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| Katikati & Te Puna Ridings Road Status Map, May 1986 Tauranga City Libraries, Pae Korokī Ref. Map 20-150 |
Were he to return to his former address in Te Puna today, John Munro - who lived there between 1893[1] and his death in 1924[2] - would have little difficulty negotiating the roads between the Wairoa River and his home. This 1986 map of State Highway 2[3] and its offshoots - our fishbone road – bears a close resemblance to the original route as constructed by the Armed Constabulary over a century before. When my family took over the Munro farm in 1955, our address was as given in the title of this essay. Why, you might wonder, was the road already “old”?
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| Rough sketch plan of Tauranga District, by James Mackay, 4 May 1867 Tauranga City Libraries, Pae Korokī Ref. Map 20-265 |
In 1867, before there even was a road[4], the challenges confronting the Constabulary were significant. There was no stone, so they used the technique of laying transverse boughs of manuka across the roadway and compacting fill over it. As this “corduroy road” broke down into sloughs and bogs and dustbowls with use, the roadway itself tended to wander over the landscape. Horses and vehicles picked their way through fern and wetlands, fording the smaller watercourses and stopping to consider their options at the bigger rivers. The most significant of these for John was the Wairoa River itself, where a kauri bridge had been constructed in 1874 “under the superintendence of AC Turner, Esq., District Engineer.” [5]
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| Wairoa River Bridge being built, 1874 Tauranga City Libraries, Pae Korokī Ref. Photo 03-244 |
John’s route from the bridge still winds up the hill, whose headland, Pukewhanake, was ravaged for engineering purposes. The terraced pa sites behind Pukewhanake, so obvious until the 1980s, have now been covered over by a modern house. The hill climb was windier in John’s day, creeping behind and around the hilside’s southeastern edge, but the straight stretch intersected by Te Mete Road to the south and, further on, Clarke Road to the north has remained relatively unchanged. The dip into the Hakao[6] was a vexed issue for years and we can imagine John allowing himself a wry smile as he remembers hauling stone from the Te Puna Quarry[7] to satisfy the vigorous complaints of Mr JAM Davidson, County Chairman, about the “lake” at the gateway to his farm[8].
The roundabout at the four-way intersection of Minden and Te Puna Roads might have disconcerted our time-traveller, were it not for the fact that the construction of the Takitimu Northern Link, a massive new highway leading from the Tauriko interchange south of Tauranga city, including a new bridge across the Wairoa, and another one at the “Te Hakao Minden Gully”[9], is already obvious at various points along his route.
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| Artist’s impression of completed Te Rangituanehu Minden interchange, Takitimu
North Link Image courtesy of Waka Kotahi |
This image[10], which does not show the existence of our present State Highway 2 (it is out of shot on the left), shows the extent to which John’s – and our – Te Puna landscape is about to change forever. The “corduroy road”, and its later improvements, adjustments, and “deviations”[11] will become a thoroughfare much more akin to that of John’s day, however. So maybe, were he to book a Tardis for, say 2025, he may feel more at home on what would by then be the old main road.
And what about the even older, so-called, Old Main Road on Rural Delivery route number 2? John might be gratified to find out that this road, that he objected to when it was proposed in 1920[12], is now named after his family. He may also be amused to discover that this new main road, known on a Lands and Survey aerial photograph[13] as the “Paeroa Whakatane State Highway”, did not stay new for long. In the early 1950’s, further works along the Te Puna stretch of the highway returned “Bledisloe Road” to its original status as the main road, eliminated Pipeclay Cutting (now enjoying two names – Ainsworth Road to its north and Munro Road East at, confusingly, its western end) altogether and created Loop Road (these days, no longer a loop).
Loop Road is, however, the currently-intended end of the Takitimu Northern Link. Having circled the Te Puna roundabout, John will return to relatively familiar ground. He would recognise Quarry Road, which he was paid £33 15/- for fencing in 1913[14]. And he would know his own driveway, which is still where it always was.
[3] May 1986 local road network, image courtesy of Pae Koroki
[4] James Mackay’s 1867 sketch plan, image courtesy of Pae Koroki
[6] Beth Bowden, “Te Puna’s Lost Watercourse” http://taurangahistorical.blogspot.com/2022/01/
[10] Image courtesy of Waka Kotahi, takitimu-north-link-artists-impression-of-completed-te-rangituanehu-minden-interchange__ResizedImageWzYwMCwzODBd
[11] The technical term for re-routing the highway, much in use over the 1920s and 1930s
[12] “A Te Puna Deviation” https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT19200807.2.9
[13] NZMS 3, Sheet N.58/7 First Edition photographed February 1943 and published September 1949
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