The Centennial Film in Tauranga, 1938-39

From Tauranga City Library’s archives

A monthly blog about interesting items in our collection

In 1938 the Government Film Studios, part of the Tourist and Publicity Department, started filming for a production to celebrate New Zealand’s centennial year in 1940. A short sequence of settlers landing from the ship that carried them from England was shot on location on Ocean Beach. The lower slopes of Mauao are visible in the background, but are not identified.
There are several reports in the Bay of Plenty Times on the filming of what it called the New Zealand Centenary Film. A front page article on Friday 4 November 1938 describes the arrangements being made ahead of the arrival of the production unit and two lead performers. They included collecting ‘properties’ to represent the arrivals’ belongings, and recruiting extras for the scenes on the beach.
The St John Ambulance Association proposed holding a fundraising ball where the attendees would attend in period costume, the best of which “will be given the opportunity of appearing in the film”.
The ball was held in the Town Hall on 28 November, with the costumes worn described enthusiastically in the Times the following day. Some of those selected as extras are listed, including a Miss Doreen Mander. Pae Korokī contains scans of two copies of a photo of a Miss Dorothy Mander in costume – presumably the same person.

Dorothy Mander in costume for filming on Ocean Beach, Mount Maunganui
(Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries Photo 01-343)

 Planned weekend rehearsals went ahead over the weekend of 2 and 4 December 1938, despite bad weather. There is a gap in reporting until 16 December when the director, Mr. Bridgman, and leading lady of the film, Miss Una Weller (accompanied by her mother), judged the costumes at a fancy dress ball for school children held at the Peter Pan Hall in Pacific Avenue. On 20 January 1939 there was a notice calling for extras for some filming at Whareroa.
Pae Korokī has scans of five other photographs taken during the filming on Ocean Beach. Three were provided for scanning by Ray Armstrong, one by Marion Proud, and we have a print from an unknown donor in our Climate Controlled Room.

Filming on Ocean Beach, Mount Maunganui 1938-1939

(Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries Photo 01-155)

Sets and extras on Ocean Beach, Mount Maunganui 1938-1939

Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries Photo 01-156

These two photos were provided by Te Ao Mārama's then New Zealand Room team for a Bay of Plenty Times feature called “Back in time”, one in 2001 and another in 2006. Several people responded with more information - "Mr W. D. Moxham of Alexandra [writes that].... as a child he was an 'extra' in the film, qualifying for this privilege not because of his acting prowess but because he was top in arithmetic that day at Mount Maunganui Primary School" (Bay of Plenty Times, 18 August 2001).

This information enabled the dates of the filming to be narrowed down. However, no informant could remember the title the film was eventually released under – “One Hundred Crowded Years”. The articles found in Papers Past for 1938 helped make the connection. This led to the discovery of more detail about the production from a chapter in a 2004 book edited by William Renwick (listed in the Sources and available online). This doesn't mention who played the Māori seen on screen, opening a hāngī to feed the new arrivals, guiding the settlers into the bush, and later attacking a redoubt.

A lack of resources and the outbreak of World War 2 in September 1939 dramatically slowed the completion of the film. It wasn’t released until the very end of the Centennial Year, when “the government gave it to the National Patriotic Fund Board, which made it available to provincial patriotic committees to screen as a fundraiser” (Renwick, p. 269). It toured the country for the next 18 months, raising £1,200.

The fifty-minute film can now be watched on Archives New Zealand’s YouTube channel, with the landing sequence starting at 12 minutes 35 seconds, followed by the pioneers’ journey inland to start breaking in the countryside for farming (filmed around Ōropi at the same time).

 

 

As you might expect of a celebratory film of the period it skims quickly over the complexities of the Treaty of Waitangi, land ownership and later instances of warfare between Māori and Pākehā. This may be particularly so since the film’s ending included footage of New Zealand soldiers boarding a ship back to the Old World, to fight in a war with no certain outcome.

Exploring part of the set built on Ocean Beach, Mount Maunganui 1938-1939

Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries Photo 01-269

In early December 1938 the film’s director wrote to the Mount Maunganui Town Board for permission to build “temporary huts, etc., on the ocean front necessary in the taking of the Centenary film”. This was granted, but it looks like the budget didn’t stretch to anything too elaborate.

Sources:

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXVII:

Issue 12497, 4 November 1938, Page 1

Issue 12517, 29 November 1938, Page 1

Issue 12521, 3 December 1938, Page 4

Issue 12521, 3 December 1938, Page 5

Issue 12522, 5 December 1938, Page 1

Issue 12531, 16 December 1938, Page 4

Issue 12258, 20 January 1939, Page 4

 Renwick, William. One Hundred Crowded Years: The Centennial Film. Chapter 19 of Creating a National Spirit: Celebrating New Zealand's Centennial. Wellington : Victoria University Press, 2004. Pages 260-270.

“The Tin Shed” : the origins of the National Film Unit. Wellington : New Zealand Film Archive, 1981.

Early documentary film in New Zealand - last paragraph. Retrieved 20 December 2025

One Hundred Crowded Years. Wikipedia. Retrieved 18 December 2025. 

Written by Leslie Goodliffe, Information Access Specialist at Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries

The Pilot House on Mauao

 
Pilot House on the slopes of Mauao, Mount Maunganui, c. 1950s
Collection of Te Ao Mārama  - Tauranga City Libraries, Pae Korokī Ref. Photo 99-243

Access by sea has always been important to Tauranga since the first European ship, the Herald, entered the harbour in 1826. The barriers of the Kaimai Range and a swampy strip of land between hills and sea prohibited any form of transport except on foot for many years.

