The Bay of Plenty Times, a history from 1872

From Tauranga City Library’s archives

A monthly blog about interesting items in our collection

Users of Pae Korokī - Tauranga Archives Online will regularly discover photographs from the Bay of Plenty Times. The library's Heritage and Research team has also collaborated with the National Library of New Zealand to put editions from the very first up until 1949 online via the Papers Past website. Here's a brief history of the paper, including an exciting new development for researchers! 

The Bay of Plenty Times was first published on 4 September 1872, making it one of New Zealand’s longest-running provincial newspapers. Its founder and first editor and publisher was W.B. Langbridge, with H.W. Penny also a publisher. Initially issued twice weekly, the paper consisted of four tabloid-sized pages and sold for threepence per issue. Printed on a flat-bed press from premises on The Strand, then Beach Road, it became known locally as the “Tauranga Duster.”

The first of the three long single story structures to the right is the initial Bay of Plenty Times on The Strand in the mid to late 1870s. A portion of Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries Photo 04-213.

In September 1875 ownership passed to Edward Mortimer Edgecumbe, a prominent Tauranga figure remembered in "Edgecumbe Road". By September 1878 public demand for news led the paper to publish tri-weekly and it was becoming clear that the newspaper was a powerful tool for shaping public opinion . At the start of 1879 control of the paper passed to George Vesey Stewart and A.F. Rathbone, Rathbone serving as editor and manager. Stewart was a central figure in the organised settlement of Katikati and Te Puke, and was destined to become the first Mayor of Tauranga in a few short years (1882). That first month new premises were built in Harington Street on the former Customs House site. Before the end of March, he had became sole proprietor and Rathbone was out, departing for England that May. These early years were marked by repeated disruption: in May 1881 a major fire destroyed much of the northern end of Tauranga, including the Times premises. Publication resumed in short order (7 June 1881), missing just two issues, and rebuilding began immediately. By August 1881 the new, new building was ready for use. Over the next year and a half the paper floundered and in March 1883 it was sold by order of the mortgagee. And who should be waiting in the wings but our newly minted Mayor George Vesey Stewart and the Rev. David Bruce of Auckland for £1000. 

Astute and influential, Stewart was well aware that power and media went hand in hand. But now with control well in hand and with a sympathetic business partner, management could pass to the Reverend.

Portrait of George Vesey Stewart (1832–1920), Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries Photo 21-1915

The sale was part of a wider pattern of financial instability: over its first 40 years the Times changed ownership many times, including several changes through mortgagee sales. Ownership changed again in November 1887, when Edward Alexander Haggen became proprietor and Walter James Pull was appointed printer. On 16 April 1888 Haggen handed over the Bay of Plenty Times, which was amalgamated with another Tauranga paper owned by barrister and solicitor James Galbraith.

The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were difficult economic years for many provincial newspapers. Frequent changes of ownership, publication schedules, and printing arrangements were common, including at the Bay of Plenty Times. Despite this instability, the paper issued a Christmas supplement in 1897 that featured one of the earliest uses of photographs in a New Zealand newspaper. Stability began to return in the 1890s under William Elliot and General Arnold Ward, followed by technological upgrades and the construction of new printing premises in Willow Street. Photographic illustration, modern presses, and engine-powered printing kept the paper at the cutting edge in the region.

A major turning point came in 1913 when W.H. Gifford purchased the Bay of Plenty Times. Under the Gifford and Cross families, the paper entered a long period of continuity that lasted for most of the twentieth century. The Bay of Plenty Times Company was formed in 1929, and William Cross played a central role in the paper’s administration for more than sixty years. Circulation and staffing expanded steadily, supported by the growth of Tauranga and the wider Bay of Plenty, especially after Mount Maunganui developed as an export port in the early 1950s. New technologies were introduced, including linotype typesetting, reel-fed presses, rotary presses, and later full computerisation.

Bay of Plenty Times premises on Willow Street before it moved to Durham Street in 1955. Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries Photo 00-399

A 1976 fire destroyed the newspaper’s own collection of back issues, but copies survived on microfilm kept by the publisher and now held by the Alexander Turnbull Library. A collaboration between The National Library of New Zealand and Te Ao Mārama, Tauranga City Libraries has meant these historic papers are also available on Papers Past up until 1949. But in an exciting update, this collaboration in currently being extended and we can expect to see papers from 1950 to 1963 appearing in the first part of 2027. 

Bethlehem School pupils shown around Bay of Plenty Times factory in 1966. Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries Photo gcc-13613

In 1992 the Gifford and Cross families donated tens of thousands of historic negatives to Te Ao Mārama – Tauranga City Libraries. Most date from the late 1960s to the late 1970s and are primarily 35mm film, which had replaced earlier 120-format negatives, along with a smaller number of large-format negatives. These have since been digitised and made available through Pae Korokī – Tauranga Archives Online.

That same year, the newspaper was sold to Wilson and Horton. In 1996 Independent Newspapers plc of Dublin acquired a controlling interest in Wilson and Horton, bringing the Bay of Plenty Times into a broader Australasian newspaper group.

From the early 2000s the newspaper faced industry-wide challenges of declining print circulation and advertising revenue. In response, it made significant changes to format and delivery: on 5 February 2011 the first rebranded Saturday edition, Bay of Plenty Times Weekend, was published, and in March 2013 the weekday paper shifted from a traditional broadsheet to a compact format with morning delivery.

A series of images captured by Bay of Plenty Times photographer John Borren during the Rena Disaster, 2011. Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries Photo NZME-CD810_181111jb08

In 2014 APN News & Media’s New Zealand operations were restructured into New Zealand Media and Entertainment, or NZME, a merged national media company combining publishing, radio, and digital assets. Under NZME, the Bay of Plenty Times became part of a national network of regional newspapers. NZME lists the Bay of Plenty Times among its current publishing brands, and its Bay of Plenty presence expanded in March 2024 when it acquired Tauranga-based SunMedia, including SunLive, The Weekend Sun, Coast & Country News, and New Farm Dairies.

In 2023 a second large donation of negatives and Optical Discs containing born digital photographs was made to Te Ao Mārama – Tauranga City Libraries’ Heritage and Research Team. This captured images from the late 1970s through to 2012. These will enter the teams schedule of work in the future.

Users of Te Ao Mārama – Tauranga City Libraries can access recent editions from 2008 onward through the library’s PressReader subscription, available free to library card holders.

Sources:

Pae Korokī - Tauranga Archives Online, The Bay of Plenty Times, 1872 - (Organisation)

Pae Korokī - Tauranga Archives Online, Gifford-Cross Photographic Collection

Pae Korokī - Tauranga Archives Online, Bay of Plenty Times moments in history

Pae Korokī - Tauranga Archives Online, William (Bill) Cross interviewed by Rosalie Smith in 1985

Tauranga District Museum Oral History Unit, Interview with Mr William Frederick Wallis Cross

A Bay of Plenty Times timeline (1995), part of the Vertical Files in the former New Zealand Room (Tauranga Library)

Papers Past (Bay of Plenty Times)

New Zealand Media and Entertainment (Wikipedia)

---

 

Written by Harley Couper, Heritage and Research Team Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries

 

E is for Embroidery

“Success is not fame or money or the power to bewitch. It is to have created something valuable from your own individuality and skill, a garden, an embroidery, a painting, a cake, a life." Charlotte Gray, Canadian biographer and historian

This sampler is an example of embroidery created to demonstrate skill and proficiency in needlework. 
Tauranga Museum, 0283/84.

This embroidery sampler was created in 1913 by Iris Shead and, according to Tauranga Museum’s receipt book, was donated to the collection in 1972 by Mrs Wapp. When I first came across it, a few questions quickly came to mind: Who was Iris? How old was she when she embroidered the sampler? And where, or what, was Hamont?

Research revealed that Iris was born in Ashburton in 1898 to Amy and Walter Shead. Just a year after her birth, her mother was involved in a shocking railway accident at Rakaia, where four passengers were killed when two excursion trains collided due to excessive speed. Amy was pregnant at the time and sustained serious back injuries, prompting Walter to take a civil case against the Crown. The case was successful and became something of a landmark, leading to improvements in railway safety across New Zealand. Amy received £700 in compensation, and Walter £500, awarded for “the expenses he had been put to by his wife’s illness (he had been forced to hire a housekeeper) and as compensation for the loss of society and companionship.”

The Rakaia Railway Disaster: view of wrecked carriage in which victims were killed. 
Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections AWNS-18990324-04-03

 You may be wondering what any of this has to do with an embroidered sampler. A few months after receiving the payout, the Shead family left New Zealand for Europe. By 1913 Iris, aged 14 or 15, was living in Hamont, Belgium, where she embroidered this sampler.

In 1920, Iris married Englishman Wilfred Phillips, had a son, and eventually returned to New Zealand. She later divorced Phillips and, in 1927, married Arthur Wapp. Together they would also have a son. Through all these moves and life changes, Iris’s sampler travelled with her. Toward the end of her life, she chose to preserve it by donating it to the museum’s collection. What initially appears to be a modest example of needlework becomes something far more evocative - a stitched record of a young woman’s life shaped by family tragedy, migration, and resilience.

The Stranding of the SS Penguin

Matakana Island’s 20 km-long, ocean-facing Panepane Beach - notorious among 19^th century Māori and  Pākehā seafarers - posed a serious risk to paddle, sail and steam powered vessels. The beach formed a featureless, deadly, surf-pounded lee shore. Some vessels that hove‑to offshore during northeasterly gales often dragged their anchors on the sandy bottom and were driven ashore there. Others, particularly smaller sailing vessels under 20 tons that missed the channel entrance, even by small margins during such gales, were swept sideways onto the beach, rolled and wrecked.

The 5km beach section extending north from Panepane Point opposite Mauao | Mount Maunganui continued to claim shipping well into the 1900s. Had their skeletons remained they would have stood as a stark warning to careless or drunken skippers and those new to the Bay of Plenty. However, the many vessels wrecked there soon disappeared from sight, as the beach sands quickly absorbed their hulls.

Matakana Island’s Panepane Point and beach from Mount Maunganui across the channel

Built and launched in Glasgow, Scotland in January 1864, the steamship Penguin was sold to the New Zealand Steamship Company in 1879. Some 220 feet in length, with a gross registered tonnage of 749, the steamer became a familiar sight in Tauranga Moana during 1879 and 1880, as it delivered passengers, freight and mail to and from the North and South Islands’ east coast ports [1].

On 16 January 1880, New Zealand newspapers reported that the SS Penguin (Captain Malcolm), had gone ashore while entering Tauranga Harbour close to where the SS Taupo had been wrecked in February the previous year. Ironically, the Penguin had been purchased specifically to replace that unfortunate vessel on the return coastal route from Auckland to Tauranga, Gisborne, Napier, Wellington, Lyttleton and Port Chalmers [2].

The SS Penguin at Port Chalmers

The SS Taupo had gone ashore on Stony Point Reef at the base of Mount Maunganui where the channel opened into the harbour (marked today by the statue of Tangaroa, the Polynesian sea god). It sustained significant damage to the hull in the process and although salvaged, later sank off Tūhua | Mayor Island. The Penguin, on the other hand, was driven to starboard while attempting to negotiate the channel during ‘a terrific gale’. It went aground on a sandbank close to Panepane Spit at the southern end of Matakana Island’s Panepane Beach [3].

The little SS Staffa (Captain Baker), was at once dispatched from the town to the Penguin's assistance. The mail and passengers were taken off and landed at the town. On 14 January the Auckland Star reported: 

The SS Penguin came off the sand hillock at eleven o'clock this morning, with the assistance of the steamer Staffa under the command of worthy Captain Baker. No damage was done. She had not even moved a pound of cargo or coal. Her light kedge came home, or else she would have got off when she first touched [the Penguin’s light kedge or emergency anchor had failed to hold and had been dragged across the channel with the ship] [4].

After reloading her passengers and mail at the town, the Penguin immediately resumed her voyage to the southern ports on her itinerary, one editor noting, ‘as the steamer is built of the best Lowmoor iron it would be almost impossible to injure her’ [5]. Despite again running aground during dense fog at Nelson in November 1895, and being refloated without damage, the SS Penguin was to prove as vulnerable to shipwreck as any other New Zealand coastal steamer. 

The SS Penguin ashore at Nelson in November 1895

On February 12, 1909, the SS Penguin (Captain Francis Naylor), struck Thoms Rock in Cook Strait while navigating during a severe storm. The women and children were loaded into the lifeboats, which were swamped by the heavy seas. Only one woman and a boy survived. All the other children drowned. Other survivors came ashore on rafts. As the Penguin sank, seawater flooded the engine room and, on reaching the boilers, caused a massive steam explosion. It was New Zealand's worst maritime disaster of the 20th century: 75 people lost their lives while only 30 survived [6].

A court of inquiry found that Captain Naylor did everything possible to save the lives of his passengers and crew once the disaster occurred. Ultimately blaming Naylor’s navigational errors for the disaster, the court suspended his certificate for 12 months. 

