Wooden Monuments – Markers of the Past

Sometimes only trees are left to remind us of human settlement. And sometimes their absence does the same. Now that a lattice of shelter-belts characterises the landscape around Tauranga, including my home locale of Te Puna, it is difficult to picture the transformation that has taken place as a consequence of both Māori and European settlement.

Google map, screenshot of Te Puna area, Snodgrass Road in the centre

About a millennium ago, when a group of ocean-voyaging waka made landfall in the sheltered waters of Tauranga Moana, the new immigrants found a remnant population, Nga Marama, and a vista of timbered hills receding to what came to be known as the Minden dome. A tiny sample of that dense bush, the reserve at Whakamarama, can be seen as a dark irregularly-shaped patch in the bottom left-hand corner of the above Google maps image[1]. But even that is not ngahere horomata (virgin forest). It was milled for timber in the early twentieth century by the Sharplins, a rival to the Gammans’ operation in Oropi[2].

Most of Tauranga was without trees for centuries before Europeans arrived. An early survey noted its countryside as “good soil, fern and tutu”[3] and the sketch made of the harbour entrance looking south from the deck of the HMS Pandora[4] offers no indication of a fuzzy, tree-lined inland horizon. Archaeological studies tell us that the local style of agriculture was a cycle of burning, cultivation and planting, moving on when the soil ceased to be productive and returning when it had recovered.This allowed no time for aboriculture. Such timber as there was was likely dedicated to building waka and important wharenui. The most venerated tree in Te Puna, a pohutukawa growing on the ravaged slopes of Pukewhanake close to the Wairoa River, is unlikely to be very ancient, although these tolerant and adaptable trees can live for half a century or more.

Old gum tree, corner of Tangitu and Te Puna Roads, 2025
Photo by Beth Bowden

The trees we see in Te Puna, therefore, were all planted after European settlement. Many of them were indeed markers of settlement, nineteenth-century examples of exotic arrivals in waves of arboreal fashion. This Australian gum has stood at the end of Te Puna Road for possibly a century. A rapid-growing species, this specimen was already huge to my five-year-old eyes in 1958.

Phoenix palms, end of Snodgrass Road Te Puna, 2025
Photo by Beth Bowden

The rusticity of this image was chosen in deliberate contrast to the sophistication of a stand of three phoenix palms that mark the end of Snodgrass Road, an area of Te Puna that was subdivided by landowner Sandy Snodgrass between 1930 and 1950.

Sutton kauri woodlot, Wallace Road Te Puna, 2025
Photo by Beth Bowden

For years after the Snodgrass homestead itself had disappeared, the Norfolk pine that marked a shady corner of its tennis lawn stood high above the surrounding rows of casuarina and matsudana willow shelter lines: cheap, mass-produced and unbeautiful trees kept trimmed for optimal economic benefit to the orchards they protect. That pine no longer pierces the skyline of Te Puna; but just along the road, on land that once was Snodgrass’s farm, a stand of kauri marks a twentieth-century investment.

Baby grey heron, Ettrick Farm, 1960
Photo by Shirley Sparks

Snodgrass Road is a name applied to a more ancient ara – a well-used pathway between the harbourside and the Minden that surveyors marked as a convenient line for a road. At its inland end, the trees changed. Farmers like John Munro preferred sturdy macrocarpas to wind-tossed fronds. Not only did a line of conifers mark his boundary with the Harper property to the north; he planted a macrocarpa near his barn and cowshed, at the bottom of wife Mary’s beautiful garden. By the time my parents took over the property, which they named Ettrick, this tree was a vast Ent-like structure.[5] Its strength and generous shade made it the ideal site for the periodic slaughter and butchering of a farm sheep for the household’s mutton. A more innocent image was caught by my mother in 1960.

Macrocarpa planted on L T Harper’s property, Te Puna
Photo taken 1970 by Shirley Sparks

The Harper farm had its signature macrocarpa too. I think Len’s father must have planted it, on the very top of the hill that was the highest point of their farm. This tree, much loved by the Harper family and ours, succumbed to disease in 2015 or so. It was a true landmark on both State Highway 2 and the horizon of the surprisingly small pastoral area that made up the productive part of the Munro’s, Sharp’s, and then the Sparks’ family farm.

