had just that day been recaptured from the Germans by the NZ Division. Royal New Zealand RSA: New Zealand official neatives, World War 1914-1918. Photographer: Henry Armytage Sanders. Alexander Turnbull Library. Reference No. ½-013506-G
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By the time his parents received news of John’s death, the Brunning family had moved closer to the Blenheim area. Over the next few years they shifted several times, with Richard working as a farm labourer.²⁵ Newmans’ horse-drawn coaches were a thing of the past, replaced in ever-increasing numbers throughout the war years by service cars.  Although enthusiastically embraced by the younger generation, the transition to motorised transport was often difficult for those who grew up appreciating and working with horses.

The Blenheim Borough Council was moved to offer its sympathies to John Brunning's family during a meeting held on September 12, 1918: "A resolution of condolence was passed for communication to the relatives of Rifleman J.W. Brunning, who had recently made the supreme sacrifice."²⁶

Richard and Betsy's sixth son, Alan Cecil, was born the same year that John was killed. In April 1920, the Brunnings were living at Spring Creek when Alan, then two, contracted influenza and meningitis. Within a week he was dead. Still grieving for their oldest son, this second loss was a heavy blow for both parents, but appears to have been the tipping point for Richard. Over the following months he fell into a deep depression and turned to drink, becoming at times irrational and suicidal.  He hanged himself in a cowshed at home on April 3, 1921, at the age of 59. An inquest held the following day concluded that "Richard Brunning committed suicide by hanging himself whilst temporarily insane due to excessive indulgence in liquor."²⁷

It must have been a time of great hardship for Betsy, who was pregnant with their last child, Samuel Leio Steven Lionel (Steve), to whom she gave birth in Nelson on 5 September, 1921. She was staying with her sister Mary Jane Robinson, by then living in Beachville, and herself recently widowed.

The Brunning family drifted apart, with the older children leaving home to work and Betsy, with her youngest children, employed as a cook at various sheep-stations, including the 10,000 acre Mount Gladstone Sheep Station in the Awatere Valley. After 1946 she moved to the Motueka area. By then her sons Herbert and Len had married and were working at Ngatimoti in the Motueka Valley, and several of her Brunning in-laws were living around Motueka and Riwaka. Betsy worked for the Rose family at Ngatimoti for a time. The Roses were originally German settlers who farmed the area named after them – Rosental (Rosedale).  Betsy was living at Ngatimoti when she died of heart failure on October 8, 1950. She was buried at Wakapuaka Cemetery in Nelson.²⁸

The wartime period was a fraught one for those of German descent, who suddenly found themselves transformed from valued, hard-working neighbours into enemy aliens, despite having been British subjects from the earliest days of European settlement.  They tried to keep a low profile, but often suffered abuse, bullying at school and discrimination. Nonetheless, many chose to fight for the British Empire, and including John Brunning, twelve of Matthias and Lena Bruning’s grandsons served during the First World War.

The remains of those buried at the Grévillers cemetery were later reinterred, and today John William Brunning lies beneath a headstone in the Adanac Military Cemetery, Miraumont, at Somme, France. He is commemorated in Marlborough at the Havelock War Memorial, in Havelock Memorial Park.

In Memoriam

BRUNNING. -  in loving memory of Rifleman J.W. Brunning, killed in action on the 30^th August 1918.

In a hero’s grave he sleepeth,
Somewhere in France he fell;
How little we thought when we parted
It was the last farewell

Inserted by his loving father and mother, sisters and brothers.²⁹

2015

In the last quarter of the 19^th Century and the first quarter of the 20^th Century, Havelock School was involved in the early education of two stellar minds, who were both involved in far-reaching scientific discoveries in their fields:  Ernest Rutherford and William Pickering.

Havelock School. The 1861 building, now the Rutherford Youth Hostel

Havelock was a goldrush town established as a service centre after the discovery of gold in the Wakamarina Valley in 1864. By the 1870s, thousands of metres of timber were being shipped out of the port, with 22 vessels reported laying off nearby Cullen Point in 1877.

During the years the young Ernest and William roamed the countryside and learned the basics at Havelock School, the settlement of Havelock was beginning to grow and even saw a visit from His Royal Highness, Prince Edward, Prince of Wales in 1920.¹

Ernest Rutherford’s early school days
Ernest Rutherford was born at Spring Grove in rural Nelson on 30 August 1871. He was the fourth child of 12, born to James Rutherford and Martha, who had been the schoolteacher at Spring Grove.²

Collie, W :[Rutherford family group at Havelock], [1880-86?], Alexander Turnbull Library, PAColl-0091-2-001.: Alice, Mary Thompson (cousin), Arthur (in front), Ernest (behind), Eve(in front in white), James (in chair) Nell (standing), Ethel (in front in white), Flo (in chair), George (immediately behind), Herbert (at rear), Martha (standing side on), Charles & Jim.

Earning enough to feed the large family was a struggle for James.  In 1882 when Ernest was 11, the family moved to Havelock where James ran a flaxmill at Ruapaka. In 1885, he turned to sawmilling, manufacturing railway sleepers for the Government.³ The young Ernest helped out at his father’s flax and saw mills.⁴

The close-knit family forged a good life with few amenities in the isolated and rugged landscape and Martha ensured that all her children were well prepared for school, with all receiving good educations.⁵

In the years Ernest attended Havelock School, there was one teacher, two ‘pupil teachers’ and 100 students.⁶ When awarded the Nobel Prize in 1908, Dr Rutherford wrote to his former principal Jacob Reynolds thanking him for initiating him ‘into the mysteries of Latin, algebra and Euclid in my youthful days at Havelock, of which I still have a very keen remembrance.”⁷

Ernest distinguished himself at school, coming top in his class in every subject in his final year. But as the family was not wealthy, a scholarship was one of the few options for him to continue his education.⁸

A Nelson College school photograph from 1887 in front of the first school, later destroyed by fire. Scholarship pupil, Ernest Rutherford is pictured in this photograph, ninth from the left in the third from the front row. Nelson College: Images of an Era.

In 1886, when Ernest was 15, tragedy struck. Two of Ernest’s brothers, Herbert and Charles, drowned in the Marlborough Sounds on a fishing adventure. Apparently Ernest was supposed to be on the trip but was running an errand. This tragic accident overshadowed his winning a scholarship to attend Nelson College, which he achieved with high marks on his second attempt. ⁹

Ernest Rutherford left New Zealand in 1895 as a highly skilled 23-year-old, who held three degrees from the University of New Zealand and had a reputation as an outstanding researcher and innovator working at the forefront of electrical technology. In 1908, he was awarded a Nobel Prize in Chemistry for investigations into the disintegration of the elements and the chemistry of radioactive substances.

Sir Ernest Rutherford [Herbert photograph studios], Alexander Turnbull Library, 1/2-050243-F http://mp.natlib.govt.nz/ detail/?id=7208 Click image to enlarge

Baron Rutherford of Nelson, as he was eventually known, became the father of nuclear physics. He took up the role of director of Cambridge University’s Cavendish Laboratory in 1919. He was still at the Cavendish when he died of a strangulated hernia, aged 66 in 1937. His ashes are buried in Westminster Abbey in London.¹⁰

The late New Zealand physicist, Sir Paul Callaghan said Lord Rutherford’s work laid the foundation of modern understandings of chemistry and physics. “He is our greatest scientist and one of the greatest scientists who ever lived,” he said.¹

William Pickering’s early school days
William Pickering’s grandfather showed some zest for exploring new frontiers.   In 1885, William Pickering, senior, made history by being the first person to take a four horse team between Blenheim and Nelson.¹² 

William Pickering. NASA

William Hayward Pickering was born in Wellington in 1910. His mother died when he was six and when his father, Albert, took up a Government post as a pharmacist in Samoa, Will was sent to live with his grandparents William and Kate in Havelock.¹³

He soon made an impression at  Havelock Primary School. Well-behaved, quick to learn, curious and equipped with a naturally retentive memory. He liked to pretend to be a teacher at home while his amused grandparents played his classmates.¹⁴

Will excelled at school, particularly in science and arithmetic. His scholastic ability was such that he learned algebra and Latin as well as the regular curriculum of English, composition, history and geography. He won a scholarship to Wellington College where he excelled in maths and science and discovered an intense interest in the (then) new techniques of amateur radio communication.¹⁵

In 1929, William arrived at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) where he studied electrical engineering. By the 1930s, there was an impressive array of scientific talent at Caltech, which was visited by Albert Einstein three times in the first half of that decade.¹⁶

Dr. William H. Pickering, (center) JPL Director, presenting Mariner spacecraft model to President John F. Kennedy, (right). NASA Administrator James Webb is standing directly behind the Mariner model.

A seminal figure of the Space Age, William Pickering was internationally known for his significant contributions to the founding of the age, and for the first robotic explorations of the Moon, Venus and Mars.¹⁷  He met U.S president Lyndon Johnson in 1964¹⁸ and was pictured on the cover of Time magazine in 1963.¹⁹

While unable to attend the centennial of his old primary school in 1986, William wrote: “I have very fond memories of my school days in Havelock. In this busy world in which I find myself today, the relaxed life in a little country town in New Zealand seems an impossible distance in the past…..I also remember that in school we learned the discipline of intellectual work.” ²⁰

Sir William returned to Havelock  in 2003 to unveil the memorial in honour of himself and fellow Havelock School alumni, Lord Ernest Rutherford. In that year, he was awarded New Zealand’s highest civic honor, the Order of New Zealand.²¹

When he died in March 2004, aged 93, a NASA spokesman said: ”He brought a vision and a passion to space exploration that was remarkable. His pioneering work is the very foundation we have built upon to explore our solar system and beyond.” ²²

2017

John Collins  did a bit of everything to make a living on his Cullensville hill country farm: milking cows, shearing sheep, mustering and mussel harvesting.

John Collins at Linkwater Cemetery. [Lucy Stronach, 2015].

Aged 25, John paid ‘a quid’ an acre for the 706 hectare hill country farm in 1964.   “It was just a block of land. There were no fences, buildings - nothing.  It was tussock country- native grass- danthonia. There were wild sheep, goats and pigs- it was character building in that rough sort of country.

“You burnt the scrub - you put a match to it in February/March. You didn’t burn the whole place at once, simply because you’d have a rush of feed for the first two years and then nothing. You burnt about one quarter of your property every year and you only farmed that quarter, so you could have fresh grass each year.”

There were a lot of sheep farms in Linkwater  in the 1960s but by 2015, dairying was the main farming activity, with forestry and native bush in the hill country. “In the 1960s, I’d shear about 10,000 sheep a year. You’d be lucky to shear 500 now.”

John met his wife Pam in Linkwater and their two sons went to Linkwater School in the 1980s which had 24 pupils at the time.  Everybody was involved in school and community projects and John is proud that the Linkwater Hall floor came from his Cullensville farm. 

St Lukes Anglican Church and Hall at Linkwater. Image source Wikimedia, author Mattinbgn.

“The Linkwater Hall was over 100 years old. The floor was kaput and it got to the stage where it was unsafe.  My farm had quite a lot of native timber and I said they could have any amount of timber they wanted to renew the flooring.

“Rimu trees were selected. We took up Jim Shallcrass’s portable sawmill, felled the trees, sawed it into timber, carted it out and strip stacked them to dry for about 18 months.  Then we renewed the hall floor.  We only picked the best timber to make the best floor we could.”

John eventually sold the farm in the mid -1980s to a local farmer who planted it in trees. “It became uneconomic. It was a sound investment but you had to work hard farming it.”  

Maori axe heads and tools found at John Collin's property. [Lucy Stronach, 2015].

He bought a three hectare mixed farming block at the head of the Mahakipawa Arm and has discovered evidence of early Maori settlement  there. “It is an old pa site. I was set to begin building a house shortly after buying the property and we began to dig up Maori axes- they haven’t been dated but some would be very old. The Historic Places Trust decided we can keep the axes as long as they stay on the property. Local iwi have also been informed.”

There are also middens on the farm: “When I arrived there were huge piles of sea shells and  blackened stones from fires on every terrace. I presume they (early Maori) must have cooked and eaten them up on the hillside. ”

Marlborough Express, 18 February 1907. Image from PapersPast.

Former Governor General of New Zealand, the late Sir Paul Reeves has roots in the Cullensville- Linkwater area and with an interest in local history, John was able to help him locate the grave of his grandmother.  Sir Paul’s grandfather Frank Sparks was a gold miner at Cullensville and married a Maori woman, Ruka.  In 1907, aged 56, Frank died after he accidentally drank poisoned liquid.¹  “In those days there was only a Maori cemetery at Linkwater and he had to be buried in Havelock. There was no road so they had to come by boat to get his corpse and take it back to Havelock for burial.”

Their daughter Hilda married William Reeves and they had two sons: Paul and Bill:  “The boys grew up in Wellington but apparently loved coming to Linkwater to visit their grandparents.  They were little rascals like typical boys- climbed trees, threw mud at each other, got wet through and played larrikins.”

