The Maindy Court

These days large ships berthed at the Mount Maunganui wharf are run of the mill but it wasn’t always like this. On October 9th 1922 a rather nondescript tramp steamer named the Maindy Court, at 107 metres and 7150 deadweight tonnes and whose home port was Cardiff, became the largest ship to have sailed through the narrow entrance to the harbour and berth at the Railway Wharf at Mount Maunganui.

S.S. Maindy Court. 7,700 tons, at Mount Maunganui Wharf, Oct. 1922
Glass half-plate negative by John Welsh
Collection of Tauranga City Libraries, Pae Koroki Ref. 20-047

The ship’s master was Captain J Donnelly and the its voyage had originated in Wales, calling in at Bombay and the Busselton, Western Australia where hardwood sleepers - 31,311 of them to be exact - were loaded into the bottom of each of her four holds, destined for the East Coast railway project at Mount Maunganui. Prior to the Maindy Court the largest ship to call with cargo for the railway was the Clan Ross which had been forced to put to sea again and off load 9,000 sleepers to lighten the ship after touching the bottom.

S.S. Maindy Court. 7,700 tons, at Mt. Maunganui Wharf, Oct. 1922
Glass half-plate negative by John Welsh
Collection of Tauranga City Libraries, Pae Koroki Ref. 20-188

At his Newcastle, NSW, Australia port of call Captain Donnelly was told charts for Tauranga Harbour did not exist and in Lyttleton, NZ the company’s agent told him the harbour was only suitable for coastal shipping and the sleepers would have to be unloaded in Auckland. On his arrival in Auckland, and after discussions with a deputation from the Tauranga Harbour Board, Captain Donnelly decided to check out the situation himself. He took passage on the Ngapuhi, a coastal steamer servicing Tauranga/Auckland which regularly berthed at the Horseshoe Wharf. His decision was that it was perfectly feasible to bring in the Maindy Court himself without the help or a tug or pilot.

Looking at Railway Wharf from Mt Drury, showing Tauranga & railway bridge in distance, early 1920s
Postcard format photograph by John Welsh, c. early 1920s
Collection of Justine Neal

The ship arrived off Tauranga at 7.45am and the Bay of Plenty Times of October 9th reported: “Within half an hour Captain Donnelly navigated the steamer into the harbour under her own steam and she came in with the same apparent sure progress with which the Ngapuhi regularly makes the entrance.” Once safely berthed the ship was dressed with flags and over the next few days hundreds of adults and school children viewed the ship from the harbour steam ferry Ruru and other scows that were called in to help with the sightseers.

By October 26th unloading of the sleepers was completed and at 10.30am the Maindy Court left for Makatea Island to load phosphate for Europe. Mount Maunganui school children were given time off school to watch the ship sail and she left with the cheers of the local people bidding her farewell.

Railway Wharf, Mt Maunganui, Tauranga, c. 1910s-1920s
Postcard format photograph by Henry Winkelmann (Tourist Series 996)
Collection of Justine Neal

For those who thought that the Maindy Court’s successful visit could be the start of greater shipping traffic through the port, it was not to be. In 1928 with the completion of the east Coast railway the Horseshoe Wharf was dismantled and it would be 32 long years before a ship larger than the Maindy Court would enter Tauranga Harbour.

References
BOP Times 30.9.1922
BOP Times 9.10.1922
BOP Times 2002

Half a Crown for Your Vote, Sir

Map of the East Coast Electorate, 1876 (McRobie, 1989)

A central Parliament and Provincial Councils governed New Zealand from 1852 until 1876 when the Abolition of the Provinces Act of 1876 brought an end to that system. Tauranga was a small town with a population of less than 300 residents who believed they were poorly done by under the Auckland Provincial Council. The new electorate of East Coast stretched from the Bay of Plenty coastline around East Cape to Wairoa and then in a straight-line west to the southern end of Lake Taupo, with Tauranga once again a small town in one corner of the region.