Hay harvesting, Ettrick 1967
Photo by Shirley Sparks

My father made his hay on paddocks that were flat enough to take the machinery. While he cut and wind-rowed the grass himself, using his trusty Fergusson tractor, Rex Williams’ baler was a large and unwieldy beast, and the bales once made were picked up on a truck. Gradient was the key factor in an efficient, mechanised harvest. And macrocarpas loomed over the whole operation.

Hand-drawn map of Ettrick by Shirley Sparks, 1964
Photo by Beth Bowden

The treeline boundary on the lower left marks an important, original survey line that dates from Theophilus Heal’s map of 1867[6]. Here it is again, running on the diagonal in a hand-drawn map done by my mother in 1964.

Shirley Sparks mock-planting with a tiny trowel on the new house site, Ettrick, 1967
Photo by Beth Bowden

Local memory is bound up in trees. They have a chancy existence amongst their human companions, being vulnerable to development pressures, carelessness and climate change; but, left to themselves, their lifetimes extending well beyond those of the people who planted them, they can command a quiet significance. My mother who turned 95 while this essay was being written, has planted many and many a tree, not all of which have lasted her distance.  But those that will survive her will carry her memory. The same is true for others who set their saplings at roadsides and on hilltops. Trees may indeed have a secret life – and they tell a public story too.

References

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[1] For an interactive scan of the extent of the thousand-year-old Kaimai bushline, go to

https://www.google.com/maps/@-37.7041192,176.0304427,7647m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MDEwNy4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D

[2] https://taurangahistorical.blogspot.com/2020/06/

[3] Map of Otumoitai West, Parish of Te Puna, Cook County, SD 420

[4] https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ Pacific Ocean NEW ZEALAND From Surveys in HM Ships Acheron & Pandora Captn. JL Stokes, Comndrs B Drury & GH Richards Assisted by… 1848-1855

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ent

[6]  Map of Otumoetai Block, parish of Te Puna, Cook County, SD 424

Godfrey Lindsay Mackersey 1929-2023

Godfrey and Scott

Godfrey was a farmer and family man, bush activist and conservationist who lived a life on the edge, over 70 years of it in the Tauranga region. He passed on late last year at the age of 94.

He was born the youngest of four to a Hastings family and his first brush with death was the 1931 Napier earthquake, where he was narrowly missed by a falling chimney. He remembered an idyllic childhood as he commented that he was too young to be aware of everyone's financial challenges, in particular their own, as his Dad was a generous hearted lawyer and often waived fees.

Two things which shaped his youth were picking peas for "Mr Wattie" and being trained as a dispatch cyclist in the event of a German invasion. He reached School Certificate level before heading out to work on farms; his eventual aim, owning one.

Massey College occupied 1949 and 1950. Following his studies, a technician's position became available at the Ruakura Research Station near Hamilton for which he was accepted. Keen to get back on the land, he did a couple of stints scrub-cutting for a distant relative at the back of Te Puke and later in the King Country. However, the farm dream was not getting any closer so he returned to Ruakura.

Godfrey and Margaret in a bush clearing

Enter Margaret Bell, of a Tauranga farming family, whose mother needed a sharemilker on the family farm (Townhead Farm) on Cambridge Road. A crash course on how to manage dairy cows for a town milk supply operation was undertaken. He enjoyed the company of Mrs Bell who was a prominent educationist and political character.

In the mid-1950s Godfrey and Margaret became engaged, then married and went on to have three daughters. The sheep farm dream persisted and by the mid-1960s the 'writing was on the wall' for Townhead Farm due to Tauranga city development.

Makereti

720 acres of 'cutover' bush and scrub became available in upper Whakamarama and for ten years they commuted between the two properties, clearing land to farm and constructing a new home. Makereti, as the farm became known, had the old Tauranga Harbour Board Office building to serve as a temporary woolshed for many seasons.

