The Otūmoetai Beachfront Pathway- Three Later Walkers

 The Otūmoetai harbourside path with Te Puna’s Oikimoke Point in the distance

The Otūmoetai beachfront pathway was traversed for centuries by resident Māori iwi as well as iwi from outside the region with peaceful or warlike intentions. During the 1800s, a succession of European missionaries, traders, sailors, scientists and colonial officials also walked the pathway, after first crossing the Wairoa River from the Te Puna Peninsula to the west or the Waikareao Estuary from the Te Papa Peninsula to the east.

Reverend John Wilson

Rev. John Wilson, 1836

After ten years’ service in the Royal Navy, John Alexander Wilson was employed by the Anglican Church Missionary Society as a catechist. He was posted to their missions in New Zealand, arriving at the Bay of Islands with his wife and children in 1833.

By 1835 mission stations had been established beyond the Bay of Islands including Mangapouri (Hamlin and Stack), Matamata (Alfred Brown), Rotorua (Thomas Chapman) and at Te Papa, Tauranga, by John Wilson. However, as the intertribal fighting in the Tauranga region escalated, Wilson and the missionaries Alfred Brown and James Stack at Te Papa sent their families aboard the missionary brig Columbine for safety on 31^st March 1836. They remained at the Bay of Islands and did not return to Tauranga until the following year.[1]

In 1836, Wilson and the Rev. Thomas Chapman set out from the Bay of Islands in the hope of ending the intertribal war in the Bay of Plenty. The missionaries first visited the Ngati Haua iwi at Matamata, before crossing the Kaimai Range to meet with Tauranga iwi who were jointly planning an attack on the Te Arawa people at Maketu and Rotorua. Alone at Te Papa during July 1836, Wilson describes crossing the Waikareao Estuary by boat, before undertaking the (one hour) beachfront walk to and from Otūmoetai Pa.

9th. --Mr. Chapman left to-day for Rotorua. I walked some distance with him. On my return had a visit from one of the head chiefs of Tauranga, old Taharangi. He was very pleasant but sorry to see me left alone and grieved that everyone had left the station. Flooring my back room--found it hard work planing boards and getting them to fit, I being a very unskilful carpenter.

Sunday, 10th. --A few people came to morning service at the settlement [the Te Papa Mission Station]. Spoke from Matt xiii. 13 to 16. Felt deeply the fulfilment of the prophecy here quoted by our Lord as applicable to the present state of the Māori people. They appear alike uninfluenced by the love or the terror of God.

“At Otumoetai only sixty natives were present at service. Walked solitarily homewards, if a desolate house can be called home. And as I sauntered along the shore [the Otūmoetai harbour front walkway], the loneliness of the mission station, surrounded on two sides by water, without a habitation near, or native, save one [Taharangi, the elderly rangatira who protected the mission station], open and exposed to the enemy, gave rise to sad forebodings. But soon the thought flashed into my mind that it was for the Lord, and my gloom was gone.”[2]

Intertribal warfare in fact escalated during the remainder of 1836. Following the storming of Maketu and Te Tumu Pa and the slaughter of their inhabitants, and the plundering of the Rotorua mission station, Wilson and Chapman temporarily abandoned the region and retraced their steps over the Kaimai range.

Rev. Richard Taylor, 1839

Rev. Richard Taylor

Richard Taylor (1805–1873) was ordained as an Anglican priest in 1829. He was later appointed a missionary with the Church Missionary Society (CMS) and settled at the Bay of Islands in 1839. He took part in Treaty discussions at Waitangi in February 1840 and in later years he evangelised at Whanganui and Taupo with considerable success.^[3]

In 1839, Taylor had only been in New Zealand for a few days before he set out from the Bay of Islands with missionary William Williams on the cutter Aquila for the East Coast. They called at Tauranga during the voyage where they met the missionaries Alfred Brown, his wife Charlotte and John Morgan. Like the Rev William Colenso, Taylor was a keen student of natural history and the life and customs of Māori. He also kept a diary in which he detailed all that he saw and experienced. [4]

Monday 25 March – “I walked with Mr Morgan to the pa at Otutumoiti [Otūmoetai] which is a very populous one and much like the other distant about 3 miles [Maungatapu?]. I called upon a Mr Bidewell residing there [John Carne Bidwill, botanist and explorer]. He is supposed to be sent to spy the land by the New Zealand Association. He is a very gentlemanly and well-informed person. He returned with us to dinner and then accompanied us to see the mount [either Mount Drury or Maunganui]”. [5]

Taylor, Williams and their Māori crew remained for a week at the Te Papa Mission Station awaiting favourable winds, before they and the Aquila exited the harbour entrance to continue the voyage to the East Coast.

