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

Shapeshifter: Our Landscape and the Te Puna Quarry

Te Puna 1954

When David and Shirley Sparks came to start farming in Te Puna the year after this 1954 photograph [1] was taken, the Quarry that lay on the hill to the south-east of their farm was a merely noticeable, rather than a noteworthy, feature. The metalled road that snaked up to it was little different in surface quality to any of the roads in the vicinity – their pale dustiness stands out in this image. Te Puna Road runs up the middle, Borell Road is off at centre right, even a pale streak of Te Puna Station Road is discernible at upper left. The rhyolite used to make and maintain them came from the Tauranga County’s quarry, at that time run by the Smythe quarrying company. The Quarry, in this picture just a background smudge on the dark Minden ridge at top right, had by that stage been a source of roading stone since 1911.

And that, it seemed, was all it would ever be. Rhyolite is not commended by most roading engineers – it is highly crystalline and degrades quickly in comparison to andesite, often called ‘blue chip’ and familiar to all of us who drive on tar-sealed roads. It is what Brian Robbins, who took over the Quarry from the Smythes in the mid-fifties, described as a “woolly” rock [2], good for the first course at the base of a roadway, and for creating a quick slurry in preparation for a firmer, harder-wearing surface, and not much else. But it was handy, and it was cheap.

By 1975,  however, this local source of rock had become a landmark that could be used as a navigational aid from well out to sea around Tauranga Moana. Here’s a closer shot [3], taken from the (now sealed) intersection of Quarry Road and State Highway 2.

Te Puna 1975

While some of the pastoral landscape typical of early twentieth-century Te Puna remains upland, and new kiwifruit and citrus orchards are coming to occupy the flats, the Quarry itself now looms as an industrial behemoth over this benign countryside. What were the reasons for this extraordinary expansion of rock mining activity on the Minden?

The answer has to do with both navigation and Depression-era forestry.  As economies recovered from World War II, new stirrings of ambition for the development of shipping, and the export of logs from mature radiata forests in and out of the Pilot Bay wharves at Mount Maunganui came to the fore [4].  (It seems odd, now, to see that the immediately alternative contender for a major port in the Bay of Plenty was Whakatane [5]. This is not the place to discuss the debate that ensued.) Outcomes, however, were to be seen in a range of 1960s reclamation projects that extended all around the Tauranga Harbour edge and, eventually, out into its depths [6] - and (as a sidenote) even contemplated eliminating the Waikareao estuary entirely [7].

Waikareao Estuary reclamation proposal

The image is of a print block, showing (in reverse) a map of the planned project, which did not proceed beyond the proposal stage. It illustrates, however, the scale of thinking that exponentially increased demand for exactly the sort of rock that came from the Te Puna Quarry.

Here’s where some of it went [8].

Strand reclamation

Anyone familiar with the present Quarry Park will recognise the useful lumpiness of rocks that settle and lean into each other, creating an inelegant but useful mass that could cope with the sea swirling through below and the pressure of cars parking above. The Strand reclamation was finished in time for two royal visits over 1962 and 1963 [9], glamorous occasions for a workaday material.

Most of the Quarry rock went into the water. Huge quantities were required for port development.  Trucks rolled out for twenty years, making a new shoreline beyond the Mission House. This 1969 image [10] shows the start of the Sulphur Point causeway, not for a harbour bridge but another purpose entrely.

Sulphur Point causeway

The causeway was part of the maritime enterprise that became the Port of Tauranga.

Training wall heading north

The astonishing “training wall” [11] in the middle of the water was designed by hydrological engineers in London, working with a tank that modelled Tauranga Moana’s tidal flows. It was the flows that were being “trained”. The line of rhyolite boulders intercepted the moving sand and built it up in sufficient quantities to enable, eventually, the advent of container cranes and a new wall of stacked containers. 

This phase of port work was completed by 1976 and the Quarry operations ceased. Here’s what it, and Te Puna, looked like in 1982[12]:

Te Puna 1982

My mother Shirley’s caption to this photograph reads: “The Te Puna Quarry showing signs of weed re-growth during … years of closure. Land development for subdivision of the Sparks farm in the foreground.” In truth, the actual foreground is occupied by clumps of Quarry rocks, features for a new garden my mother was making, in existence still.

In 1997 Shirley created, from Council records, a hand-drawn map (she chose to orient it to the south) of the effects of other subdivisions. Forty years after she came to live underneath the Minden, and twenty years after Don Thwaites’ 1975 photograph, the area shows a close-packed jigsaw of lifestyle blocks.