In 1978 the Mackersey family gifted a bush block on the farm to Otumoetai College, where their daughters had attended secondary school and Godfrey was on the Board of Governors. This is now the Oteora Outdoor Education Camp where students have the opportunity to explore the native wonders.

Godfrey with Jock

Godfrey was very active in his rural community, being the Dairy Representative for the Bay of Plenty Federated Farmers and setting up their Farm Cadet Scheme. He was also on the Waikato-Rotorua National Parks and Reserves Board, involved in the Kaimai Bush Campaign during the 1970s, a member of Rotary, Corrigal Trust, Avalon Trust and last, but not least, a very long standing member of the Tauranga Historical Society.

Barrett's Store

Guest article by Max Avery

Barrett’s Store Omokoroa, post-1954
Image courtesy of Tauranga City Libraries, Pae Korokī Ref. 06-063

The death of Mrs Freda Elsie Barrett on June 5, 2022  prompted a look back at her family’s link with one of the Tauranga districts best remembered groceries - Barrett’s Store at Whakamarama, once the only commercial enterprise on the highway between Bethlehem and Katikati. The store existed under the Barrett name from 1949 to 1966, and although it was first known as the Omokoroa Store, and carried the names of previous and subsequent owners, most older Tauranga residents remember it as Barrett’s Store. The enterprise had the distinction of two locations, and in its second form became ostensibly the first self-help checkout supermarket with trolleys in New Zealand. Grocery executives from several parts of New Zealand were said to have flown into local top dressing strips to see this American-style innovation in operation.

The original Omokoroa Store, cnr Old Highway/Te Puna Point Rd, western view
Private family collection

The store was first built on the corner of the old Tauranga-Katikati highway and Te Puna Point Road (later becoming Station Rd, Omokoroa Station Rd and finally Barrett Rd and, on the northern side of SH2, Plummer’s Point Rd.) The business was opposite the Tawhitinui Marae and was probably initiated by Ken and Nancy Gordon in 1926. The little motor transport that existed in those years turned off the highway onto Te Puna Point Road as the only way to reach Omokoroa Beach (also known as Crapp’s Point), passing in a cloud of dust in the summer, with mud clogged wheels in the winter. Otherwise only the clip-clop of horses' hooves and the grinding of waggon wheels on the metalled surface disturbed the bucolic peace of what was then known as the Omokoroa Store.

Installation of Plume benzine pumps at Barrett's Store, southern wall
Private family collection

Jack Borrows is said to have bought the store, which included a small living area for the grocer, about 1930. The building was rather oddly sited, close and corner-wise to the road, making it awkward to extend, which is what Mr Borrows was doing when he sold it to Jack and Edna Ewart late in 1939, for Mrs Ewart later described it as “a little and almost new junction store.” The population in the district was by then expanding, and with the store too small to meet the demands made upon it, more extensions began. Later in their tenure a van delivery service, each day to a different area in the Omokoroa-Whakamarama area, was introduced and Plume brand petrol pumps were installed.

Barrett's Store and accomodation, c1940s, northern aspect
Private family collection

When Matthew John (usually known as Jack) and Doris Barrett bought the store on 1 May 1949 it was more associated with Whakamarama than Omokoroa. They arrived from Buckland (between Pukekohe and Tuakau). With three sons, George, Graham and John, and daughter Joan. All helped make Barrett’s Store the service-centre and landmark it became during the next seventeen years. The need for fresh meat was seen early by Jack Barrett, a butcher by trade. Assisted by Graham (Freda Barrett’s husband) he built a butchery adjacent to the store, and Graham became store butcher. George ran the store, until he moved to Auckland in 1957, when John joined the business and took over. Joan distinguished herself by becoming office manager, mastering the cash register-cum-electronic scales at the checkout in the supermarket.