Parliament House from garden, c.1897-1903
Silver gelatin print mounted on album page, Ranfurly family Collection
Courtesy of Alexander Turbull Library, Ref. PA1-f-194-15

There were four candidates for the 1876 election:

• William Kelly from Ireland, who in 1865 set up a shipping business between Opotiki and Auckland and was a member of the Provincial Council;
• George Edward Read who arrived in the Pacific as a whaler, became a first mate on various trading vessels, advanced to captain, and by 1852 owned a 20-ton schooner, the Mendlesham named after his home village in Suffolk. Read quickly established himself as Gisborne district’s principal trader;
• Captain George Bentham Morris, a Tasmanian, also a Provincial Councillor and a resident of the Bay of Plenty;
• and finally Wi Marsh.

Land issues dominated political debate in 1876 and Kelly described himself as the small holders’ friend and advertised “vote for Kelly and speedy settlement of native land title”. He supported income tax and favoured true local government by the county and borough councils. 

Hon Capt G B Morris MLC, c.1875-1880
Carte de visite portrait by R.H. Bartlett, Auckland
Courtesy of Alexander Turbull Library, Ref. PA2-0213

Morris believed that more land should be opened up for settlement at less than £2 per acre. He supported property tax and described himself as “the people’s candidate”.

Read called on people to vote for him to look after their interests “which are identical with his own”, and was strongly supportive of the people of the Gisborne area.

The low population meant that there were only polling places at Tauranga, Maketu, Opotiki, Whakatane, Gisborne, and Wairoa. The Tauranga court house was the principal polling place in the electorate and results were received by telegraph. Only 62% of the roll voted and distance could account for that.

Gisborne’s Captain Read won, as Kelly and Morris split the Bay of Plenty vote. The results were Read 215, Morris 206, Kelly 185 and Marsh 10.

Read’s tally was helped by his supporters providing pieces of cardboard valued at 2/6 and 10/- that could be redeemed for drinks at Gisborne hotels.  In the Tauranga Court a case was heard against Major C D Pitt for inducing Fairfax Johnson to procure the vote of certain electors in favour of G E Read at the election, and Pitt was fined £50. A Parliamentary Inquiry found that Read has not approved the actions of his agents so he was not prosecuted but had to forfeit the seat to Captain Morris.

The following election in 1879 was held on the same boundaries and A C MacDonald of Gisborne won so the support from East Coast voters was still greater than from the Bay of Plenty.

Sources

WH Gifford & HB Williams, A Centennial History of Tauranga, (Tauranga Centennial Committee, 1940)
A McRobie, New Zealand Electoral Atlas (GP Books, 1989)
M Bassett, The State in NZ 1840-1984 (Auckland University Press, 1998)

Gossip in the Street

Surprising discoveries are often made when circuitous research routes are taken. Recently I learned that the Bay of Plenty Times in its first year of publication had, not one, but two gossip columns!

The first column appeared in the third edition of the paper (11 September 1872) under the heading ‘In the Street.’ The author, writing under the pseudonym ‘Paxillus’ (a poisonous mushroom) established their credentials in the opening paragraph:

"Standing, as I frequently do, at the corner of streets and often in the vicinity of public-houses, there is seldom a discussion either upon matters of public interest or private scandal but what I hear. Having also some status in society, the weak-minded often come to me for support and assistance; and even their stronger brethren, when overcome by heat of argument or the closeness, perhaps of debating room, not infrequently favour me with their company, and demonstrate their opinions to whom all find a patient listener."

Captain Henry Lufkin Skeet N.Z.F., circa 1860
Image courtesy of Te Papa, Ref. O.013509

Published on a regular basis for just over a year, the author was outed in November 1873 as Captain Henry Lufkin Skeet. A summary of Skeet’s surveying career appears in Harold Jenks’ Forgotten Men: The Survey of Tauranga and District 1864-1869 published by the Tauranga Historical Society:

"In November 1866 he was gazetted captain in the Auckland Volunteer Engineers, a unit which he helped to raise, and in November of that year he was appointed surveyor-in-charge at Tauranga to expedite the survey of urban and rural land for military settlement … Skeet remained in charge of surveys until near the end of 1868, perhaps longer. He is recorded as having worked in the parish of Onewhero in mid-1870, but he returned to Tauranga and his name appears in association with community affairs and industry between July 1871 and November 1872." (p.67)

