History of Havelock North – Michael Fowler

Michael Fowler: Welcome along tonight for the talk, on the 150th Anniversary of Havelock North. Tonight I’ll be going right through from about 1852, right through to about 2009. I guess it’s my selective history … what I have chosen; I apologise now if I’ve left out your family or something that’s [laughter] near and dear to you, because I’ve really had to select, and it will be quite a roller-coaster. There are some people I need to thank, especially the Hastings Building Society and Kevin Smith, but I’ll do that at the end.

So what we’re going to do, we’re going through [??] the foundations of when Havelock was not Havelock; and this man here, William Colenso, just to give you an idea what the land was like in Hawke’s Bay before it was settled. If you now go up to Te Mata Peak, or flying in an aeroplane, you’ll see this patchwork of colours, and you’ll think ‘what a lovely place this is – no wonder the Europeans were so anxious to get their hands on it’. Well, it wasn’t actually like that at all, because when Colenso first arrived, he described what it was like on the plains and round Napier. “It was impossible to travel through the dense interlaced jungle of cutting grass and flax. Words would fail me to describe the original state of that land. I’ve travelled a good deal in New Zealand, but never knew a worse piece of country to get through”. In fact he went from Waitangi, the mission – there’s a plaque or a statue – he went from there to Meeanee;  he got lost, so he stayed the night perched up on some mountain of flax bush – it was so dense.

Another man called James Nelson Williams, in the 1850s – he was a relative of Samuel Williams of Te Aute. People were very keen for land – a farmer came up from the South Island. They climbed up … I guess it was like Mount Threave down Te Aute way … looked over Hawke’s Bay; all the farmer saw was just flax and swamp, and he said, “I don’t think much of Hawke’s Bay”; turned around, didn’t say anything to J N, and left. A group of Australians came also – they just looked at the land and got back on the boat. So it wasn’t the paradise that we see now.

This gentleman here [shows slide] – his actual name is William Barney Rhodes, but Barney – he was a very enterprising gentleman. He was stationed in Australia as a sea captain. He decided to go for a bit of a sail around New Zealand and do some horse trading with the local Maori. He did rather well, actually. He came to Hawke’s Bay in 1839 and purchased eight hundred and eighty-three thousand acres, including this site here that we’re on now, off [from] five of the Chiefs for £150, which … in today’s terms it’s $15,000. So – even Terry [?] agreed with me – so they got things at a pretty good deal. [Laughter] So he went gloating back – he bought other things as well – I think up Mahia.  While away he managed to do the old blankets trick, and gun trick, and got a few hundred thousand more acres up there as well.

So he went strutting back to New South Wales and said “I’ve done all this. The only problem is only five Maori signed it, and none of them were the Chiefs”. [Laughter] So the government caught up with him in 1852 and offered him compensation of two thousand five hundred and sixty acres, which apparently he didn’t take, and he took money instead. He never lived in Hawke’s Bay. His two brothers did – Robert and Joseph Rhodes of Clive Grange, and they settled out there. They did establish a whaling station though, and they married Maori women, so … strategically it helped to do that, so he did that.

[Shows slide] That’s a painting of [?] Te Mata Peak. My wife and I [???] once, and the lady was doing this painting;  that was one of the peak. There it is there – the legend of the Giant of Te Mata Peak. Most of you will know the story – Waimarama Maori were at war with the Heretaunga tribes quite a bit, so they devised this plan where the best looking Maori woman, who was the Chief’s [daughter], would fall in love with the Giant called Te Mata from the Waimarama tribe. So if he fell in love with her and they married – less chance of a war. And that was actually what they did … very commonplace to do it. Hinerari [Hinerakau] her name was … actually fell in love with the giant, but the tribes people of course remembered this and remembered the wrongdoings that he’d done to their tribes, so they got him to do all these tasks. One of them was to make a pathway through there. [Indicates on slide] As the story goes, he was biting his way through there, [coughing] swallowed and choked, and died, and laid there.

Now several weeks ago I was on a bus tour taking some new immigrants around, as part of the Hastings City Council to get them blooded, and I was telling this story as the bus moved towards … and there was a little four year old English boy. When I was telling this story he suddenly looked and he could see the outline of the giant as I explained it to him. And his eyes kind of go really big, and I had to say, “Don’t worry, it’s not real.” [Laughter] But there probably was some truth to this story, not in terms of that graphic but there usually was some kind of truth to the story with a lot of the Maori legends. So it probably wasn’t the scenario, but did actually happen like that.

[Shows slide] Te Hapuku, Chief … principally as you’ll know, down in Te Hauke. What happened was that he was at disagreement with another chief called Te Moananui, and this land that we’re on now, both of them basically claimed it as theirs. So they came to an agreement that … well, it appears as if the Crown – New Zealand Government – stepped in, and they surveyed this land, what was called Karanema’s Reserve. Now Karanema was Te Hapuku’s oldest son, and how he claimed the land was because Te Hapuku’s wife was a descendant of Ngati Hawea, and that’s how they managed to get the land – not through Hapuku, but through his wife, and they gave it to his son. So this land here [indicates on slide] was a Reserve created. On either side Te Moananui owned both plots of land but this was a Reserve set aside for the descendants of Karanema, forever. So the straight lines in which it was surveyed … this is an 1857 map. That there [indicates] … well, it’s Karamu Stream now, and the Maori Studies Department at EIT [Eastern Institute of Technology] told me it’s pronounced Ngariroro, instead of Ngaruroro … Ngariroro. But Europeans renamed it River Plassey – didn’t want to say Ngariroro, Ngaruroro or whatever, so named it River Plassey – good Indian mutiny fighter name. And there it is there, [indicates] set out in a straight line. Maori did not survey their lands like that, so it would have been a European. You can see they’re next to the Tukituki, so this is about 1857, ‘cause it says there ‘Under Offer’. So at that point, the Crown had started to move to try and buy that Reserve which they said they would never give away. [Indicates points on map] You can see changes … own land there; changes surrounding that part and that part. Even though it stops there, that’s obviously the back of Te Mata Peak. So that was how the Karanema Reserve came about – a dispute between the two Chiefs.  Te Hapuku claimed the land for his son because his wife … [coughing, deleted] the descendant of another tribe. And that’s what they often did, they had fights and things; they’d intermarry, so the lands would be … so on and on it went.