There is some mystery about the circumstances of Ruka’s death but she is buried at the Maori cemetery at the foot of Red Hill near Linkwater.   About 35 years ago, Paul, then a church minister, visited Linkwater and wanted to see his grandmother’s grave.  “I had been shown the grave by some old timers so we scrambled up through the scrub and found four graves. There were no headstones as we know them but hollows in the ground. One of the graves was Ruka’s and Paul was rapt to see them.”

Fifty years of Rugby

John began his rugby career for the Spring Creek school team in 1948 and played his last game for the Moutere Golden Oldies (Spring Creek) team in 2006.  He played  for six clubs including Pelorus and played for the Marlborough Golden Oldies in world tournaments in 1999 and 2004. He managed the team which took part in the 2010 tournament  in Sydney and continues to be the manager.

John played two seasons for the Marlborough representative side prior to buying the Linkwater farm in 1964. “It was a toss-up: do I stick with a rugby career or do I turn my back on it and buy a farm?  I stopped playing for several years until I sorted myself out on the farm.” 

John Collins was still playing rugby in 2006. Image supplied by John Collins

The Pelorus rugby sub-union was formed in 1907 and in the 1920s when there were sawmills throughout the district, there were six rugby teams in the sub-union: Ronga, Carluke, Opouri, Canvastown, Havelock, Linkwater.  Once a year, a selection of players from the six teams would play a Marlborough B team.  In 1954, all of the teams were amalgamated under the banner of the Pelorus Rugby Club and played in the Marlborough Rugby Union competition.

John says Havelock’s rugby field was on the site of Havelock School and was 16 feet higher at one end than the other.” It was also only 60 yards wide (instead of regulation 75 yards). The players used to play four quarters instead of two halves because it was too tiring running up and down the hill for the players.  Eventually the Fissenden Brothers from Kaikoura won the contract to fill the site and even it out.”

John Collins was interviewed by Joy Stephens in Havelock in April 2015.

The abandoned town of Cullensville, which sits at the head of the Mahakipawa Valley about two miles inland from the eastern arm of the head of the Pelorus Sound, was once a thriving goldmining centre.

Gold was reported in Cullen’s Gulley (there was a race to report it as a £500 bonus awaited) in May 1888, and the area was officially declared a gold field in late June, by which time there were hundreds of men on site.  The first flood washed them out the same month.  Cullensville township sprang up almost overnight.  The first business established was a bakery, then stores, a butchery, milk and meat deliveries, blacksmiths, a branch of the bank, and hotels.  The first hotel had people queueing for both drinks and meals.  A Chinese market gardener supplied vegetables from Kaituna.  A new wharf was built at The Grove with revenue from the gold tax, and steamers delivered passengers from Picton. 

Grand National Hotel. Cullensville. Image supplied by author
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Mail day at Cullensville; post would be brought from Havelock in the morning and taken back in the afternoon. Image supplied by author
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There was a school at Cullensville with 40 pupils (about the size of Ward School today) – this eventually closed in 1907, when the Grove school building was moved to Linkwater to serve the whole district.  A new school was eventually built in 1932, after the old one ‘conveniently’ burnt down.  Another Government institution was the Post Office, which operated from 1888 to 1911.

Although the gold was of high quality, the rush was short-lived, and most was exhausted in the first two years.  The township was abandoned, and gradually buildings were demolished for use elsewhere, fell to pieces, or burnt down.  However as late as the 1930s, when another Depression struck, miners were still active in the valley. 

Leo Gilchrist’s parents ran the hotel at Linkwater.  He remembers in his childhood: “The mines used to be working three 8-hour shifts.  They’d start at midnight, change shifts again at 8 o’clock in the morning, and again at 4 in the afternoon.  When the miners come off the shift, whether it was day or night, that was the day’s work, and they wanted a beer.  So consequently the pub used to run 24 hours a day!”  He also recalled Gorton Cuddon (founder of Cuddon Engineering) staying at the hotel while he serviced the mine machinery.

 This story was adapted from one written by Loreen Brehaut for the Picton Seaport News, 2014

Havelock was a goldrush town which, for a short time, nurtured two of New Zealand’s greatest scientists: Sir Ernest Rutherford and Sir William Pickering.

The SS Manaroa leaving Havelock.  [The Manaroa was a coastal steamer plying this coast from the 1890's]. Photo Havelock Museum Society Incorporated.
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When a New Zealand Company party explored the head of the Pelorus Sound in 1838, Edward Jerningham Wakefield observed that the extensive mudflats at the head of the Sound gave little promise of a future seaport. However, the discovery of gold at Canvastown in 1863 saw Havelock become a port of consequence.  Large vessels stopped at Cullens Point and were served by lighterage. It was reported in 1877 that, on one occasion, 22 vessels were laying off Cullens Point.¹

Before the arrival of Europeans, a Pa known as Motuweka (now Havelock) lay at the junction of two Maori trails: one to the Waitohi (Picton), the other to the Wairau.² New Zealand Company surveyor, John Barnicoat saw the potential of the Motuweka flat as early as 1854. Kurahaupo chief, Hura Kopapa from Kaituna, was reluctant to sell the site to the Company,  but eventually agreed to relinquish the land.  The Motuweka Pa was destroyed and four or six sections were granted by the Crown in compensation to Maori.³

Gold miners in the Havelock area. Date unknown. Back row, left to right: G.Sutton, Ted Levene, F.Scott, C.Anderson, Ern Scott. Front row (l-r) J.Ward, Jack Ward, Joe Anderson. Photo Havelock Museum Society Incorporated
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Gold was discovered in the Wakamarina in April 1864 and  Havelock became a service centre for gold miners, with stores, wholesale merchants, boarding houses and inns quickly springing up.⁴  In May 1864, Thomas Hewetson, a storekeeper, wrote: “…Havelock …is nearly as big as Nelson. I should suppose there is upwards of 150 large tents and weatherboard and corrugated iron buildings- nine tenths of them grog shantys.” He also described “a strong force of Dunedin police and detectives”, restaurants and dining rooms, two Banks and a new Post Office. As the manager of Mr Allen’s Store, Hewetson reported that some days he was sending eight or nine tons of goods up the river to the diggers.⁵

Mrs Mary Mulvey who died, aged over 100, in 1922. [“Mrs Mulvey’s big sack apron did everything. She even used to collect wood in it. As you passed her gate, Mrs Mulvey always hailed you in for a cup of tea. One could not refuse! All visitors would be served a thick slice of bread, handmade butter and cheese – each slice was brought in and handed out from, her handy sack apron!”- Ivy Godsiff. Caption from the Havelock Museum.] Photo Havelock Museum Society Inc.
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Havelock’s first public school was established in Outram Street in the early 1860s and was soon bursting at the seams.⁶  In 1882, James and Martha Rutherford arrived in the area with their large family, including their second son Ernest .  In 1908, Ernest Rutherford wrote to Jacob A. Reynolds (principal Havelock School 1882-1898) not long after he was awarded the Nobel Prize for his investigations into the disintegration of the elements, and the chemistry of radioactive substances. He thanked Reynolds for initiating him ‘into the mysteries of Latin, algebra and Euclid in my youthful days at Havelock, of which I still have a very keen remembrance.”⁷

In 1885, William Pickering made history by being the first person to take a four horse team between Blenheim and Nelson. He had operated a coach service between Blenheim and Havelock since 1879. Pickering was on the Havelock School committee for 30 years.⁸  His grandson William was born in 1910 and lived with his grandparents while he attended Havelock School.⁹  William Pickering was destined to become a rocket scientist who headed Pasadena, California's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) for 22 years.

Brownlee’s Mill at Pelorus. 14 June 1908. Photo Havelock Museum Society Incorporated.
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With the gold rush over within a year or so, Havelock became a small service centre and stopping place for travellers. The end of the gold rush saw many men eager to pick up work, which they found in sawmills at Havelock and throughout the Marlborough Sounds.¹⁰   By the 1880s, sawmiller, William Brownlee was employing 75 men in his mills.

'Telephonic communication’ between Blenheim and Picton was established in February 1906, with the first message announcing: “The Labour Department has just advised local authorities that Thursday from March 31^st, shall be the weekly half holiday in Havelock.”¹¹

The Prince of Wales (standing legs crossed) is greeted by a crowd at the Havelock Town Hall, 1 April 1921. Photo Havelock Museum Society Incorporated.
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The 1918 flu epidemic saw the Havelock Town hall converted into a temporary hospital and older children were recruited to carry broths and medicines. Havelock put on festive finery for the visit of the Prince of Wales on 1 April, 1921. Four years later, Sir Ernest Rutherford visited his old school.¹²

A gathering outside the Havelock Town Hall. Date unknown. Mr Wells in the wheelchair. Photo Havelock Museum Society Incorporated.
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In the 1930s, Sounds folk shopped at Orsmans’ General Store and stayed at the Post Office Hotel before returning home on the Mailboat the next morning at 8am, if the tide allowed. The Havelock mudflats were notorious and many a launch master after a drink at the hotel would push off a little too late and get stuck in the mud.

From the 1930s to the 1960s, the Mailboat was run by the Johnson family. Passengers caught up on news before reaching the isolation of their farms, which were connected by a primitive phone system consisting of a wire stretched in long sagging loops between posts and trees.¹³

The Havelock Museum

The Havelock Museum on the Main Road, Havelock is well worth a visit. Evocative and informative displays draw you into the stories of  Havelock’s past including milling and mining, farming, businesses and community.

The Havelock Museum Society Inc. has nearly 200 historic photographs and database containing social history and stories about local families. There are also some historic displays at Canvastown. To find out more about these resources,  see www.peloruspeople.org.nz/havelockmuseum.

2014

At Home and Away during World War I: A Tale of Two Families

Albert Edward (Bert) Everett was born in Nelson in 1857 and was the fifth of ten children. He came from a prominent Nelson family with civic connections. His parents, Edward and Hannah (Annie), née Pope, had previously spent several years in Canada before emigrating to New Zealand on the Sir Edward Paget. They made landfall in Auckland on May 25, 1853.¹ A Londoner by birth, Edward Everett settled with his wife and first four sons in Nelson around 1856 and soon prospered in his new home town.

Edward set up as a publican and wine and spirit merchant, getting an early boost to his fortunes by obtaining a lucrative "bush licence" in March, 1857, for the sale of liquor at the Aorere goldfields. Starting with both the Bank and Masonic Hotels on Hardy Street, he built up a substantial property portfolio over the years, including the historic Haven homestead, "Stafford House". He also served as a captain of the Volunteer Fire Brigade, City Councillor, Justice of the Peace and twice as Mayor of Nelson during the 1870s and 1880s.²

Everett Bros. Bridge Street Store ca 1910.Nelson Provincial Museum Ref: 176679 (Photographer F N Jones). The "Victoria House" premises were sited at 68 Bridge Street. Later this would become the site for another long-running Nelson business, H & J Smith’s department store. Click image to enlarge

1864 saw a goldrush at Wakamarina and another opportunity for Edward Everett, who bought up John Wilson’s Accommodation House at Canvastown and rebranded it the Pelorus Hotel. With his two oldest sons, Edward Jnr and Charles in mind, he also set up an import and retail drapery business on Bridge Street. Trading as Everett Brothers & Company, with Edward Jnr in charge of the store and Charles in London, sourcing merchandise and sending it back home, this highly successful business would run for nearly 50 years, becoming a Nelson institution.³

Everett Bros. expanded their operations in 1874 by building a second, larger shop on Bridge Street. Following the death of storekeeper William Snow early that year, Everett Bros. acquired the drapery he had established on Trafalgar Street in the 1840s. Its stock and well-known trading name, “Victoria House”, were transferred to their own new premises, sited nearer the centre of town and opened in October, 1874. However, in March, 1875, a spectacular fire destroyed the original Everett Bros.’ store and its contents, fortunately well insured.⁴ Everett Bros were back to one shop, with all business now devolving on “Victoria House”.

Meanwhile the younger son, Albert, went to school. He won a scholarship to Nelson College, which he attended 1871 to 1874, then spent time in Christchurch and Dunedin. Around 1885 he joined the partnership as manager of the family firm and oversaw another period of expansion. Everett Bros.’ Nelson store underwent a total revamp in November, 1899, and branches in Takaka and Motueka were opened around the same time.  

Country cousin: Everett Bros.’ new Motueka store on opening day, 15 Nov., 1902. Motueka & District Historical Association. Fergus Holyoake Collection. Ref:355/1 SHOP. Motueka. This store was established at 151 High Street, where Paper Plus stands today.
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Motueka’s first Everett Bros.’ shop was a modest affair, but a brand new, purpose-built store on High Street was launched with great fanfare on the 15^th of November, 1902.⁵ Everett Bros.’ Motueka establishment was sold in August, 1904, to its Motueka manager, William Uren, who continued to run it as a drapery under the name Uren & Co. Albert Everett retained his connections with the Motueka community. He had a new interest and may have made a trade - store for land. In 1904 he bought a farmat Pokororo in the Motueka Valley, where he could experiment with apple production.⁶ By 1907 he was winning prizes for his apples at the Motueka Horticultural Society Show.