Whether Jenks’ definition of “community affairs” would include Skeet’s side hustle as a gossip columnist, is unclear. But how scandalmongering was it? Disappointingly from a social history perspective, the answer is, not very. Individuals and their failings are rarely mentioned, and never by name. In one column Skeet discusses an ‘old settler’ heading for the ‘lunatic asylum’, detailing the unfortunate circumstances around their decline (BOPT, 25 September 1872). However, Skeet’s intention was to elicit sympathy from readers rather than provide them with entertainment.
Overwhelmingly, Skeet uses the column to express his opinions and vent frustrations. These generally focus on local and national politics and the poor behaviour of fellow residents:

“Whilst the older inhabitants of Tauranga are taking steps from time to time to secure its advancement, it is a pity some effort could not be made to restrain the playful eccentricities of some of the juvenile population. Ropes stretched across a street, old kerosine tins, iron hoops and broken bottles placed in the middle of roads are not of any particular advantage to either foot passengers or horsemen … I trust if one of the delinquents be ever caught, a day or two in the redoubt, with a private whipping to dispel the monotony, might prove advantageous to himself and his associates.” (BOPT, 16 November 1872, p.3)

Taken from the Wharf Street Wharf (built 1870), facing toward The Strand. The Mission Institute (demolished 1874) is visible in the distance at the far right
Image courtesy of Tauranga City Libraries, Pae Korokī Ref. 16-011

In November 1873 Skeet left Tauranga to take up a government post in Taranaki. The editor of the Bay of Plenty Times wrote of his contribution to the paper:

“… Captain Skeet has been a constant contributor to our columns, and his various articles, under the title of ‘In the Street’ have afforded, no doubt, much interest to our readers, and at the same time frequently been instrumental in promoting local matters, whilst, by his careful avoidance of personalities, he has not at any time laid himself open to strictures.” (BOPT, 8 November 1873)

So perhaps Skeet wasn’t really a gossip columnist after all?

A Dinosaur from Karewa

W.B. Tegetmeier, 1879
From an etching by Hubert Herkomer, Image courtesy of The Friends of Charles Darwin

In 1869, William Tegetmeier, naturalist, prolific writer on pigeons, and experimenter with his friend Charles Darwin on how beehive cells became hexagonal, reported in the Daily Southern Cross on New Zealand’s Tuatara, known then as a ‘Tuatera’ or Navara lizard.

Naturalist Ernst Dieffenbach, employed by the New Zealand Company, to assess sites suitable for settlement, arrived in Wellington on the Tory in May 1839. During his travels around the country, he learned about a large and interesting lizard which had once been common in the islands around New Zealand. It could grow to over two feet in length and lived in holes, often in sandhills, near the shore, but had become scarce due to being eaten for food and killed by pigs. Unable to find a ‘Tuatera,’ Dieffenbach offered a reward. After his year-long contract finished and within days of departing, he obtained a specimen, caught on the small, rocky islet of Karewa. (The island’s conical peak can be seen from Tauranga, on the outside of Matakana Island). Dieffenbach must have taken the ‘Tuatera’ to Britain, for he kept it alive in captivity for some time, then presented it to the British Museum. It is unclear whether it died with him, or in the museum, where it was preserved.

Albert Gunther by Lucy Gee (Mrs H. Coxeter), watercolour, 1900
NPG 4965 © National Portrait Gallery, London

German-born Albert Günther, keeper of the Zoological Department at the Museum, studied the ‘Tuatera’s anatomy. (This was probably not Dieffenbach’s specimen, as today, tuatara from the North Brothers Island in Cook Strait, bear Günther’s name – Sphenodon guntheri, whereas those from Karewa Island are now Sphenodon punctatus. It has been debated as to whether these are two distinct species, or a variant of the same).

Tuataras, adult and juveline, Karewa Island, c1920-1930s
Black-and-white positive lantern slide, taken by Bernard Sladden
Image courtesy of Tauranga City Libraries, Bernard Sladden Collection, Ref. bs-188

Günther noted peculiar dentition, as the teeth appeared as prominences of the jawbone; singular fishlike vertebrae and abdominal ribs, as well as those attached to the spine, which he believed would assist with the ventral plate for climbing from holes and through sandhills, as its limbs were short, with feeble claws. The highly developed bony skull and birdlike ribs indicated very low and very high vertebrate organisation, which Günther considered significant, as New Zealand had scanty development of reptilian life. The scientific name Hatteria punctata and order Rhynchocephalia was given, forming a distinct group between lizards and crocodiles.