The land was two miles wide, so it was from about where Crosses Road is, out to about Iona Road, and then back towards the Peak, so Crosses Road bridge, end of Iona Road – I actually measured it out – it’s about two miles on an angle, ‘causes it is a bit of an angle. So that was the area of land, and it was four thousand acres … about four thousand acres in total.

So it was Government policy to actually keep some land back for Maori, but in this case it wasn’t listed as part of the official Reserves. I think there was a good reason for that – I think they had their eye on it, and if they could put it in Te Hapuku’s name – he wanted to sell; he liked selling land. So if they put it in his name, he was probably more likely to sell it. Te Hapuku for instance, wanted to sell land. The only problem he has [had] was with the low Europeans of this place. [Cough, deleted] He actually asked for better ones to be sent. [Laughter] The thing about Napier – it was a really good place for convicts who escaped from Australia to go and live, and the whalers would make today’s wharfies look like Sunday School children. They were brutally tough men.

John Chambers. [Shows slide] Most of you’ll know that, it’s a drawing of his original homestead in 1854. He leased off [from] Chief Te Moananui, who had the land either side of Karanema’s Reserve. He wasn’t supposed to, but the Government turned a bit of a blind eye ‘cause Europeans weren’t supposed to lease directly off [from] the Maori, which was [?] done. So there he is there. In 1854 he leased;  1855 he purchased – when the Government bought the land he purchased sixteen thousand acres for £1,000. So sixteen thousand acres … most of the land you saw on that map before … there and there [indicates on map] and some at the back as well.

There was bit of friction between Te Hapuku and Te Moananui. Te Moananui … Chief Te Moananui … was very jealous of Te Hapuku, because he was going around selling land … selling land that didn’t belong to him, which created a few problems, which actually … down Waipukurau way there’s a bit of land that he sold down there.

So a fight broke out in 1857. Te Hapuku actually moved up – that’s Whakatu there, [indicates on map] so there’s Karanema’s Reserve there, Havelock. And we are round about there somewhere – that’s the old path of the Ngaruroro – Ngariroro I should say. There’s some bush there. There’s his pa – round about there I understand there’s a pa. Te Moananui’s pa, I understand, was over that area there. [Indicates on map] They were near rivers because that’s how they navigated around the place to get to the sea and their food source. All this was just a massive swamp and flax. So that’s how they moved around quite a bit.

Te Moananui said to Te Hapuku, “You can take some firewood from that bush … that land, ‘cause I own that, take some firewood”.  Te Hapuku said, “No, I’m not doing that. I’m going to take some wood to build pas with.” So Te Moananui was not happy about this, so a battle started and it actually went over several months. And one of John Chambers employees was actually carting some hay through that area and they actually stopped the battle for him. [Laughter]. They let him pass through and said, you know, “The fight is not with us – go well”. So they actually stopped the fighting.

In general, Hawke’s Bay Maoris were very friendly towards European – not like Waikato region. Mind you the local Maori here weren’t too fond of them either, especially Te Kuiti. [Te Kooti] So the end result was that because of the skirmish at Whakatu, Te Hapuku lost and retreated to Te Hauke, his marae down there. He torched the pa when he left;  sent the women and children first, torched the pa, and then continued on his way … went back. So in other words, Te Moananui could not occupy his marae.

Donald McLean was a land buyer, which you’ll notice was later Sir … you may be familiar with him. He purchased Maraenui first in 1851. They sensed an opportunity, so he got a man called George Cooper, who was sort of like his protégé or replacement, to go down, and he literally followed Te Hapuku down to Te Hauke. And they wanted that land, so as soon as they had their scoop and Te Hapuku left, Te Moananui said, “It’s my land now – he’s gone;  I’m selling it.” Europeans did not want to upset Te Hapuku, because if they did, he was the one that was selling them all the land, so ‘we’ve got to keep them onside’. So they did what they did. When there was a dispute between two Chiefs, they said, “Fifty/fifty. You can have half of the £800. So the purchase price was £800 and it was split. [Coughing] In today’s terms it’s about $80,000 – a steal, you could say in other words too – it was a steal.

The thing about McLean – he understood the Maori concept of ownership of land, so the agreements that he had basically said things like – “You must wave goodbye to the land. Everything up and on it is not yours any more. Wave goodbye.” So he put all these things in to try and get them to understand that ‘you’re not getting it back’. So quite a different concept of ownership, as most of you will be aware.

Now in 1858 while all this was going on, Wellington was being a little bit naughty. Well, according to some in Hawke’s Bay, there was about £33,000 of profit from land sales going on in the district. Wellington decided that they’d take most of that, thank you very much, and build their infrastructure, and leave us with nothing to build roads and things like that. So what happened was Hawke’s Bay got a bit upset with that, and they seceded from the Wellington province.

Now, another thing happened too. Immediately after the government had purchased … or the Crown had purchased … that land for £1,800, some pastoralists and settlers – and it doesn’t say;  you’d never find out who they were – pulled up some old Wastelands Act, and said, “You have to sell it to us. We want that now;  we want to buy it for ten shillings [10/0d] an acre – in other words I think, buying it a bit cheaper. And the Government said, “No, no, we can’t do that – it’s worth £4”, and they had a bit of a skirmish about that ‘cause some of the settlers tried to actually buy that land straight away, using some obscure Act. They didn’t succeed. H S Tiffen, the District Land Commissioner, refused to allow the purchase, and said, “We’ve saved this valuable tract of land for legitimate users of a new province” – that’s because Hawke’s Bay seceded from the Wellington province.

So they had this piece of land, what we know now as Havelock. [Shows slide] There’s Donald McLean. He was instrumental of course in getting George Cooper to follow Te Hapuku to Te Hauke. That is very blurry, [shows slide] but that is one of the original maps of the many. You can see the distinctive roads there. They wanted, in creating a town, to create a middle class, and Fitzgerald, the Governor … original chairman … said, “We want to secure the settlement of a middle class; a class devoted to agricultural pursuits, the want of which has been felt for so long. It is to adopt for the future such means as to secure working men the opportunity at all times of coming to enterprise.” See, they were worried about a few men owning too much, so they wanted to create this; have a healthy middle class involved.

So they had this bit of land and now they said, “What shall we call it?” And you’ll all know that it was planned to create names after the Indian mutiny, so that’s how we got the name of Havelock. A surveyor, J Hughes, came in October 1859 and created the town sections as you see around about there, [shows slide] … half an acre, and there were other lots from twenty to eighty acres. Middle Road actually existed, and I think they chose the site for a number of reasons – the height above the swamp;  the soil;  and also the fact that Middle Road had already gone through.

