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.

D is for Dog (skeleton)

 

Excavation at Ōtūmoetai pā on Levers Road, 2005. Image courtesy of Tauranga Museum.

In 2005, archaeologists made a significant discovery at Ōtūmoetai pā on Levers Road - an intact dog skeleton, or kuri, buried in a grave at the highest point of the pā. Such finds are highly unusual in New Zealand archaeology. According to the country’s leading expert on kuri, Dr Geoff Clark, this suggested something out of the ordinary, possibly ritual in nature and associated with a person of high status. 

A mounted kuri. Image courtesy of Otago Museum 

Kuri were descended from Polynesian dogs, which accompanied the first people to Aotearoa in the thirteenth century. Medium-sized and long-haired, kuri are often described as being roughly the size of a modern border collie. They arrived as part of wider voyaging traditions, with waka travelling from Hawaiki carrying a variety of animals and plants, many of which did not survive in the cooler climate of Aotearoa.

Dog skeleton found at Otūmoetai pa. Image courtesy of Tauranga Museum.

Kuri were valued not only for food but also their bones, which were used for making fishhooks. Several hooks dating to before 1600AD were unearthed during the Heritage New Zealand excavation at Ōtūmoetai pā. Archaeologist Ken Phillips who led the dig was reported as saying that “to be buried intact is pretty unusual considering most of his mates probably ended up as fishhooks.” 

Matau made from dog's jaw bone. Image courtesy of Tauranga Museum

It is generally believed that interbreeding with European dogs led to the extinction of the kuri by the 1860s. This period coincided with major upheaval at Ōtūmoetai pā, which was caught up in the confiscation of 50,000 acres of Tauranga land by the government in 1865, following the New Zealand Wars.

Forestry on Matakana Island in 1969

From Tauranga City Library’s archives

A monthly blog about interesting items in our collection

Matakana Island Timber Mill
Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries Photo 21-248

Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries' Heritage and Research Team and its predecessors have been collecting local history material for over 50 years. The snapshot above is from a set donated to the team by Hamilton City Libraries - Te Ohomauri o Kirikiriroa, and digitised in 2021. The set is undated, but looks like it may be from the 1970s or 1980s. The set can be viewed here, each individual image includes an edited version with colour restored, due to severe fading of the original prints.

The present Heritage and Research Team at Tauranga are reviewing their Vertical File collection and other, related items are emerging. In the Forestry file was an article clipped from an unidentified magazine and with no date, called "Matakana Island : reaping the Pineland wealth", by Olaf Petersen. After some investigation we determined it was published in the New Zealand Weekly News of 2 June 1969. We have added a scan of the article to Pae Korokī.

It contains twelve images selected from photographs the Auckland-based Petersen took of timber felling and processing on Matakana Island, in Tauranga Harbour. Of the twelve photographs in the piece, eight include pictures of individuals. For some reason only one of them is named - Mr Stuart Hume, forest plantation manager on Matakana - in the top left corner of page 31.

In 1988 the photographer donated his archive to the Auckland War Memorial Museum. It is described at length in their Collections Online entry for the archive. Two of the photographs from this article have been digitised. The photographer had collected information about his subjects that wasn't included in the published article, so we can now add a little bit more detail to the story of forestry on Matakana Island.

The photograph on page 31 captioned "A stack of timber is wired together ready for transport" is described by Auckland Museum as "Photograph of Hohepa (Joe) Hamuera Kohu working in a shed and operating a hand lever used in timber production".

The photograph below it, captioned "Morning tea break in the Pinelands forest on Matakana", is described as "Three men who are working at felling trees in the forest, stop for a break to drink from jars and a thermos. On verso the men are named as L to R; Melbo Rolleston, Charlie Murray, Eru Tukaki. They are surrounded by felled trees and a stand of forest in the back ground. Sitting on the trees near them are two chainsaws and an axe". The published version has been cropped and is missing Melbo Rolleston.

We hope that over time more photos used in the article will be digitised, allowing the identification of more individuals.

Extracting the article, finding the work of other institutions and receiving donations has allowed us to both increase our knowledge of a subject of local interest and enable more questions to be asked. This process of accumulation can be slow and indirect, but placing it in Pae Korokī opens it up to discovery and engagement by one of the distinctive communities of Tauranga Moana. 

Sources:

Matakana Island / Neil G. Hansen. Journal of the Tauranga Historical Society No. 63, August 1979, pages 38-40 (or 41-43 of the PDF).

Matakana Island (Tauranga) / Jinty Rorke. Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries, Matakana Island.

Matakana Island / Suzanne Woodley. Wellington, N.Z. : Waitangi Tribunal Division, Department of Justice, 1993.

Petersen was a well-known photographer who died in 1994. Te Ao Mārama -Tauranga Libraries holds copies of a recent collection of his nature photography - Nature boy : the photography of Olaf Petersen.

Captain Alexander Turner Jnr. and the Scow 'Margaret' 1892-1914

Part I 

Alexander (Sandy) Turner sailed from Ireland to Auckland with his family on the immigrant ship Carisbrooke Castle in 1875. Travelling on to Tauranga by steamer, he established himself as a 27 year old freehold farmer on Katikati’s Uretara River. After farming for some years, he commenced running coastal sailing vessels and cargoes between the Bay of Plenty, Auckland and intermediate ports. 

Captain Alexander Turner Snr. 

Image: The Pioneers: Settlers and Famulies of Katikati and District. Christine Clement, 2012, p.327.

On 13 February 1892, his son Alexander Jnr., known locally as Alec or Alick, sailed into Tauranga harbour with his new purchase, the Margaret, a bluff bowed, flat bottomed, two-masted scow. With a gross weight of 31-tons, it was powered solely by sail [1].

The scow Margaret c. 1890s.

Sitting level in low tide Tauranga  harbour, the crew are offloading posts and sawn timber onto two drays. While scows were often crude and ungainly in appearance, the Margaret has pleasing lines with a nice lift to the capping rail fore and aft. Image: Photographer unknown. Photo 04-572, Te Ao Mārama.

Built at Auckland for its first owner Mrs M. Andrew in late 1884, and described as ‘a small coaster’, the bluff-bowed Margaret was initially engaged in carrying kauri logs, baulk kauri and sawn timber to Auckland, from locations as diverse as Great Barrier Island, Ōrewa, Pūhoi, Pākiri and the Coromandel mill ports at Mercury and Kennedy’s Bay[2]. Between February 1892 and 1906, Captain Alec Turner and the Margaret regularly transported sawn kauri timber from Auckland and Coromandel sawmills to Tauranga, and on to Maketū and Katikati where it was needed for the construction of houses, schools, retail stores, hotels and churches for George Vesey Stewart’s immigrant settlers [3].

The large-scale timber felling and milling operations at Katikati, Whakāmarama, Omanawa and the Ōropi Bush which required numerous scows (most assisted by steam engines) to transport lumber by sea, did not commence in earnest until the early 20th century. During the depression of the 1890s, entrepreneurial local scow owner-captains like Alec Turner took every opportunity to acquire cargoes and ensure that their vessels turned a profit. On St Patrick’s Day 17 March 1892, for instance, he took a party of 30 people on a fishing excursion out into the Bay of Plenty, having sold tickets at 10 shillings per head. Turner continued his fishing excursions as far afield as Tūhua-Mayor Island and picnic excursions from Tauranga to the Mount throughout the 1890s [4].

When not delivering timber to Tauranga on contract, Turner disposed of his own cargoes of sawn timber and posts ‘at unusually cheap prices’, directly to local builders and timber merchants. Soon after purchasing the Margaret he sold off a cargo of sawn timber from Tairua at the Victoria Wharf in Tauranga at just 5 shillings and sixpence per hundred feet, yet was still able to return a profit [5].

The scow Lena Gladys on Katikati’s Uretara River, 1920

Like Captain Turner’s Margaret, the shallow draught Lena Gladys regularly sailed up the Uretara River to deliver and collect freight from Katikati. The Lena Gladys operated in Bay of Plenty waters until the Taneatua branch railway line opened in 1928. Image: Photographer unknown. Western Bay of Plenty District Council Community Archives.

Uplifting their purchases from the Margaret as it lay at Victoria Wharf or as it sat level at low tide locations around the harbour, Turner’s customers transported their purchases away by horse and cart.

Ever the entrepreneur, in October 1893, Turner returned from Mount Maunganui in October 1893 with a cargo of beach shells, before departing to sell them in Auckland for roading and road fill[6]. Turner continued this lucrative sideline into the late 1890s, supplying the Tauranga Borough Council with much needed ‘Mount shell’, as it was called, for local roading [7]. According to the Bay of Plenty Times:

"In those days there were tremendous quantities of marine shell deposited in the locality of the North Rock Light at the Mount. This was shovelled into drays, carted across the isthmus, and loaded into a large scow, the Margaret, in Pilot Bay. The unloading of the boat took place into drays at a point off the eastern end of Spring Street, but unloading periods were restricted to the times when the water was low enough to permit the draught horses to draw the loads. The pulling was heavy too, but nevertheless Cameron Road, the Strand, Devonport Road, and other streets in the business area carried surfaces up to four inches in thickness, when dressed with this material. Those road tops were well maintained. Half-a-century ago practically no metal was used [8]."

View of the Opopoti, Maungatapu Marae and the Rangataua Estuary on 2nd October 1958.

Captain Alec Turner and the Margaret once negotiated the estuary’s shallow inner harbour waters to bring a cargo of raupō (bulrush) for thatching the walls and roof of a new wharenui (meeting house). Image: Bronwyn Taikato. Ref 00-127. Te Ao Mārama.

Again, during April 1899, Turner and the Margaret arrived in Tauranga from an unidentified location with a cargo of raupō for Māori at Matapihi who were constructing a large wharenui. At that time there was also considerable demand for raupō by Ngāi Te Rangi hapu who were repairing their wharenui at Wharēroa Marae (near the present site of the harbour bridge on the Mount Maunganui side), at Karikari Marae (on the inner harbour near modern-day Bay Park Stadium) and at Maungatapu, where the Ngāti He hapū were constructing a new wharenui [9].

