The Metal Road to Ohauiti

by Guest Author Lucy Mullinger

View from the Amy’s new home, 1970s

“We were just out in the sticks, we really were”, or that’s how it felt for Trudie Amy, when she was persuaded to move to a rural section in Ohauiti just over 40 years ago. Newly married, Trudie and her husband Kenneth had originally planned to buy land in Judea, but changed their minds when they came across the property situated on the Poike block, originally known as Lot 3. (i)

“I told Ken I wasn’t living on a metal road but after a bit he persuaded me and we ended up paying $21,000 for a quarter acre and the house.” At the time, the $11 per week mortgage seemed steep to the couple. “We spoke to the lawyer and said there was no way we could pay it off, but he said ‘you’ll cope’ and we did.” The mortgage rate increased over the years but the couple managed to pay the lot off in 15 years, thanks to Trudy’s job  as a machinist for Expozay and Ken’s expertise as a metal worker for Forlong and Maisey. (ii)

Ken and some workmates at Forlong and Maisey

One of Ken’s favourite pastimes was driving about in his Hillman Hunter. “Poike Road was only about 10 foot wide at the time and my Hillman often skidded off the road. Whenever it did, I would contact the council and a grader would come in and sort out the road so it was drivable again.” When their only son started to learn to drive, he would take the Hillman up to Hollister Lane, which at the time was a gravel road with no houses on it.

Motorcycling in more carefree times

 Trudie also has fond memories of their son working in Maungatapu and flying home on his motorbike. “It was just a quick drive from Maungatapu, around in an S shape to Ohauiti, down the gravel road.” They also enjoyed spending a day trip at the strawberry farm situated in the dell on Hammond Street, where a main highway now travels through. "Everything was so different,” says Trudie, “it was all rural with views as far as you could see.”

The house they fell in love with over 40 years ago was, at one point, nestled amongst a working farm, with horses grazing next door. “They often were caught chewing on our trees,” Trudie laughs. At the top of the driveway, there was a section filled with plum trees. “The plums were huge and so delicious,” says Trudie. “Sadly, once the land got sold off the trees were removed.”

As their son grew up, the family began to welcome grandchildren, nephews and nieces to their home. “There were always children in and out of the house.”

Shopping centre floor

Over twenty years ago, land was earmarked for a shopping centre and Trudie remembers taking the children to visit the site, which was surrounded by farmland at the time. Ohauiti is loosely translated, by The New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage to mean “place of little wind” and, while it did boast a school at one point, the suburb is now home to subdivisions and farms as you travel further up to rural Ohauiti.

Top end of Poike Road, in the 1970s (above) and now (below)

Images courtesy of the Amy family

References

(i) Charles Hollister-Jones bought 80 acres of Ohauiti land, under Lot 3 with William White, in 1939. According to the book Ohauiti, 1878 - 1980 the Hollister -Jones family originally paid ten shillings per acre.

(ii) Exposay was a swimwear business, which was founded in Mount Maunganui in the late 1960s and Forlong and Maisey, which was founded in Hamilton, employed metalworkers from its factory in Gate Pa. A keen metal worker and engineer, Ken spent many years working for the New Zealand brand metal working business, then moved to Fisher Vogue Lighting at Mount Maunganui, when Forlong and Maisey closed.

Richard Coles Jordan (1838-1919)

Richard Coles Jordan, Mayor of Tauranga 1882-3, 1885-6
Courtesy of Tauranga City Libraries, Ref. Photo 21-1852

This early Tauranga settler lived a reasonably long and rather fruitful life. He came to Te Papa somewhere between 1866 and 1872 and eventually fathered four sons and three daughters. A surveyor by profession, he was engaged by the Town Board as their first engineer to build the Beach Road, now our Strand. In 1873 he was the first to drive a horse and dray over the road to Ohinemutu in Rotorua, and was described as a roading contractor. Following his journey, locals were keen to see the establishment of a mail service on this route. New roads in those days were paved with firstly sand and then shell.

He continued surveying for a living until at least 1874 but was soon owner of a Bond Store and described himself as land agent, auctioneer and stock agent, reputedly the only one of the latter between Katikati and Opotiki. The first Judea sale yards (still operating in the 1980s*) were a venture of his, and he held an initial sale of cattle there in 1876. His residential address in 1880 was “West side of Strand, between Harrington and MacLean Streets.”

17 Oct 1883  Letter from J Mann to Matravers reminding him the longer goods stayed at Jordan [and Sheppards] the more they will be [ruinous]
Courtesy of Tauranga City Libraries, Ref Ams 12/2/7

From 1882 to 1915 Tauranga mayors were elected annually and RC Jordan was the second, following George Vesey Stewart. He held the office for two terms, in 1882 and again in 1885. Due to a fire in his premises he was forced to declare bankruptcy in early 1883, but was soon solvent again. He won the seat back from Thomas Wrigley nearly three years later. He was in office during the Tarawera eruption on the 10th June 1886 and called to Auckland for help for our citizens as he was concerned about the falling ash

16 Oct 1883 Telegram sent to officer in charge Customs, states that Mann’s Warehouse is approved and Jordan’s revoked.
Courtesy of Tauranga City Libraries, Ref Ams 12/2/1

It is important to note that another prominent citizen of Tauranga, also named Jordan, was elected Mayor five times, he was Canon Charles Jordan, vicar of Holy Trinity.

RC was later a member of the County Council representing the Waimapu Riding. He took an interest in the Acclimatisation Society, the Agricultural and Pastoral Society and called for expressions of interest in forming a Young Farmers Group.

Richard’s wife was Kate and they both appear on the ratepayers register for 1908 along with sons Cyril, a storekeeper, and his wife M(….), and Arthur, a surveyor, and his wife Jesse. The following year Cyril owned his father’s plot of land and at least by 1916 it seems that of this Jordan family only he and his wife remained in the area.

There is a small street off the West end of 9th Ave named after one of the Jordan residents, more likely RC.

*Please see post on Judea sale yards by Beth Bowden dated 23 August 2019

Sources

Tauranga 1882-1982, The Centennial of Gazetting Tauranga as a Borough, Edited by A.C Bellamy

Pae Koroki, courtesy Tauranga City libraries:
Tauranga Historical Journal No. 15 1961
Tauranga Rates Books 1907, 1916
Tauranga Street Directory 1880                                          

Geni  Family Tree

Kaimai Road (Part 3)

Pile for new Hairini bridge, 80 feet long, weighed 13 tons,
fallen off its trailer on the Kaimai road, c 1950s
Image courtesy of Tauranga City Library Ref. 08-018

When the Minister of Public Works in the first Labour Government, Robert Semple, addressed the Kaimai road labourers in March 1937, he was greeted with enthusiastic applause. And no wonder: he had just told his audience that one navvy was worth ten bankers. (Exceptions to this praise were those the Minister called ‘dissipators’, i.e. drinkers and gamblers, who would be an unwelcome influence in the work camps.) Rather than struggling as relief workers on a stingy dole, the navvies – 40 of them, with the likelihood of an increase to 100 – were being paid a decent wage, and were acknowledged to be doing essential work. Perhaps as a result, progress on the road was described by the Bay of Plenty Times on 19 March 1937 as ‘excellent’ and ‘wonderful’. In December of the same year, the paper stated that the estimated cost of the Kaimai Road would be £63,000, £5,500 of which was to come from Tauranga County Council, and that the works would take about two years to complete.

Kaimai Road, taken by the Richardson family, 17 Nov 1947
Image courtesy of Tauranga City Library Ref. 02-022

This sounds like a happy ending to the story of the Kaimai Road. However, its steep and winding sections, its elevation, and its gravel surface continued to challenge motorists right through the 1960s and 1970s. Even in the 21st century it can be daunting to the timid driver. State Highway 29 now carries heavy freight to and from the Port of Tauranga, and traffic volumes that Bob Semple and his contemporaries could not even have imagined. Closures and delays due to adverse weather, rock falls, or serious crashes still happen. Travellers, take note:

While a novice was driving a car
Down the Kaimais, his son said, “Papa!
If you drive at this rate
We’re bound to be late.
Drive faster!” He did – and they are.

(Please contact us if you know who is responsible for this verse, as we would love to make proper acknowledgement.)

New cutting at the top of the Kaimai road, 1963
Image courtesy of Tauranga City Library Ref. 04-037

Kaimai Road (Part 2)

Thompson's Track, Bush road with woman and dog (1900)
Photo: Emily Surtees Photographic Collection, Tauranga City Libraries. Photographer: Emily Surtees (nee Stewart) (eldest child of George Vesey and Margaret Stewart). Courtesy of Elizabeth Smith and Ellen McCormack (Ref: Page 50, 003) Image ref. 16-348

 It is clear from this 1900 photograph that Thompson’s Track (named after assistant surveyor Thomas Kirkpatrick Thompson) did not get the 1500 pounds promised by Government in the 1890s. The funding was withdrawn because it was conditional on substantial contributions from impoverished local authorities. Stories tell about the track being upgraded during World War II (1939-1945) so it could be used as an alternative escape route should Tauranga be invaded.

It was not just Tauranga’s Pakeha settlers who wanted a road to the Waikato. A petition from local Māori, 'aboriginal Natives of New Zealand, living in the County of Tauranga in the Provincial district of Auckland’, implored the Government to finish the Kaimai road (Bay of Plenty Times 18 May 1894 p4). As the end of the nineteenth century approached, both Māori and Pakeha could be forgiven for thinking that the Government was tying itself in knots to avoid spending money on the Kaimai road,  or indeed any road in the area: the offer of funding for Thompson’s Track was withdrawn after local bodies could not pledge enough to support it. In 1896 the Minister of Lands refused to fund the Kaimai road because it went through land owned by the Estates Company which the Government might be expected to buy. Putting a road through it would increase its value and the price the Government would have to pay; therefore, the road was not funded, because the land was (potentially) worth too much. Later, it was announced that the Government would not want to buy that land because there was Crown land in the area of equal value for which there was no demand; therefore, the road was not funded, because the land wasn’t worth enough! This tortuous logic upset the good people of Tauranga, as well it might, and their road seemed further off than ever.

‘[T]he public is beginning to ask itself once more, "What about the Kaimai road, are we going to get it after all?" And echo just answers, "After all! After all!" till the sound dies away in distant futurity’ (Poverty Bay Herald 30 November 1899 p4). 

Ivy Bridge, Ruahihi, Kaimai Road (built by Mr McNaughton), 1903
Photo: Tauranga City Libraries Ref. 02-067

But a little help was at hand. In 1900 the Rev. Charles Jordan was despatched to Wellington to boost local representative Mr Herries’ request for £2,500 from the Government to complete the Kaimai road. In October a grant of £350 for the road appeared in the supplementary estimates. Mr Jordan’s report made the best of this limited success.

‘We have now, so to speak, got in the thin end of the wedge, and we must keep on driving it home, year after year, until this road is formed’ (Bay of Plenty Times 7 November 1900 p2).

And that is more or less what happened. Although the big lump sum to complete the whole project never eventuated, smaller grants trickled in, and the Kaimai road gradually improved. Provided you didn’t expect too much, you could be positive about it, like the Bay of Plenty Times in 1901: the track was ‘in capital order for bridle traffic in fine weather’ (my italics; 23 September 1901 p2), and two years later it was ‘in much better order than in the past and much more generally used’ as a stock route (7 August 1903 p2). It was also being widened for wheeled traffic. There was still, however, a long way to go…

To be continued.

Frederick Newnham Christian

Frederick Newnham Christian in his 70s
Collection of Julie Green

Fred was born in 1884 in Christchurch, he was the youngest of seven children. Apprenticed to machinery suppliers Andrews and Beaven for 5 years, he also studied electrical and mechanical engineering at Canterbury University and worked at his trade in England. Once qualified as a Marine Engineer he worked for the Northern Steamship Company on coastal boats including ‘Wave’ and ‘Victory.’ In 1911 he purchased Davies Bros business in Devonport Rd and renamed it Tauranga Plumbing and Engineering Works. He resided at ‘Dilston,’ a boarding establishment run by the Norris Family (near present day Elizabeth Heights.)

The garage in 1955 on western side of Devonport rd, Tauranga
Collection of Julie Green

In December 1913 he married Mary Parkinson whom he had met in the UK. They later purchased ‘Fairlight' overlooking the Waikareo Estuary, and raised their family there. During the first war he began to sell cars and became Tauranga’s Ford agent, continuing in business until the mid 1950s. By then he employed 30 staff including painters, panel beaters and upholsterers but due to failing heath he sold to Tappenden’s.

Advertising Souvenir
Collection of Julie Green

Many of the mechanics trained at the Devonport Rd garage went on to have successful businesses in other parts of the district. Some of these were:

• Phil Prime — agent for Humber, Commer and De Soto in Grey Street,
• Erle Prier — garage at Warner Rd for many years,
• Wally Brockway — Bethlehem Motors for 30+ years ,
• Johnny Phillips — Fraser Street and his daughter is still in business,
• Charlie Dinsdale — Birch Ave
• Doug Hayward — Omokoroa
• Frank Olsen — Eleventh Ave

and several others in other districts.

Some of F.N. Christian’s achievements in the Tauranga District:

• Lay preacher and member of the Guild of Wesley Methodist Church,
• School and Liquor licensing committee,
• Debating and Literary Society,  a prominent Rotarian,
• Commissioner of Scouts for 7 years,
• Chamber of Commerce for 6 years,
• Deputy Mayor and at his death in November 1957
• Member of the Harbour Board and a Borough Councillor