2025 - A Good Year for Local Histories

 

A few of this year’s local histories

Two hundred or so contemporary tales of past and present, a selection of Tommy ‘Kapai’ Wilson’s newspaper columns written for the Bay of Plenty Times since 2004, and put into a handsome volume entitled Paperboy Writer, starts this review of the efforts of local writers to evoke the history of Tauranga Moana and its surrounds.  Paperboy Writer was published in November 2024, but this review stretches a couple of points, in time and space, in order to make a larger one:  the astonishing variety of history books concerning the Bay of Plenty – east and west - that came out in 2025.  All of those described here are in the Tauranga Library: ask at the Reference Room if you can’t find a borrowing copy.

‘Variety’, in this discussion, takes a number of forms.  There is not only a breadth of approach and tone, ranging from Tommy Wilson’s (mostly) cheerful nostalgia to the balanced formality of Trevor Bentley’s prose in Te Kaewa, The Wanderers [1] and the almost lyrical intertwining of te reo and English in Tame Iti’s compelling autobiography.  We are also offered some very fresh approaches to the way history can be written – Sarah Ell’s excursions into imagined thoughts of The Elms’ inhabitants, for instance; or the very practical, informative, and carefully ordered and illustrated lists that form the backbone of Hatu Hone – 120 years of St John’s in Tauranga.

There are hidden gems to be found as well.  Robert Craig Scott’s prodigious efforts to track and trace the changes in neighbourhoods that have now become Tauranga’s suburbs are hugely useful to those researching past lives in close and often unexpected detail.  Bob published the second edition of Mount Maunganui, A History of the Land and Early Settlers from 1864 in November of this year.  As if this was not enough, he also managed to produce the ninth volume of his series: Otumoetai, A History following confiscation in 1864.  Although my editorial eye regrets the lack of macrons in the text, I was well impressed that Bob had found a first-person account, an article from the Bay of Plenty Times of 8 June 1882 and quoted in full on p. 138, that illustrated the poignancies of settlement in transition:

… most of the other trees were planted by the natives.  Mr Matheson has erected a dairy under the willow trees.  On the side of the house is a very old titoki tree.  The natives left this Pa at the outbreak of the late Maori war and burnt all their whares before leaving.  Since then, the old Catholic Church has been left to go to ruin.

 The titoki tree can be identified in the photos Bob provides and – as visitors to the Otūmoetai Historic Reserve can see for themselves – still stands [2].  Bob has done for his beloved suburbs what I would love to see done for Te Puna: setting out the land use changes at a level of detail that makes present recognition easy and delightful.

Communities are another theme that gets varied treatment from our 2025 authors.  Raewyn Otto, née Phare, has significantly revised and augmented the photocopied booklet she produced to mark the 75^th anniversary of the establishment of her faith community.  Celebrating 100 years: The Seventh-day Adventist Church in Tauranga 1925-2025 is now a large-format hardcover volume, lavishly illustrated in full colour, assembling personal testimony, autobiographical accounts of the church’s families – the Ashtons, the Goldstones, the Maunders and more – their poetry, a short story, their performances of The Road to Bethlehem; and enough institutional history to help us understand how a modern-day church establishes itself in a society where the faith traditions that came with nineteenth-century settlers were already well in place.

Kathy Wills’ Tales of Old Katikati, third edition, is another reworking, based on original author Elsie G Lockington’s reminiscences and stories of people she clearly knew very well.  Its sixty pages have a conversational quality, often loaded with personal and place names; it is occasionally vague as to detail, although Elsie makes it clear what the impacts of dreadful events, such as the influenza epidemic of 1915, can be on a tight-knit town and country society.  The tone is invariably polite.  It is, however, worth reading to the very end where, at a safe distance, the third-generation editor lets us know that even Elsie had personal opinions.

Someone looking for a more comprehensive – I would go so far as to say definitive – history of Katikati will find it in Katikati, From First Peoples to the Present Day/Ngā Reanga Tangata ki Katikati, co-authored by Francis Young, Sandra Haigh, Pauline McCowan and Chris Bedford and produced in time for the 150^th anniversary of the arrival of the Ulster settlers in September 2025.  That well-worked aspect of Katikati’s history is, however, deliberately downplayed in favour of settlement patterns since 1300 CE and Katikati’s development since 1940.  “We had to make choices,” the authors say in their preface, “to keep the book manageable; not everyone may agree with those.”  This solid and readable book has the same self-confidence that is shown in the small rural settlement it describes.

One significant element stands out in reviewing the books mentioned in this article: the choice and quality of the images used.  Francis Young had a busy year.  He and Di Logan put together an astonishing book, Pictures from the Ulster Plantation: Katikati 1898-1900, of the very lovely photographs of Emily Surtees.  Her album records the homes and people of the Ulster families that George Vesey Stewart somehow persuaded and energetically led to live on the other side of the world. These evocative images have been carefully selected, even more carefully digitally enhanced, and are laid out in such a way that each monochrome page is beautiful in itself.

Quite another, just as compelling, approach is taken by Sally Pratt with her publication, Tauranga: Just scratching the surface.  As every successful publisher knows, you can judge a book by its cover: Sally’s lively account of interesting and exciting episodes of our town’s past is accessible, impressively researched, packed with Tauranga’s more unusual stories and a quantity of spectacular illustrations, almost all of them colourised using AI and up-to-the-minute digital publishing technology.  This is the perfect way to interest a younger reader – a highly pictorial presentation showing the layers of history in our place, with enough text to explain how streets and shorelines change, and who was involved in changing them.

No review of the histories published this year would be complete without acknowledging the two mainstream books shown above.

Sarah Ell gave a talk to Tauranga Historical earlier this year.  The Spirit of a Place celebrates the status of one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s significant heritage sites, and Sarah explained how she steered a careful course through her chapters.  She set herself to meet the demands of the expected readership of her book: serious scholars, heritage enthusiasts, and of course the tourists who flock to The Elms from the cruise ships and elsewhere, seeking something that will mark a memorable experience rather than - maybe as well as – explain the background to a distinguished building and the family that made it their home for so long.  Glossy, with sensitive photographs and even more sensitive side-stories, the book is a triumph by any standard, and the writing of a quality that shows even a well-trodden tale has fresh insights to uncover.

Tame Iti’s autobiography, Mana, is a quality publication of a very different kind. Beautifully designed, with lots of white space on its matt-paper pages, it has a congenial font that helps make the considerable amount of te reo, although not invariably translated, adequately understandable in context.  The overall tone of the book, as might be expected of its subject, is one of drama in both the narrative and the images.    It is also sober and reflective, the story of an examined life, one we are privileged to see too. 

What a vintage year 2025 has proved to be for us here in the Bay of Plenty.  Local history really does enrich our lives and the way we deal with our present day.  We must be grateful to all our local historians who take the time, and expend prodigious effort, to help us understand how things were and are now.  Tame Iti’s approach, in connection with the Waitangi Tribunal’s hearings of the Tūhoe claims, sums it up:

…we came up with a way to convey that history.  Instead of a lecture about colonization and confiscation, we would paint the picture of the experience of our tīpuna.  We reminded ourselves: Imagine being in that space.  What are we thinking? [3]

 [1] We published a description of Te Kaewa/The Wanderers on this blog on Tuesday 28 October

[2] I am indebted to Harley Couper of the Reference team at Tauranga Library for helping me to find this on the 3D Tauranga Web Viewer, https://www.tauranga.govt.nz/council/maps

[3] Tame Iti, Mana, p.201

Author and images: Beth Bowden

The Otūmoetai Beachfront Pathway - Four Early Walkers

A map of the Otūmoetai Peninsula by the late Tauranga historian Alistair Matheson

Otūmoetai Peninsula’s beachfront path has been a major thoroughfare for Māori visitors and residents for centuries.  Walkers traversed a level and pleasant path of approximately two miles – often through groves of ngaio trees - from the Wairoa River entrance to the Waikareao Estuary entrance, just as they do today. Tauranga is a region of peninsulas and estuaries and accessing the peninsula path was not always an easy task.

Before the 1860s and the Tauranga War (1864) and Bush War (1867), Māori and Pākehā overlanders walking south through Waihi and Katikati or over the Kaimai Ranges from the Waikato would, from the Te Puna Peninsula, walk or canoe across the Wairoa River to access the walkway. Travellers trekking northwards from locations like Lake Taupō and the East Coast/Western Bay of Plenty, would first visit the Te Papa mission station before crossing the Waikareao Estuary to access the path.