Joseph Cochrane, 1855

Joseph Cochrane

Like the traders James Farrow and John Lees Faulkner, the former Londonderry auctioneer Joseph Cochrane also located his store near the busy Otūmoetai pathway and foreshore. On passing Joseph Cochrane’s new store, from 1855, people travelling the beachfront would stop to converse with the trader - described by his peers as ‘a cheerful, intelligent kind and generous hearted man’. The store was a large building from which Cochrane supplied other traders along the Bay of Plenty coast. Located by his patron and protector Hori Ngatai on land, between the Faulkner's land at Okorore and Otūmoetai Pa, Cochrane regularly forded the Waikareao Estuary to stay and converse with his good friends Rev Karl Volkner and his wife Emma at the Te Papa Mission Station.⁶

On one occasion when Archdeacon Brown was away from the Te Papa Mission Station, Cochrane crossed the Waikareao Estuary and saw Rev Volkner and his Māori schoolboys engaged in clearing a patch of scrub near the cemetery. Wishing to assist, Cochrane set fire to the heaps of cut scrub, but when the wind suddenly changed and the fire threatened to spread, someone, hoping to preserve the wooden grave markers, pulled them up and threw them into the estuary. As the estuary entrance was rendered tapu by this act, Māori fisherman and traders were unable to enter or exit in their waka and sailing boats. To redress this offence and transgression of tikanga (customary law), a Māori taua muru (ritual plundering party), approached the mission station, but withdrew when Rev Volkner, a former Prussian Army soldier, confronted them with his rifle. [7]

Another Māori muru party later crossed the Waikareao Estuary to Cochrane’s premises seeking redress, but as he had considerable mana, being Hori Ngatai’s Pakeha, Cochrane’s store was not plundered. Nevertheless, utu (redress) was still required as without satisfaction the affected Māori traders and fishermen would be rendered huka kore or people of no consequence. To the satisfaction of the offended parties, utu was achieved when Cochrane’s wheat theshing machine was ritually struck and damaged with a tomahawk, an act considered tika - a perfectly correct response to the considerable inconvenience he had caused them. [8]

[Editorial note: Readers may be interested in part one of this article, The Otūmoetai Beachfront Pathway – Four Early Walkers, published here on Sunday 23 March 2025.]

References

[1] McClymont, W.G; The Exploration of New Zealand, Department of Internal Affairs, Wellington, 1940: 33.

[2]  Wilson, J.A; Mission Life and Work in New Zealand, 1833 to 1885, Star Office, Auckland, 1889: 41-42.

[3] Taylor, Richard – Dictionary of New Zealand Biography – Te Ara, https://teara.govt.nz › biographies › taylor-richard

[4] Taylor, Richard, unpublished journal, cited in Matheson, A. H; ‘Early Tauranga visitors’, Journal of the Tauranga Historical Society (Inc.), No. 51, August 1974: 21

[5]  Ibid, 26.

[6] Bay of Plenty Times, 23 October 1875: 2. Fletcher, Kathleen, Early Flax Traders Around Tauranga’, Journal of the Tauranga Historical Society, No. 59, September 1976: 26.

[7] Bay of Plenty Times, 16 September 1884: 2. Matheson, A. H. ‘Otumoetai Pa and the Early Days in Tauranga’, Journal of the Tauranga Historical Society (Inc.), August - September 1975, No. 54: 17-18.

[8] Ibid.

Images

Photographer, Sgroey,‘Otumoetai Beach’, 9 April 2022,https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ot%C5%ABmoetai_Beach.jpg

Wilson, John Alexander, Missionary Life and Work in New Zealand, 1833-1862, C. J. Wilson (ed.), Star Office, Auckland, 1899, title page.

Reverend Richard Taylor. Bates, Arthur Palmer, 1926-2002: Photographs of Reverend Richard Taylor and associations. Ref: 1/2-C-14302-F. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. /records/22607779

Hopkins, Wanda, ‘One of the Right Sort’ Kae Lewis (ed.), The New Zealand Goldrush Journal, Vol. 4, 2020. Kae Lewis, https://www.kaelewis.com › cochrane › hopkins

Joyce West, Tauranga writer

 From Tauranga City Library’s archives

A monthly blog about interesting items in our collection

In the reference section of Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries, there is a a dedicated collection in honour of esteemed Tauranga writer, Joyce Tarlton West (1908-1985). 

While working full-time as an accountant - writing only at night, over a four-decade career, Joyce West produced a series of detective novels (with Mary Scott), articles and poems for periodicals, and eight children's outdoor adventure books which garnered global popularity. 

Joyce started writing in her teens and had stories published in the New Zealand Herald and the Weekly News. She wrote her first novel, Sheep Kings, while living at the family farm in Oropi, in 1936. Her 1953 novel, Drover's Road, was rejected by 13 publishers before being accepted by  J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd, London.  It would go on to be used in New Zealand schools as an English curriculum literary text.

A black-ink illustration on p. 63 of  'Cape Lost' (1963), one of many that are Joyce West's own work.

Much of the inspiration for Joyce's childrens' stories came from her own childhood. She and her siblings did their secondary schooling by correspondence as her parents were both school teachers, who taught at remote schools in Northland, Taupō and the East Coast.  Her books have countryside settings,  depicting the rural places where she was raised.   Joyce told the Bay of Plenty Times, "I specialise in a type of nostalgia writing... I write childrens' books because I had such a pleasant childhood in an environment so differerent from ours today." (1974, p.9).

Joyce West, with her award-winning book, 'The Sea Islanders', and the contract from Walt Disney Productions, 1974. Te Ao Marama - Tauranga City Libraries photo gcc-26441

The Sea Islanders, published in 1970, was a particularly successful work. It featured in the BBC series Jackanory,  airing in five parts in September, 1971. Walt Disney Productions bought the rights to the book, though a screen adaption  was never made. 

A copy of 'The Sea Islanders' translated into Danish, in the Joyce West Collection at the library.

Following Joyce's death in 1985, the library sought to recognise her contribution to children’s literature through the establishment of the Joyce West Collection; a reference collection created to preserve and celebrate excellence in New Zealand children’s literature, and provide a resource for those interested in the field of New Zealand children’s writing in years to come. Initially beginning with a copy of each of Joyce's books, the collection grew through the annual addition of award-winning titles donated by the Bay of Plenty Children’s Literature Association (now Bookrapt), an organisation of which Joyce was a foundation member and patron. With help from the Friends of the the Library, the library continues to expand this collection by adding titles that include New Zealand Book Award winners and noteworthy authors from the Bay of Plenty region and beyond.

A signed copy of 'Drover's Road' with a 'Joyce West Memorial Collection' plate in the front of the book.

References

Bay of Plenty Times. (1974, October 26). Author gets TV showing.

Gilderdale, B. (1982). A sea change: 145 years of New Zealand junior fiction. Longman Paul.

Gilderdale, B. (1991). Introducing twenty-one New Zealand children's writers. Hodder & Staunton.

For more information about these and other items in our collection, visit Pae Korokī or email the Heritage & Research Team: research@tauranga.govt.nz

Written by Michelle Bradbury from the Heritage & Research Team, Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries.

Photo News Views Te Puna, 1963-1967

“BACK COVER. A quiet corner of Te Puna River.  Just around the point to the left of the picture, the estuary opens out to form a popular anchorage for small boats.”

IImage:  Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries, Logan Publishing, Tauranga and Bay of Plenty Photo News Collection Magazine Number 63

For the purposes of this exercise, it turned out to be fortunate that Te Puna is bounded by two rivers.  Seeking to promote the Western Bay of Plenty Community Archives [1], I asked for access to its collection of the Tauranga/Bay of Plenty Photo News, with the thought that browsing through its early issues would be a certain way to discover many images, long left hidden, of life in the 1960’s in the rohe west of the Wairoa bridge.  After all, I reasoned, the magazine’s editor, Tony Ahern, lived in Bethlehem – he was bound to find, and frequently, matters of interest in the next-door neighbourhood, and worthy of a picture or two?

 Tony Ahern 

Image: Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries, Logan Publishing, Tauranga and Bay of Plenty Photo News Collection Magazine Number 61

Not so.  Tony’s was a big beat to cover, extending out beyond the growing town (which became a city in a ceremony recorded in the Photo News of 25 May 1963, Issue 12)  to Opotiki in the east and, occasionally, Katikati and the lower Kaimai to the west and south.  He didn’t look past the riverside very often.  Over the first four years’ worth of issues held in the archive, I found that someone using the search term, <Wairoa> would be much more richly rewarded than if they sought for hits on <Te Puna>.

Tony himself wrote, in the 27 April 1963 issue of Photo News:

“Rivers nearly always make attractive pictures and this scene, where the Wairoa crosses the Waihi highway [i.e., upstream of the road bridge], has frequently been painted by local artists.”

Browsing through the physical copies, as opposed to searching on-line using a specific search term, rewards the researcher with a sense of proportion as well as humility (if that researcher is biassed, as I am).  This is a historiographical exercise – where was the gaze of Tony’s photo-journalism directed?  What served the popular imagination in ensuring the undoubted success and wide appreciation of the Photo News, franchised as it was throughout the North Island? [2]  What – my crucial inquiry – were the things that got Te Puna a feature image or two as the magazine found its way into the households of the Bay of Plenty?

As well as rivers: two things, it turns out.  Cute kids and mushrooms.

Tauranga Photo News #31, 12 December 1964, “Te Puna Convent Day”, p. 49

Image: Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries, Logan Publishing, Tauranga and Bay of Plenty Photo News Collection Magazine Number 31

I encourage readers to explore the online image, digitised on Pae Koroki [3]  - the captions, especially for the driftwood sculpture displayed by Selwyn Bidois, are well worth reading.

Over the first 62 issues of Photo News, this was one of only two features concerning non-riverine Te Puna, as well as one incidental (and interesting) image of a painting, not of river scenery but of workers in the Te Puna Mill, by a local Tauranga artist, Pauline Peacock-Mills. What has happened to this evocative picture? 

 Franklin's Mill, circa 1963, by Pauline Peacock-Mills
Image: Beth Bowden

Photo News spared little to no space to industry in Te Puna, framing it very much as a pastoral enclave with few indications of the corporate, monocultural land uses that were to become such a feature of the area (after the magazine’s demise, it must be said).  One example of innovative and high-tech factory farming, then as now much appreciated by locals, was the Olivers’ mushroom production unit originally sited on Clarke Road [4].

 Oliver family's mushroom farm, Te Puna 1967.  Bay of Plenty Photo News, June 24 1967.  
Image: Beth Bowden

We do know what happened to the Oliver’s mushroom farm.  It moved [5].  For while the geography of Te Puna remains bounded by its two rivers, and its economy is founded on its famously versatile soils, the skills and techniques of land and farm management Tony Ahern recorded in his scant coverage of Te Puna either died in place – as with the mill – or found other ways and means of showing themselves.  The area pictured below, now designated – and used - as an industrial zone in the WBoPDC’s District Plan, no longer merits Tony’s caption of September 1963 [6]  But so things go.

"Down to the Sea.  Wide and free, the beautiful Wairoa River flows beside Te Puna station road through quiet countryside of great charm."  Tauranga Photo News, Issue 16, 14 September 1963 

Image: Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries, Logan Publishing, Tauranga and Bay of Plenty Photo News Collection Magazine Number 16

[1] See its online collections at https://westernbay.recollect.co.nz/

[2] For a step-by-step account of how the Photo News for each particular region was produced, see Bay of Plenty Photo News No. 61, 24 June 1967, “Focus on Photo News”, pp 71-77 Bay of Plenty Photo News No. 61 | Pae Korokī

[3] https://paekoroki.tauranga.govt.nz/nodes/view/101357#idx380992

[4] Bay of Plenty Photo News No. 61 | Pae Korokī

[5] https://www.maramasmushrooms.nz/pages/about-us

[6] https://paekoroki.tauranga.govt.nz/nodes/view/101372     

Author: Beth Bowden

 A to Z of Tauranga Museum - A is for apron

Charlie Haua outside his blacksmith shop in Grey Street. Late 1960s.

Image: Tauranga Museum.

It feels fitting to begin our Tauranga Museum artifact alphabet with a blacksmith apron once worn by Charlie Haua. In 1969, Charlie’s tools and equipment were acquired by the Tauranga Historical Society, forming the foundation of the museum’s collection. Although the Rotorua Museum offered a higher price, Charlie accepted the Society’s offer of £500, as he wanted his blacksmith shop to remain part of our story. “I’ve been at it all my life ... this is a dying trade, and I could not sell out. There is a great deal of old stuff here – material that you would not find in many places.”