In 1883 Albert married Ada, née Gordon, born 1862 in Melbourne, Australia. They had 12 children who were raised in Nelson at the family's John Scott-built Collingwood Street villa, several attending Nelson College and Nelson College for Girls. They were: George, Ethel, Gladys (who became a well-known headmistress at various private girls’ schools in Australia), Viola, Claire and Dorothy (twins), Gerald, Frank, Charles, Stella, John and Colin.

Captain George Gordon Everett. Courtesy Barbara Strathdee, My Heritage: Everett-Strathdee Family
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George (b. 1884) was the eldest, and distinguished himself at Nelson College, which he attended 1900-1904, being captain of the 1st XV and Head Boy, dux and captain of the No 2 Cadet Company in his final year. A career soldier, he went to England after leaving school and gained a commission with the British Imperial Army in 1904. He was later transferred to India, where he served for 12 years as a Captain with the 67th Punjabis. He had just returned to Baluchistan after a three-year tour of duty with the Military Police in Northern Burma when he was killed on 1 May, 1917, during an attack on a British convoy by Mahsud tribesmen near Fort Nili Kach, on the North-West Frontier.⁷ He is the only known New Zealander to be commemorated at the India Gate memorial in New Delhi, dedicated to Indian Army soldiers killed in WWI and on the NW Frontier (today Pakistan).

By the time of George’s death, his father Albert was living at Pokororo. His wife, Ada, had died in 1906 and on 10 September, 1913, he remarried at the Nelson Registry Office to 40-year-old divorcée, Annie Watson, née Arscott, daughter of Thomas and Harriett Arscott of Timaru.⁸ Annie had come out from England with her parents on the White Rose in 1875. Not long before the wedding, Albert liquidated several Nelson properties, including the flagship Everett Bros. store on Bridge Street. By now the only family member involved with the business, he had decided to make a complete break and, with his new bride, set up permanently on his Pokororo farm as a commercial fruitgrower.⁹

Ralph Watson. Nelson College Old Boys Association. Courtesy Gina Fletcher. Originally published in The Nelsonian, July, 1917
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Annie had a son, Ralph Thomas Watson, born in Wellington on Christmas Day, 1897, who became Albert Everett’s stepson.¹⁰ Ralph got off to a rough start. His birth father was William John Turner Watson, an Australian carter who was working as a hotel-keeper at Makikihi when he married Annie in January 1897.  The Watsons struggled to make a living and he deserted her a year after Ralph's birth. Annie returned to her family in Timaru, where she supported herself and her son by working as a dressmaker. She eventually sued for divorce and was granted a decree nisi in 1910.¹¹

Ralph's grandparents lived on Timaru’s Dee Street. His grandfather, Tom, was a stoker with the Timaru Gas Company, his grandmother a supporter of women's suffrage. There were plenty of male role models amongst his extended family. His mother had three brothers  - Ernest, Frederick and Alfred Arscott  - who all served in WWI and returned. Their names are inscribed on the Roll of Honour at the Timaru War Memorial.

A regular attendee at the Timaru Congregational Church Sunday School from an early age, Ralph started school in 1903 and spent 20 months at Timaru Main School. From 1905 to 1910 he was educated at Tasman Street School and Nelson Central School, after moving with his mother to Nelson.¹² Annie Watson carried on her work as a dressmaker at a Bridge Street establishment, almost certainly Everett Bros., the biggest employer of tailors and dressmakers in Nelson.¹³

Ralph attended Nelson College, 1911-1914, at the same time as Albert Everett’s sons, Gerald and Frank. He appears to have been a natural athlete. In December, 1910, at the age of 12, he was coxswain for the losing crew in the final of the Nelson Rowing Clubs fours. At College he was a keen rugby player and cricketer, being a member of both the 1st XV and the 1st XI.

Albert Everett at his Pokororo farm with his children Claire (later Strathdee) and Charles (Charlie). Courtesy Barbara Strathdee, My Heritage website: Everett-Strathdee Family.
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After leaving College Ralph worked on mixed farms and orchards around Pokororo, no doubt including his stepfather’s property, where his stepbrother Frank was employed. At the age of 17 he enlisted at Pokororo, becoming a Gunner with the NZ Field Artillery. He was still keen as mustard when he wrote to his proud grandfather from France in August 1916,¹⁴ and itching to get back to the Front in a letter sent to Timaru from Sling Camp a couple of months later. Just five days after this last letter was published in the Timaru Herald, Ralph would be dead, killed in action at the Somme. He was 19.¹⁵

Five of Albert Everett’s other children also served during WWI. His sons Gerald and Frank were likewise Gunners with the NZ Field Artillery. Gerald joined up before his younger brother Frank, leaving New Zealand with the Main Body on October 16, 1914. Frank and Gerald (known as “Flick”) were also Nelson College Old Boys, with Gerald a noted sportsman at school.¹⁶

Matron Fanny Wilson and nursing staff at Walton-on-Thames Hospital, ca. 1918. Claire & Dorothy Everett together at right-hand end, bottom row. Credit: Royal NZ R.S.A. Collection, Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. Ref: 1/2-014124-G
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Roy Edward Everett. Image supplied by Jenifer Lemaire
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Viola, who qualified as a nurse in Sydney, Australia in October, 1915, joined the Australian Army Nursing Service in December 1916 and served as a staff nurse at No 27 General Hospital in Alexandria, Egypt, returning to Australia in July, 1919.¹⁷ Twins, Claire and Dorothy, who qualified together at Christchurch in June 1916, both went off to England with the NZ Army Nursing Service in August, 1918. They served together as staff nurses at No 2 NZ General Hospital, a military hospital for seriously wounded NZ soldiers, situated at Walton-on-Thames. The life-saving care their brother, Frank, received at No 1 NZ General Hospital at Brockenhurst from October 1916 to January 1917 possibly influenced their decision to join up. They returned to New Zealand in August, 1919.¹⁸

One of Albert's nephews went off to war as well; his brother Frank Evelyn Everett's son, Roy Edward Everett.  Roy was another Nelson College Old Boy. He also served as a Gunner with the NZ Field Artillery and was awarded the Military Medal for gallantry in action during the Battle of Broodseinde Ridge in October 1917. After the war he became a farmer at Motupipi, Takaka.

In October 1916, around the same time as Thomas Arscott was receiving the bad news about his grandson in Timaru, Albert Everett was notified that his stepson Ralph had been killed and his son Frank seriously injured by shrapnel.¹⁹

A Gun-Pit in the Somme Valley. From: The New Zealand Division 1916-1919: A Popular History Credit: NZETC
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The two stepbrothers were close in age and clearly inseparable friends as well, perhaps from school-days. They joined up together on the same day, 24 August, 1915, left with the same draft on 9 October, 1915 and trained together in Egypt, where Ralph turned 18. They were together, too, in the same artillery gun pit at Flers when it was struck by an enemy shell on October 15, 1916, during the Battle of the Somme. Ralph took the full impact and was killed instantly. Frank was hit by shrapnel, receiving head injuries which left him unconscious for 14 days. Ralph was found lying over Frank, who later credited his stepbrother with saving his life.²⁰

Frank Everett. Courtesy Barbara Strathdee, My Heritage: Everett–Strathdee Family
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After three months in hospital in England, Frank was sent back to New Zealand for 12 months’ recuperation, but was discharged in 1917 as a result of his injuries and later moved to Australia to live. Gerald was demobilised in 1919 and went to Auckland, where he resumed his former profession as a clerk with the Union Bank of Australia. He retired to Nelson. Viola, who never married, continued her nursing career in Australia and in 1945 became Matron of the Kenmore Repatriation Hospital in Queensland. In 1957 she was awarded an MBE for her work there. Her sister Gladys (who preferred to called "Gordon") was also awarded an MBE in 1960 for her work in the field of education.

Dorothy and Claire came back to Nelson but soon found that it was too quiet for them. They travelled together to San Francisco where they both took work as nurses. Claire met and married Frederick (Fred) Strathdee, who came from Scotland. He had been recruited as a teenager by a Canadian Bank, and remained in banking all his working life. Fred and Claire made their home in San Francisco, and raised their three children there. Dorothy didn’t ever marry, but continued working as a nurse. She was a fond aunt and spent many weekends with the Strathdee family. When the Strathdees eventually retired to Victoria on Vancouver Island in Canada, Dorothy returned to Nelson.

The Everett family suffered an earlier loss at home on the 1^st January, 1915, when Albert’s daughter Stella drowned while swimming in the Motueka River. She was 24. Stella had epilepsy, which was thought to have been a contributing factor in her death.²¹

Albert Everett lived with his second wife Annie at his Pokororo farm for many years and remained closely involved with the local fruitgrowing industry until April 1935. He then leased out his farm and retired to Nelson, where he died 17 August, 1943, aged 85. Annie died 29 September, 1957. They both lie at the Wakapuaka Cemetery, with Albert's first wife, Ada, his parents Edward and Hannah Everett and other family members close by.

Ralph Watson is commemorated at the Caterpillar (New Zealand) Memorial at Caterpillar Valley Cemetery, Longueval, France, which records the names of those NZ servicemen killed during fighting at the Somme in September and October, 1916, "whose graves are known only to God."

He is listed on the Nelson/Tasman Roll of Honour and also honoured at the Ngatimoti War Memorial in the Motueka Valley, Tasman, New Zealand.

2014

Acknowledgements: Jenifer Lemaire and Barbara Strathdee (Everett and Strathdee families); Nelson College Old Boys’ Association per Gina Fletcher; Coralie Smith, Motueka Historical Association; Tony Rippin (curator), South Canterbury Museum, Timaru, and Teresa Scott (librarian), South Canterbury Branch NZSG.

Shaky Ground

For centuries before Europeans arrived, Māori had experienced rū whenua - ‘the shaking of the land'. According to Māori tradition, earthquakes are caused by the god Rūaumoko (or Rūamoko), the son of Ranginui (the Sky) and his wife Papatūānuku (the Earth).

Fissures in Road at Murchison. Nelson Provincial Museum, F N Jones Collection: 321270
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Rangi was separated from Papa, and his tears flooded the land. Their sons resolved to turn their mother downwards, so that she and Rangi should not constantly see one another's sorrow.

When Papatūānuku was turned over, Rūaumoko was still at her breast, and was carried to the world below. To keep him warm, he was given fire-he is the god of earthquakes and volcanoes, and earthquakes are caused by him as he walks about.¹

Major 'Quakes

On 16 October 1848 an earthquake with an estimated magnitude of 7.5 shook the region. It was felt throughout the top of the south and caused substantial damage in Wellington.

Murchison Earthquake 17.6.1929, Busch’s Slip. Nelson Provincial Museum, F N Jones Collection: 309942
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The 1848 earthquakes and aftershocks were caused by movement along at least 105 kilometres of a major fault along the Awatere Valley. 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 one place the crack passed through an old warre [whare] dividing it in two pieces standing four feet apart.²

But worse was to come on 17 June 1929. The magnitude 7.8 Murchison earthquake was centred in the Lyell Range west of Murchison and was felt from Auckland to Bluff.

There was serious damage throughout the Greymouth, Nelson and Westport districts, with Murchison's 300-plus inhabitants experiencing the most cataclysmic havoc and destruction as slips roared down hillsides covering farms, livestock and roads with tons of rocks and clay. Trees snapped like twigs, huge cracks appeared in roads, and telephone and power poles leaned at drunken angles, surrounded by twisted wires.

Seventeen lives were lost in the Nelson/Buller area and hundreds of farm animals died.

Evidence of the seismic power of the earthquake at the end of Johnson Creek Track. Huge layered sedimentary rocks are jumbled about below the cliff face from which they were sheared in 1929. Native forest is regenerating around the massive rocks which have been eroded and weathered. Photo: Wayne Stronach 2014.
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In 1979, The Murchison District Museum and Historical Society gathered first hand accounts of the earthquake.³ Bernard Teague, a Methodist home missionary, was pushing his bicycle over the Maruia Saddle when he heard a strange roaring noise and the ground began to shake, trees crashed around him and he had trouble staying on his feet.

When he climbed the terrace above Six Mile Creek, Bernard saw a slip, which covered two farms. "One of them, the home of Sam Busch, being completely covered with tons of great rocks and clay. Mr Busch had been away delivering cream to the factory when the earthquake struck. He saw the slip fall over his home with his wife, son and daughter buried beneath it. He lost everything he had."

Nonie Rodgers saw the top blown off the hill. " It was absolutely horrifying, enormous rocks being hurled into the air, volumes of dust and what looked like a fire behind it all."

She grabbed her baby and crawled to the front door, where she stood up, but was thrown down the steps and surrounded by falling electric wires: "I lay there petrified to see the ground open and close again not far away. I looked up to see the hills rocking like jelly on a plate and to my relief, saw Dr McLean staggering up the road.....he found a piece of wood and lifted the wires up so I could crawl away with Des still clutched in my arms."

After the Earthquake. Nelson Provincial Museum, F N Jones Collection: 321277
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Heavy rain made the conditions even worse with continuing earthquake tremors adding to the confusion and terror. With their houses uninhabitable or completely destroyed, the residents of Murchison camped in tents or took shelter in sheds. After about five days about 280 homeless people were evacuated to Nelson. It was six weeks before many people could return home.