Shirley’s map 1997

From the hills to the sea. Quarry rhyolite underlies an emphatic story of rapid infrastructural growth and development in Tauranga Moana. The one constant is the Quarry reserve’s shape and extent [13], which has remained unchanged ever since it was gazetted in 1912. The same cannot be said of the landscape around it.

section of SO 13702

References

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[1] Pae Koroki, https://paekoroki.tauranga.govt.nz/nodes/view/2074

[2] Conversation with the author, December 2017

[3] Image courtesy of Don Thwaites, by permission

[4] Bay of Plenty Times, 23 January 1950, p.2

[5] Bay of Plenty Times, 24 January 1950, p.3

[6] A relative term.  Local wisdom described the average depth of Tauranga Harbour as “eighteen inches”.  Dredging and the hydrology of the training wall exploited harbour channels to the full.

[7] https://paekoroki.tauranga.govt.nz/nodes/view/76448

[8] https://paekoroki.tauranga.govt.nz/nodes/view/20653

[9] Visiting monarchs were King Bhumibol and Queen Sirikit of Thailand and Queen Elizabeth II

[10] https://paekoroki.tauranga.govt.nz/nodes/view/91062

[11] Image courtesy of Brian Robbins.  The explanation is also his – from a conversation with the author, December 2017

[12] Image courtesy of Shirley Sparks

[13] Section of SO 13702 TePuna Eastern Grazing Run 1906 SAK33VIII, cadastral map courtesy of LINZ

Seaward’s Hand-coloured Postcards of Mt Maunganui

Coastal Scene, Mount Maunganui, N.Z., c. 1950s-early 1960s
Hand-coloured postcard published by N.S. Seaward, Broad Bay, Dunedin
Image courtesy of Fiona Kean, private collection

Hand-coloured postcards of New Zealand scenic views had been around since the early 1900s, but were overwhelmed by inexpensive collotype-printed cards imported from Bavaria and Saxony. When the supply from Germany dried up on the outbreak of the Great War, hand-coloured real photo postcards were produced in numbers once more, and remained popular for some years after the war had ended.

Ocean Beach, Mount Maunganui, N.Z., c. 1950s-early 1960s
Hand-coloured postcard published by N.S. Seaward, Broad Bay, Dunedin
Image courtesy of Fiona Kean, private collection

After the Second World War, during which there had been a dearth of postcards available for purchase, the National Publicity Studios became the most significant contributor to the market. Along with the increased demand for postcards, there was a resurgence in the popularity of hand-coloured images. It did not take long for other photographers and publishers to join the fray.

Mount Maunganui, N.Z., c. 1950s-early 1960s
Hand-coloured postcard published by N.S. Seaward, Broad Bay, Dunedin
Image courtesy of Fiona Kean, private collection

One of these was Neville Stephen Seaward, whose postcards published from his home base in Broad Bay, Dunedin feature widely in institutional and private collections around the country, and presumably overseas. Seaward was born in Christchurch in 1913, and started photographing scenery with his first camera aged seventeen.

Coastal Scene, Mount Maunganui, N.Z., c. 1950s-early 1960s
Hand-coloured postcard published by N.S. Seaward, Broad Bay, Dunedin
Image courtesy of Fiona Kean, private collection

He married in 1948, moved to Dunedin with his wife Gwen, and three years later they started up a business from their home, printing, publishing and selling postcards of photographic views that he had accumulated.

Coastal Scene, Mount Maunganui, N.Z., c. 1950s-early 1960s
Hand-coloured postcard published by N.S. Seaward, Broad Bay, Dunedin
Image courtesy of Fiona Kean, private collection

At an early stage Neville started making annual trips to Rotorua and elsewhere on the North Island to increase the portfolio of views which were soon in great demand. All of the postcards were printed in black-and-white from their home, and a proportion were hand-coloured with simple watercolour washes. Unfortunately serial numbers were not printed on any of the cards, so there is currently no assessment of the numbers of individual views produced country-wide. 

Mount Maunganui, N.Z., c. 1950s-early 1960s
Hand-coloured postcard published by N.S. Seaward, Broad Bay, Dunedin
Image courtesy of Tauranga City Library’s Pae Korokī, Ref. 99-027

From 1951 onwards he also published several guide books of tourist destinations, illustrated with his own photographs. Colour slide views (probably Kodachrome) were added to the repertoire in 1954, sold loose in the same manner as the postcards, and the business continued to thrive into the 1960s. By the end of that decade, though, production appears to have ceased, probably as a result of increased competition from full colour postcards printed in South-east Asia. After he ceased photography, all of Seaward’s photographic negatives were destroyed.

References

Skinner, Damian (2001) Unpublished notes from interview with Neville Seaward, Modernism Oral History Project, [relates to 3 tapes of oral history interviews at Te Papa Tongarewa, Refs, CA000633/001/0020, 0021, 0022)

Main, William & Jackson, Alan (2005) Wish You Were Here: The Story of New Zealand Postcards, New Zealand Postcard Society Inc., Nelson

Main, William (2007) Send Me a Postcard: New Zealand Postcards and the Stories They Tell, Craig Potton Publishing, Nelson