Hastings Jubilee Number 1923

THE HAWKE’S BAY TRIBUNE

VOL. XIII. No. 256.     SATURDAY EVENING, OCTOBER 13, 1923.    TWOPENCE

HASTINGS JUBILEE NUMBER

Begone, Dull Care – The Carnival is Here!     Gaiety is the Soul’s Health – Sadness its Poison.

FIFTY YEARS takes a big cut out of a man’s life, but in the life of a town it is but as a day. Yet, what changes fifty years have brought to this bright corner in God’s own country where our town is built. The celebrating of a town’s jubilee brings to the surface thoughts that lie buried in the mind, and revives our memory of men who have been the town’s builders. Looking at the fine buildings, well paved streets, the pretty bungalows and residences, and while enjoying all the comforts and conveniences that civilisation can give, and are to be found in Hastings to-day, only with difficulty can one picture the landscape here as it appeared when the early pioneers laid the boundaries of our town. We have much to thank these early settlers for, much more, indeed, than is to be found in the small meed of praise that usually falls their way, It is right and proper, and most fitting, therefore, that in our carnival rejoicings and festivities, we should release kindly thoughts towards them. They were men of sterling merit, men born and bred in the United Kingdom and imbued with the highest British traditions. It has been truly said that they represented the very best of their class. Their power of endurance proved equal to the hardships they experienced; by their […] they transformed the wilderness into bountiful pastures, and built embryo cities throughout the silent land. Their courage did not fail them even in the troubled times of the long-drawn-out Maori Wars. The years through which they worked and endured were necessarily the most trying in the history of New Zealand, but the comforts and advantages enjoyed by us to-day are the outcome of the arduous efforts put […] the settlers who laid the foundations of the Dominion’s prosperity. It was the business of the pioneers to lay the foundations. It is our business, the business of their children, to erect the walls, to […] the building; it will be the business of those who come after to decorate the interior. Goethe has said, “The little done vanishes from the sight of man, who looks forward to what is still to do.” It is for us, while steadfastly looking forward to what is still to do, to see that the early builders are not forgotten. The work of the men who early in the nineteenth century built this corner of the Empire, and the sacrifices of the men of the early years of the twentieth century who fought and died to save that Empire, must for ever be held in sacred memory. They have vindicated themselves under God’s heaven as God made men, and have shown us the way of doing noble and true things. Remembering this in our frolics and gaiety next week, our revelry and rejoicings indulged in with true carnival spirit will give expression to the thanksgiving and pride that is within us that we came of the same brave and adventurous race.

Down the Corridor of the Past

Hawke’s Bay as Cook Found It

Maoris, Missionaries and White Settlement

Brief History of our Province

Celebrating the jubilee of Hastings inspires the present generation to look down the corridor of the past, even to the time of Cook’s landing, when the Ngati-Ruhungungu tribes monopolised the country between Poverty Bay and Wellington the tribes with whom the first white settlers came in contact when the process of colonization was extending northward from Port Nicholson to the shores of Hawke’s Bay. These two tribes had spread over the east coast of the island from the original homes selected by their ancestors, who had reached New Zealand hundreds of years before from Hawaiiki, and it was their members with whom Cook first came in contact, when the “Endeavour” visited the east coast of the North Island in the year 1769. On the 14^th October of that year, Cook lay off the Napier bluff and got his pinnace and long-boat out intending to land for fresh water, but several canoes came out loaded with Maoris, who appeared hostile, so no landing was made. Tomorrow is, therefore, the 154^th anniversary of Cook’s first sighting of Scinde Island.

THE CRUISE OF THE ENDEAVOUR

The great navigator first came in sight of New Zealand in the neighbourhood of Poverty Bay, and his landing place, at Gisborne, is one of the few spots on the east coast to which great historical interest attaches. Further down the coast, Cook named Cable Cape, north of the Mahia Channel, and an island, called Te Houra by the Maoris, he renamed Portland Island after the island in the English Channel, which it seems to resemble. Some attempts at trading with the Natives were made, but with small success, owing to their dishonest practices. Cook sailed across the inlet which we now know as Hawke’s Bay – so called by him in honour of Admiral Hawke, and at the headland which marks its southern limit he had further trouble with the Maoris. They attempted to carry off the son of his Tahitian interpreter, Tupaea; and after the lad’s rescue Cook named the point Cape Kidnappers. Immediately to the south, Cook saw the barren islet which he called Bare Island, and the “Endeavour” reached the end of her coastal cruise southward at Cape Turnagain.

SEALERS AND WHALERS AND THE MAORIS

After Captain Cook’s visit there was a long interval during which New Zealand was almost forgotten. The only people who represented any connection with the rest of the world were the sealers and whalers who frequented the coasts. From the end of the eighteenth century onward, the New Zealand waters were the favourite hunting ground for American and Australian whalers, who were really instrumental in establishing the first white settlement that ever existed in this Dominion. The crews of the whalers often took long holidays ashore, and at the drying-out stations, during the off-season, they consorted freely with the Maoris. Many of them married native women, became pakeha Maoris, adopted the Maori habits, and completely surrendered their civilised manners and attire.

But even in this anomalous position they did something, by precept and example, to prepare the way for the higher civilization which was to follow. Most of the whalers, however, though physically brave and energetic, as their vocation demanded, were dissolute and given to violent excesses, and from this point of view they did little to win the respect of the Natives or reconcile them to the coming of the white race. So far as Hawke’s Bay was concerned, there was a whaling station there at an early date, as in 1837 we hear of a boat’s crew who deserted to join the whalers.

ADVENT OF CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILISATION

The first real civilizing agency came to Hawke’s Bay in 1843, when the missionary stations, which had been established early in the nineteenth century in the Bay of Islands, extended their mission south, and founded a missionary station in the district. From this time onward, the east coast tribes had the benefit of the ennobling and civilizing influences which Christianity always brings in its train. The Maoris were soon fully alive to the advantages conferred by the new faith, and the labours of the missionaries among them paved the way for the influx of colonists who could never have ventured to these shores had it not been for the self-denying labours of the teachers and preachers sent out in the early years in the nineteenth century by the Church Missionary Society and the Missionary Committee of the Methodist Church.

SETTLEMENT SLOWLY PROGRESSES

Writing more than forty-five years ago, in Sir Julius Vogel’s Official Hand Book of New Zealand, Mr. W. Carlile remarked that it was not possible to fix any date at which it could be said that the settlement of Hawke’s Bay was founded. For many years it had been associated in the minds of colonists only with whalers and pakeha Maoris; and the few faithful missionaries who labored amongst the Native tribes felt little desire to expose their converts to the evils which always follow in the first contact of a higher with a lower civilization. Hawke’s Bay, as a settlement, started without any definite impulse, and grew almost by imperceptible degrees. Later it was realised that if no efficient effort was made to secure this land, it would fall into the hands of the land sharpers.

EUROPEAN LAND PURCHASE

In 1851, Mr Fox, in his “Six Colonies of New Zealand”, urgently recommended the Government to purchase the lands now included in the Manawatu, Wairarapa and Hawke’s Bay districts. At that time, it was believed that £50,000 would cover the total cost of the land; but it was not until sometime later that the desired step was actually taken. However, in December, 1850, Mr. Donald Mclean, then native Minister, had gone up to the Hawke’s Bay district as Lands Purchase Commissioner, and negotiated the purchase of several important blocks. A tribal quarrel about land titles between two principal Hawke’s Bay chiefs and their followers, ended in some loss of life to the Natives; but after the fight was over, both parties appear to have accepted Mr. Mclean’s offer gladly enough. From the Chief Te Hapuku, the Commissioner bought some large and valuable areas in the interior, including the land comprised in the Pourere and Homewood estates, and from the rival Chief Tareha Te Moananui he bought Scinde Island, now the site of the town of Napier. The ownership of these lands having now passed into European hands, the pastoral leaseholders were able to exchange their precarious Native titles for a well defined and permanent form of tenure.

THE BIRTH OF NAPIER

From this time forward the stream of settlement flowed rapidly towards Hawke’s Bay.

In 1855, five years later, the town of Napier came into being. The town was laid out, and on the 5^th of April of that year town sections were sold by auction. The streets were named by the Hon. Alfred Domett (author of Ranoff and Amohia) who was then Provincial Crown Lands Commissioner, and his strong literary tastes were evinced in the names of Shakespeare Road, Milton Road, Byron, Browning. Tennyson, Emerson, Dickens and Thackeray Streets. About that time Indian affairs were matters of general current interest, and this fact accounts for the occurrence on the map of Hawke’s Bay of so many names connected with the rise of the British Empire in the East – Napier, Meeanee, Clive, Scinde, Havelock, and, later, Hastings.

Hastings Fifty Years Ago

THE BIRTH OF A TOWN

From Waste Acres to Progressive Centre

Sunday, July 8^th of this year, was the fiftieth anniversary of the rapidly growing town of Hastings, which sprang into being from what was jeeringly described at the time as “a few waste acres”, on July 8^th, 1873, when the late Mr. Francis Hicks offered by public auction some hundred acres in the vicinity of the land he presented to the Government for railway purposes, now occupied by the Railway Department leasehold in Russell Street, from the Post Office to the Heretaunga Street corner and round Heretaunga Street to Thomson’s boot shop. Later in the year Mr. James Boyle sold what was described as Hastings South.

Although Hastings had been conceived years before, this sale registered the birth of what was destined to become the present borough, which was then christened Hastings, not after the English watering place, as some people even now suppose, but in consonance with the Indian nomenclature which had already claimed this part of the province in Napier, Meeanee, Clive, Havelock, and surroundings.

PURCHASE FROM NATIVES.

Before proceeding with the story of the foundation of the town, whose destiny is to be the City of the Heretaunga Plains, it may be as well to epitomise the previous history of the district, for the information of those recent settlers who have not the knowledge of the story, which is tradition to the old identities of Hastings.

As is already so well-known to the older generation […] lying between the racecourse and the old Ngaruroro River, was a swamp, and other portions on that side were in a similar condition, in addition to which the population of the entire province was scanty and scattered, it will be seen that these sturdy settlers, who set out to blaze the track for our present day comfort and prosperity, paid the full market value for the land.

NO BUYERS AT £5 AN ACRE.

The demand for land did not increase, and some six years later Mr. Tanner offered an acre of the best ground in the present borough for every three acres ploughed. That is to say, he was offering land for £3 an acre and accepting payment in labour. Yet he could find very few to take advantage of these liberal terms. In 1871 Mr. Tanner tried to sell his land for £5 an acre, and even less, but he could not get a buyer. Another of the syndicate offered two young Englishmen, just out from England, 660 acres in Hastings for £3 10/- per acre, but they declined.

Early in 1873 the members of the partnership had to defend themselves before the Native Lands Alienation Commission, against the charge of unfair dealing in their land transactions with the Maoris, but the case against them collapsed utterly, and Judge Richmond’s report said: “The complainants failed to establish either their particular complaint or any other ground for impeaching the good faith of the transaction.”

SALE OF TOWN LOTS

The idea of carrying the railway through the district had developed in 1873, and Mr. F. Hicks cut up a hundred acres into town lots, which were offered for sale by public auction on July 8^th.

Commenting on Mr. Hicks’ enterprise, which launched the embryo city, a newspaper published at the time said: “A Mr. Francis Hicks, it appears, having presented the Minister of Public Works with a section of land on the Karamu Plain for a railway station, has decided to lay off one hundred acres in the neighbourhood of the gift for a township, to be called Hastings. Our contemporary is under the impression that it is not improbable the proposed new township will eventually become the capital of the province. Will somebody be good enough to lay off into another township a few waste acres in order that we may have one more future rival of Napier?

The next day the same publication reported the progress of the sale as follows: –

“The township of Hastings was disposed of by public auction on Tuesday (July 8^th) by Mr. Lyndon, when 144 sections, comprising nearly 35 acres, were sold at prices which spoke well for the quality of the land and the situation of the embryo city. The average price per acre was about £56, and the total sum realised over £1900. The sale was not concluded by nightfall, and was postponed until the following day, when it was resumed at 2 p.m.” It is not improbable that Lyndon road was named after the auction who conducted the historic sale.

HICKS’ TITLE CHALLENGED

It would seem that Mr. Hicks’ title to the land was also challenged, because, on the same date, the paper in question says: “It will be seen that Karaitiana Tukomoana, for himself and other grantees, disputes Mr. Hicks’ title to the block of land that gentleman has laid off for the township of Hastings, and which he is now offering for sale. We refrain from making any comments; all we can say is that if Mr. Hicks’ title is not good, by reason of the grantees who sold the land having complained of the legality of their own actions, before the Native Lands Alienation Commission, then there is not a title to a property in the province without a flaw. It may be taken as a curious circumstance that Karaitiana did not take the same course with Mr. Hicks when that gentleman bought the land as he does now to intending purchasers of the block from Mr. Hicks.” This challenge, however, seems to have been the dying kick of certain Native chieftains, who were jealous of the increasing value of the lands they had sold, due to European cultivation and the influx of population, for nothing more seems to have been heard of it, except that a Native chieftain (Karaitiana) contemplated laying out a rival township at Pakowhai, a proposal which never reached a practical stage, probably owing to the fact that it was too near Taradale, at that time a vigorous stripling community that had ambitions of its own.

THE FIRST HOTEL

Later a local newspaper draws attention to the proposal to build the […] of the building has been taken by Mr. John Orr, of Meeanee, and will be proceeded with immediately on the arrival of the timber, which is expected on the ground in about a fortnight. Mr. Goodwin, so long and favourably known as the proprietor of the Tavistock Hotel, Waipukurau, is to be the landlord.”

The present carnival time is then the jubilee of Hastings’ birth, and there is no longer any doubt that she is well on her triumphant way to becoming the metropolis of the province and the Queen City of the great Heretaunga Plains.

First Mayor of Hastings

Mr. Robert Wellwood

THE FIRST MEETING of the Hastings Town District Board, was held in February 4^th, 1884. Present: Capt. W. R. Russell, Messrs J. Tanner, C. Davey, T. Foreman and F. D. Luckie. Captain Russell was appointed chairman, and Mr. J. Collinge was appointed clerk, valuer and dog tax collector to the Board at a salary of £40 per annum.

On September 22^nd, 1884, Mr. R. Wellwood was elected chairman of the Board, a position which he held until that body was dissolved, the last meeting being held on Aug. 19^th, 1886.

Mr. Robert Wellwod has the honour of being the first Mayor of Hastings, and he presided at the first meeting of the Borough Council, held in the Town Hall, Hastings, on Wednesday, October 20^th, 1886. There were present at the meeting, besides His Worship the Mayor (Mr R. Wellwood), Crs. George Ellis, T. Foreman, F. D. Luckie, McLeod, Morris, S. T. Tong, T. Tanner and J. N. Williams. The late Mr. C. A. Fitzroy was also a member of the Council.

At this meeting, Mr. John Collinge was appointed town clerk, treasurer, returning officer, receiver of rates and valuer to the Council.

At this meeting also, the late Mr. T. Tanner offered to convey to the Council town sections 152 and 157 East Hastings, as a site for corporation offices, an offer which was accepted on November 4^th, 1886.

Mr. John Collinge continued to act as town clerk until 1911, when he retired.

The present Mayor is Mr. George Maddison, the following gentlemen forming the Council: – Councillors P. M. Cohr, N. H. Beatson, L. W. Fowler, S. J. McKee, F. W. Cook, J. Simmons, F. A. Garry, A. Garnett and A. J. Kirkham. Mr. Percy R. Purser is town clerk.

Following is the list of the Mayors of Hastings, with the dates they held office: –

Robert Wellwod, 1886-87.
W. F. Burnett, 1890-91.
George Ellis, 1887-1890, 1891-94.
C. A. Fitzroy, 1894-99.
W. Lane. 1904-5.
W. Y. Dennett, 1899-1904, 1905-6.
T. J. Thomson, 1906-09.
John A. Miller, 1909-11.
James Garnett, 1911-13.
Wm. Hart, 1913-17, 1921 to December, 1922.
H. Ian Simson, 1917-19.
George Ebbett, 1919-21.
George Maddison (present Mayor) succeeded Wm. Hart in 1922.