New Zealand and the Gallipoli Campaign

Sons of Empire, Tauranga Public Lecture Series 

Gallipoli Peninsula

New Zealand and the Gallipoli Campaign

Dr Cliff Simons
Wednesday 29 October, 6.30pm
Venue: Tauranga Bongard Centre, Lecture Theatre 104
Bookings essential Email nyree@waikato.ac.nz or phone 027 286 7454

Overview
The outbreak of war in 1914 offered a promise of adventure, and young New Zealand men clamoured to enlist. However, their first taste of battle in the Gallipoli campaign shattered that illusion, and our troops struggled to survive in that harsh peninsular, against a well organised Turkish defence. This presentation examines the Gallipoli Campaign from a New Zealand perspective, highlighting activities of some of our soldiers from Tauranga Moana.

About the Presenter
Works at the New Zealand Defence College, in the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, and teaches about New Zealand’s colonial wars. Cliff will travel to the 2015 Gallipoli Centennial Commemorations as a Military Historian.

Street Numbers

Houses which did not need numbering: "Barbreck"
Image © and courtesy of Tauranga City Libraries Ref. 02-558

We take it for granted now that even rural properties will have numbers, making them easier to find, but in the 19th and early 20th centuries addresses were much less precise. The big houses had names – ‘Fairlight’, ‘Barbreck’, ‘Taiparirua’ – which with or without the street name were sufficient to identify the place. But for the ordinary little houses, you just had to know where people lived. As towns grew, this made for difficulties.

Letterhead of Easy Find House Numbering Company
Image © and courtesy of Tauranga City Libraries

On 24 August 1931, the directors of the Easy Find House Numbering Co. of New Zealand wrote to the Town Clerk of the Tauranga Borough Council from their head office in Worcester Street, Christchurch. They asked the Council to grant the company sole rights to manage a house numbering project from start to finish: calling on householders, explaining the advantages of the system, soliciting orders, doing the work, and collecting the payments. The Council would get ten per cent of the moneys taken – ‘to be given to the unemployed fund, or to any other fund the Council deems fit’. The number of each house would be painted on the kerb in front of the gate, facing the centre of the road, using ‘a black uniform type on a white background (averaging 10” x 6”)’ so that they would be easily seen at night under the street lamps. The Town Clerk’s reply to Easy Find does not survive, but it’s doubtful if the system would have suited Tauranga in 1931, when houses were scattered, gates far from universal, and kerbs less than ideally smooth for having numbers painted on them. It’s doubtful also that the Council would have signed up to a deal that would have returned it only ten per cent.

Houses which did not need numbering: "Fairlight" and surroundings
Image © and courtesy of Tauranga City Libraries Ref. 10-123

Seven years later, street numbering was still an issue in the town. The Very Rev. T. H. Roseveare, newly arrived minister of the Presbyterian Church, wrote to the Mayor in 1938 about the inconvenience of not having the houses numbered. His letter is polite, but he refers the matter quite pointedly to the consciences of the Mayor and Councillors, ‘feeling sure that you will take what course appears to you to be right’.

By 1939 some progress had been made: a report states that 313 houses had been numbered – and paid for, at 1/6d each. 50 or 60 were to be called on again. But every system has its failures, and a stalwart four refused to have anything to do with the scheme.

The Last Battle: Perception and Representation of the Liberation of Le Quesnoy 4 November 1918

Stained Glass, St Andrew's, Cambridge, NZ

Sons of Empire, Tauranga Public Lecture Series

The Last Battle: Perception and Representation of the Liberation of Le Quesnoy 4 November 1918

Dr Nathalie Philippe
Wednesday 22 October, 6.30pm
Venue: Tauranga Bongard Centre, Lecture Theatre 104
Bookings essential Email nyree@waikato.ac.nz or phone 027 286 7454

Overview
This presentation looks at how New Zealand soldiers were able to liberate the French town of Le Quesnoy in Northern France and also how the First New Zealand Expeditionary Force’s last battle has been depicted using various media: photographs, drawings, paintings and stained glass.