References

[1] Ingram, C.W.N. New Zealand Shipwrecks,1795-1975, A.H. and A.W. Reid, Wellington, 1977: 308.

[2] Bay of Plenty Times, 4 March 1880: 1.

[3] Evening Star, 13 January 1880: 2.

[4] Auckland Star, 14 January 1880: 2.

[5] Manawatu Herald, 16 January 1880: 2.

[6] Ingram, 1977: 308.

Images

Cousins, John, senior reporter, ‘Panepane Point to be Returned to Hapu’, in Bay of Plenty Times and Rotorua Post. 26 January, NZ Herald,https://www.nzherald.co.nz › Rotorua Daily Post.

De Maus, David Alexander, 1847-1925: ‘Steamship Penguin at Port Chalmers’. Ref: 1/1-003381-G. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. /records/22384677.

Auckland Weekly News, ‘The Grounding of the SS Penguin: The Vessel on the Rocks outside Nelson Harbour, April 28,1904’. Record ID AWNS-19040512-12-02. Auckland City Libraries Heritage Collection.

The Library's Bay of Plenty Farmer Newspapers

From Tauranga City Library’s archives

A monthly blog about interesting items in our collection

In 2023, the Library's Heritage and Research Team was invited to see if there were any published items of value we could retrieve from the basement storage area at the NZME offices on Cameron Road. Among other titles, we found issues of the Bay of Plenty Farmer, a local, tabloid publication that the library had never collected.  

The newspapers are in fairly good condition. Some issues are bound in large volumes and others are loose with punch holes near the margins. We placed them all in snug fitting archival boxes and we keep them in the library’s climate controlled room for their protection and preservation.  

A bound volume of Bay of Plenty Farmer newspapers inside an archival box.

The Bay of Plenty Farmer was a free, monthly newspaper, delivered to the ‘farm gate.’ Printing commenced in 1982 and lasted until probably 2001. After 12 years, the publishing team moved from their Cameron Road location to ‘Farming House’ at 102-104 Spring Street, sharing the premises with Federated Farmers and Farmer Mutual Group. From September 1998 it was published from the Mount and Papamoa Times offices in Mount Maunganui.

An article in the Bay of Plenty Farmer, on Clydesdale horses working in the Tarawera Forest, July 1982. 

The newspaper comprised regular features on farming industries such as dairying, horticulture, forestry, motoring, education and house & garden, along with regular columns from the Bay of Plenty Federated Farmers.  It featured articles with photographs by local journalists such as the late Brian Rogers, who went on to co-found SunMedia and produce the rural Coast & Country News publication in 2000.

Photos of the Te Puke A&P Show, published in the Bay of Plenty Farmer, March 1994, p. 8.

Plenty of local social history is captured as Bay of Plenty Farmer journalists attended rural special events such as local A&P Shows, school agricultural days and the National Fieldays. Later, issues featured coloured front-page photographs and advertising.

Front page colour photo from the Bay of Plenty Farmer showing Ben Wiltshire with Shetland ponies, September 1998.

Kiwifruit industry related articles featured heavily in the publication, however, it is interesting to note that, through the years, other interesting agricultural ventures like ferret and ostrich farming were embraced by Bay of Plenty locals. 

An article on fitch ferrets, bred in Waihī for their pelts, Bay of Plenty Farmer, July 1982.

An article on ostrich farming, with ostrich industry advertising on the same page, Bay of Plenty Farmer, February 1998.

The only other copies of the Bay of Plenty Farmer are at the Alexander Turnbull Library, which holds limited runs - from 1985 to 1986 and from 2000 to 2001, so many of these newspaper issues are unique to Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries collection. 

Sources

A&P Show. (1994, March). Bay of Plenty Farmer. Tauranga, New Zealand.

From the horses mouth. (1998, September). Bay of Plenty Farmer. Tauranga, New Zealand.

Fry, C. (2025, October 12). Rural paper celebrates 300th issue milestone. SunLive. https://www.sunlive.co.nz/news/372839-rural-paper-celebrates-300th-issue-milestone.html

Ostrich prices level with bird's productive value. (1998, February). Bay of Plenty Farmer. Tauranga, New Zealand.

Riches in fitches. (1982, July). Bay of Plenty Farmer. Tauranga, New Zealand.

Secombe, W. (1992, July). A pictorial look at the Bay at work. Bay of Plenty Farmer. Tauranga, New Zealand.