Charlie Haua’s apron.

Image: Tauranga Museum

Born in 1903, Charlie came from a well-known and respected Tauranga family. He was the grandson of Anaru Haua (son of Watene and Merepokowai), and the son of James Haua and Mary Hearling. Charlie attended Tauranga District High School until 1919 and was a gifted all-round sportsman. He competed in rowing, rugby, hockey, sailing, athletics, gymnastics, and was a key figure in the local sporting community. He was the first captain of the Cadet Old Boys Rugby Football Club and went on to represent the Bay of Plenty in 1929. Later, he was made a life member of the Tauranga Rugby Association, a reflection of his long-standing contribution to the sport in this region.

Tauranga Football Representatives, 1925. Charlie Haua is pictured at the far right of the front row in this team photograph, taken by local photographer Robert Rendell.

Image: Tauranga Museum

After finishing school, Charlie Haua became the town’s most well-known and longest-serving blacksmith, dedicating an impressive 49 years to the trade. Even in retirement, Charlie and his blacksmith shop remained at the heart of the community, becoming a star attraction at the museum in Durham Street and then at the Historic Village and District Museum, which opened on Seventeenth Avenue in 1975.

Charlie Haua making a horseshoe for the bride and groom. Early 1970s.

Image: Tauranga Museum.

Charlie generously volunteered countless hours, captivating visitors with his skill and bringing the museum to life. His handcrafted miniature horseshoes became popular souvenirs, with thousands sold to help fund the museum’s development. In recognition of his remarkable contribution to the community, Charlie was awarded the British Empire Medal in 1976. 

Nellie Haua (left) and Charlie Haua. The person on the right is currently unidentified.

Image: Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries Photo 03-047

Source:

‘A to Z of Tauranga Museum’ is a regular feature of the Friends of Tauranga Museum newsletter. To subscribe to this free newsletter and join the Friends group, visit:

https://tauranga.syd1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_3lapiU8ES1FUlMO

 Jack Costello and the Union Fish and Ice Company, Chapel Street Tauranga

Site for Costello Seafoods Ltd. Sulphur Point, Tauranga c 1968. Jack Costello holds first marker peg, while fisherman Don Shattock drives it in with an axe.
Description and image courtesy of Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries Photo 11-152

 In 1930 a retired Union Steamship Company captain, Roslyn King Clark, and his sister set up a fish curing business on the shore of the Waikareao Estuary. The Union Fish and Ice Company made hundred-weight blocks of ice in a concrete tower* and these were let down through a trapdoor to waiting trucks. 

Page 28 of the Bay of Plenty Yearbook 1955, Astra Publicity, courtesy of John Green.

 In 1938 fish retailer W.J. ( Bill ) Costello of Rotorua was the owner of a trawler operating out of Tauranga.  This was a former steam vessel, Marina, converted to a motor vessel three years previously. It was not a success due to high maintenance costs. His next boat, the Katoa, was holed off Town Point at Maketu on VJ Day, 15 August 1945 and was a total loss. 

Aerial view of Chapel St reclamation. The Union Fish and Ice Company is at the top left, its small jetty just visible at the harbour’s edge.
Image from Bay of Plenty Yearbook 1955, Astra Publicity, courtesy of John Green.

 Bill’s son Jack had served his time as a boilermaker in Rotorua but began his fishing career when he and his parents bought the Union Fish and Ice Company and their processing plant on the corner of Marsh and Chapel Streets for £3,500 in 1947. Prior to the 1959 construction of the Chapel Street road bridge, Costello’s trawlers operated from the wharf next to the plant, sailing under the Waikareao rail bridge to access the main harbour and open sea beyond.  

Trawler “Vanguard” discharging catch onto Costello’s Bedford truck at Fisherman’s Wharf, 1950s
Image courtesy of Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries Photo 11-164

 Within two years they had expanded their fleet to three  —  Vanguard, Golden Gate and Sea Ranger. Jack bought his parents out so as to have full control of the operation. The catches brought in on their three vessels had outstripped local demand so he designed and built a blast freezer and sent the frozen fillets to Australia. By 1955 he had amalgamated with fishing giant Sanfords Ltd on reclaimed land in Cross Road, Sulphur Point with the proviso that he manage it for 10 years. In 1967, once his term was over, he negotiated with the Tauranga Harbour Board for a new site. His modern fish processing plant was erected nearby and named Costello’s Seafoods.