At the same time as Tegetmeier’s report, the Illustrated London News reported the arrival of a young live ‘Tuatera’ at Regent’s Park Zoological Gardens; the first in any zoo and believed not previously seen in Europe. It was thought extremely rare; little was known about the species, which seemed to belong to the Agama family of lizards (a genus of small to moderate-sized, long-tailed insectivorous old-world lizards found in Africa). ‘The ‘Tuatera’s remarkable anatomical peculiarities were to be made known in a paper at the next Zoological Society’s scientific meeting. (Günther’s landmark paper was the first to establish the Tuatara was not a lizard).

Karewa Island, c1920-1930s
Hand-coloured black-and-white positive lantern slide, taken by Bernard Sladden
Image courtesy of Tauranga City Libraries, Bernard Sladden Collection, Ref. bs-166

Meanwhile, two living specimens of Hatteria punctata collected from Karewa Island, had been donated to the Auckland Institute by H T Clarke, presumed to be Henry Tacey Clarke (1825-1902) son of missionary George Clarke. He served in the military, spoke fluent Maori, was a registered interpreter, a Native Land Court Judge, and Commissioner of Tauranga Land. Brett Payne mentions him in his March 2019 Tauranga Historical Society blog.

An anonymous writer, who recorded ‘A North Island Trip’ in the Cromwell Argus in 1880, mentioned that in 1873 he had visited Karewa Island, ‘home of the giant lizard,’ to obtain specimens of the species.

In May 1876, the Evening Post recorded considerable public interest from the latest addition to the Colonial Museum in Wellington; thirteen living tuataras, brought by Mr. Louis B. Wilson from the Brothers Islands. Some were almost two feet in length, described as ‘having an exceedingly sinister aspect, strongly resembling crocodiles with spiky backs and extensive smiles. However, they are quite harmless and very gentle, the thirteen living peacefully together; quite a happy family amongst their artificial rockwork, grazing pastorally on the worms, with which they are liberally supplied.’ People were startled by their sudden movement after seeing them completely motionless.

Tuatara and Toanui (Flesh-footed shearwater), Karewa Island, c1920-1930s
Black-and-white positive lantern slide, taken by Bernard Sladden
Image courtesy of Tauranga City Libraries, Bernard Sladden Collection, Ref. bs-187

Keeping live tuataras at the museum in Wellington was a tradition kept for many years. When I was researching at Te Papa Archives for my book ‘A Path Through the Trees’ on Mary Sutherland, I learned that Augustus Hamilton (Museum Director 1903-1913) wrote on his desk calendar when ‘the old lizard died,’ and Mary Sutherland was present in May 1937 when Roger Walpole, assistant at the museum, somehow cracked his ribs while feeling the tuatara.

Today, Southland Museum has a purpose-built tuatarium, which started in 1961, with tuataras (Sphenodon guntheri) from the Northern Brother Island. It runs a successful breeding programme and when numbers reached one hundred and five, a decision was made to release some on islands in the Marlborough Sounds.

Photographing a tuatara with a Popular Pressman half-plate camera, c1920-1930s
Black-and-white positive lantern slide, taken by Bernard Sladden
Image courtesy of Tauranga City Libraries, Bernard Sladden Collection, Ref. bs-733

This article would not be complete without mentioning Bernard Sladden. In 1932, he was appointed Honorary Inspector under the 1908 Scenery Preservation Act, with responsibility for Bay of Plenty offshore Islands. His wonderful photographs of tuatara would probably have been taken on Karewa Island.
    
Researching this story, led me to wonder why tuataras were sent to museums. The answer turned out to be simple. New Zealand’s first zoo was established in 1906 by Wellington City Council near Newtown Park. Auckland Zoo began in 1922 at Western Springs, with a lion, a hyena, a panther and monkeys, purchased from a private zoo in Onehunga, which was closed.