Two houses were built adjacent to the first store on the corner of Te Puna Point Road for George and Graham with help from David Borrell and his sons Billy and Cotty. Early in 1952 Jack (d. 1969) and Doris (d. 1963) moved to a house on the Omokoroa Beach front. At about the same time construction of a new section of State Highway Two from the Te Puna Stream Bridge to Pahoia began. Realising they would be bypassed by the new highway traffic, the Barretts purchased land on the corner of the Te Puna Point Road and the new highway and began the construction of the new supermarket, which incorporated a butchery, hardware, drapery and Mobilgas petrol pumps. Store and highway opened at about the same time,  c. 1953-54. The 470-metre section of the Te Puna Point Road which linked the two highways was renamed Barrett Rd. Enlarged and modernised, the original store building is today residential.

Interior of Barrett's store, Omokoroa, post-1954
Image courtesy of Tauranga City Libraries, Pae Korokī Ref. 06-064

For about a decade the name “Barrett” on the shopfront identified the new enterprise, with family continuing the same service to the district, selling a wide range of foodstuffs, household and farming supplies, and then delivering it throughout the area. In October 1966 they sold the retail business, and since then other names have proclaimed its operators. In the early 1990s the Barrett family sold the building, ending a commercial link of more than four decades with the Omokoroa-Whakamarama district.

Gamman Brothers and The Tauranga Sawmilling Company

Steam hauler in the bush, c. 1912
Tauranga City Library Collection 01-106

Saw milling in the early 20th Century was a very important industry in the hinterland of Tauranga, particularly in Oropi, Omanawa and Whakamarama. There were huge native forests of rimu, totara, matai, tawa, tanekaha and hinau, to name some of the more commonly used timber.

One of the most active families involved in setting up and operating 2 mills were the Gamman Brothers the second generation of a saw-milling family from the lower North Island. In 1908 Arthur and Frank obtained 24 acres on what is now known as Gamman Mill Road opposite the Oropi School.

Steam log hauler on ‘skids’ at the Mill, c. 1912
Tauranga City Library Collection 01-107

They had cutting rights to thousands of acres of bush in 3 blocks south of their mill. Most of the first workers and the plant were brought here from Dannevirke and the mill could cut 9000 super feet of timber in a day.

Gamman Brothers' Oropi Mill, c. 1915
Tauranga City Library Collection 06-050

Sawn timber was transported 6 miles down to the landing on the Waimapu River, and from there by launch and barge to the Town wharf.

Jack Rodgers' Horse team, c. 1912
Tauranga City Library Collection 01-108

In eight years the bush had been well cut over and many of the mill and bush hands had been drafted overseas to fight in the First World War.  Unfortunately a large number of them perished in Europe. The Tauranga Sawmilling Company went into liquidation in 1915, but the community that had grown up around it survived.

In 1910, another brother George and his sons set up a much larger mill at Omanawa, near the waterfall. This mill could process 30,000 super feet in an 8 hour day and continued until 1917, at its peak employing 100 or so men. The sawn timber was taken down to the landing at the Wairoa River, where it was planed, taken by punt to the harbour, loaded onto scows and transported to Auckland and other main centres.

Omanawa Mill
Tauranga City Library Collection 99-1367

In 1923 George and Sons moved to the Mamaku and set up again, as the topography of the land made transport of the logs a little easier. That operation was finally sold to Fletchers in the 1960s.

Other family members were involved later with the H.H. Sharplin mill at Whakamarama and a smaller private mill on Plummers Point Road.

In 1971 Arthur Gamman, 89, and by then resident at Hodgson House, was interviewed. In his words ‘the Oropi Mill was the first decent sized mill able to supply Tauranga’s needs for dressed timber and mouldings.’

Sources
Tauranga Kete, Gamman Brothers Tauranga, Debbie MaCauley - 2017
Oropi, 100 Years Following the Confiscation of the Land, Robert Craig Scott - 2018
Oropi School Centenary and District Reunion, Edited by Annie Rae - 1999
The Ngawaro Regional Historical Review, Jim Pendergrast - 2005
Omanawa Settlers 1910 - 1960, Compiled by Trish Heke and Margaret Bennett
Mamaku 100 Years, Edited by Shona Jennings - 1994