 

70-foot purse seiner “Valkyrie”, complete with pipe band on board, at her commissioning ceremony.  Built for Costello’s Union Fish and Ice Company in 1964.
Image courtesy of Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries Photo 11-162

By 1971, Sanfords planned to build their own modern plant next door but the depressed fish export market at the time resulted in Costellos’ selling their assets to Sanfords and once again appointing Jack as managing director there until 1975, and then as an advisor for a further three years.

 

Costello’s Seafoods, Sulphur Point 1969.  

Image courtesy of Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries Photo 11-157

Following this he moved to Auckland where he set up several more businesses, including two coolstores —  later sold to Sanfords. Jack then moved back to Tauranga and got into property development before leaving for the Gold Coast, Australia in 1981. He passed away over there in 1998, well respected and remembered for his efforts to establish a competitive and successful fishing industry in Tauranga area.

 * The tower was finally removed when the Marsh Street flyover was constructed in 2008

A History of the Old Tauranga Post Office

 From Tauranga City Library’s archives

A monthly blog about interesting items in our collection

That old-timey feel the ‘Old Post Office’ carries has a name, Edwardian Baroque, a style designed to declare "empire" with all its permanence. Government Architect John Campbell gave it form in 1905–06 with stone walls and a clock tower meant to outlast us all. By 1987 however, it was empty, nearly felled by that decade’s scythe to all things unprofitable. Yet here it remains, long after many others have gone, a survivor with stories to tell. 

What follows is a brief history of the ‘Old Post Office’ building.

The corner of Willow and Wharf Streets was in the 1830s, part of the Church Missionary Society reserve, where Rev. Alfred Brown established a mission school. During the New Zealand Wars the building was pressed into service as a mission hospital, caring for both Māori and Pākehā. Later it passed into Crown control and became part of Tauranga’s government reserve, already a focus of administration and defence.

In 1874 the Crown erected a vast timber Government Buildings block on the site, an Italianate design by Bennett and Kaye of Auckland that was, at the time, the second-largest wooden building in New Zealand. For nearly 30 years it housed Tauranga’s administration, post and telegraph, and the Resident Magistrate’s Court. Despite its size, maybe because of it, it was not universally admired. Then in November 1902 it was destroyed by fire, along with decades of official records, forcing departments into scattered temporary lodgings.

It was on this layered site that Government Architect John Campbell designed Tauranga’s new Government Buildings in 1904, built over 1905–06. Conceived to house multiple state departments under one roof, the structure placed the Post and Telegraph Department on the ground floor, with the court, Lands and Survey, and other offices upstairs. Its Edwardian Baroque style gave Tauranga a sense of permanence and civic pride, expressed through a prominent clock tower, ornamented façades, and its commanding position overlooking the harbour. Inside, the walls carried the government’s standard scheme: light green upper wall, a darker lower section.

The building was completed in April 1906, with government departments moving in that June. Despite years of public campaigning for such a facility, its opening passed quietly, without ceremony.

Post Office, Tauranga, with staff in front, c. 1906, Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries Photo 02-348

In 1907 the town clock was installed after a subscription fund raised by the Bay of Plenty Times, with the mechanism manufactured by Dent & Co. of London. By 1916 the building had already been extended to accommodate Tauranga’s growing administrative needs. Local rimu was used for the interiors, and with the arrival of electricity from the Ōmanawa Falls power scheme in 1915, electric lighting soon replaced the original gas fittings.

For decades the building remained Tauranga’s civic centre, housing postal services, the courts, and a range of government departments.

By the mid-20th century, Tauranga’s growth and rising expectations for modern facilities led departments to move elsewhere. The Post Office relocated to Grey Street in 1938, and a new courthouse opened in 1965. When the last government tenants, the Ministry of Works, vacated in 1987, the Old Post Office stood empty and earthquake-prone. Its future looked bleak. The Tauranga Community Arts Council convened a public meeting that revealed strong community will to save the landmark. A steering committee was formed under chair Grant Aislabie, drawing in architects, engineers, historians, and iwi representatives.

Government Property Services initially set an asking price of $1.2 million, later reduced to $530,000, but insisted on cash purchase. With professional fundraisers warning that public appeals could only follow ownership, the project fell into a catch-22. Structural reports confirmed the risks, but also pointed to possible solutions such as base isolation techniques.