---

 

Written by Michelle Bradbury, from Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries

 

The Domestic Services Block (The Cottage) at The Elms Te Papa

In colonial times, for safety reasons, settlers often constructed a kitchen separate from the main homestead.  This was certainly the case in the mid-1800s at the Church Missionary Society station (now known as The Elms) on Te Papa peninsula here in Tauranga Moana. The kitchen building and nearby bakehouse were just a few feet from the main house.  In 1877, however, a fire destroyed both, the cause thought to be a candle left burning in the maid’s room when she went over to the house for evening prayers. 

 Due to stupendous efforts of the townsfolk who heard the mission bell ringing urgently and came to assist, putting out the fire and draping wet blankets over the shingles of the house roof, the large wooden home was unscathed. The burnt-out buildings were rebuilt as soon as practical, slightly more distant from the main house.

The replacement bakehouse under construction. Image: John Kinder

There is no way of knowing if the floor plan of the new building was the same as the one it replaced.  Today the domestic services block, as it has sometimes been referred to, consists of four rooms in a row, each with their own exterior door, An internal door connects the first two rooms. One source** quotes the rooms being used as “kitchens, bedrooms and a storeroom.”

 On the death of the second Mrs Brown in 1887 the property passed to her sister Euphemia Maxwell, a widow, and her unmarried daughters Alice and Edith. At this time The Elms consisted of 17 acres of land and most of the dozen or so mission buildings the Browns had purchased from the Church Mission Society over the previous decade. Permanent structures had originally included two houses, two schools, the chapel, Archdeacon Brown’s free-standing library, a storehouse, boathouse, carpenters’ workshop, smithy, and the kitchen building and bakehouse. 

Alice outside the cottage, 14 February 1945.  Image: The Elms Collection

In 1913 subdividing the property created 47 sections.  These were sold over the next few years, reducing the land area around the main house to about 3 acres and providing much needed capital to reroof it and add a kitchenette and bathroom. This enabled Euphemia to live out her days at The Elms in greater convenience until her passing in 1919.  Daughter Edith’s death occurred in 1930. Her sister Alice advertised for live-in help and a couple named Turner came to occupy “the cottage” as the 1877 building had become known. 1945 brought another couple, George and Elsie Lambie, who lived there rent-free in exchange for domestic and gardening help, which included Elsie showing visitors around at times.

When my grandparents Duff and Gertrude Maxwell became life tenants after Alice’s death in July 1949, the Lambies stayed on for a while, but then followed a series of tenants and boarders in the 50s and early 60s. A woman and her 11-year-old son* rented the cottage around 1950 until it was possible to find a home at Mount Maunganui where she had a teaching position. One family did two different stints there a few years apart whilst awaiting the building of their new homes in Ōtūmoetai.

 Gertrude Maxwell’s sister Mildred Huggins was in residence for a few years in the early 60s. A bathroom was added for her in the space between the cottage and the old bakehouse (then in use as a laundry area). Mildred returned to England leaving the cottage free for my uncle, his wife and their first child who spent time there while saving up for their first home.  

Mildred Huggins at home.  Image: julie Green

Finally, in 1971, Auntie Mildred returned from England to ‘retire’.  For the next 20 years she lived in the cottage very happily, mending broken china people brought to her, making marmalade on the old stove set up in the corner of the washhouse and washing her very long white hair in her pink bathroom. Mercifully the place was not burnt down again - she had a habit of placing logs in the fire that were too long and gradually feeding them in as the end burnt away. Six years before her passing she moved into a rest home. Several members of the extended family then lived in the cottage at various times.

 By the early 1990s both the main house and cottage were no longer occupied.  The Elms Foundation, which took over the property, began to use the room nearest to the house as an office.  The infill addition, containing the extra bathroom, was demolished. Thus the two buildings (the first kitchen and the old bakehouse) were separated once more. 

The bathroom addition in 1999.  Image: Julie Green

Currently the building is used by the management of The Elms Foundation as offices, a reception area and a base for the visitor guides. There is a very educational laundry display in the “Mangle room” and the Dairy is complete with original shelving for the display of milk pans  and butter making equipment. These two rooms are unlined, showing their interesting construction details, including the old wooden shakes, which remain under the corrugated iron roof.

 Acknowledgements

*This informal record was inspired by meeting the widow and daughter of the 11 year old lad. They visited The Elms recently to ascertain if the story they had heard from him was true.  We were able to confirm that it was.

**I referred to Sarah Ell’s book, ‘The Spirit of a Place’ to confirm some details to add to my recollections.