Travellers in both directions often overnighted at Otūmoetai Pā, the district's Māori and Pākehā-Māori commercial hub. Also known as ‘The Capital of Tauranga’ before the 1860s, the pā was located approximately half-way along the path from the long abandoned Matuaiwi Pā. Early Pākehā travellers who trod the beachfront path included Rev. Henry Williams (1828-1832), Bishop Pompallier (1840 and 1841), Treaty of Waitangi official Thomas Bunbury (1840) and Captain Byron Drury of HMS Pandora, who surveyed the harbour in November 1852. The recollections of four additional walkers are described below.

John Carne Bidwill, Botanist,  1838.

On 3 July 1838, travelling English botanist John Carne Bidwell and his party of Māori porters crossed the Kaimai range to the Te Puna peninsula, from where he was carried at low tide ‘half a mile’ over the Wairoa Rivers dangerous outer crossing ‘on the shoulders of one of the natives’. During his walk to Otūmoetai Pā, he said:  ‘a mob of slaves and boys began to twitch my clothes and gun as I passed along, and make all kinds of impertinent remarks; however, I walked on as fast as I could... and after about a mile got rid of all but the most determined of my persecutors’.¹

From Otūmoetai Pā, Bidwill observed a visiting taua (Maori war party) ‘perfectly friendly with the Tawranga tribe’, leave the fortress for the Waikareao crossing at first light ‘as did they not leave at the time of low water, they would have about a dozen miles further to march’. He also noted that when any allied war parties traversed the Otūmoetai walkway, Tauranga’s resident traders, including those along the path like James Farrow and later, John Lees Faulkner, ‘took all possible precautions to prevent robbery, even to the locking of their stockades, and securing in them such bulky articles as canoes and boats, which would otherwise have been very probably taken away or destroyed’.² Unfortunately, no images of John Carne Bidwill have survived.

Lady Mary Ann Martin, 1846

Lady Mary Ann Martin, c1860s

Another early beachfront traveller was the intrepid semi-invalid, Lady Mary Ann Martin, author of Our Māoris (1884), a New Zealand best seller in its day. During October 1846, she accompanied her husband William - New Zealand’s first Chief Justice, on a journey from Auckland to Rotorua via Tauranga. During their crossing of the Kaimai Range by way of the Wairere Track, Mary Ann  Martin was carried by Māori bearers while lying on a stretcher. She recorded that after, finding herself in a vertical position on several occasions during the ascent, with sheer drops below, she instructed her bearers to tie her to the stretcher:

By one p.m. we had passed through the forest, and came out on a wide plain, from which we saw the sea and coast, stretching far away, and a mountain at the entrance of the harbour standing out against the blue sky; but our fatigues were not over: we knocked about till dark in a whale-boat on a rough sea, and when we landed the first sight that greeted us was a raging fire in the pah [Otūmoetai]. My bearers put me down on the beach, and rushed off to help extinguish the flames.

A kind Maori woman, whose English husband was away, received us into her house, and gave us bread and coffee, and when, after stumbling along [the walkway] in the dark to the crossing-place and shouting across [the Waikareao Estuary to the Te Papa Mission Station] in vain for a boat, we returned to her, she brought out a pile of new blankets and made a bed for us on the floor. About midnight, however, our host, Archdeacon Brown, arrived, and soon after we reached his comfortable Mission-house. After ten nights in the bush, an English bedroom seemed a great luxury.

I stayed for three weeks at Tauranga, while my husband went on to the hot springs. The house was all of native workmanship; the outer walls were of raupo, and the inner walls and ceilings reeded after the best Maori pattern. The windows of the bedroom were overhung with roses^.3

The house where Lady Martin and her husband found temporary refuge, was that of the trader and shipwright John Lees Faulkner - the ‘kind Maori woman’ being his wife Ruawahine. Their house, store and shipyard were located on her land at Okorore, a one acre property located about a half mile east of Otūmoetai Pā on what is today’s Beach Road. The Martins and their Maori porters were returned to the Te Puna Peninsula on Rev Alfred Brown’s whaleboat, from where they retraced their route to Auckland. The Faulkner house has been relocated at Tauranga’s Historic Village).⁴

An Anonymous Walker, 1859

Appearing in the newspaper New Zealander in April 1859 - one month before Ferdinand Von Hochstetter and Ernest Dieffenbach’s scientific expedition visited Tauranga – the following article was written by an unidentified overland traveller.

Leaving the Mission Station and proceeding westward for Otumoiti village, you have to be ferried over the other boat channel [the Waikareao Estuary], and, in making for the village, cross a sandy plain on which is a large, but for the present deserted, native settlement. At Otumoiti there is a considerable settlement, and the Roman Catholic Church, of native structure, is elaborately decorated in the most artistic native manner.

On the beach are the house and stores of Mr. Faulkner, who has resided here for many years, and from whom and Mrs. Faulkner the travellers receive'd a hearty welcome. A short distance further on is the store of Mr. Farrow, and on the opposite side of the harbour is the residence of Captain Sellers (of the cutter “Comet,") who trades along the East Coast. No other Europeans, that we are aware, are regular residents at Tauranga at present; but it is to be hoped that their numbers will soon have an increase, and that they will have the " White Swan" steaming into this noble harbour, and affording them the means of speedy communication with Auckland.⁵

Ferdinand Von Hochstetter, 1859

Ferdinand Von Hochstetter

A noted geologist and writer, Von Hochstetter was appointed to the Austrian round the world scientific expedition in 1857. Arriving at Auckland on the frigate Novara  in December 1858, he, the naturalist Ernest Dieffenbach (who had previously visited Tauranga in 1841), and his scientific party visited many central North Island locations including Taupō and Rotorua. Returning overland to Auckland via Maketu and Tauranga, Von Hochstetter and his companions were welcomed at the Te Papa Mission Station by the Rev Karl Volkner and his wife Emma. Departing after a two day stay he recorded on 12 May 1859:

Kind Mrs. Voelkner had baked some fresh bread and prepared an excellent roast-pork for our benefit on the road; and thus most liberally provided with food, we again parted from a Mission house, the kind and hospitable inhabitants of which I shall never forget. We crossed the Waikareao Creek in a boat, and thence passed over a sandy plain through a deserted Pah in a north-westerly direction along the shores of the harbour, which presents the character of a shallow estuary with, many inlets and studded with numerous islands, separated from the sea only by a row of sandhills, and extends, at an average breadth of two to three miles, in a N.W. direction, as far as the Katikati river, a distance of 15 miles.

After a short hour's walk we reached the Otumoetai Pah (others spell it Otumoiti), one of the principal settlements on Tauranga Harbour, at the same time the seat of a Roman Catholic mission. The church of the place is of a very neat construction; there are also some Europeans settled here. On the beach lay a number of beautiful war-canoes; and next to them a schooner, belonging to the Maoris, which they had bought for £500, leaving it afterwards to rot and decay.

From Otumoetai we came over excellent, fertile alluvial plains to the Wairoa Bay. The Bay is very shallow, and the sandy rather than muddy ground so firm, that, although the tide had already half set in, we could without danger wade through to Peterehema (Bethlehem)... How very different everything here will look in after-years, when a European City shall rise on the Tauranga Harbour, and the beautiful country round about be dotted with flourishing farms.⁶

References

¹ Bidwill, John, Rambles in New Zealand, W.S. Orr and Co. London, 1841: Capper Reprint 1974:  79-81.

² Ibid.

³Martin, Mary Ann, Our Maoris, E. and J. B. Young, London, 1884: 98-99.

⁴ Matheson, A. H; ‘Otumoetai Pa and the Early Days in Tauranga’, Journal of the Tauranga Historical Society (Inc.), August - September 1975, No. 54: 14.

⁵ New Zealander, 2 April 1859: 3.

⁶ Von Hochstetter, Ferdinand, New Zealand: Its Physical Geography, Geology and Natural History, J.G. Cotta, Stuttgart, 1867: 445-446.

Images

Matheson, Alistair, ‘Otumoetai Pa and the Early traders in Tauranga, Part II’, Journal of the Tauranga Historical Society (Inc.), August-September 1975, No.54. OT (2) 3.

Bartlett & Co. (Auckland): Lady Mary Ann Martin (1817-1884) PA2-0195. National Library, Wellington New Zealand

Dauthage, Adolf, 1825-1883. Dauthage, Adolf, 1825-1883 :Ferdinand R. Hochstetter 1859, aged 28.. Haast, Julius von: In memoriam. Ferdinand R. Hochstetter. Dunedin, J. McKay, 1884. Ref: PUBL-0135-front. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. /records/23162756

Historiography in Te Puna

It’s popular right now for historians to emphasise the “story” aspect of history.  Neat, straightforward, direct.  Everyone has a story.  Historians who are serious about their profession know, however, that every story has a story.  This is one.