I’ll show you the map to this plot here – you can see it very well. There’s little tracks … little lines there, some of the Maori tracks, so when they did this map in about 1857 they actually put on here the Maori tracks. There was a Maori track coming from Patangata – it was called Patangata line, or the Middle line, probably ‘cause it went through the gorge. There was a road already here, a main road, so Havelock was going to be a stop-off point from Patangata to take the wool up, stop off and have a few beers, which they did, and then move on to Clive, and then across to the port.

[Shows slide] Here’s another map of it, and you can see more clearly some of the other sections here. You can see the bigger ones at the back, and some of the bigger lots, so they were to create the farming-type arrangements there. There’s a lot of sections in there, so I sort of wonder how they thought they were going to make a go of it, but the difficulty of course was … oops! That’s Sir Henry Havelock, after whom it was named. He actually died in 1857 after dysentery. Some of you may have seen the statue in London.

[Next slide, discusses locations] Here’s the first European landowners. You can see three of the roads that are named there. Middle actually went through there – it wasn’t called Napier Road at that stage. That of course is the Hastings–Havelock Road there, and that of course, as we know now, [is] Joll Road.

There’s some interesting names that come up quite a bit: A H Russell – there were about three A H Russells, so it wasn’t the [??] [He was] also involved in the military, and he was a relative of the A H Russell in World War I & II. But you can see there, William Colenso owned where the village iSite is now, called the Transformer House, so he bought that land there. And A H Russell – I think he owned something like more than twenty-five of the sections – yeah, twenty-five – so he speculated. So he bought a lot of the town ones and a lot of the big ones. So … so much for them wanting to create a middle class sort of environment, when speculators actually moved in and bought quite a lot of land.

And there’s William Colenso, of course … bought section 47 for £30. He actually hung on to it ‘til about 1891. He never actually lived here. He got in a bit of strife, because when he got basically kicked out of the Church and he became the provincial government, they wanted to make the road better from Napier to Havelock, and he suggested that they miss out the Clive people. Of course the letters to the editor flowed in because he owned a section of Havelock, and people put two and two together and said, you know, “You’re just looking after your own section”. And to be frank, a lot of them did look after their own interests in those days, and it wasn’t rated well. Kay Mooney said a few things about … or said an important thing about how Maori felt about all these roads that were being built, and she’s put it in 1976: ‘Once settlers began to build their roads and roll in their world vehicles, they would never stop building and rolling and claiming everything they saw’. So Maori actually feared a lot of the road building, in some cases.

[Next slide] That was Napier in 1875, it just shows you the terrain. Let’s look at how you got to Havelock in those days from Napier. So you can see there swamps – that is actually a painting. That there obviously is on Scinde Island, as it was, surrounded by water. And at that stage they had a road – they called it White Road because of the limestone that they put on it. But getting to Havelock in 1860 was quite a difficult thing to do, so you had to negotiate along here. [Indicates on map] Remember that was in 1875 so there’s been some reclamation of the land actually been done at that stage. So you had to go along there, cross – this would’ve been in 1860 if you were travelling – cross a bridge called Tareha’s Bridge. He was a Chief – I think he lived in Waiohiki. There was a toll that they put there. So there was a toll, so in those days in 1860, you travelled along the Beach road. They put fences right in the water, because people tried to swim around the toll. [Laughter] Sleight of hand. After you got over the Tareha’s Bridge [and] you paid the toll, you came to the Ngariroro River, which nowadays is the Clive [River], because in those days what happened was there only one main river, the Ngariroro, that flowed through there. In 1867 it changed its course past Havelock anyway. So once you got to that, you had to go across by punt. There was no bridge, so you had to board a punt. So basically the bullocks unloaded the drays and they got taken across and then finished up on the other side. And occasionally the punt got swept out to sea, so it wasn’t a very easy task to do. The tolls weren’t very popular, and a letter to the editor in 1862 said, ‘We poor devils cannot travel to Clive, or even to Havelock without paying the toll’. So they hated tolls way back then. So that was the trip.

Young man in 1865 called Joseph Chicken … just to show you how difficult it was to get to Havelock from Napier … had to pay his landlord, which was in Havelock. He set off on his horse, ‘course crossed over the punt – he’d taken the horse on the punt across – stopped off at the Clive Hotel, and then he got lost; crossed the Ngariroro River by mistake; tried to cross back again on a ford, which is what they used to put shingle on a low cross where they could cross the river;  his horse got stuck and he drowned.  So they had this big inquest – the first thing they did was they went to the Clive Hotel and asked how many beers had he had? [Laughter] Drinking was quite an issue in those days. So it wasn’t an easy thing, if I can get that across, to travel from Napier to here in those days.

And this is the path you would see; it was a Maori track they would have followed. It’s actually not too dissimilar from the line taken today. So that’s Havelock there. [Indicates] There was [were] two tracks coming out from obviously a landing point for the Maori there. There was one going through here – it would’ve been the road from Middle Road, and they changed that – obviously you had to come closer in. But there’s the line on the road – you can’t see that quite clearly, but it leads right through there. You crossed over by punt there; across the Ngariroro which is now the Clive River;  crossed over Tareha’s Bridge there;  paid your toll;  and then you’d go along the beach shore and across there to Napier. And that changed – that path changed as the rivers changed as well.

That’s the Exchange Hotel, the first hotel in Havelock. Of course you had to have a hotel. What happened … they were driving from Patangata in Central Hawke’s Bay, their drays full of wool … they were driving them through and they’d stop off at Havelock, and they’d stop off for a few beers. So the first hotel was the Havelock Hotel, and John [?Grey?] was the owner. In researching the hotels, ‘cause what I’ve tried to do here tonight is not take necessarily from books I’ve used as reference, to try and give you some new material that you haven’t come across before.

But there were lot of tragedies in both the Havelock Hotel, which is on the site where St Columba’s Church is now – at that site there [indicates] – and [cough] probably TAB is where the Exchange Hotel was. John Grey didn’t have very good luck with his first cook because he committed suicide. Now what happened with this – the Coroner said, “You’ve got to take the body to Clive”, ‘cause it was Thomas Hitchins who was the Doctor … Coroner … “Take the body to Clive”. So he had to put this body on a cart, take it off to Clive;  people saw it;  letters to the editor:  “What’s he doing with a cart with a body bouncing around?” [Laughter] So he takes it to Clive;  end of story, he thinks;  comes back again;  knock on the door the next day:  “Here’s your body back”. [Laughter] Four letters to the editor, because this body once again was exposed and bouncing around in his cart, [chuckles] with a little note attached” ‘Bury him’. So John Grey had to bury this … and apparently what he’d done is, he’d gone up to one of Chamber’s shepherds and got strychnine, and said, “Look I just need this for something”, and unfortunately he committed suicide.