By the time the Land Wars ceased, there had been an increase in the number and size of ships entering the harbour, and several had been wrecked or grounded on sand banks. In December 1864 the Auckland Provincial Government appointed Thomas Sparrow Carmichael as pilot for Tauranga and provided him with a tent to live in on Maunganui, as Mauao was generally referred to in those days. He had two boatmen to row him out to the ships as they waited offshore.

By 1866 the Provincial Government built a house for the pilot and another for the boatmen. Little is known about these buildings and their exact locations. One theory is that it might have been uphill above the Pilot Wharf, where they would have access to their boat, and the more likely theory, nearer to the location of the second pilot house built above the present camping ground, with a view out to sea. Ships needing a pilot would fire off a gun to signal their presence. The pilot then raised a flag to notify the townspeople that the entry of a ship was imminent.

With the end of the Land Wars, the decline in provisions and other goods needed for the military noticeably reduced the volume of ships into Tauranga and, after six years, Carmichael’s position was terminated. The money saved from upkeep was spent on building wharves on The Strand. However, after a few years, and growth in population of the town, an official decision was made to re-establish the position of pilot and in 1873 an experienced master, Captain Hannibal Marks, took over. By then, the original pilot house was in a state of “rack and ruin”.^[i]

Pilot House, Mauao, Mount Maunganui, April 1955
Collection of Te Ao Mārama  - Tauranga City Libraries, Pae Korokī Ref. Photo 04-625

The Auckland Provincial Council approved payment of £200 for a new Pilot House in June 1874 and a second house for the son and family.^[ii] Captain Marks and his son, also called Hannibal, were drowned when the pilot boat capsized in the harbour in August 1879. Following the death of Hannibal Marks the Marine Department appointed Captain Best, formerly of Thames, to the position of Harbour Master and Pilot.^[iii] He appeared to have occupied the Pilot House in the Domain, as the newspaper recorded the Presbyterian Picnic as gathering on the beach behind Captain Best’s house. During all of this excitement, the pilot himself was watching for the arrival of the Lady Jocelyn, the first immigrant ship to arrive directly at Tauranga.^[iv] Stormy weather caused the loss of the “iron chimney” on the Pilot House in 1881. This was probably a chimney made of two facing sheets of corrugated iron inside a timber frame, a style common in early buildings.

Grace Earle & Violet Petheridge seated on a cow, Mauao, Mount Maunganui, 1920
Collection of Te Ao Mārama  - Tauranga City Libraries, Pae Korokī Ref. Photo 05-456

With the cessation of the pilot service, the house fell empty, and it was suggested that it be handed over from the Marine Department to the Tauranga Improvement Society to use as holiday accommodation for visitors to the beach. The idea was even floated that Mount Maunganui become a destination for invalids like the sanatoriums at Te Puke and Rotorua.^[v] Although there was some enthusiasm for transferring ownership of the Pilot House reserve to the Borough Council, it eventually became the property of the Harbour Board like the nearby Mount Drury (Hopukiore). The Harbour Board repaired the roof and part of the house several times, and the Pilot House reserve was fenced, with some camp sites made available. Various people leased the Pilot House and reserve for raising poultry, solely for the accommodation or, as occurred in March 1933, for a returned soldier from the First World War and his family with their four donkeys.^[vi] The cottage had been described as kauri, having five rooms with electricity and a tank water supply with a four-roomed second cottage alongside. The whole property totaled one and a half acres.^[vii]

Pilot House and Mount Drury (Hopukiore), c. 1950s
Collection of Te Ao Mārama  - Tauranga City Libraries, Pae Korokī Ref. Photo 99-244

The new tenant Fred Davies, with his family, and the donkeys called Smithy, Murphy, Brownie and Snowy, were to be a drawcard for the Mount Main Beach for the next twenty years. Fred named the donkeys after his mates who died at Gallipoli. He also built a corrugated iron shop opposite the Oceanside Hotel selling ice cream and soft drinks. The Davies sons supervised the donkey rides and when they left school their mother took over, until 1952 when she moved out of the Pilot House to her new home in Marine Parade.^[viii] The visit of the young Sel Neal in 1951 shows a building with a rusting roof and deteriorating cladding. Thus ended occupation of the Tauranga Pilot House. The house stood for a few more years but is missing from images taken in the 1960s, and the second house is recorded as being demolished in 1964.^[ix]

Sel Neal, age 9 with a donkey, at the Pilot House, Mauao, Mount Maunganui, 1951
Collection of Justine Neal

References

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^[i] Bay of Plenty Times (BOPT), 9 May 1874

^[ii] Daily Southern Cross, 13 Jun 1874

^[iii] BOPT, 4 Sep 1879

^[iv] BOPT, 4 Jan 1881

^[v] BOPT, 25 Jul 1887

^[vi] BOPT, 5 Mar 1933

^[vii] BOPT , 9 Sep 1930

^[viii] Neal, Justine, The Donkeys of Ocean Beach, Historical Review, Bay of Plenty Journal of History, Vol 64, No.1, May 2016, p19

^[ix] Cunningham, B. & Musgrave, K., A History of Mount Maunganui, Commissioned by Mount Maunganui Borough Council, 1989, p. 18