About the Presenter
Dr Nathalie Philippe is a senior lecturer in French at the University of Waikato. Her research focuses on the plight of civilians during World War One and New Zealanders on the Western Front.

Brain Watkins House

Brain Watkins House, c.1906

The house has stood solid and square on a corner in Tauranga for 133 years. The square villas featured in many New Zealand towns from the 1880s were practical and utilitarian and the Brain Watkins House is no exception. Like The Elms, the Brain Watkins House attempts to fulfil the gap in Tauranga, the city which lacks a civic museum.

Built entirely of kauri by Joseph Denham Brain for his family, the house follows the typical pattern of a central corridor from front to back door with rooms opening on each side. Fire places in two living rooms, a coal or wood stove originally in the kitchen, and a fireplace in one bedroom provided heating in an otherwise house cold in winter. Weatherboard cladding and an iron roof with a central front door and windows on either side shows an affiliation to the neo-Georgian style.

Brain Watkins House, after 1957

This is a house derived from a pattern book rather than an individual design and the joinery, verandah fretwork, balusters, verandah poles and gate being factory made. A feature unique in Tauranga is the encaustic tiled front path and steps.

Brain Watkins House, 1969

The house remains furnished with the possessions of the Brain family who were the only people to live in the house, ending with the death in 1979 of Elva Phoebe Brain Watkins, the youngest daughter. It is a veritable treasure house of china, linen, crochet and embroidery and the nick nacks collected by a family during their hundred year occupancy.

Brain Watkins House, 2011

Elva Brain Watkins left the house to the Tauranga Historical Society after her death and they have protected and preserved the house since. Through the City Partners scheme the Tauranga City Council has entrusted the care of the garden and lawns to City Care who do this well.

Due to the limited numbers of members available to be House Guides the house is only open on Sunday afternoons from two to four p.m. but arrangements can be made for group or class visits on week days. Volunteers who could help as guides are very welcome.

All Quiet on the Western Front: the Mundane Realities of Trench Warfare 1914-1918

Sons of Empire, Tauranga Public Lecture Series

All Quiet on the Western Front: the Mundane Realities of Trench Warfare 1914-1918

Dr Damien Fenton
Wednesday 15 October, 6.30pm
Venue: Tauranga Bongard Centre, Lecture Theatre 104
Bookings essential Email nyree@waikato.ac.nz or phone 027 286 7454

Overview
One popular myth today about WWI is that life in the frontline trenches was an unmitigated nightmare of mud, blood and madness, which few survived. This is simply not true, and is based on a selective populist memory of a few key battles – the Somme in 1916 and Passchendaele in 1917 – which were the exception, not the norm, when it came to trench warfare realities on the Western Front. Damien Fenton will discuss these realities in this presentation.

About the Presenter
Dr Damien Fenton is Honorary Research Fellow, First World War Centenary History Series, College of Humanities & Social Science, Massey University. His latest publication is New Zealand and the First World War (Penguin NZ, 2013).

Miners in Khaki: New Zealand Engineers Tunnelling Company (NZETC)

NZ Tunnelling Company

Sons of Empire, Tauranga Public Lecture Series 


Miners in Khaki: New Zealand Engineers Tunnelling Company (NZETC)

Sue Baker Wilson
Wednesday 8 October, 6.30pm
Venue: Tauranga Bongard Centre, Lecture Theatre 104
Bookings essential Email nyree@waikato.ac.nz or phone 027 286 7454

Overview
During WWI miners and employees of Public Works Departments throughout New Zealand were recruited to form the New Zealand Engineers Tunnelling Company. Their skills were needed on the Western Front where the stalemate on the surface forced parts of the war underground. This talk provides insights into the lives of those who responded to the ‘Empire’s Call’ for miners to serve a hazardous underground war.

About the Presenter
Sue Baker Wilson is a member of Waihi Heritage Vision, and the key driver of the group’s
New Zealand Engineers Tunnelling Company project.

Visiting Price's Corner Studio on The Strand

Joseph and Kate Brain with their five daughters
Cabinet card portrait by Thos. E. Price of Tauranga, taken c.1898
Image courtesy of the Brain Watkins House Collection

When Joseph Brain took his wife Kate and five daughters into Thomas Price's newly commissioned and lavishly appointed studio on the corner of Harington Street and the Strand in the late 1890s, it was with the expectation equivalent to a special event.  Although only a fifteen minute walk from their house on Cameron Road, the streets were unpaved and they were dressed to the nines, so they would have taken care to avoid getting their clothes dusty en route.  The pre-printed card mount shows "Masterton" crossed out and "Tauranga" written below in black ink, indicating that he was still using the remnants of old card stock.

Victoria Wharf and The Strand, Tauranga, c.1902
Photograph by Henry Wright, Image courtesy of the Alexander Turnbull Library

Thomas Edward Price (1838-1928) arrived in Tauranga in early 1897, having sold his photographic firm in Masterton in December the previous year, and announced on 31 May in The Bay of Plenty Times that his new studio was now open for business.  It was conveniently located on the waterfront, immediately opposite the Tauranga Hotel at the head of the Victoria Wharf, on what would subsequently become known as Price's Corner.  The town's previous resident photographer, Charles Spencer, had left around 1893, and in the interim residents had been reduced to taking the steamer to Auckland to have their portraits taken.  Bartlett's Studio in Queen Street was a regular advertiser in the Times.

T.E. Price's Corner Studio, Harington St/The Strand, Tauranga, c.1905
Image © and courtesy of Tauranga City Libraries Ref. 04-257

Price was an experienced photographer, having been in the business for well over 20 years, operating in Otago and on the West Coast in the heady gold rush days of the mid- to late 1860s, in Timaru in the 1870s, and then in Masterton for seventeen years from 1879.  His showroom opened out onto The Strand, with a wide variety of framed and glazed portraits and landscape views visible through the window and open doorway in this view from c.1905, courtesy of the Tauranga Library Collection.  The studio itself was located behind the main building (to the left, in this image), clearly identifiable by the large, curtained windows and shuttered glass skylights which were designed to allow plenty of lighting control by the photographer.

Tauranga Hotel, Price's Corner Studio and Victoria Wharf, The Strand, Tauranga, c.1905
Image © and courtesy of the Tauranga Heritage Collection

Another copy of this print deposited with the Tauranga Heritage Collection by Price's daughter Elsie Hulse is annotated to show that she was born in the house attached to this studio in 1898.  Despite a flurry of initial work, business appears to have been sporadic, because he temporarily closed the studio several times between 1898 and 1901 while investigating opportunities in Te Aroha, Auckland and Waihi.  However, by the time Price's second daughter Leila was born in 1905, the family appear to have been firmly settled in Tauranga, and Thomas became a very respected member of the community, meriting a lengthy obituary full of praise for his good deeds for the community when he died in February 1928.

Reverse of cabinet card portrait by Thos. E. Price of Tauranga
Image courtesy of the Brain Watkins House Collection

The cabinet portrait, mounted on glossy maroon card with a plain back, has a label from The Medallion Art Company, portrait enlargers and fine art dealers of 67 & 69 Vivian St., Wellington pasted on the reverse, presumably some years later.  This has been filled in with black ink, and gives instructions from Miss B(essie) Brain of Cameron Rd/Elizabeth St, Tauranga ordering a "bust" portrait of "elderly lady and gent" (her parents) to be enlarged from this photograph and mounted in a passe partout frame, at a cost of £2/10/-.

Framed portrait enlargement of Joseph and Kate Brain
Image courtesy of the Brain Watkins House Collection

Also in the Brain Watkins House collection, gifted to the Society by the youngest Brain daughter, Elva, is this framed and glazed portrait enlargement of her parents.  It appears to be that same one originally ordered by Bessie from Wellington.