References

William Bernharrdt Tegetmeier, Wikipedia
Dieffenbach, Johan Karl Ernst (1811-1855) on JSTOR
Albert Günther, Wikipedia
Papers Past
Daily Southern Cross, 4 August 1868, 13 February 1869
Otago Witness, 13 February 1869
Evening Post, 12 May 1876
Cromwell Argus, 19 October 1880
Press, 16 February 1869
High Trees and the Te Papa Peninsula 1860-1910, by Brett Payne. March 2019 Tauranga Historical Society Blogspot
Bernard Sladden – The Man and the Books, by Max Avery, Historical Review, Vol.68, No 1, p29 Sphenodon punctatus, Animal Diversity Web, University of Michigan Museum of Zoology

Peace Garden at Hopukiore – Mount Drury Reserve

From Tauranga City Library’s archives
A monthly blog about interesting items in our collection

The original peace garden at the junction of Maunganui Road and Grace Avenue, beside Hopukiore - Mount Drury, was a joint project between Altrusa Club of Mount Maunganui and Tauranga District Council. 

75th Anniversary of Altrusa International, Inc. club community milestone project. Tauranga City Libraries Ams 291.

The project that celebrated both ten years since the Mount Maunganui group chartered to the women’s civic organisation, and 75 years of Altrusa International’s commitment to ‘improving economic well-being and quality of life’ through community service and literacy. Ams 291, in the Tauranga City Library Archives, contains plans, planting schemes and clippings about the peace garden.

The Mayor Keith Clarke, was invited to the birthday dinner on Monday 13 April 1992, with publicity releases sent to Mount / Pāpāoma Times, Bay of Plenty Times and Bay News, and Annabelle White, food columnist, confirmed as the after dinner speaker.

Plans for the peace garden were drawn up with Roel Koopman, from the Tauranga District Council, and featured cobble stone areas, seating and garden planting.

Plans for Peace Garden, 75^th Anniversary of Altrusa International, Inc. Tauranga City Libraries Ams 291.

In June an update on the project was submitted to the International Anniversary Chairman District Fifteen Governor. Periodic Detention workers, under council supervision, had erected the timber pergolas, and the peace roses were on order. The “plans are nearer to completion”, although the raffle with a diamond theme to raise funds hadn’t sold out but was “a really good start of our fund raising”. Club members and local residents were “enthusiastic” to see the garden completed.

On 1 November 1992 the newly completed Peace Garden was dedicated. A Mount and Papamoa Times article from the following Thursday included pictures of Altrusa members and painting of the fence (but unfortunately no view of the pergola and paving). Speakers included Mrs Gail Gerrand, President of the club, Christine Mora, chairperson of the project committee, and Mayor Clarke, who all agreed that the garden was a ‘lasting and meaningful gift to the community for years to come’. 

The archive collection includes annual reports and public relations scrapbooks for the Altrusa Club of Mount Maunganui, and their last project in March 2007, ‘Magic Mums’.

But what happened to the garden after that? Sandra Simpson wrote in the Bay of Plenty Times, 27 August 2010, that Tauranga City Council were ‘reclaiming’ the site to extend the children’s play area, and members of the disbanded Mount Maunganui branch were “thrilled” Ned Nicely, the council city parks co-ordinator, offered a new site on the ocean side of the reserve. Gail Gerrand, is photographed sitting next to the new Marine Parade garden of native plants – the peace roses deemed unsuitable for the more exposed site. A rata tree was to be planted in the centre on Saturday by Tauranga MP Simon Bridges.
Thoughts from Altrusa Tauranga president Fern Nielsen conclude the article “the first garden was a “much-used oasis of peace and pleasure”, and hopes the new one will achieve the same ambience, with its backdrop of pohutukawa, the green slopes of Hopukiore and the sound of the ocean.”

Sources: 

Altrusa International. (2018m July). The history of Altrusa. https://www.altrusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/The-History-of-Altrusa.pdf

Simpson, S. (2010, August 27). Opening ceremony marks return of floral ‘oasis’. Bay of Plenty Times. p. 28. 

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This archival item is on our schedule for digitisation, and will be added to Pae Korokī once digitised. For more information about other items in our collection, visit Pae Korokī or email the Heritage & Research Team: Research@tauranga.govt.nz

Written by Kate Charteris, Heritage Specialist at Tauranga City Libraries.

Laura Dunnage, photographer

On 1 July 1901 an article on page 2 of the Bay of Plenty Times announced the arrival of a Miss Dunnage who would be staying in town “for a few days.” On the next page an advertisement appeared in which she presented her credentials – Christchurch School of Art and holding South Kensington certificates – while offering tuition in drawing, painting and landscape sketching from nature. What pearls of artistic wisdom she may have imparted to the community is unknown, as no contemporary accounts of such lessons are known. However, it was a large wooden case in her luggage that she neglected to mention which afforded a much more tangible legacy to her stay in the Bay of Plenty.

Laura Constance Dunnage (1874-1957)

Who was the eminently qualified Miss Dunnage? Laura Constance Dunnage was born in 1874 in Papanui, Christchurch, the youngest of eleven children of farmer George Dunnage (1830-1904) and his wife Louisa née Bowron (1831-1905). Her schooling in West Christchurch was accompanied by the usual array of “commended” awards, as well as prizes for her hand bouquets and cut flower displays at the annual summer flower shows. As implied in her advert, she then attended the Christchurch School of Art between 1892 and 1896.

She probably came to Tauranga because one of her older brothers was Walter Henry Dunnage, a former government surveyor who had been living at Waipapa – near Aongatete – since 1895 and working on various contracts in the district and further afield.

1st Avenue, Tauranga, 1901
Photograph by Laura C. Dunnage from the Dunnage-Hartree Family Album
Courtesy of Jan Hartree & Tauranga City Library (Pae Koroki) Ref. 00-651

Laura Dunnage brought a field camera – probably half-plate – with her to Tauranga, and demonstrated that she was already quite proficient in its use by capturing a series of views of the townscape. In this image of three children amusing themselves with a pony and sled in 1st Avenue, her open camera case is seen at right in the foreground. By 1901, she would have been using the readily available dry plates, which could be safely stored in the box after exposure, and then processed when she returned home in the evening.

Tauranga Harbour, 1901
Photograph by Laura C. Dunnage from the Dunnage-Hartree Family Album
Courtesy of Jan Hartree & Tauranga City Library (Pae Koroki) Ref. 00-659

A view of the Tauranga foreshore at low tide with Mauao on the skyline is captioned, “Moonlight on the harbour,” which would have been quite an achievement although, judging from the detail visible in the dark areas of the image, it seems more likely that it was actually taken mid-morning.

Sulphur Mill, Tauranga, 1901
Photograph by Laura C. Dunnage from the Dunnage-Hartree Family Album
Courtesy of Jan Hartree & Tauranga City Library (Pae Koroki) Ref. 00-662

Her scene of the derelict sulphur works on the Spit, which later became Sulphur Point, is so atmospheric it seems almost haunting. The photographer’s companion, a young woman, waits for her in a one-horse gig, carefully positioned adjacent to a rough track in the foreground. The tall chimney and building of the former fertilizer factory are framed by Karewa Island and Mauao on the skyline, and a narrow foot jetty has been left high and dry by the receding tide.

Miss Dunnage wasn’t the first woman in the Bay of Plenty to venture into the decidedly male-dominated pursuit of photography. Emily Surtees, daughter of Katikati pioneer George Vesey Stewart, brought a camera with her when she returned from England with her husband in late 1898, and photographed family, friends, homes, social events and local scenes in the Katikati district before they returned to England in 1900. Mary Humphreys took up photography, probably soon after her husband died in May 1898, and her circumstances most likely dictated a more professional direction. A year later in May 1899, she was confident enough to photograph the Governor’s reception in Tauranga, offering prints for sale as mementoes of the event at bookseller Thomas Duncanson’s Novelty Depot next to the Commercial Hotel on The Strand. By December that year she was supplying images for publication in the Auckland Weekly News.

Scene on the Kaimai Track to Cambridge, photograph by Laura C. Dunnage, 1901
Published in Auckland Weekly News Supplement, 19 Dec 1901
Courtesy of Auckland Library Heritage Images, Ref. AWNS-19011219-3-4

Laura Dunnage remained in Tauranga for a good deal longer than the “few days” originally planned, and decided that she too might able to derive some revenue from what had hitherto been a leisurely pursuit. One might speculate that she may even have been given a nudge in that direction by Mary Humphreys. It was, after all, a small community. On 14 December she boarded the SS Clansman bound for Auckland armed with a portfolio of her scenic photographs, and presumably met with a favourable response. By the time she returned to Tauranga in late January, having spent Christmas with her family in Christchurch, her photograph of the Wairere Stream above the falls on the track across the Kaimais to the Waikato had been published under her byline in the Auckland Weekly News.

Beaching the Whaleboat, Motiti, c.1901-1903
Photograph by Laura C. Dunnage from the Dunnage-Hartree Family Album
Courtesy of Jan Hartree & Tauranga City Library (Pae Koroki) Ref. 00-671

She rented Gray’s Cottage in Willow Street, next to Hammond’s timber yard, and again advertised her services as an art teacher. A collection of oil paintings, including some by Miss Dunnage, were exhibited at the Chrysanthemum Show in April. She also demonstrated and instructed in Indian Club exercises, the 19th century equivalent of aerobics or zumba. Together with a party of friends she made an expedition to Motiti Island in the yacht Hopara, probably in December 1902, returning with at least two dozen exposed glass plates, although some may have been taken on other trips to the island. She pasted prints of these in an album that was later digitised for the Tauranga City Library, and include two which were subsequently published by the AWNS on 26 March 1903.

Large gathering at Te Hiinga-o-te-Ra wharenui, Motiti, c.1901-1903
Photograph by Laura C. Dunnage from the Dunnage-Hartree Family Album
Courtesy of Jan Hartree & Tauranga City Library (Pae Koroki) Ref. 00-669

Apart from scenes showing the visiting party in their yacht, and picnicking and bathing in Orongatea Bay, she also took pictures of local residents at Tamateakitehuatahi and Te Hinga-o-te-Ra wharenui and outside their whare.

A “bush whari,” Oropi, c.1901-1903
Photograph by Laura C. Dunnage from the Dunnage-Hartree Family Album
Courtesy of Jan Hartree & Tauranga City Library (Pae Koroki) Ref. 00-658
Also published in Auckland Weekly News Supplement, 13 Aug 1903 (link)

Her brother Walter had in May 1902 married Caroline Kensington at Holy Trinity, Tauranga, she being from a large Oropi family. Their first child was born at Tauranga in April 1903. Laura Dunnage presumably took the photo of a “bush whari” during a visit to Oropi around this time and submitted it to the AWNS shortly after leaving Tauranga on 8 July 1903.

Spraying potato crop, Patoka, c.Dec 1908
Photograph by Laura C. Dunnage from the Dunnage-Hartree Family Album
Courtesy of Jan Hartree & Tauranga City Library (Pae Koroki) Ref. 00-665

After a brief stop in Gisborne she returned to live in Christchurch. Further photographs compiled in the album (1905-1906) and published in the AWNS (Sep 1910) demonstrated that she was still active with her camera. In late 1908 she produced a flurry of images of farming scenes around Patoka and Rissington, north-west of Napier. The man spraying the potato plants in the image above is probably Henry Harper Hartree (1883-1976) who she married at St Augustine’s, Napier on 3 June 1913. They had a son Harry Nelson Hartree born at Napier in 1917. It is unknown whether she continued with her photography after her marriage.

“In the track of the bush fellers, Patoka, Feb 1909”
Photograph by Laura C. Dunnage from the Dunnage-Hartree Family Album
Courtesy of Jan Hartree & Tauranga City Library (Pae Koroki) Ref. 00-711

A final image from the Dunnage-Hartree album includes a possible self portrait (at left). Laura C. Dunnage died at Napier in 1957 and is buried in Taradale Cemetery.

References

McCauley, Debbie (2020) Emily Surtees, a Snapshot of Katikati
Indian Club, Wikipedia
Heritage Images, Auckland Library
Pae Koroki, Tauranga City Library
Papers Past, Alexander Turnbull Library
Family Trees from Ancestry.com