Title page of Keepers of the Faith

A somewhat battered copy of the book compiled to commemorate the centennial of St Joseph’s Church, Hatu Hohepa, in Te Puna, titled  Keepers of the Faith, has come to the Te Puna Archive. [1]  Its provenance is reasonably clear: it was initially acquired by the Te Puna Community Library, had apparently sustained water damage, in which state was withdrawn from the library’s holdings and came into the possession of the Gravits (Peter Gravit was for a time a member of the Community Library Committee).

Peter and Jen Rolleston authored the book.  Peter died in 2007, [2] but Jen is still very much with us, and was very willing to talk about the way this very local history was brought together.  As a direct consequence of the work she, Ellen Nicholas and Peter did to research the Pirirākau Claim: WAI 227, Peter Farrelly of the Parish Council approached them on behalf of the Church Centennial Committee for a publication to support the celebrations attendant on the little wooden church’s one hundredth anniversary.  The first service there was held on 1 January 1900.

Compared to the work required to support WAI 227, this job seemed, and was, Jen says, relatively straightforward.  It took between six and nine months to write; photographs were readily available, and the community it described were all people known to each other, or whose memory was still well alive among them.  Most people came forward with their recollections of the church and its place in the Te Puna landscape.

Jen Rolleston

Compared to the gaps and contradictions that had to be resolved for the raupatu claim, Jen told me, getting material for the St Joseph’s book was far easier.  “People had papers, photos and bits and pieces about the church in all sorts of places – for instance, [co-builder with Werahiko Borell] Hone Bidois’s papers were put together in a box held in the Tuhakaraina homestead.”  Hone was the grand-uncle of Martin Tuhakaraina, Chairman of the Centennial Committee. 

Despite these advantages, writing a local history is not always easy.  Jen called it “interesting” when I asked her if it was fun to do.  Peter, who, she said, “Put his heart and soul into the WAI 227 claim”, was a serious historian whose work entailed deep analysis and careful assessment of the evidence.  “It’s hard for us to really understand how things were then,” Jen muses.  “We think we know but we don’t really.”  Nevertheless, the experience gained by the team from the raupatu claim – Peter doing the narrative, Jen and Ellen ferreting out the information needed to fill the gaps – has clearly shaped Keeping the Faith.  It’s a book that, quite deliberately, has almost no conflict.  But it does have a clear historical arc, situating the story of St Joseph’s into a wider context, and balancing the secular forces of history with a moving account of a miracle, set out in an (ahistorical) Appendix.

A careful reader of this local history can, however, detect the threads of tension through the stories.  This is one of the great skills of good local historians: to let past voices speak so that people can, later, make their own minds up.  This short book, citing primary sources, oral accounts and memoirs, is foundational for deeper, more scholarly explorations of the way spirituality and institutional religion contend with and complement each other. [3]  It also offers very practical insights into the life and work of missionary fathers: the St Joseph’s complement were mostly from Holland, speaking te reo with a noticeable Duch accent, authoritative, hands-on and pragmatic.  The Convent school, which ran from 1958 until 1980, was staffed by the Sisters of St Joseph of Cluny in Ireland, [4] another missionary order. Furthermore, the function of evangelism itself is illustrated: once the Church determined that there were no new converts to be gained, the priests were withdrawn and the school was closed. The Little Sisters of Carmel, under the chaplaincy of the combative Father Jordan, lived in it as a retreat for the next decade, until “the effects of a Priest shortage had a direct and dramatic impact upon the Parish”.[5] The response to this crisis came directly from the devout within the Te Puna Catholic community. The book includes an account from the Guardian of the Sacred Sacrament, Rosina Borell.

I am happy to confirm that – quite aside from the rough dealings that resulted in the return of St Joseph’s bell to that church [6] - another conflict reported in Keeping the Faith [7] has also been resolved.  Father Jordan’s cottage, controversially located, in 1982, “squarely in front of the Church, almost completely obscuring [it] from the road frontage”, was at some stage moved to another position, behind the church, and in the background of this photo.

St Joseph’s site, looking southeast

Although Jen cannot remember when, exactly, her book was thus rendered out-of-date, we agree that the cottage’s removal was probably tactfully managed by the Centennial Committee to make way for the welcoming waharoa that bears the plaque and blessings made in the new millennium, January 2000.