The Exchange Hotel in 1862 is now the site where the Happy Tav [Tavern] is. It was owned by Thomas Reynolds. He was Napier’s first butcher and carpenter, and he was the local pound keeper. So where the Transformer House is now, there was a pound, and Thomas Reynolds was in charge of that. There were two Reynolds – there was a school teacher in 1865, and this one. No one seems to know who Reynolds Road was named after.  Drunkenness was a major problem at the Exchange Hotel and the Havelock Hotel, and all too frequently the shepherds and people literally drunk themselves to death. And the editor of the Hawke’s Bay Herald in 1863 said, “It is deplorable to think that so many of shining talent are prey to the besetting vice of habitual intoxication, and from this course so many persons from time to time have lost their lives in this province”. There was quite a few of them, and in the end the Coroner just said, “Visitation from God”. [Laughter]

[Next slide] That’s Havelock’s [???] on the Clive – the first one was in 1865 – J Reynolds – John Chambers employed him as a private tutor at his estate at Te Mata. There were fifteen boys and eleven girls. He later became Headmaster of Te Aute [coughing] School. Thomas Tanner.

Meanwhile, Hawke’s Bay wasn’t getting a very good reputation. The thing is there were other [coughing] random [?] going on round New Zealand which weren’t probably that flash either, but unfortunately, they loved to pick on the Hawke’s Bay people – The Otago Daily Times in particular – and said, ‘Napier – that headquarters of land grabs, and scene of brandy mortgages and [?] natives. Hawke’s Bay is a by-word of shame throughout the colony, and a stronghold of wrong in a hot bred [hotbed] of corruption.’ [Mobile phone ringing] So every time that Tanner, Sutton or Russell (of the Russells;  a Russell got in Parliament) they were harangued. It was interesting too that Anne Tolley got called a name in Parliament earlier this year – ‘squatocracy’, or something like that. As soon as I saw that I sort of thought ‘oh … [there’s] sort of history there, what’s that about?’ But that’s the sort of thing they got targeted about.

In 1864, the Bee family made up half the population of Havelock which is about thirty two people.

[Next slide] J H Joll, Blacksmith – that’s the corner of Joll Road and Middle Road. He was the blacksmith there. I think that’s his grandson Des, [who] contacted Kim and sent a message to me.  And I went round, and me being an accountant … and I won’t expect you to understand this … but he had a ledger going back to 1868 … big excitement for an accountant to see that. So … I mean it’s in the possession of the library now, but the records of his business go back to 1868. So at some stage when I’m not busy I’ll go through and have a good look at that. And there’s all these names of people that [he] dealt with. So on that site later – I think the last one there, I understand, was Bob Given, who was the last blacksmith in Havelock North.

[Next slide] That’s the village in 1910;  that there’s the BNZ;  [Bank of New Zealand] that’s where the cenotaph will be. Those of you in Clive will probably [?] this. [Chuckles] That’s the Exchange Hotel;  that’s the pound in that area;  that land that’s vacant next to the pound, that’s where the Transformer is. And you can see the road there … not flash.

So in 1870 the population of Havelock had actually moved only up to two hundred and twenty people. So they decided to have the first form of local government, which was the Roads Boards in about 1870. So the first one met in 1871 – some of these names will be familiar to you only because they’ve got roads named after them – Thomas Gilpin, who actually was the first constable, and Duart House have got his gun, [inaudible] the first gun that he was issued. So if you want to go and visit Duart House you can see his gun – they wouldn’t let me fire it. [Chuckles]

Thomas Chrystall;  George Bee;  John Jury;  David Fleming;  W [?];   end of 1861, John Chambers joined in 1873, and Tanner joined in 1874. Good reason why Thomas Tanner joined in 1874 – ‘cause there was railway going in in Hastings, and Thomas Tanner needed a bridge, ‘cause he was still selling land and he needed a bridge. So he paid a lot of money towards that bridge. Tanner incidentally never lived in Hastings. So in 1873 – how would you like to strike a rate of fourpence per acre? [Chuckles] Which is $2 in 2008 – per year. Yes.

[Next slide] So that’s the Joll family. That’s the old St Columba’s Church there, that’s the first church … better mention the churches. That’s the Joll family, around about where the old Borough Council office used to [be], which … there won’t’ve been much there that you knew, but it is now sort of a carpark, or a road … round about that area there.

[Next slide] That’s St Luke’s across from us in 1874. They burnt a lot of land – they just set fire to it every few years [cough] … [?broke?] down. So as you can see that is Te Mata Road. We’re over here somewhere. So not a lot happened there.

[Next slide] That’s the builder of St Luke’s, George Bee. Thomas Tanner had a lot to do with St Luke’s, financing and arranging a lot of it. That’s Te Mata Road, across there;  that’s Napier Road;  that’s St Luke’s there;  that’s the Mechanics’ Institute.  So that was built in 1873, and I guess that would be around 1880, or probably a bit later, 1890 perhaps. So they wanted the Mechanics’ Institute, which is like the beginnings of the early libraries, and they were good places for the middle classes to meet. And one concert featured the following … now this house was terrific in entertainment, so this was like a social gathering. You won’t be able to read this necessarily:

‘The Reverend St Hill of St Luke’s did a reading to start with, and then there were [was] a procession of songs’.   A lot of repeats;  a duet from Mrs Tanner and Thomas Gilpin for your entertainment;  another song by Mrs Tanner;  a reading by Mr Gilpin;  a song by Thomas Tanner’s brother;  [laughter] another song by Thomas Gilpin’, so … and at the end, there’s ‘Glee’ … whatever that is. [Chuckles] What’s that?

Audience member: Community singing.

Michael: Yes, yes – I now understand that. Community singing at the end of … Glee … probably something [??] too, with an interval of ten minutes.

[Next slide] The railway. That’s Heretaunga Street … that’s before … Russell St now goes through there. The railway really, as you know, put paid to the fact that Havelock was not going to grow. Just to give you an idea of some of the population figures – in 1874 there were two hundred and twenty-eight people in Havelock North;  Hastings there were three hundred and ninety-one. By 1911 there were five hundred and one people in Havelock, and six thousand seven hundred and eighty-six in Hastings. So no contest, really. Nowadays, which [inaudible] … probably want to give the railway back to Havelock now – it’s a bit of a nuisance to them.

Duart House – built for Alan and Hannah McLean, as you know – it’s still there today, [coughing] settled in 1883.

Now Havelock did this … sometimes there’s nothing new under the sun, and in 1887 the Napier people decided to pick on the youth of Havelock, and in the irate use of the editor’s writers. We’re quite tame today, and some of them [??] were just absolutely brutal with each other. Mind you, nowadays you’d probably get sued for some of the things that they said. So there was a bit of a problem in 1887, when somebody complained about larrikinism. [Chuckles] Apparently they had the … larrikinism, so the Havelock town boys are larrikins. And they were all non-de plumes – somebody called ‘Sit’ wrote and said, “There’s no foundation for this whatsoever.” But somebody else wrote and said he’d “never met such wild, unruly lads as there are in this township”. Another one called ‘Justice’ wrote and said he “had travelled the colonies, and not met a more respectable lot of youths than in our little village.” [Laughter] Somebody else wrote back and said, “He’s only been here for three months – what would we know?” [Laughter, making voice inaudible]

[Next slide] The Chambers family were very, very clever. Bernard – that’s Bernard here, but John … couldn’t find a photo of John Chambers Junior … he had reportedly the first telephone in Hawke’s Bay, between Pekapeka and Tauroa in his houses and farm, and was very interested in mechanical engineering. And he built, as many will know, the first hydro-power system in 1892. So he was very clever, and very mechanically-minded, so he used it for his shearing equipment and things like that.

In 1892 we come to Bernard.  A French visitor remarked that this was supposed to be fantastic for grapes, so he planted the grapes that still exist today.  And he also reportedly owned the first car in 1902, which was an Oldsmobile. The story goes too, that the local reporter got in the car ‘cause he was very curious;  was travelling along;  didn’t like it and wanted to get out – except you can’t stop it … just put the brakes on and stop it – it’s got another fifty yards, so the news reporter just absolutely jumped out of the car. [Laughter] The Maoris of course were very scared of the car too. They couldn’t understand how there wasn’t a horse pulling it. We don’t necessarily think that’s strange today, but obviously it was in those days … never seen it before.

[Next slide] Lucknow Lodge – William Beecroft. We’ll come back to William Beecroft again, but there he is there. He was a Hastings City Councillor … a Borough Councillor in those days of course. He owned the Railway Hotel, which is about where the Noodle Canteen is today. And he first built Lucknow Lodge and he called it – and my Indian’s not too good, I’ve tried to do a bit of an accent – in 1895 he built what we now know as Lucknow Lodge which still exists … called [?‘Dil Kusha’?], which apparently was a hunting park in Lucknow, India. So up there [indicates] that way of course was Cemetery Road;  of course Lucknow Road here.  So that – of course many of you who have been here for a while will know – Nimons had their buses there. Joe Nimon of course worked for Beecroft, and he had a taxi service from Hastings to Havelock.

Now in those days, Hastings … they got a bit all high and mighty, even though they were some years later than Havelock. They sent out a reporter every now and then. If you get the ‘Hawke’s Bay Today’ … similar to what you have today when one of the reporters goes on the corner for two hours … and just see what happens. Well, they [eventually] sent someone out and he came across this here, [indicates] and thought ‘Ooh, that’s pretty good for Havelock – Havelock’s making progress’. But what really got him excited was that Beecroft had put a tank, probably up where Plassey Street is … round about there … to pump water from an artesian well, and he’d used a hydraulic pump and pumped it back down there. [Indicates] And on the tank – Beecroft had sold the rights to the tank to a soap manufacturer. [Chuckles] And all this time [what] the reporter couldn’t stop talking about was how “Havelock is moving forward, because this well-known soap maker had advertised on the water tank.” [Chuckles] He finished by saying: ‘The lines which they’ve erected were bound to be a necessity, and people will wonder why they were not erected before. A walk on the hills can be so cheaply and easily attained in Havelock, and is an excellent constitutional, and folks engaged in town work in Hastings would lose nothing [cough] but an occasional trip to the pretty little [cough] town equipment [cough] [?]’. [Chuckles]

In 1898 the Duart subdivision occurred. That was the first [major] subdivision in Havelock. So that’s where [indicates] Duart house is, round about there up, now – they just sold off those parts. Obviously Alan McLean of Duart … from Duart House, bought up quite a bit of land and married one of the Chambers’ daughters … their eldest daughter, Hannah, so when he died – he was a bit of a feisty Scot;  apparently he liked the old drink as most of them did in those days. You probably know the story – he fell into the fireplace up in Duart and died several days later. That’s how the story goes. His obituary didn’t actually say how he died – you probably wouldn’t want that to be well known.

At the time of the subdivision William Beecroft, [cough, deleted] [who I] talked about before, one of the coach service[s] – he was a Hastings Borough Councillor and recently moved out to Havelock, and of course when you move out to Havelock you become very pious. [Chuckles] Well he did, and he said to the Hastings Borough Council, “Why don’t we buy some of the land and use it for a site for a hospital?” Now to put this in context, in 1897 [coughing] there was a great flood. You’ll know that at Clive people died, and there’s a memorial in Napier to those people. So people were quite anxious about the plains, so he said, “Let’s try and put a hospital up there”. Now Beecroft wanted that for two reasons – you probably know. One – he owned the bus service to get from Hastings to Havelock;  [chuckles] two – he’d have a hospital on his doorstep. The other councillors were not at all happy about this, and when he [cough] said “We haven’t got any money to build a hospital”, the Councillors and the Mayor said, “It’s all right – we’ll graze sheep on there”. They said, “How much will we get for grazing sheep?” And he goes “Oh, I don’t know”. So the mayor though … or other councillors … said, “Well this is a complete waste of money”.  And “A hospital at Havelock is a ridiculous idea”, said another one. The Mayor though, came up with the best excuse of all. He said “Well, we want to build a three-storey building, because we want to be above the fault, so we want this three-storey building.” And he said, “If you look over to Havelock, the hills are covered in mist, so we can’t build a hospital in Havelock because there’s too much mist and there would be no view.” [Chuckles] I tell you! [Chuckles] Barbara Lawrence tried to swing that one through the … yes.

[Next slide] William Rush, the architect. [Excessive coughing] He came in 1904 and set up an office in Hastings. [Indicates] They were the buildings that he designed through his school – Woodford House;  through the ‘quake, the village hall which is no longer with us;  the [?] Tower which is no longer with us;  and the Iona College. He’s also quite a good painter, and … he won’t mind me saying this … but Duart house has got a painting of William Rush’s where, during the Depression, they used relief labour to build the roads [cough] up there. Another good reason to visit Duart. So he was very instrumental in designing a lot of the houses.

[Next slide] Joe Nimon in 1905 purchased Beecroft’s business. [Indicates] That there is probably running over a pod there … [chuckles followed by coughing making speaker’s voice inaudible] … so you can see by the roads there, it’s basically metal roads.

[Next slide] This man here is James Chapman-Taylor – [we’ve] got an expert here with us today who’s written an excellent book … Judy Siers, on ‘The Life & Times of James Chapman-Taylor’, so … fantastic. But there’s not a lot of time to do justice to a lot of these people, but there he is [indicates] and we understand that that photo was taken on a time release, and that’s probably a lady at the drama group … a young lady in a drama group that I think his wife belonged to – hope I’ve got that story right. There he is, I think it was taken in Lower Hutt. So he was one of, as you know, New Zealand’s foremost architects. He was attracted to Hawke’s Bay and visited here quite a lot. He had a group of like-minded friends – that’s people that shared and discussed philosophical views and cultural activities. Now … ‘cause I used to come up, and people like Reg Gardiner.

In 1908 there was a tour by a lady called Annie Besant, who I read up a little bit about over the week, and – quite a formidable lady. For one thing, she didn’t agree with the English rule in India. But anyway, she was President of the Theosophical Society, and she had a tour in New Zealand. And after she’d come here there was a lot of heightened interest in that pursuit, so James Chapman-Taylor came to a meeting in [?] in about 1908 where about a hundred people came and voted. It was originally called the Arts and Crafts Society, and later became known as the Havelock Work, founded by a Reginald Gardiner. So he was mainly attracted to Havelock because of that group. He designed around ten or eleven buildings in Havelock, one in Hastings for his parents, and of course his best known was Whare Ra in Duart Road. And I believe he lived in Havelock North between about 1911 and 1922 intermittently … on and off. That’s right, Judy? So that’s Whare Ra.

Now the Havelock Work – there’s a whole lecture, and it’s best not delivered by me – Judy would be best to do that – talk about the Havelock Work. So apparently it began in 1907, when a man called Reginald Gardiner established a small group to discuss articles that they had written. So the main group was – they were interested in intellectual pursuits; they were interested in knowledge, and all those areas of discussion that were philosophical in nature.

So as James Chapman-Taylor … a quote from Judy’s book … his purpose was to ‘search for things we don’t understand’. It was a group of people that aimed to encourage the talent of musical, dramatical and literacy pursuits. So they organised the building of the village hall in 1910, [I] understand, and they also decided that they wanted to take things a little bit further. After a man called Reverend J Fitzgerald came in 1911 and had a discussion with Reginald Gardiner … they’d been wanting to move towards a more spiritual element for their group … and it led to Robert Felkin coming in 1912. He was a medical practitioner, and a pretty good one because nobody died in Havelock in the 1918 influenza – two hundred and seventy-six people died in Hawke’s Bay, but nobody died in Havelock. Whether that’s something to do with this [???] I’m not sure. So James Chapman-Taylor met him and brought him to Havelock. He was a gifted psychic [next slide] – there he is there. He actually died here, but he was apparently a gifted psychic, and when he came there was a lot of gossip about him. So they apparently made some story up, or some story was circulating that he was Chambers’ private physician. Because Felkin basically said, you know, “We should keep this to ourselves; we don’t want everybody knowing what we are up to”, and of course everybody thought, ‘Voodoo! Black Magic! Occult! [Chuckles] Those weirdos at Havelock.’ [Chuckles] So he believed their society should be kept secret. And there was a temple at Whare Ra, where [which] of course led to that. So – I think the mistress of Woodford House was particularly condemning of them. Really as I said, I don’t think I’m the best person qualified to talk about this. It’s quite involved;  it’s a fascinating read and I encourage you to actually read up about this yourself.  So the temple Whare Ra actually closed in 1979. Some of the things that they did do – they read Shakespeare to each other, and [held] a Shakespeare pageant in 1912.

[Next slide] That’s where the BNZ would be now; another one there. That’s J H Joll, the blacksmith;  that’s Mary McLean which [who] was the daughter of Duart Estate … of Alan and Hannah McLean – she actually died in the 1931 earthquake in Napier. That’s taken at the Shakespeare pageant. That’s the inside of it – I believe it’s changed now, I’ve never been in it – I’d like to go in it, actually, to see what it’s like. I believed that’s changed now.  That’s the village hall for which they raised money ‘cause they wanted a place to meet. It was demolished. Some of you are squirming in your seats about that being demolished.

[Next slide] Iona College 1914 built, and that’s the opening day in 1914.

[Next slide] That’s Havelock Boulevard in 1912.

What happened in 1910, there was a bit of a fight between Havelock in the South and Havelock in the North about … because obviously there was a mix-up with some mail. Havelock in the South wanted Havelock in the North to lose the name, but what happened was that in the end they decided that they’d be Havelock North. Actually, early in the 1880s they actually were putting North on anyway, to avoid the postal hiccups.

[Next slide] That’s Transformer House, which was a James Chapman-Taylor design … very unique, because of the three frontages.

[Next slide] World War I – the population of Havelock in World War I was about eight hundred. Thirty-eight men lost their lives, including Selwyn Chambers, so he’s named Selwyn Road;  and Nigel McLean was the youngest son of Duart House … the Duart Estate … of Alan and Hannah McLean, was named Nigel Street as well … he passed away. So in today’s terms that would be about five hundred and forty-seven men dying in terms of the population. The Cenotaph was put up in 1924 on some donated land.

[Next series of slides] That’s in 1958, the swimming baths – referenced to Percy James Sefton, [for] who[m] Sefton Street is named. ‘Truth’ magazine said it all, ‘It’s still [coughing, inaudible] … found out about Percy Sefton, said this about him: ‘He knows all about Waterloo and the playing fields of Elton; more than what most teachers do’. So ‘the cost was nearly $2,000 [£2,000] and he almost raised the amount of money himself. Not a penny came out of a public fund. And the schoolchildren can have the sole use of the baths free from 12-1 and 3-4:30 every school day [for] all time.’ He might’ve opened up a can of worms with that one [chuckles] – it says ” ‘Truth’ knows a good man when he [it] sees one, and dips its lid to Percy James Sefton”.