Ideas for new uses reflected both community and tangata whenua aspirations. Proposals included a community resource centre, a bi-cultural gallery for local and touring exhibitions, and space for the Ngāti Ranginui Iwi Authority. Discussions were shaped by the concurrent Ngāi Tamarāwaho claim (WAI 42) over the land, which added weight to the iwi’s call for cultural facilities.

The Historic Places Trust recognised the building’s significance, upgrading its classification from Category C to Category B. Even so, by 1990 the Arts Council concluded that only a community-based solution was realistic, since commercial development was unlikely to succeed. Without the resources to purchase, the campaign faltered. But the effort ensured that the building’s value was now firmly stamped on the public consciousness.

In 1998 Grasshopper Properties acquired the property from Tauranga District Council for $200,000 and undertook a $1.5 million restoration. Historic Places Trust guidelines required the 1905 exterior to be precisely replicated, while the interior was adapted to modern use. New foundations, steel-mesh linings, and a ductile frame system provided earthquake strength, and original features such as the staircase and courtroom fittings were retained.

The restored building reopened in 1999 as modern office space, with Grasshopper Properties among its tenants. A History Room, gardens, and the restored clock reaffirmed its civic role. Mayor Noel Pope praised the project as a “marvellous” legacy for Tauranga.

Opening of the refurbished building 1999, Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries Photo 04-670

In 2001 the Smythe Family Trust purchased the building and used it for office space, including leases to iwi organisations. By 2018, new seismic requirements and commercial pressures prompted another transformation. Tauranga City Council approved a $4.9 million conversion into a boutique hotel and restaurant, with careful strengthening and refurbishment. Later that year the building reopened as Clarence Hotel, offering ten suites upstairs and hospitality venues below.

Today the old stone heavyweight that once stamped empire onto this landscape is dwarfed by modern buildings that seem largely agnostic to the history of our city, while down the hill two new structures emerge that, one hopes, will tell a better story.

Sources:

Newspaper Articles in a 1999 Special Edition

• BOP Times. (1999, October 27). “Tricky task, but it was worth it.”
• BOP Times. (1999, October 27). “Clear guidelines helped restoration project.”
• BOP Times. (1999, October 27). “If these walls could speak, they’d say...thank you.”
• BOP Times. (1999, October 27). “First Government architect.”
• BOP Times. (1999, October 27). “Original building much more than a post office.”
• BOP Times. (1999, October 27). “Proud to be part of a project.”
• BOP Times. (1999, October 27). “Top example of baroque style.”
• BOP Times. (1999, October 27). “Marvellous says mayor.”
• BOP Times. (1999, October 27). “Final postmaster started job in 1942.”
• BOP Times. (1999, October 27). “Outside looks deceptive.”
• BOP Times. (1999, October 27). “Last gasp of the Empire.”
• BOP Times. (1999, October 27). “A passion for old buildings.”
• BOP Times. (1999, October 27). “Newspaper fund helped pay for new town clock.”
• BOP Times. (1999, October 27). “Building extended after just 10 years.”

Other Sources

• Rorke, J. (1988). Draft and notes to article in the Historical Review – Bay of Plenty Journal of History, 36(2), 104–110.
• Tauranga Community Arts Council. (1990). Report.

Written by Harley Couper, Heritage Specialist at Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries

Te Kaewa-The Wanderers, a new book by Trevor Bentley

           

This book by local author Trevor Bentley recounts, in vivid style, the ‘shipping out’ of Māori adventurers across the seas and oceans of the world on Euro-American whaleships It investigates the reputation of Māori as the most courageous and dependable of all the indigenous Pacific seamen engaged in whaling - a notoriously brutal and bloody exploitative industry. It discusses their diverse work roles aboard foreign windjammers, their exploitation by avaricious shipowners and captains, and the maritime customs, lingos, diet, dress and superstitions they adopted.

Te Kaewa describes how Māori seamen coped in the face of multiple dangers, privations and separation from their whanau for months or years at a time. It details how they responded to mistreatment by ship’s officers and crewmates, their lives ashore in rollicking port towns like Sydney, and the diverse challenges overcome by those who managed to return home.

                     

Te Anaru

                                Robley, H; Moko or Maori Tattooing, Chambers and Hall, London,1896: 37.