The Murchison Earthquake section of this article was based on an article published in Wild Tomato, June 2008, p 23. The article was written by Joy Stephens for The Nelson Provincial Museum and resources mainly came from the Murchison District Museum and Historical Society collection of memories cited below.

It took nearly 50 years of exploration, analysis and debate ¹ before Onekaka’s rich iron ore resource was to be commercially processed in 1922. While the Onekaka Iron and Steel Company had plenty of potential, a combination of low demand, foreign competitors and an economic Depression saw the works closed by 1935, although it was kept on standby during World War II.

Ironworkers at Onekaka, Copy Collection, The Nelson Provincial Museum, C3014
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Pipe Dreams at Onekaka

From the earliest days of European settlement in Golden Bay, there were high hopes for an iron industry. Crown agent, Mathew Richmond became aware of the value of the mineral deposits in 1852 and was eager to acquire land before local Maori realised its value.

Various companies were formed to develop the region’s limonite  deposits from the 1870s onwards, but inadequate capital hindered most attempts. In 1891, 300 tons of Parapara iron ore, along with coke and coal from Ferntown, were taken to the Onehunga Iron Smelting Company, where they produced good quality iron. ³

The frustration felt by enthusiasts can be sensed in the Golden Bay Argus of August 1, 1895: “Unlimited iron of first class quality, coal, limestone, easy access, cheap production, deep water for shipping and plenty of foreshore are all provided by nature, and if the venture will pay at all in the colony this locality offers super conditions.” ⁴

The Onekaka Iron & Steel Company Ltd was formed in 1920 with capital of £80,000. About 50 men were employed to build the works, which comprised 16 coke ovens, a blast furnace, a water race and an aerial cableway. Iron is produced by smelting (heating) iron ore with coke, with limestone being used to remove impurities. The limonite and lime were on hand at Onekaka, but coking coal was brought in from the West Coast.⁵

Onekaka moulds, The Nelson Provincial Museum, Copy Collection, C3276
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Onekaka ironworks wharf , The Nelson Provincial Museum, Copy Collection, C3275
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The first smelting of good quality pig iron was produced in April 1922. By October 1925, 2670 tons of iron had been produced, but the local market was saturated and prices were falling. About 600 tons of pig iron were shipped to Australia, but, when Australian Customs Duty was tripled to $6 per ton, the future seemed gloomy.⁶

To diversify, a pipe making plant was installed in 1927. Auckland, New Plymouth and Nelson local authorities all bought the pipes for underground use, with some still in use in 1979. Australian pipe makers introduced new, lighter pipes, however, undercutting Onekaka’s prices, and the Onekaka Company went into receivership in 1931. Pipes and pig iron were manufactured until 1935, but competition with the Australians and a lack of local capital during the Depression years, saw the closure of the plant in 1935.⁷

Between 1922 and 1935, a total of 81,499 tons of iron, valued at nearly £210,000 were produced, with up to 180 men being employed.⁸

Ultimately, the company’s hopes were defeated by the economic conditions of the time. Historian Jim McAloon suggests that Onekaka suffered from a credibility problem, with potential customers not believing the company could supply iron to the whole of New Zealand, and continuing to import large quantities. ⁹ It has been suggested there are still many tons of ore at Onekaka.¹⁰

A hydro electric dam and plant were built in 1929 to provide power for the pipe-making operation. After the Onekaka works were closed, the plant continued to generate electricity for Golden Bay between 1937 and 1944.¹¹

Today, there are scant remains of the iron works and wharf, but the hydro scheme has been reconstructed and generates about 900 kilowatts of electricity for up to 450 Golden Bay homes.¹²

2008 

Phyllis Field (nee Griffin) 1914-2007 - the early years

Phyllis was born in 1914, the youngest child of George and Caroline Griffin.

Her father was manager of the Griffin Biscuit factory, a business begun by his father John Griffin in 1865. The factory was on the land on the corner of Alton Street and Nile Street East. The family lived in a large two story house on the top of the hill in Tipahi Street (now 3 Eckington Terrace).     Phyllis recalls that they had a large section and kept a cow and lots of chooks. She had five brothers: Charles, Augustus (Gus), Henry (Harry), Robert (Bob) and Peter and her sister Else.

View from Dellside looking down Queen street. Image supplied by author

In 1919, George Griffin purchased the Barrington Farm of 100 acres, following the death of William Higgs (see map – section 90 and 88). When her brother Gus came back from the war with tuberculosis of the spine, after living in the trenches, he was not allowed to do office work again so the farm was for Gus and Harry to work. The old house was rebuilt and the property was re-named Dellside by Gus, after the convalescence home where he recuperated in England during WW1. Dellside is believed to have been a private home near Southhampton.

Phyllis had many happy memories of her time at Dellside. The farm grew new potatoes and peas, they kept pigs and had a milking herd of pedigree Jersey cows.  There was also a plum orchard. A spring on the hillside was used as a source of water for the Griffin cowshed. The children played in Reservoir Creek catching “crawlers” (Koura), eels and large native fish. Cooking up the native crayfish was a great delicacy. Brothers Bob and Peter dammed up Reservoir Creek and dug a swimming hole. This was still evident at the time of the interview and may have been the pond near the Cambrian coal mine. The mine sold coal as early as March 1862. A Mr. Roberts took out 100 tons then sold to W. Higgs who reopened it in 1872 and took out 30 tons. The mine closed in 1873 because the workings were below Reservoir Creek level. Gus and Harry later lost a horse in the mineshaft and Phyllis was told to stay away from the area.

View of Easby Park. 1920. Image supplied by author

The Griffins also had a tennis court at Easby Park (the level area of grass can still be seen). Every Saturday carloads of family and friends turned up for tennis. Sister Else spent all morning cooking dainties for afternoon tea. (The tennis court against the hill is the site of the target range that was no longer in use when Phyllis was young). Below the tennis Court, where the present footbridge crosses Reservoir Creek from the carpark, was the area where the Griffins kept their pigs.

Approximately 60 metres upstream from the pond William Higgs had a sheep dip. The Griffin brothers and neighbouring Sutton family used this facility.

Griffins Factory 1904, Nelson Provincial Museum, FN Jones Collection 9944.

When Phyllis was about eight years old they moved back into Nelson living in a house in Hardy Street which was close to the factory. Phyllis attended the Tasman School which backed onto the Maitai River. By the time she was about 11 years old they had moved back to Dellside. Her oldest brother Charles had married and he and his wife Alice moved into the Hardy Street house. Her father and brother Bob would travel into Nelson by car and take Phyliis to Preparatory of Nelson Girls College. As they would arrive in town early she would amuse herself at the factory – eating biscuits and looking for unusual foreign stamps in the rubbish baskets. Many of the materials used in the factory came from overseas. Crystallised flowers from France, patterned tinfoil from England and Europe, cocoa butter and vanilla pods from Africa or cocoa beans from tropical countries.

Phyllis was at the prep school in 1929 when the big Murchison earthquake struck. Luckily the building was wooden and didn’t sustain the damage of the Nelson College. Nevertheless, it was a terrifying experience. “Our school just shook and shook and all the water from the boarding rooms above came pouring through the ceiling”.

28 Marlborough Cresent 2016

The Griffin family homestead survives and is located at 28 Marlborough Crescent. Across the road, behind existing houses, along the base of the hillside, thousands of shells and evidence of ashes (middens) were found by the Griffin children. It is significant to note that Gus or Harry recovered a Maori adze from the swimming hole. It was small and polished[this is possibly held in the Nelson Provincial Museum]. Phyllis also mentioned that they dug out “Maori Potatoes”. This area of Dellside is also recognised for the large number of fossils found by the Griffin family.

[This story is based on notes of an interview with Phyllis by Tom Kroos in August 2006]

The Anchor Shipping and Foundry Company

Port Nelson. Nelson Provincial Museum, F N Jones Collection: 309919 [with Anchor Foundry buildings]
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The Anchor Foundry operated from 1866 to 1986. During this time it was the mainstay of Nelson’s heavy industry and its main source of engineering trades skills. The Anchor Foundry was established by Nathaniel Edwards¹ who arrived in Nelson in 1845. After a failed attempt to establish a flax dressing mill Edwards joined, in 1856, the mercantile firm of Fell & Seymour as a clerk. In 1857 an agreement was signed for Edwards and George Bennett to take over the company and John Symons joined the partnership. The business was known as N. Edwards & Co.. It operated as general merchants, importers and commission and shipping agents To further its mercantile interests, the company established, in 1866, a shipping branch, and established a workshop near N. Edwards & Co bulk store at Auckland Point.

In 1866 Edwards sold his shares in the mercantile firm to his partners. He retained the shipping department but, by 1870, John Symons had become the sole owner of both the mercantile company and its shipping department and in August of 1870 he changed the name of the shipping division to the Anchor Line of Steam Packets and used a new pennant, designed by the artist William Cock, featuring an anchor. A large new workshop on Wakefield Quay, named “The Anchor Foundry” was in use by 1873. By 1873 the Anchor Foundry was big business. Much of its work was heavy engineering. The foundry maintained and repaired the Anchor Line steamers as well as taking on outside work such as building other steamers, making gold sluicing equipment, cast iron stoves, a locomotive for the Takaka Tramway Company etc..² The Foundry also serviced Nelson’s largest industries such as Griffin’s confectionery and biscuit factory, S. Kirkpatrick & Company’s jam and canning factory and Baigent Timber Mills, offering fitting and turning, blacksmithing, moulding and casting, boiler making, electric and acetone welding, pattern making, and electrical wiring and installation.

In 1883  the 'Anchor Steam Shipping Co.' was formed, consisting of the Anchor Line proper, a foundry, and a shipyard. The firm grew despite adverse circumstances and was renewed again, as 'Anchor Shipping & Foundry Co.' in 1901. From 1921 on, there was friendly co-operation with the famous Union Steam Ship Co. which had quietly taken over half of the shares in 1908. By 1930 the fleet consisted of  sixteen ships.  After World War II trade declined, partly because of competition from ferries and the declining use of coal.

Dorman Engineering. Nelson Photonews Jun 24 1967
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A key figure in the Anchor Foundry was Alexander Brown³ who was its Chief Engineer and subsequent owner. Alexander Brown was born in Rutherglen, near Glasgow, Scotland in 1830. He was Chief Engineer on the Paddle Steamer Lyttlelton which was purchased by N. Edwards & Co in 1862 and subsequently became the Company’s Chief Engineer. He worked on their vessels until 1866 when he came ashore to establish and supervise the ship repair yard. In 1880 Alexander Brown became a major shareholder in the Anchor Steam Shipping Co, which purchased the shipping and foundry assets from the estate of John Symonds. Brown continued as the Anchor Foundry Manager and in 1901 was appointed a Director and Consulting Engineer to the Anchor Shipping & Foundry Company. He retired as Foundry Manager but retained an active interest until his death in 1913, aged 82.

The sons of Alexander Brown and then grandsons served their engineering apprentices at the Anchor Foundry before going to sea and qualifying chief engineers. The eldest son, Thomas, was Foundry Manager from 1901 until retirement in 1921 and remained a company director until his death on 26 May 1943. John (Jack) Brown was a seagoing engineer and Assistant Foundry Manager from 1912 until 1915 when he retired for health reasons. Alexander Irvine Brown was a seagoing engineer and Superintending Engineer from 1915 until 1944. He remained a Director until his death in 1962. Thomas Alexander (Alex) Brown, the eldest son of Alexander Brown, like his father and uncles was an engineering apprentice at the Foundry, and
was a seagoing engineer until his appointment as Assistant Superintending Engineer in 1938. He remained in this position until his death in 1963.⁴  In 1969 the Anchor Shipping and Foundry Company bought the firm of T. Dorman Engineering.

Late in 1973 the Anchor Shipping and Foundry Co was wound up by its owner, the Union Steam Ship Company of New Zealand. This company, previously holding 88 percent of the Anchor Company shares, bought all the remaining
shares (held by the Brown families of the Anchor Company). A new company Anchor Dorman was constituted which took over the administration of the Union Company’s interest in Nelson. Then in 1984 Anchor Dorman was sold to Perry Dines Corporation of New Plymouth. Within two years this company was forced into liquidation. Their buildings were sold to the Nelson Harbour Board and the plant disposed of to buyers from many parts of New Zealand. Such was the financial state of the company that employees who had served Anchor-Dorman for over 30 years received no redundancy payments. Thus came to a very sad end a fine record of over 120 years of marine and heavy engineering services in Nelson and New Zealand”.⁵ The extensive buildings of the Anchor Foundry along Wakefield Quay were demolished in 2005 and luxury apartments subsequently built. All that remains now are the traditions and skills carried by tradesman into the new marine and heavy industry businesses of the city and the few artefacts which exist in the old buildings and structures of the city. The steps at 15 Richardson Street are one example of these artefacts.

Russell Dicksons's Anchor Foundry Memories

In 1959 I was accepted for a Fitting & Turning Apprenticeship with the Anchor Shipping & Foundry Co. at Port Nelson, a five year or 10,000 hour engagement.