References

[1] Clement, Christine and Ellen McCormack, The Pioneer Settlers and Families of Katikati and District, Ellen McCormack, Katikati, 2012, p. 328; Bay of Plenty Times, 20 August 1936, p. 2.

[2] Auckland Star, 6 December 1884, p.2.

[3] Bay of Plenty Times, 1 February 1893, p. 2; 14 December 1898, p. 2; 14 May 1900, p. 2; Auckland Star, 25 March, 1898, p.2.

[4] Bay of Plenty Times, 15 February 1892, p. 2; 27 December 1945, p.4; 21 January 1948, p.2.

[5] Ibid:May 1892, p.2.

[6] Ibid: 30 October, 1893, p.2.

[7] Ibid:15 December 1897: 2; 25 August 1897, p.2.

[8] Ibid: 5 January 1839, p.5.

[9] Ibid:5 April, 1899, p.2.

The Mōtiti Road Rail Ferry

 

Two maps of Mōtiti.  Neither is contemporaneous with Brain’s work on the island, but the coloured image shows the settlement pattern of the island’s residents in 1929; the black and white sketch map shows the route (dashed line) of the tramline that once led to Orangatea Bay.  Images: (left) Western Bay of Plenty District Libraries, SAK 34A, digital only; and (right) Te Ara, An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand, ed. A. H. McLintock, 1966

I first began researching the people who lived in the Brain Watkins House back in the early 2000s  when I was working for NZ Historic Places Trust (now Heritage New Zealand).  Among the listed achievements of Joseph Brain was “a tramway on Mōtiti Island to transfer cattle to a ship waiting off shore”.

George Alexander Douglas, An Irishman, originally from Derry, moved down from Auckland to Tauranga and received a Crown Grant of a piece of land in 1867. He became a successful storekeeper when he arrived in Tauranga.

He had begun working in Auckland as a commissariat contractor supplying the military forces in the country and was elected a member of the Auckland Provincial Council from 1869 to 1873. G A Douglas leased a portion of Mōtiti Island from a local chief Tupaea, probably commencing in 1867 but he did not move there to live until 1870. He improved the breeding of cattle and Clydesdale horses on Mōtiti. He was also responsible for the introduction of the Bumble Bees that were essential for the fertilization of the Red Clover flowers. The clover had been introduced to boost the quality of the stock food but could not flourish without the bees. The soil on Mōtiti was fertile, water was abundant from numerous springs, but it lacked a natural harbour. 

S.S.Staffa   Image: Te Ao Māramā – Tauranga City Libraries Photo 04-593

To ensure transporting stock and goods, Douglas bought a small coastal steamer S.S. Tauranga in 1870. From 1876 to 1881 he had the S.S.Rowena and S.S.Staffa. The difficulty created by the lack of a harbour was loading the stock onto his ship before he could send the cargo to Tauranga.

In Orangatea Bay Douglas built a system of stock yards, and tramline. The late local historian Alister Matheson, in his book Motiti[1], tongue in cheek, named the project “The Motiti Road Rail Ferry”. The stock yards held the stock until they were loaded on a punt that could hold twenty cattle. The punt sat on a cradle or bogie that ran down the tramline, gaining speed, and was attached by a rope on a winch on land. When the punt reached the steamer it was secured and the rope wound back by the winch. The cattle were individually lifted by slings on to the steamer, which then sailed to Tauranga.  Douglas was helped in the construction of the tramline system by Joseph Brain, the experienced ship and bridge builder of Tauranga.

Hoisting fat cattle from the wharf to a steamer for shipping from Auckland to Sydney, Australia, 1902. 

Image: Supplement to the Auckland Weekly News, 14 August 1902, p. 10

In an interview with Mrs Elva Brain Watkins, the youngest daughter of Joseph, Matheson learned that Brain’s practice was to row across the harbour to Mount Maunganui then walk along the ocean beach until he was opposite Mōtiti Island where he would signal his arrival.  A boat from Mōtiti would then pick him up from the beach. In his boatyard on The Strand Brain employed Māori men from Mōtiti who would stay at the Mōtiti Hostel across the street.

J. D. Brain, Brain Watkins House Collection.  Image: Shirley Arabin

At the time that Matheson wrote the book the only remnants of the Mōtiti Road Rail Ferry were decaying puriri posts at the site, so it is unlikely that there will be any evidence left of this project today.

When George Douglas visited Napier in 1892 to purchase sheep he fell ill and died there.  He had not married and in his will the beneficiaries of his estate were his nieces and nephews.

 [1] Matheson A.H.,Motiti,pub. Whakatane & District Historical Society P O Box 203, Whakatane 1979.

 

Editorial note: Readers may be interested in finding an extended photo-essay on Mōtiti Island life in the 1960’s by Tony Ahern, editor of Tauranga Photo News, Issue No. 34, April 3 1965:

https://paekoroki.tauranga.govt.nz/nodes/view/101354