Brain Watkins House Garden Party – A Special Milestone

 

Mr and Mrs B.C. Julian examining a family postcard album on the front steps of Brain Watkins House at the Tauranga Historical Society’s inaugural Garden Party in December 1979
Photograph by the Bay of Plenty Times photographer, published 3 Dec 1979
Courtesy of Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries, Pae Korokī Ref. Photo nzmec-33738

In November the Society hosted visitors to the Brain Watkins House and garden as part of the biennial Bay of Plenty Garden & Art Festival, the second time we have done this instead of our usual Garden Party. What members and visitors alike probably didn’t appreciate was that the occasion happened to be the 45^thanniversary, almost to the day, of our first Garden Party on 1 December 1979.

Willie Watkins and Elva Brain, c. August 1965
Photo Brain Watkins House Collection

The home of Elva Brain and Willie Watkins on the corner of Cameron Road and Elizabeth Street was left to the Society earlier that year as a bequest in Elva’s will and the garden party was an opportunity for members and guests to inspect the house and gardens which are still the Society’s home, and an important focus of our activities. More than 150 members and their guests attended, many in Victorian costumes, including then Mayor Eric Faulkner with his wife Connie, MP for Tauranga, Keith Allen, film and television actress Pat Evison, and visitors from historical societies in Hamilton, Whakatāne and Te Awamutu. We retain strong links with the Whakatāne & District Historical Society in our joint publication of the Historical Review, the Bay of Plenty Journal of History.

Wooden half hull model by Joseph Brain, Brain Watkins House Collection

Guests had an opportunity to view the rooms of the home containing not only the existing furnishings in a setting reminiscent of earlier decades, but also mementoes collected over a century. On display were old family photographs and documents, including Joseph Brain’s will, plans of his engineering projects around Tauranga, early photographs of the house, cups won at sailing regattas and even prizes won by Elva when a schoolgirl.

Elva Brain in the arms of her mother Kate, with her four older sisters, on the steps of their home, c. early 1890s
Carte de visite photograph, Brain Watkins House Collection

Elva was born in 1891 the house which her father Joseph Brain had built a decade earlier, and she lived in it for most of her life. She and her sister Bessie inherited the property when her mother died, and she became the sole owner after her sister died in 1957. The layout of the rooms and their contents have changed little since 1979, the Society choosing to preserve and maintain the look and feel of the early New Zealand home, with all its idiosyncrasies.

Brain Watkins House guides Leslie Goodliffe and Glennis Smith with the Brain family postcard album which featured in the 1979 Garden Party photo, 16 Feb 2025
Photo: Brett Payne

We also look after the more ephemeral contents of the house, such as the postcard album pictured in the photograph. Our conservation plan is currently being updated and our volunteer team not only show visitors around the house, but keep up an ongoing monitoring of the house’s condition. With the assistance of both the Tauranga Heritage Collection and the Tauranga Library’s Archives, the Society is in the process of conserving and digitising many of the house’s artifacts, and ensuring that they are cared for in the most appropriate physical and environmental conditions.

Bishop George Selwyn, Archdeacon Alfred Brown and the Flying Fish

Among the small missionary schooners like the Herald, Karere and Kukupa that sailed through Tauranga Harbour’s Maunganui entrance during the 1830s and 40s, was the 17 ton Flying Fish. Built at the Bay of Islands for use as an Anglican missionary vessel, it should not be confused with the Pacific Island’s trading schooner Flying Fish, 35 tons, which under Captain Webster, frequently arrived at, and departed Auckland during this decade).¹

Two men at work on Flying Fish at her berth at Orakei, Auckland, circa. 1844-1847

After Bishop Samuel Marsden’s death in 1838, the Church Missionary Society in New Zealand was led by the Rev. Henry Williams. A former Royal Navy Lieutenant, Williams who had built built the Flying Fish, wrote that the need for a Bishop was very great. George Augustus Selwyn was selected for the position in 1841, with responsibilities that included oversight of the Church of England’s work in New Zealand, as well as among the islands of Melanesia.² Selwyn’s first missionary vessel for use in New Zealand waters was the Flying Fish. A swift and most seaworthy vessel, from 1842 he often referred to it as ‘my yacht’, ‘my little schooner’, and greatly enjoyed taking a turn at the tiller.³ Later remodeled with a deck and cabin, the little schooner proved an ideal craft for visiting New Zealand’s North and South Island mission stations, accessible only by sea and often through challenging harbour entrances.

Bishop George Augustus Selwyn

Selwyn had a close relationship with Tauranga’s leading missionary Alfred Brown. In 1843 and 1844 Brown was encouraged in his arduous overland evangelising work when Selwyn trekked from Auckland to visit him at Matamata and Maungatautari, with an earlier visit to Brown at Te Papa in December 1842. He also showed his faith in Brown’s efforts by appointing him Archdeacon of Tauranga on 20th September 1844. Selwyn was to show his confidence in the new Archdeacon still further, as there is on record a letter written by Brown, on 29th February 1848, declining the appointment to a Bishopric which had been offered him by Selwyn.⁴  

On 9 March 1845, Selwyn recorded that the Flying Fish had made the quickest passage ever recorded for a vessel sailing between Wellington and Auckland. ⁵ Ably skippered by Captain Champion, the Flying Fish was also known as the ‘college schooner’, as it regularly transported missionaries and Maori ‘college boys’ to and from Thames, Tauranga and other Bay of Plenty mission stations to Selwyn’s St Johns College at Kohimarama, Auckland. During mid-1845, Brown was conveyed by the Flying Fish to Tauranga on an urgent visit to see his wife Charlotte and dying invalid son Marsh who had previously been cared for at St. John’s College.