General Printing Services Building [once one of the Anchor Shipping & Foundry buildings], built 1927.  A Cat II heritage building. It has been a distillery and stood vacant for many years. Now owned by Nelson City Council. Click image to enlarge

The apprenticeship was to be undertaken at the Anchor Foundry at Port Nelson, which was the base workshop for servicing of the Anchor Company’s six vessel fleet, together with general work for numerous companies in the district. The building was erected in 1907, and was a long narrow building with an exterior cladding of grey corrugated iron. It extended along the waterfront from the power house building to the then Pier Hotel, and was demolished in 2003. Numerous up-market apartments have now been built on the site. Memories of my time spent as an apprentice and the numerous colourful personalities, with whom I was involved, and the incidents that occurred formed a lasting impression on me:

 Jimmy McClaren

One of those personalities was Jimmy McClaren, who worked for the Company all of his life until his death in 1965, aged 79 years. Before attending school Jimmy would light the boiler at the Anchor Foundry to raise steam for the engine which drove the overhead drive shaft to power the large number of machines that were installed. When the 1907 building was opened, the overhead drive shaft extended the full length of the building, and was reputed to be the longest single overhead drive shaft in the southern hemisphere.

Jimmy was the Ship Repair & Survey Foreman, having responsibility for arranging any repairs that were required to the rigging, winches, deck and some of the engine room equipment on the company's vessels. His small workshop base was located opposite the Anchor Foundry on the old Albion Wharf, adjacent to where the company’s Providor store was.

On the foreshore, opposite where the Anchor Foundry was located, could be found the concrete skids (gridiron) where, in earlier years, the vessels requiring a propeller change, or repairs to the hull, would be slipped on the incoming tide and repairs affected when the tide dropped. Jimmy was known to frequently work in water up to his neck during all seasons making these repairs.

During the time that I was at the Anchor Foundry, Jimmy would arrive at work at 7.30am from his Russell Street residence in a taxi and return home at 5.00pm, this at 78 years of age. He would always be seen wearing his trademark distinctive black beret.

Wharves, Port Nelson. Nelson Provincial Museum, F N Jones Collection: 311098. Image shows the Anchor Foundry building.
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I can distinctly remember the wrinkled skin on his forearm and legs, the tattoo’s on his arms being unrecognisable due to age and fading. He usually had an apprentice assisting him when working on the vessels and, if he wanted a certain sized piece of metal for a job that he was on, the conversation would go like this: ‘ What size do you require Jimmy? ‘ his reply would be given in ‘matchbox sizes’ never in conventional measurements! – ‘ Make it around six  matchboxes long by two matchboxes wide’ would be the reply, it was usually pretty accurate!

Electric welding requires the use of a specialist welding helmet if your eyes are to be protected from ‘arc-eye,' which can cause temporary blindness and be very painful, but not in Jimmy’s case! He would just line up the welding rod, strike it, squint his eyes and carry on welding with no ill effects!!

Jimmy retired in 1965 due to ill health and was presented with a silver tea service from the company, something that he always wanted. The presentation was made at his home by two long time employee’s B.T. Redditt and R. Millard.  Jimmy died a short time after this presentation, bringing to an end a colourful chapter in the company’s history.

Apprentice Initiations 

All apprentices were subjected to an initiation ceremony called ‘Tubbing’ which involved them being dunked in a large cast iron trough filled with dirty water and covered in black plumbago from the moulding shop. The trough was around two feet high and approx one and a half yards in diameter and was to be found in the company’s rigging yard, which was located on the seaward side of the road opposite the Anchor Foundry. The site is where the Sea Rescue Headquarters are now located.

The apprentice would be grabbed and ‘coerced‘ to accompany the rest of the apprentices and marched to the yard after work on the selected day. He would then be dunked in the tub, clothes and all and grease and plumbago rubbed all over him. This was the initiation ceremony, following which all of the participants retired to the Pier Hotel to continue festivities.

These are just a few of my memories of a most enjoyable period of my younger days when employed by the Anchor Shipping & Foundry Co Ltd. We were given a very good grounding in trade skills, learnt about life in general and met some personalities who would make a lasting impression on a young mind.

March 2014

Fire, earthquake and a Nobel laureate

Nelson College was established in 1856 with high hopes that Nelson would become  the ‘Eton of the South’.

Nelson College. Principal's Residence on the left. Copy of a sketch of Nelson College by Alfred Domett in 1861. Nelson Historical Society Collection/Nelson Provincial Museum Collection

But it wasn’t all plain sailing. The early settlers were angry and frustrated that due to a lack of land sales and funds,  the New Zealand Company did not provide  the promised £15,000 for the construction of a college as promised.¹

“But all this has proved a dream. Nine years have slipped away nine years of momentous account to youthful minds deprived of that training and instruction upon which their after characters as men so much depend.^"2

Finally the British Government assumed responsibility for the Company’s affairs and £28,000 was allocated for the establishment of a college.³  The Rev John Charles Bagshaw was appointed to enrol pupils and organise a school,  and the first school opened  in a house in Manuka Street on Monday April 7, 1856.⁴

“Our head master, Mr. Bagshaw, has had a very arduous task to perform.  He has had a most heterogeneous mass of materials to operate upon lads varying in age from eight or nine to more than twice that age, and differing as widely in their attainments and previous training.”⁵

A Nelson College school photograph from 1887 in front of the first school, later destroyed by fire. Scholarship pupil, Ernest Rutherford is pictured in this photograph, ninth from the left in the third from the front row. Nelson College: Images of an Era.

Architect William Beatson was engaged to design a college building which reminded the school’s governors of ‘dear old England’.⁶ The successful tender for about £24,000 was won by Nelson building firm, Robertson Brothers.⁷

Ernest Rutherford - in the 1887 school photo

“Scattered around, his Excellency would behold a material (timber) which they were accustomed to despise, constituting it as frail and perishable, when compared with brick and stone, but in this country it was practically superior, the liability to earthquakes forbidding the use of materials which, although more durable, were yet so easily disjointed by shocks of those dire visitations, and in their downfall so dangerous to life, Beatson told Governor General Gore-Browneat the laying of the Foundation Stone on 7 December 1859.⁸

In October 1861, 49 pupils moved to the new building on the Waimea Road site  where the College is still located.  There were eight boarders- a necessity with the scattered population through Nelson and the Waimea.⁹  By 1900 there were 138 boys on the roll, 54 of whom were boarders.¹⁰

“The Nelson College, situate about a mile from the centre of the town, on the Waimea road, is decidedly the most extensive institution of the kind in the colony. The building is in the pure Elizabethan style of architecture….and well ventilated school rooms, Masters' and Matrons' apartments, Class Rooms, &c, occupy the ground floor. In the upper story are situated the pupils' bed rooms and those of the officials of the institution,” wrote a traveller in 1862.¹¹

Nelson College began life as a private school, but some scholarships were available: “…. where the attainment of a boy is of a superior character, as a further encouragement to learning, there is a chance of obtaining one of the four scholarships of £25 per annum that have been offered by the Trustees.”¹² Ernest Rutherfordentered as an Education Board scholar from Havelock In 1887.¹³   

Boys in the school gymnasium around 1900. Nelson College: Images of an Era.

In 1901, Richard Seddon’sLabour Government vowed to make secondary education more attainable to the general population. The Nelson College Council didn’t take kindly to the suggested changes but, by December 1902, the College accepted state funding and became a state school.¹³

A painter’s blow lamp started a fire which burnt down the wooden school in 1904. A lack of readily available water was always a problem in early New Zealand and the school burnt to the ground. Nelson Historical Society Collection/Nelson Provincial Museum Collection

On 7 December 1904, the 45th anniversary of the laying of the foundation stone of Beatson’s wooden building, a painter using a blow lamp started a fire which burnt down the school. Many remembered the architect’s comments 45 years earlier that the college had but one enemy to fear - fire.

The next day, school reopened in the School of Music and the Bishop’s School and classes were held in various halls around the town for the next two years.  New plans for a brick building were drawn up and the college reassembled in its new home at the beginning of Term 1 1907.¹³

School sports day 1920: parents watched from the front of the second college building. Nelson College: Images of an Era.

More than 300 Old Boys celebrated the college’s jubilee in December 1906 combined with the opening of the new building. The  Hon. Robert McNab(Minister of Lands) spoke of the success of the college. “Its pupils were to be found in literature, law, and medicine; in agricultural, commercial, and industrial undertakings, while some such as Professor Rutherford were distinguished in science.”¹⁴

The 1929 Murchison earthquake brought down the clock tower with the horrified school watching as a boy ran just ahead of a great tumbling block of the tower. When he jumped sideways off the steps onto the field, a great cheer went up from the crowd. Nelson College: Images of an Era.

The fine new building constructed from brick and stone was very similar in style to the original wooden building.  On 17 June 1929, Nelson experienced the severest earthquakein its history.  The boys raced outdoors as chimneys and windows crashed down.  The College’s clock stopped at 10.20am. When the rocking and shaking was at its height, the clock tower broke apart and the front of the tower collapsed blocking the main entrance through which boys had poured a few seconds before. No lives were lost, the wooden outbuildings remained intact but the grand building was destroyed.¹⁵

Nelson College had to face rebuilding for a third time.  Temporary classrooms were erected in the grounds.  An expanded layout including two new boarding houses: Barnicoat and Rutherford were planned.  The new school, costing £43,000  was built to withstand earthquake and fire. Opened on 12 October, 1942, this College building continues to provide good service to Nelson College to the present day.¹⁶

Nelson College’s purpose-built Scriptorium has papers, books, artworks  and memorabilia relating to the school’s long history and its pupils. You can visit the Scriptorium by contacting:

• David Robertson: Museum/ Scriptorium Manager/ Archivist: 027 775-7872
• Gina Fletcher: Nelson College Old Boys Association Liaison, 03 548-3099 ext825

 2015

Stoke was once a swampy area with numerous small streams. When Maori arrived in this area, it was a wetland with numerous streams draining water from the hills to the sea. Covered with flax and raupo it was a mahinga kai.  It was first known as “Brook Green” but renamed by William Songer, who arrived in Nelson in 1841 as Captain Wakefield’s personal attendant. As  Stoke’s first settler, he named the place in memory of his English birthplace.

Stoke walk map. Numbers refer to places mentioned in the article

Settlers cleared flax and raupo and fruit growing became the main occupation of settlers in Stoke by the mid 1890s.

Early settlers

Early families settling in Stoke in 1844 were mostly small-time farmers, who would have had a house cow, a couple of pigs and transport would have been a horse or horse and cart. They included Marsden (Thomas and James), whose stories are told elsewhere on the Prow, Duffey, Walkinshaw, Hammack and Cresswell, as well as these notable names:

William Songer's house. Image supplied by Havell Stephen-Smith

William Songer was the first settler. When Captain Wakefield was killed at the Wairau, he was given the land, around the area where Strawbridge Square now lies,  by Reverend C. Torlesse, whose son he mentored in New Zealand, and whose daughter was married to Captain Wakefield. Both the Torlesse family and Songer came from Stoke-by-Nayland in England. The families are also remembered in the names Songer Street and Torlesse Street in Stoke.

William Songer 1882-4. Image supplied by Havell Stephen-Smith

Songer built a mud cottage here in 1843 and grew wheat, oats, barley, turnips and potatoes and ran cattle and pigs.  He was very community minded, being a member of the Jury, the Education Committee, Agricultural Committee, and was involved with building St Barnabas Church and Stoke School. He was the first superintendant of the local Anglican Sunday school and very involved in a variety of roles at St Barnabas Church. Sadly he had no children, and when his first wife died he married Mrs Mary Hubbard in his 60s, and was 90 when he died in 1904. His neighbours were the Ward brothers and C. Thorpe.

Hugh Martin arrived in 1844 with his wife, six children and livestock including “a first rate entire draught horse and very superior ram”. A livestock breeder, he settled on his 50 acres in Stoke, building ‘The Hayes’ homestead. 1844 - 45 was a time of near starvation for many and Martin was well remembered for his generous help to those who struggled to feed their families.

Hops and other crops

One of the main crops grown in Stoke were hops - Nelson was the first, and practically the only, hop-growing area in New Zealand, and had the first brewery. Some of the first hop-growers in the Stoke area were Mr Harley (below the bank in Nayland Road), Sir Edward Stafford (the Orphanage Farm), Mr Saxton, Mr John Bradley (the old hop-kiln on Mr Manson's property is a relic of these days), Mr Alf Bradley, Mr E. Chisnall, Mr W. Roil (where the macrocarpa tree stands on the bypass road near the bottom of Saxons Road) and Mr Jellyman.

Other crops grown at that time were oats, wheat, barley and potatoes. The fruit-growing industry, which was to become the main occupation of settlers in Stoke, did not commence until about the middle 1890's, when Mr Miller and Mr Hale planted about five acres each along Nayland Road.¹

The settlement develops

The road
Work by the New Zealand Company’s road parties to construct Waimea Road from Nelson to Stoke and beyond began in 1842. Drainage channels, bridges and gravel were all required on the swampy ground. Arthur Wakefield ordered Mr Kenning and his road gang to dig what became known as ‘the company’s ditch’ to control water at Stoke. Unfortunately in heavy rain falls, water roared down this channel creating an ever widening gap. The Stoke Road Board were happy as the torrent brought down huge mounds of good usable gravel, which they seized upon, digging out hundreds of dray loads to take away.This annoyed Mr Thomas Marsden as they encroached on his land, digging right up to his gates.

By the 1850s crossing the ‘ditch’ became dangerous and Stoke residents demanded a bridge. A satisfactory bridge was finally built in 1858. A small piped stream can still be seen by the Fire Station.

Main Road Stoke in the 1950's. R. Marshall

Twentieth Century developments
Stoke changed from a sparsely populated area in the 1800s to a popular residential area coping with the post World War II baby boom demand for housing. In the 1950s some early housing developments occurred around Maitland, Arapiki Street and Andrew Street areas. Orchard land was slowly converted into housing. At that time Stoke was part of Waimea County, and provision of amenities such as sewerage was a strong reason to amalgamate with Nelson City in 1958.

In the 1920s Main Road Stoke was a narrow gravel road that had to be graded regularly. Few cars were seen. Horse-drawn vehicles were most common, and one woman regularly tied her horse to the big Macrocarpa in front of St Barnabas church while she went inside for a service.

There was no electricity, water supply or sewerage. Water was precious especially in hot weather. Many families had a 20 foot well and used a windmill to pump this water into a tank. They also collected rain water from the roof. Toilets were outside, with either a long-drop or a bucket, which had to be emptied regularly onto the farm. Stoke did not have a night cart collection. House lighting was by kerosene and gas lamps.

Groceries were delivered by Mr Rodley from Nelson in a horse-drawn vehicle. Mr Gledhill cycled from Nelson to Richmond collecting the orders for groceries. The order for the following week could be given when goods were delivered. Bird and Coleman sent their butcher's van from Richmond, and the bread came from at least three different sources. Milk came from the family cow or could be obtained from a neighbour.

In the 1920s young resident Geoffrey Gates recalls: “The village of Stoke consisted of the Turf Hotel, the Methodist church, the Anglican church and the blacksmith W. B. Heath opposite the Turf, who shod the horses and also had one petrol pump. Robinsons had a grocery store and Vincent Dee had a second small (grocery) store down Songer Street, near the railway station. The Turf burned down in about 1927, leaving only the chimneys, and had to be rebuilt. The Reverend Rogers was the minister of St Barnabas, which at that time was  small church with only a handful of parishioners.”

(Railway Publicity photo.) Apple Orchard at Stoke Valley, Nelson, New Zealand. NZETC

The railway
The railway line section that ran through Stoke from Nelson to Foxhill was constructed in 1873 and opened in January 1876.  The first sod for the railway was turned in Saxton’s paddock for the Nelson-Saxton section of the line. Stoke was an easy distance to the city of Nelson and it appears to have been well used. Stoke residents used the rail service into the city for business, purchase of supplies, and entertainments such as those offered at the Theatre Royal. Rail transported produce to Samuel Kirkpatrick’s successful canning factory established in 1881 in the city, and encouraged growers of fruit and vegetables in the region. College students were regular rail users until the last train ran in 1954. The girls and boys travelled in separate carriages and were allowed to use skipping ropes inside to keep warm!

It was always  intended to join the Stoke line to the main trunk line. Frustrating delays occurred, then competition from road transport led to suspension of rail services. Despite huge public protest the last train ran in 1955 and the line was dismantled.A walk/cycleway now runs along the old railway reserve (6)  encouraging easy self propelled access to and from Stoke.

Buildings

The early gracious residences built in Stoke in the 1800s that have endured and are open to the public include Thomas Marsden’s Isel House (2 and the Park 3) and Broadgreen Historic House (7 and 8 the Rose Garden). The latter was built by merchant businessman Edmund Buxton circa 1855. The early Methodist Church, built by Samuel Ironside, has been removed.

Stoke School
Matthew Campbell, who lived in Stoke, was instrumental in building many schools in the district. The first Stoke School was built in 1845, then moved to land provided by Mr Marsden around 1851. By day the building was used as a school and in the evenings and on Sunday was used for religious services. In 1858 the school moved to its present position, and St Barnabas Church was built in its place. The Nelson Education Act was passed in 1856, and made the Nelson Province the first in New Zealand to have public schools where no fees were charged. A central board was established to run them, and the schools were funded through taxation and public revenue.

Centenary of St Barnabas Church, Stoke. Nelson Photo News No 40 : March 7, 1964

St Barnabas Church (1) was opened on 22 August 1866 and consecrated in 1870. It was the first stone church built in the Nelson Diocese. The architect was William Beatson, who had taken services as a lay preacher in Stoke since moving there in 1852. A new bell was gifted to the church from Sir Rowley from Stoke-by-Nayland in England, and was inscribed “Come let us go up to the house of the Lord”. The stones came from nearby Marsden Valley stream and the half acre of land was given by Thomas Marsden. It had a new nave added in 1971, which blends well with the original architecture.

The Stoke Library (4) has had many homes, but is now firmly situated in Neale Avenue. Established in c.1858 it first operated out of the primary school. By the 1920s books were held in store cupboards in the Foresters Hall, which was on the present Memorial Hall site, and the service was run by volunteers. Stoke became part of Nelson in 1958 and the Nelson Literary and Scientific Institute, which established the Nelson Library in 1841, took on the operation of Stoke Library from the cloakroom of the Memorial Hall. In 1965, Nelson City Council took over the library system from the Institute, and purchased the former Stoke Methodist church to convert into a pleasant suburban branch. A new library was built in 1992 in Neale Avenue, and further developments are planned in the future.

Stoke Memorial Hall. Nelson City Council

Stoke Memorial Hall (5)
Foresters Hall was a lively spot, with old time dances and weekly ‘sixpenny hop’ dance classes held there. Silent movies were shown with a truck outside to provide the power. Stoke Memorial Hall replaced this hall in 1951. It was built using community volunteer labour as a living memorial to those soldiers who were killed at war, from government subsidies granted in 1945-6 to upgrade  community halls.

The Hall continued to provide a venue for community events for all ages. Baby shows were very popular, with the post war baby boom providing much talent. Regular old time dances were held there, and there was a dancing class every week for boys and girls. Bands also did the rounds of community halls bringing a variety of music each weekend until dance popularity waned by the end of the 1980s.

Otumarama (9) , was the site of Charles John Rayner’s homestead. He built there c.1892 when he retired to Stoke from Temuka. Even though the original house is no longer standing, remnants of his garden are still there. The site is now occupied by a rest home.

Mayor Doug Strawbridge (on right) congratulating Mr James Eyles, the first director of the Nelson Provincial Museum to be established at Isel Park, 1964. Nelson Photo News, Issue 63, May 1964, pg. 7. Nelson.

Important names

Bill Kane, 1968. Nelson Photo News, Issue 97, November 1968, pg. 5.

Douglas Strawbridge was Mayor of Nelson from 1962 to 1968. A Stoke resident, he worked prior to his appointment as an advocate for Stoke amalgamating with Nelson. Post-war housing developments had sprung up in Stoke to house an increasing population, and improving sewerage and other infrastructure were important reasons for Stoke, part of the Waimea County, to join Nelson in 1958. Strawbridge was educated at Nelson College in 1923 and was a successful building contractor.

William Kane was the headmaster of Nayland College, which was opened in 1966.   William (Bill) Kane was a well-respected leader who chose the school's motto, Loyalty and Honour, both qualities he sought to instil in students. Kane became a Nelson City Councillor in 1968 and served three consecutive terms in office, until 1977. He retired from Nayland College at the end of 1978 and moved with his wife, Florence, to Waikane, where he died in 1995. W. Kane Lane was named after him.

2014

Life was pleasant for the local school master of Tannadice in the quiet countryside around Forfarshire, Scotland in 1840. William Moore and his wife Isobel lived in a two storeyed white washed school house beside the river Esk. Next door was the school where William, the sole charge teacher, was known as Dominie to his pupils. William was also a published poet and his poem The Burning of Kildrummy Castle was taught in schools throughout Scotland at the time. His patron was Lady Mary Ogilvy of Tannadice House, thought to be a relative of William's wife.

Nature and Grace, poems by William Moore. This edition published Marlborough Express Newspaper Co.,1961

William and Isobel had a three year old daughter, Mary Ogilvy Moore and were expecting another baby when along with Mary's older son, Peter Fyffe, the family boarded the Fifeshire. This was to be the first settler ship to arrive in the new colony of Nelson, New Zealand. By the time they disembarked at Nelson on February 1st 1842, the Moores had a newborn son. His name was Walter and his life would be one of adventure, hardship and a violent ending.

The family began life in barracks on the hill where the Cathedral was later built, but soon moved to a cottage in Collingwood Street. A few weeks later a Requisition¹ from eighty immigrants in the town petitioned William to open Nelson's first public school, to be funded by subscription. It opened on September 12th, 1842 and was managed by a Committee of Captain Wakefield, Captain England, Captain Wilson, Dr. MacShane and Messrs. Tuckett, Anderson, Richardson, King, Spence, Barton, McDonald, Domett, Tytler, Jolie, Brown, Cockburn, James and Cautley, some of the key gentlemen of the New Zealand Company.² 

William began teaching the children of Nelson, described at the time as running wild in the bush for want of an education, in the one-room school built on Town Acre 208, at the Eel Pond, now Queen's Gardens. The success of this school came to an abrupt end the following year when several of the principal men of the New Zealand Company, who were also involved in the school,  met their deaths at the Wairau in conflict with Maori over the survey of land. Without these men of influence and financial security, William Moore's school was forced to close.

Portrait of Matthew Campbell, The Nelson Provincial Museum, Tyree Studio Collection, 69466/3

Mathew Campbell and others opened a new school on February 21st, 1844 under the Nelson School Society. William Moore continued teaching under this governing body whilst publishing his poetry in various newspapers, sometimes under his own name and sometimes under his pen name “Sawny”.

William and Isobel moved to Section 145, Waimea West. An early survey map shows the section owner as Ogilvie/Ogilvy suggesting it may have been purchased for the family by Lady Mary or another member of the family. It is known that she sent out bolts of fine Scottish cloth for the family during these early years of colonial hardship.

A culture of cooperation existed between the early families who had endured those early days of settlement in Nelson and the Moores, Cotterells and Kerrs remained closely connected in Waimea West. When the Nelson School Society opened a school there on January 1st, 1846, William was appointed the first teacher. The community celebrated the opening with a tea party prepared by Mrs Moore and Mrs Morris and attended by Captain Blundell.

By 1848 it was found necessary to open a school for the settlers of Riwaka and William was asked to take on the role of first teacher there. Leaving their property at Waimea West in the hands of Isobel's son Peter, now aged eighteen, William and Isobel moved to Riwaka, but sadly this was to be her last home. Isobel died two years later on September 9th, 1851. Peter Fyffe and his younger half brother, Walter Moore, continued as farm labourers in the Waimea district on their father's land and, in February 1859, a notice of the dissolution of the partnership between William Moore and Peter Fyffe was witnessed by William Bell and J. Palmer.³ This may have been because Peter had purchased a property of his own. In the same year, William and Isobel's daughter Mary Ogilvy Moore and her husband Edward Solly left Waimea West with their first two children and took up land in Takaka, where the show grounds are today. Here Edward and Mary Solly grew hops and had another ten children. Their thirteenth child born in 1882 died as a very young baby and was buried on the property.

Riwaka School. Nelson Provincial Museum, Tyree Studio Collection: 179229

Soon after his daughter moved to Golden Bay, William Moore, now a widower, was asked to open a school at Renwick in the Wairau Valley of Marlborough. The school opened in January 1861. Conflict over land once again saw relations between Maori and European deteriorate in the North Island and the settlers of Nelson Province became concerned that the conflict might come south. Several Volunteers Corps were formed and Peter Fyffe joined the No 8 Company, Waimea West. Nothing further is known of Peter except that he farmed in the Motupiko district and died in Nelson in November 1880.

In 1865 Walter Moore, William's half brother, and also a Volunteer, travelled north eventually joining the colonial troops stationed at Ōpōtiki following several Pai Mārire (Hauhau) ‘disturbances’ in the Bay of Plenty in 1865. Some time after these events, when things appeared more peaceful, the military settlers were placed upon land still disputed by Maori. A large majority sold their claims to speculators or to intending settlers, willing to brave the dangers of occupation, provided they could get cheap land. Among those who bought in this way were four settlers Messrs. Livingstone, Beggs, Wilkinson and Walter Moore. In May 1867, Wilkinson and Livingston had built a house on their property near the entrance to the Waioeka gorge. Walter Moore and Beggs, who owned the adjoining property, lived in the same house, on the principle of there being safety in numbers. On the 23rd May, 1867, they were confined to their house by heavy rain and engaged in a game of cribbage when they failed to notice the barking of their dog. The barking continued and Walter Moore got up and looked out of the window. Wilkinson suggested that they were friendly Whakatoheas hunting for their horses but when Walter took a second look, about forty Maori were beginning to silently surround the house. The Maori were in fact Hauhau and well armed. Walter and his friends had rifles but only one of the rifles was loaded. They ran out the back door to hear the kokiritia (charge) sounded. They made for the steep fern-ridge, trying to gain the shelter of the bush, but had just reached the edge of the forest when the Hauhau caught up with them.