References

---

[1] Kindly deposited as part of the Gravit Collection, 7 March 2024.

[2] See Elisha Rolleston’s essay for Te Mahi Rangahau, https://temahirangahau.wordpress.com/2022/05/01/peter-rolleston/ also published on the Tauranga Historical Society blog, 7 June 2022, https://taurangahistorical.blogspot.com/2022/06/peter-rolleston-1949-2007.html

[3] See, for instance, Cameron, G B: That you might stand here on the roof of the clouds.” The development of Pirirakau theology from encounter to the end of conflict, 1839-1881, Master of Theology thesis, University of Otago, 2015

[4] http://sjc.ie/

[5] Rolleston, P and J: Keeping the Faith, p.55, quoting Rosina Borell

[6] Ibid, p.36

[7] Ibid, pp.48-49

Mary Humphreys, Photographer: Part 2 – 1901

In Part 1 of this series we learnt that in 1899, her first year working as a professional photographer, Mary Humphreys opened a photographic studio on Tauranga’s Strand to sell local views, “Maori scenes” and photographic Christmas cards. She demonstrated considerable skill in both technical and artistic aspects of the craft, developed working relationships with three newspaper publishers in Auckland and Christchurch, and cultivated connections within the community to take photos of events, views and cultural themes.

Crater Lake at Whakaari (White Island), 9 March 1901
Quarter-plate silver gelatin print mounted on album page, photographed by Mary Humphreys
Collection of Tauranga City Library, Pae Korokī Ref. Album Box 4

On the morning of Wednesday 6 March 1901 Mary Humphreys boarded the steamship Waiotahi at Tauranga’s wharf,[i] taking advantage of an organised excursion to the Opotiki Show, Races and White Island which had been advertised in the Bay of Plenty Times a few days earlier.[ii] A number of racehorses were also loaded, joining a party who had travelled overnight from Auckland, which included an unnamed journalist from the New Zealand Graphic.[iii]

“Opotiki Summer Race Meeting” [iv] and “Opotiki Agricultural and Pastoral Show” [v], 7-8 March 1901
Photographs published by New Zealand Graphic, 23 March 1901, possibly attrib. to Mary Humphreys
Courtesy of Papers Past

She photographed the Opotiki Races  on Thursday, the A & P Show  on Friday, and on Saturday reboarded the Waiotahi which then proceeded to Whakaari (White Island) for a visit which lasted four hours. Mary returned to Tauranga on Sunday and developed the numerous plates which she had exposed over the previous five days.

“Some capital photographic souvenirs of the recent excursion to Opotiki for the Show, Races, and White Island trip, were secured by Mrs M. Humphreys in the shape of pictures of all descriptions; among the most interesting are those of the volcanic island, one of the finest being a whole-plate, looking along the floor of the crater, across the great hot lake of diluted hydrochloric, at the great fumaroles from which issue the vast clouds of steam which have given the island its name.”

“A Burning Island – White Island, Bay of Plenty”, 9 March 1901
Photographs published by New Zealand Graphic, 23 March 1901, possibly attrib. to Mary Humphreys
Courtesy of Papers Past (p541 & p542)

A series of images of all three events were published in the New Zealand Graphic on 23 March, accompanied by an account of the trip written by an Auckland-based journalist.[vi]

“… the Graphic this week … published a series of views of thermal activity in another quarter of the colony. Under the title A Burning Island appears an interesting account, profusely illustrated, of a visit of exploration to White Island … other fine pictures, including scenes … of the Opotiki Show and Races ...” [vii]

She told one of her boarders in later years that “such was the corroding atmosphere on the island, the sleeves of her blouse disintegrated.” [viii]

“The Landing of the Visitors on White Island”, 9 March 1901
Print (120 x 163 mm, full plate) mounted in album, possible attribution to Mary Humphreys
Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections, Album 62, Ref. 3-ALB62-13

While none of the photographs published are credited to Mary Humphreys, they correspond well with those she is described as having taken, one of which was from on board the Waiotahi on its arrival in Opotiki. Auckland Library has a mounted print of one of the images, titled “the landing of the visitors on White Island” in the original article, although they appear to be departing.