The book also references Anaru, (likely Te Anaru -The Brave), a Tauranga adventurer, who worked aboard whaling ships and was based in Sydney. There, he met and married a European wife (unidentified by name), before they sailed for New Zealand. The couple lived with Te Anaru’s hapū at a pā in Tauranga. The British Army officer and renowned artist Horatio Robley sketched Te Anaru at Tauranga circa. 1864 but, unfortunately for local posterity, not his Pākehā wife.

Bentley, Trevor, Te Kaewa - The Wanderers: Māori Sailors on Euro-American Whalers, 1790s-1890s. Kererū Press, Tauranga, 2025.

The imagination of Michael Hodgkins

The imagination of Michael Hodgkins

 From Tauranga City Library’s archives

A monthly blog about interesting items in our collection

This month is the 60th anniversary of Michael Hodgkin's death, at his hut on the salt water marshes of Ōtūmoetai.

Headstone unveiled in 2009 at the Tauranga Anglican Cemetery, following fundraising by Tauranga Historical Society. 

Tauranga City Council cemeteries. B3691

The nephew of New Zealand artist Frances Hodgkins, and grandson of the founder of Aotearoa's first art gallery, Michael followed his parents to Tauranga in 1937 and was well known in the district, walking long distances to gather botanical samples.

Alister Matheson and Jinty Rorke wrote in his 'Dictionary of New Zealand Biography' entry:

Local teachers, aware of Hodgkins’s immense knowledge of nature, encouraged him to visit their schools so that children could ask him questions. They also used him in lessons to foster a tolerance of eccentrics. Seated under a tree in the playground with his black Aberdeen terrier, Angus, Hodgkins held children spellbound with the tales he told of natural history.  

 One of these students was David Saric, who collected pencil sketches and notes made by Michael and donated them to Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Archives (Ams 285). A delightful collection that showcases a broad range of topics.

Peacock. Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries Ams 285/1/38

Motorbike. Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries Ams 285/1/42

David recalled Michael's 'sparkling blue eyes', and how his ability to sketch and write notes, perhaps from a photographic memory 'inspired many kids - sowed seeds of thought'.

In the era of the first moon landing, Michael's tales of satellites in the sky and how and why they worked, must have been spellbinding for young minds.

Sketch of a satellite (not to be confused with a water cannister with spikes).

Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries Ams 285/1/1/1

First page of Satellite notes. Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries Ams 285/1/1/2

The accompanying seven pages of Michael's note that the satellite

...with the dog would be more a ball shaped container fitted with an air supply food supply and means of warming the dog also a parachute to bring the dog down when the Satellite has descended to near to earth...if the dog can be got back alive...

Writing on scraps of paper that were available, Michael's fifth page of satellite notes is penciled across typed columns of people notes, such as B.R. Shakes from Tauranga was previously with Downer & Co, and Palmer from Tauranga had spent five years with the Auckland Harbour Board and had nearly completed their Accountancy Proficiency.

 

Fifth page of Satellite notes. Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries Ams 285/1/1/2

 

The value of archives can be measured in many ways, one of the almost intangible is how they connect and delight the viewer. Enjoy exploring the collection, and imagine yourself as a child in 1950s-60s Tauranga, sitting under a tree, as a man (who later inspired characters in the writings of Frank Sargeson, Ian Mune and the TV film 'The Mad Dog Gang meets Rotten Fred & Ratsguts'), sketches in pencil and tells you about tigers, turtles, koala, Robin Hood, Māori warriors, aircraft carriers and more.

 

Thanks to David Saric, and others who have shared their memories of Michael 'Spring Heel Jack'.

 

Sources

 

Kean, Fiona. (2014, June 6). Michael Hodgkins, a gentleman and a scholar. Tauranga Historical Society. taurangahistorical.blogspot.com/2014/06/michael-hodgkins-gentleman-and-scholar.html

 

Matheson, Alister and Rorke, Jinty. (2000). Biography: Hodgkins, Geoffrey Michael William. Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand. teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/5h25/hodgkins-geoffrey-michael-william

 

Saric, David. (2009). Portfolio. Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries, Ams 285/2. paekoroki.tauranga.govt.nz/nodes/view/113206

 

Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries. (n.d.). Who was Michael Hodgkins? paekoroki.tauranga.govt.nz/nodes/view/118696

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Written by Kate Charteris, Heritage Specialist at Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries