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| The Wairoa River entrance at low water showing Kaiarero (Tilby) Point on the north-west corner of Fergusson Park |
Living in early Tauranga, a place of many peninsulas, rivers, estuaries and fords, often meant getting your feet wet and muddy depending on where you crossed - and now and again in the case of a misstep when travelling on foot or horseback, a complete soaking or drowning. Before the 1870s, overland travellers from the north wishing to access the Otūmoetai Peninsula and beachfront path to Otūmoetai Pā and Te Papa mission stationwere confronted with a final watery challenge - a crossing of the Wairoa River, which contributes about 50% of the total freshwater inflow to Tauranga Harbour.
On 3 July 1838, travelling English botanist John Carne Bidwill and his party of Māori porters crossed the Kaimai range to the Te Puna peninsula, from where he was carried at low tide ‘half a mile’ over the Wairoa Rivers dangerous outer crossing ‘on the shoulders of one of the natives’. to the Otūmoetai beachfront path.1 The outer crossing from Te Puna’s Oikimoke Point, which followed a narrow zig-zag causeway with quicksands on either side, had a sinister history, with fatalities among both Māori and Pākehā who mistimed the crossing or strayed from the path.
In March 1832, the chief Titore Tākiri’s predatory Ngāpuhi amphibious expedition from the Bay of Islands entered Tauranga Harbour. Initially camping on Rangiwaea Island, the invaders crossed to the Te Puna side of the Wairoa River. When a daring group of Ngāpuhi musketeers attempted the outer crossing at low water, they became caught fast in quick sands off what is now Tilby Point, on the north-west corner of the Matua foreshore (Fergusson Park). All attempts by their comrades to extricate them failed and they remained trapped with their heads barely above the tides. When the sufferers called out for sustenance during the stillness of the nights, the Otūmoetai defenders from the pa, called to them contemptuously Kaiarero! (Eat your tongues!), by which name the point is known to Ngāi Te Rangi to this day.2
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| Wairoa Swamp |
This watercolour was painted by an unknown soldier. He was present at the siege of Maketū, the battles of Pukehinahina (Gate Pā) and Te Ranga in in 1864, and the subsequent occupation of the Tauranga District. Titled ‘Wiroa Swamp’, the sketch shows the old Matua-Otūmoetai Swamp, which was later drained to become today’s Fergusson Park. Kaiarero (Tilby) Point is in the foreground with Te Puna across the Wairoa River entrance at high water. From Kaiarero Point, north bound travellers left the Otūmoetai beachfront path and depending on the tide, walked, rode or were ferried by canoe directly across to Te Puna’s Oikimoke Point.
Miss Eliza Jones, 1858
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| Eliza Stack née Jones in later years |
In June 1858 the Anglican missionary John Kinder accompanied Miss Eliza Jones, a well travelled, adventurous young woman, from Auckland to Tauranga in the schooner Hope. Having lost her Welsh parents at an early age, Jones who had been born and raised in Edinburgh, came out to New Zealand with her brother Humphrey, an officer in the Britsh Army in 1857. After enduring an appalling ten-day, rough weather voyage in a dirty, cramped cabin, half suffocated, amidst dogs, poultry, potatoes and three additional fellow passengers, Jones resolved never to repeat the experience and later returned to Auckland on horseback.
Arriving at Tauranga on 9 July 1858, Jones lived at the Te Papa Mission Station with the Volkner family and later with the Chapmans at the Maketū station. Her enjoyable and memorable sojourn which included picnics, local explorations, and a visit to the Rotorua themal district soon came to an end. On 25 October, she departed overland to Auckland by way of the Kaimai Ranges’ Wairere Track accompanied by Rev Karl Volkner. The Maori travellers and porters accompanying the party travelled on foot while Volkner rode a horse and Miss Jones rode Archdeacon Brown’s pony Robin Hood, sitting side saddle, with a starched bonnet and thick veil to ward off the ‘venomous bites’ of mosquitoes.3 She recorded:
It was sad parting from my dear friends at Te Papa, who had been so kind to me, and to whom I was indebted for one of the most notable experiences of my life. The whole party together with the [Maori] school children, came to the beach to see me off [from where they crossed the Waikareao Estuary by boat]. The horses were already waiting for us on the Otumoetai side, and a few minutes after saying good-bye I was mounted on Robinhood and cantering along the beach with Mr Volkner, to catch up our Maoris who had gone on with the baggage and provisions. We found them waiting for us at Te Puna, a broad estuary which could only be crossed at low water, and under the guidance of some-one who knew the fords.
As soon as the tide permitted, we commenced what proved to be a most disagreeable undertaking. We had to traverse a wide extent of sand and mud flats, crossed by many water channels, varying from two to four feet in depth. The sides were steep, and getting in and out was very unpleasant. The shortness of my pony's legs caused him to drop into the water with such a sudden jerk every time that he nearly pitched me over his head, and I was very thankful when the last channel was crossed and we got back to dry land. The danger when crossing this estuary is being caught by the tide. The channels are only fordable at dead low tide, and as it takes some time to get over them all, it proved nervous work till it was done.4
Near the end of her return journey to Auckland in October-November 1858, 29-year-old Miss Jones stayed at the Kohanga mission station on the Lower Waikato River. There she met for the first time James Stack, a young missionary who was then assisting the missionary-linguist Dr Robert Maunsell. On the 28 January 1881, Eliza Rachel Jane Jones and James West Stack were married by Bishop Selwyn at Auckland; they had seven children.
Eliza Stack and her party were fortunate to have crossed the Wairoa safely. The river’s outer crossing continued to take the lives of the tardy, the reckless and the unlucky into the 1870s. Under the heading A Horseman Lost, the New Zealand Herald reported on 14 August 1871:
A man named E. G. Hall, attached as foreman to the party engaged in the erection of the telegraph to Katikati, was on Tuesday reported to the police by Mr. Floyd, as missing. He had started to cross the Wairoa at the ford on horseback. The horse was caught on the Te Puna side of the river with saddle and bridle on, but the rider has not since been seen. He was believed to be drowned while crossing that very dangerous ford. Mr. Hall was seen riding east Mr. McSweeny’s place beyond Otumoetai, going towards the Wairoa, between one and two o'clock in the afternoon, with a heavy bag over his shoulders and long boots on ... [A] native coming down from Te Puna to the Wairoa river to fish for eels, met and caught the horse just as he came out of the wnter on the Te Puna side, with a saddle and bridle on, but no rider, so it must have been almost immediately after the catastrophe.
Only those who have crossed this ford can properly describe its dangerous character. The ford is at the mouth of the river, which there is very wide; and the track - if it may be so called - is on a narrow strip of solid sand, on each side of which are numerous quicksands. The water, at the lowest tide, is over the saddle flaps, and the route for more than half-a-mile goes in a zig-zag direction, only known to those who have to cross frequently, and very unsafe for an unpractised traveller. It is said that a Maori and his horse once disappeared altogether in one of the quicksands. The search party returned again on the evening of the 6th instant, without having found the remains Mr Hall. It is said that he was the bearer of a considerable sum of money, wherewith to pay the men employed at the telegraph camp.5
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| Wairoa Village |
Painted by the same unknown soldier, the original handwriting on the front reads ‘Wiroa vilace.’ Looking across the Wairoa River from the Matua side to Te Puna, the watercolour shows the Wairoa River at high water with Wairoa Pā and kainga in the background. In the foreground is a waka tētē (utility canoe) for ferrying travellers across to Te Puna.
Travellers crossing to Te Puna from the Otūmoetai Peninsula were able to avoid the treacherous outer crossing by bypassing Kaiarero Point. Wading over Wairoa Bay (today’s Matua Saltmarsh Reserve) which could be safely crossed at half tide, they made their way to Bethlehem, where, depending on the state of the tide, they waded or were canoed across the Wairoa at its safer upper ford - crossed in later times by three successive bridges.6
In 1874, with travel across the Wairoa River increasing, the government built a one-way bridge of kauri timber. It replaced the ferry service operated by Te Puna’s Ngāti Kahu who were transporting travellers across in waka and row boats. The wooden structure was replaced in 1913 by a single laned concrete bridge. The two-laned State Highway 2 bridge that motorists use today was opened in February 1968.7
References
1 Bidwill, John, Rambles in New Zealand, W. S. Orr and Co. London, 1841: Capper Reprint 1974: 79-81.
2 Rorke, Jinty, Fergusson Park and the Tilby Point Farm: The Maori History, Tauranga City Council, 1997: 1.
3 Matheson, A.H; The Wairere Track: Ancient Highway of the Maori and Missionary, The Elms Trust, Tauranga, 1975: 56-58.
4 Stack, J.W; Early Maoriland Adventures of J.W. Stack, A.H. Reed (ed.), A.H. and A.W Reed, Dunedin, 1935: 48.
5 New Zealand Herald, 14 August 1871: 2.
6 Von Hochstetter, Ferdinand, New Zealand: Its Physical Geography, Geology and Natural History, J. G. Cotta, Stuttgart, 1867: 445.
7 Neal, Justine, ‘The Wairoa River Bridge’, Tauranga Historical Society, 3 September 2021. https://taurangahistorical.blogspot.com/2021/09/the-wairoa-river-bridge.html
Images
Photographer, White’s Aviation, ‘Aerial view of Matua Peninsula, Otūmoetai, with Mauao and Mount Maunganui in the background’. Photo 00-Whites Aviation 52741 (473i), 17 March 1960. Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries Photo 00-434.
Artist unknown, ‘Wairoa Swamp’, Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries. Art 21-042.
Photographer unknown: ‘Portrait of Mrs James West Stack’. Williams, Nigel (Canon), 1901-1980: Photographs of Maori chiefs and others. Ref: PA2-2782. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand.
Artist unknown, ‘Wairoa Pa’, Te Ao Mārama, Tauranga City Libraries. Art 21-043.