The prophet Te Ua Haumēne, about 1866. From James Cowan: The New Zealand Wars

Walter Moore, who had the loaded rifle and was running last, turned to level his rifle at the nearest Hauhau. Unfortunately the solitary charge, on which so much depended, failed to explode and Walter was cut down by the pursuing Maori. This gave his comrades the opportunity to reach the shelter of the bush. From their accounts it seems Walter reversed his rifle, and presented the butt to his foes as a token of submission but was immediately shot. Wilkinson and Livingstone escaped down a steep gully but Beggs was overtaken and tomahawked. The bodies of Moore and Beggs were not discovered until some time after and it was evident they had been treated with fearful barbarity.⁴ 

Upper Wairau Cemetery

It is doubtful his sister, Mary Solly in Golden Bay, heard of his death for some time but she named one of her sons Walter Solly in memory of her brother. Walter Moore's father William, in Marlborough, expressed his grief in poems written on the death of his only son. He did find happiness once again when he married widow Sarah Burrell and, as his teaching career came to a close, he was invited by the Newman family of Cowslip Valley, South of Renwick, to be private tutor to their large family. A comfortable cottage was built for William and Sarah on the farm near the Newman's large home and upon his death, William was buried in the Newman plot at Upper Wairau as a much loved member of the family.

With travel difficult and with many children to look after in Golden Bay, it may be that Mary Solly never saw her father in his latter years, but she carried his legacy in her love of books. Indeed before his death at the hands of the Hauhau, her late brother Walter had been studying mathematics. Their father's role as one of Nelson and Marlborough's earliest educators has been largely overlooked in histories of the area although Judge Lowther Broad recorded the important part William played in establishing Nelson first schools when he wrote the Jubilee history of Nelson.

Contributed by Jane Sparrow McDonald, granddaughter of Walter Solly, great granddaughter of Mary Ogilvy Solly nee Moore and great great granddaughter of William and Isobel Moore.

Maori heritage

The earliest human footprints across the Mahitahi floodplain, upon which Nelson City now sits, belong to the tangata whenua  and manawhenua tribes of Whakatu. What is now Alton Street was an area that directly crossed the path of those travelling to and from the upper Mahitahi (Maitai River valley), in search of food and argillite to manufacture into tools, or on journeys to other districts in Te Tau Ihu. Oral traditions speak of nearby Pikimai (Church Hill) as a sentinel pa. Waimarama is the Maori name for The Brook Stream that runs across the southern boundary of Alton Street.

English heritage

Miller house, Alton Street. The Nelson Provincial Museum, Tyree Studio Collection: 46297
Click image to enlarge

Eight ‘Town Acre' sections were surveyed along Alton Street in 1841 by the New Zealand Company, each section having a boundary on Hardy, Nile or Manuka Streets to which their official address was assigned. Named by Nelson's ‘street naming committee' in 1842, Alton was chosen in honour of the many residents aboard the immigrant ships Willwatch and Whitby who came from Alton, near Hampshire, England. The name also recognised the "well-behaved, steady man"Thomas Cresswell, a Company labourer from Alton, who died in Nelson in 1841.

The water race

A short time after being named an elevated water race was installed along the length of the street, taking water from the Brook Stream at Manuka Street to the Nelson Flour Milling Company's mill situated across Hardy Street at the southwestern edge of Reserve H (the Eel Ponds; now the Queens Gardens). It remained over Alton Street for seventeen years. When the water race was placed underground, one local resident was inspired to express his viewpoint - artist J.C. Richmond had found the sound of the leaking pipe "a soft soothing sound as good as a fountain in a garden of terraces and statues, and the aqueduct has a primitive old world look which makes me regret to hear that the progress of improvement and of the Dun Mountain Railway is soon to remove it".¹

Dun Mountain railway

For ten years (1862-1872) Alton Street had the Dun Mountain Railway line running along the middle of it. The previous, soothing sound of leaking water from the overhead race was replaced by the sound of horse drawn wagons on iron rail. Wagons of chrome rumbled from near the Dun Mountain to Port Nelson. The Dun Mountain Company had a yard fronting Alton and Manuka Streets where trees felled from beside the railway were milled for firewood and timber. The land now forms part of the back field of Nelson Central School.

Town Acre 506 - Nelson Central School

Nelson Central School.
Click image to enlarge

This corner section was owned by Frederick Schumacher, recorded in 1851 on a jurors list as a cabinet maker. It is said the land was used to bury horses. Schumacher, who lived in a small cob cottage on his land, cleared his section to grow wheat and later established a cherry orchard and planted many loquat trees. His granddaughter Mrs Fairey sold the land to the Department of Education in 1893. The first school building on the site was razed to the ground by a local arsonist. The current building is the third school and was opened in 1930 by Member of Parliament and Minister of Education Harry Atmore who spent his childhood at No.7 Alton Street.

In June 1895 the headmaster of Nelson Central School, F.G. (or "Sos") Gibbs, planted the lime trees that continue to flourish along the Nile and Alton Street boundaries. The history of the large redwood tree next to the school gate is unknown but its age, calculated in 1994 at about 100 years, suggests that it could have been planted by F.G. at the same time. His pupils planted many other trees around the city and along the banks of the Maitai River.

The entrance to Renwick House, on the grounds of the School, is in Alton Street. This was once Newstead House and the home of Thomas Renwick and David Munro. 

Town Acre 509 - Gibbs Family Home

In 1877 Henry Hounsell sold 94 Nile Street for £1500 to Mary Gibbs who was attracted to the ‘large' residence in which to house her nine children. She also liked the position of Bishops School ‘just down the road'. Mary became a well-identified figure throughout her long life in Nelson, always seen in a black, ankle-length taffeta dress and a black lace cap. One of her boys, Frederick Giles, graduated from Canterbury University and became the first headmaster of Nelson Central School (for boys) where he served from 1894 to1923.

Town Acre 424 - Griffins Factory

Griffins Factory 1904, Nelson Provincial Museum, FN Jones Collection 9944. Click image to enlarge

Griffin & Sons. The Nelson Provincial Museum, Tyree Studio Collection: 30912. Click image to enlarge

In the mid 1860s John Griffin established a flour mill in Nelson. He later added the manufacturing of biscuits and confectionery when operating from the Alton/Nile Streets corner. His sons continued the business until a public company was formed after a disastrous fire that destroyed the buildings on 7th February 1895. Eight years later, Griffin's was once again razed to the ground. This time the rebuilding was in brick and the factory remained a corner landmark for decades. The residents of Alton Street were treated to a variety of aromas issuing from the factory - apparently the best were after chocolate making machinery was installed, first in 1897 and then again after the fire.

During the early 1900s, buying a 3d bag of broken biscuits was a lunch treat for many Central School pupils, "the fun was to look through it to see if there were any chocolate ones."

After 1938, when most of the biscuit making operations moved to Lower Hutt, the mainstay of the Nelson factory was confectionery. Central School once again had a special relationship with the factory over the road - teachers in the know would request treats for school camps and were rewarded with tins full to the brim with chocolate coated confectionery. Thank you letters brushed up the writing skills of the young diplomats. Another relationship centred around the 3pm factory Smoko. So many workers rushed away in their cars at the sound of the whistle to do 10 minute errands, that the school principal programmed classes to start earlier in the morning so that they could finish at 2.55pm. This gave his pedestrian pupils a 5 minute headstart! These school hours remained long after the factory had closed.

Griffin's Alton Street factory eventually required a $6 million dollar upgrade under new earthquake standards and was closed in 1988 with the loss of 137 jobs. It was demolished to make way for Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology expansion.

Tradesmen and Politicians

No. 1 Alton Street was occupied in 1899 by bootmaker George Batchelor; joiner David Jack occupied No. 3, while Mrs Aker ran a boarding house at No.9. Edward Atmore, Hardy Street greengrocer, resided at No.7 and used the front of the property as a market garden. Atmore's son Harry, who lived there until he married and settled atop Atmore Terrace, became Nelson's Member of Parliament as an independent. In 1929 Joseph Ward led a reorganised and newly-named United Party to a landslide victory and appointed Harry Atmore as Minister of Education with retention of his independent status. Although he lost his cabinet position during the Depression he remained MP for Nelson until his death in 1947. Dorothy Annie Way, off Atmore Terrace, was named after Harry's wife.

The arts

In the 1960s many craftspeople were drawn to Nelson, encouraged by pottery pioneers such as Mirek Smisek and Harry and May Davies who helped establish Nelson as an art and craft destination. In 1968 Danish born and Auckland raised Jens Hansen arrived in Nelson with his Danish wife Gurli to restore an old wooden villa in Alton Street as a home and silversmithing studio. Jens had returned to Copenhagen as a young man to study his craft, returning to Auckland with Gurli to establish a successful jewellery business. With success came the realisation that they could live anywhere in New Zealand. They were attracted to Nelson's old buildings and pace of life. For 12 years No.8 Alton Street was a centre of creativity.

The home studio was a model of inspiration for aspiring craftspeople, a focus of social gatherings and a tree-filled space to raise the couple's two boys, Halfdan and Thorkild. Expansion of Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology in the 1980s precipitated the selling of the home. The Jens Hansen business continues to operate in Nelson and is renowned for The One Ring that Jens created for the film trilogy Lord of the Rings.

Atkinson Observatory

Opposite No. 31 Alton Street a small building housed a telescope that once belonged to Harry Atkinson of Fairfield House. F.G. Gibbs secured it for the Nelson Institute, intending to place it in the school grounds. The site granted by the Education Board was too close to trees so it was erected in Alton Street. Trees and buildings eventually forced its relocation but from 1903 for about twenty years "people came on clear nights to view the stars and learn something of astronomy".

Alton Street Today

Alton Street is numbered north to south. The street has always been on two levels, at one time with a more rural ambiance than today - long grass growing down the middle was suitable for children to graze their pet lambs. The north western block of the street remained predominantly residential until the 1980s when Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology started acquiring property for expansion. One of the first houses to go was the two-storey home on Hardy Street, on original ‘Town Acre' 427. Once sold, others were acquired quickly as residents could see that the city block of old wooden family homes with large, tree-filled gardens was entering a new era of development.

Other Town Acre properties in and around Alton Street

Town Acre plan of Nelson. Nelson Provincial Museum Bett Collection M66

Town Acre 202 -  In 1845 a flour mill operated here, taking water from the Brook Stream. The mill was later owned by Matthew Campbell.

Town Acre 427 - Miller, storekeeper and educationalist Matthew Campbell lived here in a small cottage in 1845. He managed Tasman Street School 1842 as well as the Matthew Campbell School in Bridge Street which became incorporated into the Suter Art Gallery.

Town Acre 506 -   was said to be used as a horse burial site. It was covered in the poisonous native plant tutu.

Town Acre 505 - In 1851 this land with a home was purchased from W.F. Maiben by Nelson College for Rev Bagshaw, their first principal; later owners of the property included Nathaniel Edwards, Sir David Monro and later Dr Renwick. ‘Renwick House’ stands today as classrooms within Nelson Central School.

Town Acre 425 -  Constantine Dillon owned this property in 1851; it remained unoccupied for several decades.

Town Acre 509 -  A four-roomed cottage originally owned by Matthew Campbell was transformed in 1865 with a northern extension fronting Nile Street by new owner Henry Hounsell.

The text for this story comes from the Alton Street Heritage panel, created for the Alton Street Historic Precinct to celebrate the diverse history of the street, its buildings and its people. It was unveiled on World Heritage Day April 18th 2010 when international links were made with the town of Alton, Hampshire, England.

Matthew Campbell is typical of many of the early Nelson immigrants. He flourished in the egalitarian colonial society he settled in, and was instrumental in laying the foundation of a national education system.

Matthew Campbell’s Schools

Matthew Campbell, a 27-year old foundry worker, left England on the Thomas Harrison  in March 1842 bound for Nelson. Despite having no formal education, he ran lessons on board for both children and adult passengers.

As Campbell sailed for Nelson, the first school in the infant colony, in a “rush-woven cottage on the banks of the Maitai”, was opened in March 1842 by a group calling themselves the United Christians. This small Sunday school moved to the group’s new Ebenezer Chapel in Tasman Street, near the eel pond ¹ (now the site of the Queen’s Gardens²). At the end of October 1842 it expanded into a day school and Matthew Campbell, who had just arrived in Nelson, took on the management of the enterprise.