Excursionists on White Island, 9 March 1901 (detail at right)
Print (120 x 163 mm, full plate) mounted in album, possible attribution to Mary Humphreys
Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections, Album 62, Ref. 3-ALB62-14

We should be aware, however, that there may have been other photographers on the excursion. A similarly mounted print shows a group negotiating a rocky shoreline, one with a rectangular camera case slung over his shoulder. It is worth noting here that by this time Mary Humphries was using a full-plate camera, although the three known prints from photographs taken by her on this trip were half- and quarter-plate size, probably cropped from the full-plate size. It is possible that the larger format photographs were preferred by editors of the NZ Graphic and Auckland Weekly News.

Souvenir album presented to the Duchess of Cornwall, June 1901
Mounted print, photographed by Mary Humphreys
Collection of The Elms Foundation, Ref. 2006.0274

In April 1901 a group of local residents formed a committee to organise an appropriate souvenir to be presented to Princess Alexandra, Duchess of Cornwall and York (the future Queen), then on a tour of the Empire with her husband, funded by subscription. Headed by Sarah Seddon, wife of Tauranga auctioneer, and Euphemia Maxwell, they had the idea of “an album containing a number of views of the town and neighbourhood, the book to be bound in a cover formed of New Zealand woods and bearing a silver shield engraved with a suitable inscription … subscribers only to have a right, on a small extra fee, to a photograph of the book.”[ix] At least 75 people subscribed in full, with a similar number of 1s contributions, the photography for which had been entrusted to Mary Humphreys, for which she charged £4 10s 9d. The book contained:

“… 24 photographs of Tauranga and neighbourhood and these have been prepared, in full-plate size by Mrs M. Humphreys, and embrace views of the principal buildings in the town, spots of historic interest, (such as the Redoubt, Military Cemetery, interior of Gate Pah Church), and numerous pretty bits of scenery in the neighbourhood, (such as the Wairoa River near the bridge, bush scenery at Oropi, etc). The cover of the book is to be of inlaid New Zealand woods, silver mounted …” [x]

It was eventually presented to the Princess by Lady Ranfurly in Auckland in June,[xi] and Mrs Maxwell received an acknowledgement of the gift by telegram.[xii] Enquiries have been made with the Royal Collection, but further details of the contents of this album and its present location are unknown (F. Kean, pers comm).

Tauranga: The Capital of the Bay of Plenty, by G. Arnold Ward. Illustrated from photographs by Mrs Humphreys, The Weekly Press, Vol 58 Issue 11091 (Supplement), 9 October 1901
Image from microfilm courtesy of Christchurch City Libraries

On 9 October 1901 the Weekly Press of Christchurch published “a special Tauranga supplement, containing nearly forty views in and around the town, taken by Mary Humphreys, and a short descriptive article by Mr G. Arnold Ward.” These photographs included “general views of the town, the harbour, the Mount, Wairoa river … the various churches, Government buildings, wharves, Halfway house, Gate Pa Monument … [Te Puke’s] pretty little church [and] one of the Te Puke division of the T.M.R. on parade.” [xiii],[xiv]

1.     1.    The Strand, looking north
2.       Early morning, Tauranga harbour
3.       Looking up Wharf street, from the wharf
4.       The Strand, looking south
5.       Panorama of Tauranga from the Redoubt
6.       Boys’ School
7.       Girls’ School
8.       Ruahihi Rapids (see 99-337 and 03-245)
9.       Half-way House between Rotorua and Tauranga (see 99-348)
10.   Monuments [Mission Cemetery]
11.   English Church (see 99-360)
12.   Wairoa Bridge (see 99-339 and 02-046)
13.   Unloading firewood on the beach
14.   Mauao and the Old Sulphur Works
15.   Maori Women on the Strand
16.   Armstrong gun in the Redoubt
17.   Ammunition limbers and cannon in the Redoubt
18.   Wesleyan Church
19.   Wairoa River (see 99-338)
20.   Old Mission Church (see 99-358)
21.   Soldiers’ and sailors’ graves
22.   Roman Catholic Church
23.   Presbyterian Church (see 99-359)
24.   Te Puke Church
25.   Gate Pa monument (see 99-346)
26.   Maoris on the Strand
27.   Maoris returning home
28.   Post Office (see 99-340)
29.   The Mount
30.   Te Puke Mounted Rifles on Parade

A number of these views are immediately recognisable as having been published later by Mary Humphreys as postcards, such as the views of the Ruahihi rapids (Wairoa rapids), English church and Wairoa bridge. Others have survived as previously unattributed prints in the Tauranga Library collection, such as images of the Holy Trinity Church, Mission Church (Elms Chapel), old Post Office and Halfway House, Ngawaro  – which featured in my October article about Halfway House as a possible attribution to her, now gratifyingly confirmed. I have provided links to where those images may be seen.

Mrs E.B. Maxwell and the Mission Church, bef Oct 1901
Photographed by Mary Humphreys
Collection of Tauranga City Library, Pae Korokī Ref. Album Box 1 (99-358)

A PDF version of the full Weekly News supplement, supplied by kind courtesy of the Christchurch Library, is downloadable here. The images reproduced are unfortunately poor quality, understandably having been scanned from a microfilm, so if readers can identify any further versions of them existing in private or institutional collections, I would be keen to hear from you (Email).

Mary Humphreys had undertaken three large photographic projects in 1901, resulting in the publishing of several collections in the newspapers, and significant publicity around the album of views presented during the Royal Visit. Tauranga’s other photographer Thomas E. Price closed his studio and moved to Auckland where he had purchased the Newton branch of J.W. Hemus’ Sarony Studio in September 1901.[xv] Price did return for brief visits in April and October 1902, and then more permanently in 1903, when he appears to have reopened the studio, and it was still operating as late as February 1906.[xvi] However, the absence of a significant number of extant portraits by Humphreys suggests she did not see herself in the role of a studio photographer. She had by this time built up a substantial catalogue of views, and continued to avail herself of opportunities as they presented themselves, as we shall see in Part3.

References

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[i] “Shipping Departures. March 6. SS Waiotahi,” Bay of Plenty Times, March 6, 1901, Volume 29 Issue 1120 edition.

[ii] W.M. Commons, “Excursion to Opotiki Show, Races, White Island. Advertisement,” Bay of Plenty Times, March 1, 1901, Volume 29 Issue 4118 edition.

[iii] “Untitled [Excursionists on the SS Waiotahi],” Bay of Plenty Times, March 6, 1901, Volume 29 Issue 1120 edition.

[iv] “Opotiki Summer Race Meeting,” New Zealand Graphic, March 23, 1901, Volume 26 Issue 12 edition.

[v] “Opotiki Agricultural and Pastoral Show,” New Zealand Graphic, March 23, 1901, Volume 26 Issue 12 edition.

[vi] “A Burning Island - A Trip to White Island, Bay of Plenty,” New Zealand Graphic, March 23, 1901, Volume 26 Issue 12 edition.

[vii] “Untitled. [NZ Graphic Article, A Burning Island],” Auckland Star, March 19, 1901, Volume 32 Issue 66 edition.

[viii] Robert Thomson Goulding and Margaret (nee Wallis) Goulding, An interview with Mr and Mrs R.T. Goulding, interview by Mrs van Ooorde, December 11, 1975, Tauranga City Libraries Archive, https://paekoroki.tauranga.govt.nz/nodes/view/19542.

[ix] “Untitled. [Souvenir for Duchess of York],” Bay of Plenty Times, April 5, 1901, Volume 29 Issue 4132 edition.

[x] “Tauranga’s Present to the Duchess of Cornwall,” Bay of Plenty Times, May 29, 1901, Volume 29 Issue 4154 edition.

[xi] “Tauranga’s Present to the Duchess of York,” Bay of Plenty Times, June 24, 1901, Volume 29 Issue 4164 edition.

[xii] “Tauranga Ladies’ Gift to the Duchess of York,” New Zealand Graphic, July 20, 1901, Volume 27 Issue 3 edition.

[xiii] “Untitled. [Photographs by Mary Humphreys Published in Christchurch Press],” Bay of Plenty Times, October 9, 1901, Volume XXIX Issue 4210 edition.

[xiv] Gerald Arnold Ward, “Tauranga: The Capital of the Bay of Plenty,” The Weekly Press, October 9, 1901, Volume 58 Issue 11091 (Supplement) edition, Christchurch City Libraries.

[xv] Thomas Edward Price, “T.E. Price, of the Sarony Studio, Newton, Auckland. Advertisement,” Bay of Plenty Times, September 2, 1901, Volume XXIX Issue 4194 edition.

[xvi] “Borough Council [Meeting],” Bay of Plenty Times, February 7, 1906, Volume 31 Issue 4859 edition.