That’s the Exchange Hotel in 1920. [In] 1922 power was a bit of an issue – in fact when Havelock wanted to connect to the Hastings diesel generators they wanted four new connections, and Hastings said, “No – we can’t have four new connections!” So they had this power … hydro generator [?since?] 1922, so it was dismantled in about 1941. The Hawke’s Bay Electric Power Board purchased the plant in 1936. Once again a very interesting area of study. That’s the bit where the giant apparently took a bite out of the Tukituki [?]

[Next slide] 1927, the Te Mata Peak Trust Board. This is probably one of the most far-sighted things I think that anyone has possibly done. We’ll have a look at one of them getting into trouble. William Richmond, of William Richmond Meats fame, actually owned a lot of land up there. The Chambers family I think once owned it, but they bought it back. As you’ll know there’s a Trust, so they had the foresight in 1927 to do that. If they hadn’t’ve done it, you can imagine what would be there now. Peak House of course was built in 1967.

[Next slides] Now we come to the earthquake. That’s what was called Foster Brook’s building – he owned it. [Cough] He was stationer, but he didn’t have any business in there, he just owned the building – it was known as that. That’s it afterwards. The 1930 [1931] earthquake you’ll be familiar with – that’s where the BNZ is now. That’s St Luke’s Church … see that? There’s a crack up in the tower. The architect Rush designed that addition. When he saw that, he was particularly sad. The architect governing that in Auckland said, “We can save it.” The St Luke’s parishioners said, “Oh no, you’re not, we’re not going in there, [chuckles] even if you fix it!”. So down it came, and that of course is the addition which is very recent.

[Next slide] Woodford and Iona. Rush didn’t have very good records;  Chapman-Taylor did. The worst that happened [coughing] to Chapman-Taylor … I think there was a crack in one of his chimneys. He built with reinforced concrete. [Cough] Iona didn’t reopen until 1932;  they dismissed all the staff;  sent the girls to other schools. Woodford got up and going, obviously because it was more of an wooden structure than the concrete – there was quite a big crack there.

[Next slide] That’s the Havelock bridge, [?] town’s bridge. The [???] when that happened. That’s the water pipes carrying the water into Hastings, which … the road of course had a few issues.

[Next slide] That’s another view of it – [I] put it in there just to show you that’s what looking up Joll Road was like on the day – well, probably the day after, there’s a fair bit of rubble – in 1931, up Joll Road. So yeah, that’s around about there. [Indicates]

[Next slide] That’s another view, that’s the garage [cough] there. So that now is where the florist is, and a children’s store. There’s the Cenotaph there. One of the reasons now – you can’t see this, but the stock route with an arrow … there stock going through – so somebody posing there.

Nobody died in Havelock North, but there was a few people – a four and half year old girl, Ann Able, died;  May McLean, daughter of Alan McLean, who wasn’t living in Havelock but was from Havelock, died;  a shop assistant died;  and a retired settler died, so there was about five people that passed away.

William von Dadelszen was Chairman of the Town Board at the time of the earthquake, and they decided they wouldn’t ask people to do things for free. So the Town Board said they wouldn’t let people do things for free, so they paid them, which came back to haunt them a little bit, because when they came to get money they found it difficult to get money. And it was not necessarily Havelock’s fault, it was just … there’s an issue about giving people money, and Havelock was smaller, so they were very sparse giving money. In the end what happened was the Havelock Town Board had to issue debentures for people to raise the money to rebuild the infrastructure. So there was a big fight over who was going to repair the bridge, and in the end it sort of gave in;  Havelock ended up paying £300.

Sorry … we’ll just go back a bit more about the Town Board … just some of the interesting things that used to happen. Havelock got a bit of a reputation for being difficult, from people, [cough] so you’ve got to feel sorry for some of the elected officials. Apparently we can be a bit difficult. William [von Dadelszen] was Board chairman from 1930 to ‘44;  his son was Mayor and his grandson today – here as well – was the Borough Councillor from 1980 to 86 – that’s of course, Mark. So the Town Clerks had to deal with a few difficult things – just very briefly some of the aspects:  a letter to the Town Clerk Anderson – “Can I cut my hedge back on the front of my section?” “Yes, you may”.  “Can I remodel the entrance to my property?”  “No!”  “Can the Council remodel the entrance to my property?”  Chairman von Dadelszen replied, “No, we can’t! And if the Town Clerk said we would – he’s wrong!” [Laughter]

1936 they specifically advertised for a female clerk, and Mrs Lindsay was asked to stay on two weeks to break the girl in. [Laughter]

J J Nimon in 1940 congratulated a Mr Duke of Joll Road for impounding a beast. “Did I take the right action to impound the beast?”  ‘Cause a cow walked straight onto his property, and the Mayor wrote and told him, ‘Yes, you did do the right thing.’

In 1940 the Council said, “We’re no longer going to lend our gardening tools to the people of Havelock North, because some of them aren’t coming back.” [Laughter]

They were not happy with the Labour Party, so they couldn’t … and the Havelock Domain, which was opened in the 1938, building … “We won’t let the Labour Party have a card evening, because you’re a political party” – even though they were raising money for the War effort. The best and the last of all, was a letter addressed to the Town Clerk Compton in 1943, who deserved a street named after him after this. So the interesting thing was Mr Compton had actually retired in 1927 and the letter was written in 1943, and it was complaining about a dog tax. And it says, ‘Have not got a dog’ – and it was repeated five times. ‘I’m sorry to disorganise the routine of your half-daily work, and I appreciate the income of the board, but I must [be] resolute and adamant in my protestations. Though I have not got a dog, earth due all humility’, and basically says, ‘I’m sorry that I’m going to interrupt the half hour of work you actually do.’ [Laughter]

[Next slide] 1945, the War. When Ray Joll was the first volunteer, the Town Clerk sent him a pack of cigarettes. Among the War dead, whatever [??] … Michael was killed along with thirty-three others, including three members of the Cottrell family and two in the [?Pepper?] Family.

So in 1952, the Council became a Borough Council – 1952. [In] the 1950s … this may surprise or not surprise you … there was a fluoride discussion then which was quite brutal. Once again the letters came  “It is a dangerous step when one looks to the future and people get used to doctored water, and the door is open for any dictator (it is Hitler put the bromide in bread). [Laughter] Pretty tame these days.

In 1975, the Havelock High School was formed, and Saturday shopping – which I know people had to do with that, reading the old news clippings. Saturday shopping in Havelock was disallowed in 1980, and surprisingly only the Hastings retailers objected. [Chuckles] Reasons for not allowing shopping in Havelock were given:  it would encourage children to shoplift;  [chuckles] working bees would suffer;  no one would attend weddings;  [laughter] and the gardens would suffer.

[Next slides] That’s fundraising for the library in 1979;  that’s the opening in 1980, and that of course is the Community Centre, which is probably the last … maybe the last great community effort that Havelock North actually had. And Mark of course, here tonight, was at the forefront in doing that.

[We] come to local body amalgamation, just in finishing tonight. So in 1989 as you know, the government finally said, “You have to amalgamate”, so Havelock had to amalgamate with Hastings Borough Council. And that’s the start, carrying the coffin of independent Havelock down the road – that was actually covered in brown there. There they are taking … [laughter, speaker inaudible] There’s the last Council and staff there, in 1989.

Comment: It’s not 1989.

Michael: Isn’t it?

No.

Michael: Okay, I was told it was 1989.

I’d left the Council by then, and I’m …

Michael: Okay.

Nick Constantine was the Town Clerk then, and …

Michael: Yeah, I was told it was 1989, so that’s another year. That apparently was the last Council meeting. The Council was actually quite a popular one. There’s a letter to the editor that said:  ‘They’re quite a reasonable bunch actually – in fact, some of them are quite talented.’ [Laughter] ‘Mayor Harry’s [Harry Romanes] performance is quite brilliant when it comes to getting value for money.’ So Harry was quite popular. When they were amalgamating, [cough] it got a little bit tense at times, and there were some suggested that the Hastings and Havelock mayoral chains would be combined, and one of the councillors said – and I’m sorry I’m going to say swear words here – but it says: ‘They did not want the Havelock North chain to be bastardised in joining with Hastings.’ The newspaper reported that:  ‘This has not gone down well with the new District Council’. So it got a bit tense, and there’s Mayor Harry on his last day. [Indicates] I particularly liked Harry because when I was at Havelock High School he donated some concrete to have these volleyball things. I didn’t know who he was but I was pretty happy with him, while he was there. That’s where the old bar is … it’s now all been demolished. There he is sitting on the Mayoral chair. [Chuckles]

So we finish off tonight with the pods … very integral part of our history, the pods. So there was a redevelopment obviously, of Havelock, and then these things arrived. And there was [were] street lights – can you remember that? People were hanging nooses on the street lights, and … I used to love driving – and I must admit it was out of my way, but I’d just drive down to the roundabout just to see what alien … [laughter] that they’d put up on the roundabout at the time. [Laughter] So a lot of fuss all about that, but most of the criticism actually came from people that didn’t live in Havelock, so – it was an ideal time to village bash. And at the forefront was Four Square logo designer, Haumoana-based Dick Frizzell, and fellow … Frizzell. [Laughter, speaker inaudible] … if you know him or are related to him. And fellow resident Lyn Williams put up a $1,000 as a community service prize to [cough] any individual or group prepared to remove the first pod [chuckles] from the centre of Havelock. Havelock North Police Sergeant Bob Gordon said the police did not approve of Mr Williams’ plans. [Chuckles] Dinah Williams described Mr Williams’ offer as “irresponsible”, adding there were some people that actually liked the pods, particularly the small ones. [Laughter] Logical I guess. Hawke’s Bay Today, reporting: ‘After travelling overseas, Mr Williams drove through Havelock North recently and found the pods were no more to his liking [cough] than what they were last year. [Cough; chuckles] “I thought ‘this happens to be [cough] possibly the ugliest little village I’ve seen in the past month.’ [Chuckles] What a shame.” Mr Frizzell said he would support Mr Williams’ efforts;  added that he had done informal surveys of all the shops in Havelock North and had found plenty of opposition to them … to the pods.

So basically if the [?blatant?] charges from Haumoana weren’t [coughing] enough, Waipawa waded into the act, and Flaxmere stated in a roundabout way, “Hey! We’d just be happy if someone thought nobody [cough] had missed it.” [Chuckles] Waipawa wanted to take their duck … their yellow duck and mount them on the pods. [Laughter] But Mr Gilbertson then said he “didn’t want a bar of the Havelock pods, but as a gesture of solidarity and [coughs] comradeship Waipawa’s yellow concrete duck would be soon making the long waddle north to take up residence in a pod-hot roundabout.” [Giggles] Waipawa Chamber of Commerce got in on the act: “They could donate one to Waipawa, and then it would be prominently displayed so [cough] that the rest of New Zealand could see the people of Waipawa are not fools when it comes to purchasing expensive artistic sculpture.” [Chuckles] And he goes on just in folly, saying, “Those in Havelock who feel they have been sold the emperor’s new clothes will be satisfied that their money has been put to good use”. So a lot of criticism from outside Havelock North.

Right – tonight I found this great little poem … I thought it was a good little poem written by Eleanor Atkins in about the 1940s … and it really does sum up Havelock in a lot of ways. And it goes:

‘Our village is not ordinary, in fact it is quite unique
Another village just like ours we’d journey far to seek
It likes to take up new ideas, (sometimes they’re very old)
To try it’s hand at this and that, and to feel a little bold
There’s every kind of colt and stunt to elevate our minds
And to give them poise and [?villain?] grip of the highest kinds
We study drama, arts and crafts, and philanthropic schemes
Discuss the latest theories on scientific themes
Societies would link their names and awe-inspiring views
Find volturies of every age who learnedly enthuse
Some seek descent from Jewish tribes, while others claim to be
Re-incarnated folk, who died some thousand years BC’

and it finishes:

‘In diet we have simple tastes learned from the homely snail
That eating things may guess at a rose entail
In short we try to find a way to ease man’s troubled lot
Our lives are all quite wrong they say, so after all – why not?’

[Chuckles] I think that sums up Havelock pretty well.

In putting together tonight, I’d just like to thank some people. I’d like to thank Kevin Smith from HBS … Hastings Building Society … Kevin’s very good about sponsoring a lot of events such as this in the community. I’d like to thank Kim Salamonson from the Hastings District Library as well – Kim allowed me access to the Archive room, and has been just terrific in finding a lot of the photos that we have here tonight. Thank you all again for coming along. [Applause]