Portrait of Matthew Campbell, The Nelson Provincial Museum, Tyree Studio Collection, 69466/3
Click image to enlarge

During 1843 Campbell worked with the United Christians and others in a group which was constituted as the Nelson School Society. The Society achieved a government grant of land for a school near the eel pond in Bridge Street, which opened on April 7, 1844.³ (The Suter Art Gallery incorporated the brick Matthew Campbell School building when it was built in 1899.⁴)

The Nelson School Society also set up schools in Wakefield, Spring Grove, Waimea East and West, Richmond, Riwaka, Hope, Appleby, Motupipi and Clifton Terrace,⁵ establishing an education system that grew with the developing colony.⁶

The schools adopted the principles of the British and Foreign Schools Society, having absorbed an earlier school which had followed this educational philosophy and had closed at the end of 1843. They provided an elementary education which was non-sectarian for a fee of two pence a week. ⁷

Matthew Campbell was so identified with education in the province that the Society’s schools became popularly known as “Campbell’s schools”. He was not only the superintendent of the Nelson school, but also acted as treasurer for the Society’s committee for many years. He often paid for the upkeep of the Nelson school himself, as the organisation struggled in its early years, and remained involved with the Society and local education until his death in 1883.⁸

Campbell’s schools were so successful that most of the denominational church schools set up received little support. They were eventually taken over by the Society and run as non-sectarian public schools.⁹ The two exceptions were the Anglican Bishop’s School in Nile Street, which ran from 1842 to 1895, and the Roman Catholic school, which opened in 1848¹⁰ and continues today as St Joseph’s School in Manuka Street.

Matthew Campbell Sunday School 1896, The Nelson Provincial Museum, Tyree Studio Collection, 180186/3
Click image to enlarge

In 1856 the Nelson Provincial Government passed an Education Act that provided the province with a stable education system, administered by a central board of education. It proved so successful that it was virtually copied when the New Zealand Government decided education was a national responsibility. The Education Act, passed in 1877, established 12 education board districts¹¹ and the Nelson School Society became redundant, apart from its Sunday schools.

In addition to his role in education, Matthew Campbell ran a flourmill in Hardy Street. The mill was powered by water taken from the Brook Stream via a race which ran down Alton Street. ¹²

Campbell also worked to improve conditions and opportunities for the working class and, as a temperate man, supported Ben Crisp and his Band of Hope which aimed to influence people’s drinking habits. ¹³

2008 

The Williams family

The Williams family, who have lived and worked in the Nelson region since 1890 and successive generations have had a long association with the sea.

With the arrival: on Sunday of the Arahura from Wellington the entire Anchor Shipping Company's fleet was berthed at Port, Nelson over the weekend, this being the first time such a thing has happened for many years. The 'ships are the Arahura, Matangi, Rata, Titoki, Nikau, Kaitoa, Taupata, Waimea, and',- (Evening Post, 29 December 1937). Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. http://natlib.govt.nz/records/3717911
Click image to enlarge

Robbie Williams writes: ” My maternal grandfather was dock-master in Dublin before migrating to New Zealand in 1912. My paternal grandfather was a master-mariner and small ship owner in Port Nelson. He owned  Felicity and Comet, and lived close by the port in Victoria Road. My father was master-mariner master of his father’s ketches and later became a ship master for the Anchor Shipping Company in charge of MV Taupata and SS Totara during the 1930's and 1940's.  My brother, Colin Albert Williams (Bill)  went to sea in 1939. aged 16, in the scow Kohi .  Bill went on to become a ships' master of MV Kauri and Denny Rose (1950-1970),  for the Union Steam Ship Company.

I could not gain my master's certificate, as my eyesight was not up to scratch. I went to sea aged 16 in January 1951.  I sailed in various scows, steam and motor ships until coming ashore to become agent for Karamea Shipping Co and later harbour master at Motueka.

The completed building of the Pearl Kasper Shipping Co in Haven Road. Nelson PhotoNews, 1965, no. 62
Click image to enlarge

When I was 18 years old I worked on M.V Willomee with Bruce Toms, the other ordinary seaman, while the vessel was under survey at Port Nelson.  The ship was being altered in many ways under the supervision of “Chippy Cameron”. All the cargo working gear was put ashore into the building (still standing) on the town side of the Customhouse Hotel. It had a dirt floor and contained sundry gear from other ships of The Pearl Kasper Shipping Co. Bruce and I were general dogsbodies to the survey overhauling gear and taking metal gear to the Anchor Foundry on the little four wheeler hand cart for inspection. Nalder & Biddle (a maritime engineering company) was attending to the engineering side of things. Curnow & Wilton, established in 1935 but no longer in existence, was in charge of the alteration.  The survey was complete in July 1952 and we signed back on the ship under the command of Capt Barrett (Master) and Horace Hannah (Mate).

Lil Burt had the port shop where we bought our cigarettes and lollies.  There were plenty of pubs and, although we were under the age to drink on licensed premises, we drank at all of them, much to “Blossom's” (the port cop) disgust . Constable “Blossom” Lake got his name because of his ruddy complexion. The long suffering Constable Lake served at Port Nelson 1933-1954 and rode everywhere on a bicycle.  Dealing with intoxication was his main duty and he once got thrown in the sea by some wharfies

Robbie is a poet and created this poem to capture the spirit of the port as he remembers it:

“PORT NELSON 1953”

I’ll paint you a word picture of Port Nelson way back then;
I hope you’ll see the picture as the words flow from my pen

 The Port was such a busy place. The ships they came and went,
With cargoes coming into port while on others the cargo was sent

 Such a lot of people were employed there at the Port,
The wharfies and the seamen skilled in the trades that they’d been taught

 The cargo not in containers but was handled bit by bit,
With winches slings, trays and snotters. They were bloody good at it.

 The ships that served Port Nelson: some of steel and some of wood,
And the crews that manned these little ships, they kept them looking good

 “Pearl Kasper” and the “Talisman” are two that come to mind,
And the Nikau and Titoki flew the flag of the anchor line

 Now let’s take a look around the port and what went on ashore
There was always something happening people moving and lots more

 The three pubs and tobacconist they served the local trade
And all the pubs were quick to know if Blossom the cop was making a raid

 Ron Ripley had The Customhouse, Joe Ianson at the pier
And Jim Sim at the Tasman Harley’s, the local brand of beer

 The steam train still came to the port with wagons full of freight,
The locomotive could not go on the wharf, if stopped outside the gate

We’ll head towards Tahuna,
Past the Foundry with its noise
And just across the road from this The Yacht Club for the boys

 We’ll turn around and head to town,
Past the cop shop and Anchor Co
And Russell Street or Anchorville to the gasworks smell we know

But back to the port we must go for that’s what this poem is about,
You could wander round just anywhere but now they lock you out

 But there’s nothing much to see in there,
Unless containers turn you on
And bloody ugly container ships,
The romance of the place gone

 All in the name of progress the port changed since fifty three
But the tide will still go in and out they can’t rearrange the sea!

Note:  a snotter is a piece of rope with an eye spilce in either end mainly used for lifting wool bales

As a young lad, fishing off the wharves was a pastime enjoyed. The two Nelson ferries were coal burners, you would see the coal hulk tied up on the seaward side bunkering them using coal baskets.

In those days Nelson had about ten shipping companies, some would have but one ship, many of them Scows.

Port of Nelson docks and industrial area with the Maitai River Estuary, Nelson City and suburbs beyond, Nelson Region, 1956. Whites Aviation Ltd :Photographs. Ref: WA-41163-F. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. http://natlib.govt.nz/records/30119099
Click image to enlarge

The “Home Boats” (British Ships) would load meat and fruit all brought to the wharf by steam train for the cargo to be loaded directly into the ships.

All petrol and diesel was brought in by overseas vessels, as New Zealand only had the one coastal tanker, the Tanea.

The largest local Shipping Company was the Anchor Shipping Company. They owned seven ships, five of which were coal burners. The two coal burning ferries, Arahura and Matangi were withdrawn from service and replaced by the S.S Ngaio in 1950.

The Union Company coaster Waipahi and Karu were frequent callers to the port. The schooner Piri brought explosives from Australia.

I went to sea in 1952, my first ship being the Motu, a small wooden coaster run by the Karamea Shipping Company. I did the last trip on the Ngaio in 1953 and still remember the band playing as the ship departed with the paying off pennant flying from the mast.

Nelson had a small slipway behind the Tank Farm, a busy place where Scows carried out their annual surveys and repairs. I was on the Echo one time on this slip.

You could earn a living at the Port “Seagulling”* on the wharves, and working on ships while on survey, with the Seamen servicing the rigging or by labouring as tankies, cleaning ballast and fuel tanks.

When the present slipway was built, the Anchor Company employed their own team of riggers, who were kept busy carrying out work on their own ships and others visiting the port.

Today you can not get near the wharves because of security barriers, long gone are the days when, on a Sunday afternoon, families would walk around the port looking at the ships.

*Note from Tom Rowling: Seagulling was the term used on the wharf for casual labour. When the harbours were busy there was always a shortage of men to work the ships so casuals would be taken on, it was referred to Seagulling on the wharf. I had a friend who owned a shop in Tahuna, he put a manager in and spent his time Seagulling on the wharf, it was far better for his health than working in a dingy shop.

2014

The Great Days of the Union Steam Ship Company  

Consider a modern innovation such as the internet and how it has changed our day-to-day lives. Even though the Victorian era has been dubbed the Age of Invention, because of its life-changing innovations, the steam engine stands out.  

Railway Wharf at Nelson, between 1878-1894. Tyree Studio, Alexander Turnbull Library,10x8-0176-G [Union Steam Ship Company co. premises are  bottom of picture] http://mp.natlib.govt.nz/detail/?id=15120 Click image to enlarge

In the last decades of the 19th century steam ships had taken the dread out of 'the doldrums' forever. At the far end of the empire, but with close links to mother England, steam shipping was vital to New Zealand. When the young country had few roads and unreliable land transport it was also important for coastal shipping - and it was our link with bigger markets in Australia.

It was in this environment that the Union Steam Ship Company was formed, in 1875 in Dunedin. The nucleus of the fleet, in the early days, was five small vessels: the Beautiful Star, Bruce, Maori, Hawea and Taupo were the first of 42 vessels built by W. Denny and brothers of Dumbarton, Scotland for the Union Company.   By 1875 the Union Steam Ship Company had 32 vessels, and by 1913 the fleet had grown to 75. From the late 1870s the Union Company had branched out from the coastal trade to establish passenger services to Calcutta, Vancouver, San Francisco and Australia. Control of the Union NZ was acquired by P&O Line in 1917, but the Company retained its own identity.

Until the 1920s, the Union Company provided Nelson's main passenger and cargo service, including the ferry service to Wellington. In fact the Union Company's Rotoiti was the first vessel through the Cut when it was opened in 1906. For this occasion the popular ferry was decked with ribbons, packed with 800 passengers and accompanied by horns and sirens as she sailed through.

The Union Company's main vessels out of Nelson in the early 1900's were the Mapourika, Pateena and the Arahura, running a service to the West Coat and Picton. Union pulled out of the Nelson passenger service in January 1922 leaving this to the Anchor Company . However, Union continued to offer the main inter-island ferry service from Lyttelton to Wellington, with a succession of vessels -  named Maori, Wahine and Rangitira.  

The Old And The New Ships As Of The Union Steam Ship Company.[Some well-known ships, Old and New, of the Union Steam Ship Company's Fleet. From top (left): The "Hawea, " the "Beautiful Star," the "Maori," and the "Taupo," Right: The "Taroona,"the "Monowai," the "Rangatira," and the "Aorangi."]Retrieved from NZETC. Click image to enlarge

Launched in 1906, the first Maori was also the first purpose built inter-island passenger ferry, commissioned to connect the newly completed main truck railway service. She would wait for the Christchurch express train if it was delayed, but always made up time overnight to arrive in the capital at 7am. Car-owners used to watch nervously as their vehicles were slung on board, before the introduction of new roll- on roll-off Maori III in 1966.

Union also introduced the rail ferries Aramoana and Aranui on the Wellington-Picton run, taken over by NZ Railways in 1971.  

But back to the Union Steam Ship Co's role in Nelson shipping. ln the middle years of the 20th century the Union Co. operated a big fleet of smaller freighters between NZ and Australia. One of Port Nelson's Shipping Service Managers, John Westbrooke, served on two of these, the Karamu and Waikare: "At one stage the Union Co had 63 freighters," he recalls. "A high percentage would have been on the trans-Tasman run, mainly out of Tauranga. They still referred to the trade then as ‘Inter-Colonial!"

Union was out of the coastal shipping picture at Port Nelson, at this stage, but in March 1982, the Union Nelson replaced Anchor's aging freighter Titoki, offering a fully containerised coastal service with calls at New Plymouth, Lyttelton, Nelson and Onehunga. It brought in sugar for the Griffins' factory  and the Apple and Pear Board cannery, fruit trays, building materials and other general cargo. On the return trip north it took canned and frozen fish, cans of fruit and stone chips to be used in making roof tiles. This service continued until 1985, when it was abandoned due to falling cargo - a victim of the Cook Strait rail ferry service.

Meantime, on the trans-Tasman front, the Nelson Harbour Board built a linkspan at Brunt Quay in 1976 for the ships Union Lyttelton and Union Sydney. But by 1982 this was made obsolete when the service was taken over by the Union Endeavour, capable of carrying over 1000 containers and with six 25-tonne cranes to lift them on and off.  

The Union Rotoiti, introduced in 1988, was a return to roll on- roll off, but with its own ramp lowered onto the wharf. The Rotoiti, Rotorua and Rotoma have been familiar callers at Nelson over the last two decades, under the ANZDL flag since 1999. When the Rotorua departed on February 10th 2005 it ended a link with Port Nelson that can be traced back to 1875.

This article was first published in Port Nelson Limited Report March 2005, p.12