Archdeacon Alfred Nesbitt Brown

Alfred Brown and William Williams, who arrived overland from the Turanga (Poverty Bay) mission station, sailed to Auckland on the Flying Fish for a meeting of Anglican archdeacons, held on 2 and 3 September 1847. Williams briefly recorded a swift overnight voyage to the College anchorage.

At once we set sail with a light wind & crossed the firth of the Thames. Passed the Island of Pakihi at daylight grounding for a short time on a sandspit. Beat up to Auckland with a strong westerly breeze and at four oclock we landed… ⁶

Captain Champion and the Flying Fish made additional voyages to Tauranga’s Te Papa mission station during the 1840s. On 26 September 1846, the schooner returned to St John’s College with flax, potatoes, maize and timber from Tauranga.⁷ In the same year, Selwyn sailed to Tauranga to conduct a confirmation service for some of Brown’s Māori converts at Te Papa^.8

Selwyn’s arduous, extended voyages to New Zealand’s scattered CMS coastal mission stations proved, at times, long and lonely experiences. At the Bay of Islands on 9 March 1845, he recorded:

 

I am sitting in my little cabin, in the schooner Flying Fish of seventeen tons burden; with no other companions than my sailing master, Champion, late boatswain of the Government brig Victoria, and my crew of three New Zealanders.⁹

Captain Champion at the tiller of the Flying Fish

Selwyn did not remain in his cabin for long. On 11 March the ‘rebel’ chiefs Hone Heke Pokai and Te Ruki Kawiti’s warriors attacked Kororareka (Russell) in the first battle of the Flagstaff War. Selwyn, Champion and their Māori crew took some of the terrified settler refugees aboard the Flying Fish, and joined the rescue fleet that transported them safely to Auckland. Initially offered a much larger vessel for his voyages that year, Selwyn, by now an accomplished sailor and commander, declined the offer. Replying by letter to his would-be benefactor he wrote:

In answer to your noble offer of a schooner similar to that given to the Bishop of Newfoundland, I must tell you, that any thing above twenty tons is considered large in our harbours, the greater number of our coasting vessels being about that size; and, if managed by steady men, they perform their voyages with great safety.¹⁰

Bishop George Selwyn continued to sail the sea-battered Flying Fish around his coastal diocese until 1848, when the schooner’s leaks began topping the cabin floor. The final straw it was reported, occurred when he stepped out of bed one morning ‘into a salt water bath’.¹¹  In July 1848, Selwyn took command of the larger 20-ton Undine, another Bay of Islands-built schooner. Whether this vessel also became a familiar sight on the waters of Tauranga Harbour during this era is currently under investigation.

References

¹ ‘Old Mission Ships’, New Zealand Herald, 27 July 1935: 15. 

² Selwyn, George Augustus, Te Ara, New Zealand biographies

https://teara.govt.nz › biographies › selwyn-george-aug...

³ Tucker, H. W; Memoir of the Life and Episcopate of George Augustus Selwyn. Bishop of New Zealand, William Wells Gardiner, London, 1879: 148.

Tucker, 1879: 148.

⁴ Waikato Independent, 11 May 1939: 3

⁵ Tucker, 1879: 187.

⁶ Porter, Francis, (ed.), The Turanga Journals 1840-1850” Letters and Journals of William and Jane Williams, Missionaries to Poverty Bay. Victoria University Press, 1Wellington, 1974: 442.

⁷ New Zealander, 26 September 1842: 2.

⁸ Williams, 1974: 370.

⁹ Tucker 1879: 187.

¹⁰ Ibid.

¹¹ Williams, 1974: 464.

Illustrations

1 Hutton, Thomas Biddulph, 1824-1886. (56) The Flying Fish. Hutton, Thomas Biddulph (Rev), 1824-1886: [Three sketchbooks of New Zealand scenes and people. 1844-1847]. Ref: E-111-1-071. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand.

2 Mason & Co (Photographers). George Augustus Selwyn. Engraved by W. Hale, 1878-1879 from a photograph by Messrs Mason & Co. [London, 1889]. Curteis, George Herbert, 1824-1894: Bishop Selwyn of New Zealand and of Lichfield ... (London, Kegan Paul, 1889). Ref: PUBL-0148-front. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand.

3 Hemus & Hanna (Firm). Hemus & Hanna (Auckland) fl 1879-1882: Portrait of Archdeacon A N Brown. Ref: PA3-0103. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand.

4 Hutton, Thomas Biddulph, 1824-1886. (70) Champion at the tiller. Flying Fish. Hutton, Thomas Biddulph (Rev), 1824-1886: [Three sketchbooks of New Zealand scenes and people. 1844-1847]. Ref: E-111-1-085. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand.