Official Handbook of Hastings, The – For the Tourist, Sportsman and Settler
[Place names on map]
DARTMORE [ DARTMOOR ]
RISSINGTON
HAKOWHAI ROAD
TUTAEKURI RIVER
PUKETITIRI ROAD
PUKETAPU
WHARERANGI ROAD
HARBOUR
NAPIER
MOTEO ROAD
TO HASTINGS
TARADALE
TAIHAPE-HASTINGS
VIA FERNHILL
NGARURORO RIVER
FERNHILL
WAITANGI
ROYS-HIILL ROAD
OMAHU ROAD
CLIVE
HASTINGS-CLIVE-NAPIER ROAD
RIVER MOUTH
Polo Ground
PAKOWHAI ROAD
KARAMU ROAD
HERETAUNGA STREET
LONGLANDS ROAD
MARAEKAKAHO ROAD
RAUKAWA ROAD
PAKI PAKI
PALMERSTON-HASTINGS
HASTINGS-TE AUTE ROAD
PUKAHU
MIDDLE ROAD
OTANE-HASTINGS
WAIMARAMA
TO BEACHES
TO WAIMARAMA
TUKI TUKI RIVER
TO KIDNAPPERS
CLIFTON
TE AWANGA
HAUMOANA BEACH
KAHURANAKI ROAD
WAIMARAMA
MARAETOTARA ROAD
MAIN ROADS SHOWN
SECONDARY ROADS
COPYRIGHT
Guide to Hastings & District
THIS BOOK is designed to acquaint its readers with the attractions that Hastings has to offer to the businessman, the sportsman, the motorist, and to intending and prospective residents either in the town itself or in the famous farm lands that surround it. In these pages is set forth frankly, yet with scrupulous attention to actual fact, all that such people may find to interest them in the town and its neighbourhood, and those that may be persuaded by this publication to settle in the district or to spend a holiday in it are assured that they need fear no subsequent disappointment as a result of acting upon what is here set before them. The index will enable the reader to refer at once to whatever topic particularly interest him. We are confident that you will like Hastings; and you, on you part, may be confident that Hastings will make you most welcome.
G. A. Maddison
Mayor
Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand.
1929
INDEX
Map Inside Front Cover
Introductory 3
Health of Borough 6
Death Rate 6
Infectious Disease 30
Climate, Table of 31
Age of Borough 11
Value of Borough 11
Population 11
Density of Population 19
Population, Increase 29
New Buildings 20
Dwelling Statistics 21
Sections, Cost of 29
House Rents 30
Borough Finances 22
Rates 28
Community Lighting 27
Electricity costs 27
Water Supply 33
Havelock North 34
Te Mata Peak 39
Women’s Rest 40
Theatre, Municipal 42
Municipal Buildings 43
Library, Public 44
Hospital, Memorial 44
Parks and Reserves 48
Forestry, Municipal 52
Clubs, Social 52
Friendly Societies 57
Sports Clubs 58
Chamber of Commerce 67
Rotary Club 67
Miscellaneous Bodies 67
Deerstalking 68
Duckshooting etc. 69
Angling and Fishing 70
Schools and Colleges 71
Primary Schools 79
Motorists’ Camp 47
Motor Drives 81
Hastings, Havelock, Otane 81
Patangata, Havelock, Hastings 82
Palmerston North, Hastings 83
Hastings, Havelock, Te Aute 86
Maraekakaho-Kereru 87
Other Routes 88
Kidnappers and Gannets 88
Haumoana etc. Beaches 90
Waimarama etc. Beaches 91
Fruitgrowing 93
Fruit Exports 96
Yields per Tree 98
Beekeeping 101
Pastoral Industry 101
Carrying Capacity 108
Wool Yield per Acre 108
Freezing Industry 109
Record Year 110
Killings at Works 112
Wool Sold 112
Wool Exported 113
A. and P. Society 113
A. and P. Showgrounds 113
Dairying 115
Butter Exports 120
Products, summary of 120
Erratum: Page 31, last line: For “7.3” read “2.16”.
The Official Publication of the Hastings Borough Council.
Blocks by “Evening Post”, Wellington.
Page 3
THE PROVINCE OF HAWKE’S BAY lies on the east coast at the middle of the North Island, and takes in a great area of land whose beauty and richness is comparable to the loveliest parts of New Zealand. Indeed from a scenic point of view it has a character entirely of its own. It is a land of alternating low hills and fertile plains encircled by the sea on the one hand and mountains on the other. Rivers and smaller waterways abound, and the willow, the poplar and the bluegum are typically its trees. From one side of the province to the other, and from north to south, the character of its scenery is sustained but never monotonous, for the alternations of those features that give it its individuality come with pleasing frequency. Noble stretches of hills and flats that carry great flocks of sheep and herds of cattle merge into the smaller tree enclosed holdings of the dairy farmer. Then come some miles of blossoming orchard lands, and then again the bountiful lowlands where sheep and cattle are fattened; or yet again the landscape is broken with delightful unexpectedness by yellowing fields of wheat, oats and barley, or by broad expanses of ryegrass ripening for its famous seed as travelling shadows pass across it in the sunlight. There is in the atmosphere some subtle element which gives to Nature a colourfulness that is peculiar to this district. One will notice, for example, the extraordinary vivid blueness of the river waters; that near hills look soft and shadowy, and that distant hills merge into a blue haziness as they touch the blue of the sky; that even so unpicturesque a thing as the shingle that lies in the river beds appears to have a purplish colour that is not found elsewhere; and all “is colour and warmth and light”.
Photo caption – A Section of the Town.
Page 4
Hastings is an agricultural and pastoral centre, and the measure of its present and future prosperity may be gauged by the prosperity of the country that surrounds it. No matter into what part of the country one may go, the virtues of soil, climate and scenery are evenly sustained. There are no unpleasant contrasts of rich man poor man among those pleasant farming lands; no sparseness of crops, nor lean and hungry acres. Luscious pasturage, fat and healthy stock, vigorous crops of every kind, are just as characteristic of the whole district as of any one part of it. The bountifulness of the soil is exemplified in the farm homesteads, for whether they be large or small the well-being of the owners is made obvious by their quality. Here you will never see the pathetic shack that betokens almost entirely vain years of struggle with the unyielding soil, nor those worse signs that the farmer has found the struggle too much for him. Tidy, well built and roomy houses comprise the homes of the farmers of these parts, and they equal in convenience and in modernness the suburban houses of our cities. The telephone, and hydro-electric current for cooking, lighting and milking and shearing are available to every farmer.
But the Hawke’s Bay farmer has an eye to other things than mere prosperity, and has added to the natural beauties of his district by making his home pleasing to look upon. Plantations, shrubberies, domestic orchards, and well kept flower gardens surround every farmer’s house, making of it that more lovely and desirable thing, a home. Everywhere healthy green pastures reach out to the horizon; belts of dark
Photo caption – Shearing Time near Hastings
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pines or stately poplars or graceful willows mark out each holding and encircle each cosy homestead; and every now and again a river or a stream glistens blue as it flows through its border of golden broom or gorse. It is a pastoral country, and very beautiful; a land where almost every inch of soil is cultivable, where stock and fruit and crops grow with unusual abundance, where fine town and country homes abound, where deer may be hunted and trout angled for, and where New Zealand’s healthiest people live. Though bush is not a feature of its landscape, Hawke’s Bay has some fifty thousand acres of it in various parts, and most of it is classed as equal to anything of its kind existing elsewhere. A distinguished visitor to Hastings once described his idea of the province by saying that it was like some colossal English deer-park, and that description is, in part, very apt.
One of the richest parts of this rich province is the Heretaunga Plains, an area of some hundred thousand acres stretching to the sea coast and watered by three considerable rivers which enter the sea at a distance of about five miles between each of them. They and the myriad streams that join them as they flow from the mountains unite with a naturally fertile soil and a climate which the pagans would have thought was made according to the formula of their goddess of the harvest to make the district an ideal
Photo caption – Heretaunga Street, looking east.
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home for man and beast, and for everything that good land, water and sunshine can grow. Health, wealth and prosperity – those three blessings are peculiarly Hawke’s Bay’s own, and each has been given to it with the utmost liberality. Healthiest, wealthiest, and most prosperous of all its towns is Hastings, and the richest and loveliest of the district’s beautiful lands are those that lie close about the town.
Those claims are no thoughtlessly nor idly made, but are based upon definite published statements of fact. Though statistics have as far as possible been excluded from these introductory pages and left to another section, it may yet be shown in a general way that the contentions made above are capable of statistical proof.
We have spoken of health. The only figures available in that connection date back seven years, and in six of those seven it is shown that Hastings has had the lowest death rate in New Zealand. In the same period its numbers of notifiable sickness have decreased year by year until the total has reached only thirty-one in a population of fifteen thousand; and that in spite of one of those unaccountable epidemics whose origin no man can trace. Related no doubt to those happy circumstances is that fact that Hastings shares with its neighbour the largest yearly average of sunshine in the whole Dominion, the daily average over ten years working out at six hours forty-eight minutes. That yearly total exceeds the sunniest northern towns’ by over five hundred hours, and some southern towns’ by over eight hundred. Though
Photo caption – Market Street, Racecourse Entrance.
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Page 9
Hastings has an average rainfall of thirty-two inches, an amount which is copious enough to assist Nature fully in all her phases, it has the lowest Dominion average of wet days, namely one hundred and seven; so that it may make the converse claim of having more fine days than any other New Zealand town. In no month is the average rainfall more than three and a half inches. The temperature is never too hot and never too cold, the highest average being slightly over seventy-five degrees and the lowest forty-one.
We have spoken of wealth and prosperity. The province’s orchard lands, which are almost entirely a part of Hastings’ environs, are the second most extensive in New Zealand, and in the year of writing produced an export crop which had increased by over eight hundred and fifty per cent, in three years, the highest increase in the Dominion. The yield of fruit per tree was in most classes by far the greatest of the fruitgrowing districts of New Zealand, and the increase in the crop amounted to sixty-six thousand cases more than the crop of the previous year. The number of sheep shorn amounted to about two and three quarter millions in the last statistical year, and the number of sheep shorn per thousand acres exceeded those of New Zealand’s next two greatest sheep raising districts by just on three hundred. The wool sold in Napier was, as usual, the second largest quantity sold at any one centre in New Zealand, and realised £2,328,951 as against £1,644,696, an increase if £684,255, or 41.6 per cent. Those figures do not, however, fully represent the district’s output of wool, but only what is sold at local sales. Besides that wool there are large quantities
Photo caption – Romney sheep Pasturing.
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shipped overseas on owners’ account. But the Hawke’s Bay woolgrower claims pre-eminence from other aspects than that of quantity in production, for it is commonly recognised by wool experts that Hawke’s Bay crossbred wool is among the best in the world. It may be mentioned here also that in the five year period covered by the latest available Year Book, Hawke’s Bay is shown as the only province to obtain an average fleece of nine pounds weight. The quantity of butter exported from northern Hawke’s Bay rose from 942 tons in 1927 to 1890 tons in the year of writing. Cheese exports increased by almost 100 per cent. The freezing industry, another source of great wealth to the province, is almost entirely suburban to Hastings, and three of the four large Hawke’s Bay works are all within three or four miles of the borough boundary. These works killed just on 1,240,000 carcases in the 1928 season. Such general references as these will show that the district is not only productive, but increasingly productive, and that that productiveness is obviously only the beginning of Hawke’s Bay’s exploitation of its resources.
Hastings derives a great part of its importance from its situation as the centre of Hawke’s Bay’s most fertile and most wealth-producing land, and that importance is being added to every year. Though it is not to be argued that the town does not derive most of its riches and its status from that circumstance, it is not only as inhabitants of a sort of clearing house for farm products that the townspeople have begun to look upon themselves as forming one of the more considerable of the Dominion’s urban communities. They
Photo caption – A Garden at Tomoana.
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are fond of their town and proud of it because, above all, and apart of any mercenary considerations, it is a very desirable place to live in. Handsome, modern, and well administered; free from squalor and shabbiness and generously endowed with parks and playing fields; proving ever more attractive to holiday-makers and residents from other parts; grown in half a life’s span from a tiny early colonial hamlet to an urban community of fifteen thousand people, it inhabitants are proud of the achievements that it has already made, and are confident that the future has many riches and some notability in store for it.
In point of age, Hastings is a mere infant among the boroughs of New Zealand, for its constitution dates back only forty-two years and it was only three years before declared a town district. Not long previously, buyers could not be found for urban properties offered at three and four pounds per acre, and it must have seemed, judging from contemporary evidence, as though the founding of the little hamlet, as it then was, had been a vain mistake. Eleven years ago the town’s urban population was only a little over six thousand, or two-fifths of what it is to-day. The unimproved value of the borough is now nearly a million and a half, and its capital value two and a half millions, or almost exactly double what it was eighteen years ago. The number of dwellings actually in the borough is nearly three thousand.
Photo caption – Russell Street, North.
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There cannot be the slightest doubt that a great municipal career is assured in Hastings. The evidence is indisputable. The fertility of its environs, the prosperity of its industries, the healthiness of its climate, and the scope for new enterprise and for more intense cultivation of the splendid lands that surround it, all combine to create the most confident belief that the town’s real destiny towards which it has already gone so far and so rapidly, is as the great commercial base of one of the most productive of all the farming areas of New Zealand.
Those are high hopes; yet, as has been said, they are founded on firm foundations. Hawke’s Bay’s name as a wool-growing district is already held in high honour. Now dairying is taking an increasingly important place among the primary industries of the province as may be shown by the fact that whereas three years ago dairy exports from its northern area were not large enough to warrant the presence of a Government grader there, its dairy exports have now risen to nearly two thousand tons.
Hastings’ climate is thoroughly delightful, and combines a winter season of crisp, clear, and sunny days with a summer that never becomes trying. The intermediate seasons are correspondingly pleasant, and throughout the whole year, so statistics show, it is climatically comparable to those southern European resorts that northern Europeans look upon
Photo caption – A Residential Street.
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almost as their sanatoria. Its climate, its open situation, and its roominess are the chief circumstances leading to its happy state of health. The town is situated in the midst of a wonderful area of open, well drained land that is encircled by sheltering hills and yet is open to the sun from morning to evening. The encouragement of sport by the provision of numerous and large public parks and sports ground, the town’s nearness to beaches, rivers and mountains, and its wide streets and extremely low density of population have with the district’s superb climate made the people of the town lovers of fresh air, vigorous recreation, and of all those pastimes that by taking them out of doors inevitably make of them a robust and healthy breed.
The ranges within two or three hours’ drive of the town provide excellent deer stalking and pig hunting, and only a few minutes’ drive from the town are three excellent trout streams which yield fish whose size and quality may be seen illustrated in these pages. Less than five miles away is Haumoana Beach which is not only a magnificent playground for the public generally but also a place of summer residence for many of them. Haumoana stretches south to meet Te Awanga Beach, which in turn leads to Cape Kidnappers and its famous gannetry. Beyond that again is Ocean Beach, and then Waimarama, also a summer dwelling place for many Hastings people, and one of the gems of the New Zealand Coast.
Photo caption – The Avenue, Cornwall Park.
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Hastings is situated less than five miles from the sea, twelve miles from a seaport, and stands on one of the chief commercial and scenic highways of the Dominion, the route from Auckland through Taupo, Rotorua, and Gisborne to Palmerston North and Wellington. Commercially that circumstance has had the effect, in combination with the natural resources of its farming lands, of bringing about the great prosperity that Hastings enjoys, and in other ways it has brought the town no small degree of renown in other parts. Touring motorists from both north and south on their way to or from the great thermal districts have become accustomed to making Hastings their half way house, and the municipality has established for their comfort an extensive, well equipped, and very lovely camping ground where rest, shelter and baths may be had at the end of the day’s journey, and where there are the means for cooking meals. A fuller description of this camp will be found in another section of the book.
Hastings feels a certain amount of pride in its moderness, and the people are proud that the comparative youthfulness of the town has enabled them privately, and the town’s administrators civically, to impose upon it some desirable characteristics that are lacking in other New Zealand boroughs and cities. By the time that Hastings was born, as one might say, communities of what was then relatively important size
Photo caption – The Tuki Tuki near Havelock.
Page 15
had sprung up in other parts of the country. Auckland, for example, had grown from a village of fifteen hundred people in 1841 until in 1886, the year of Hastings’ declaration as a borough, it had a population of thirty-three thousand. Other towns had grown with little less rapidity. But they had grown, and had not been built according to set plans, and as a consequence each new area that was added to their original size was merely tacked on and blended promiscuously with no eye (for it was almost impossible in those days to see ahead) to disadvantages that might arise in the future.
With Hastings it was a different matter. By the time that it was declared a borough in 1886 it had been able to see what errors older and larger towns had made in allowing themselves to expand indiscriminately. The meat freezing industry had been founded only two years previously, and it was obvious to the people of Hastings that that industry was going to be the making of the province and therefore of their infant town. It was obvious also that Hastings’ palmy days were about to begin; and with confidence of an increasingly prosperous future those that were in an administrative sense the parents of the town saw to it that their offspring should grow up properly adapted to the career that appeared inevitably to lie before it.
They did their task well. To-day, if some kindly economic phenomenon happened to transform Hastings into the commercial and residential hub of New Zealand, the town would be found ready to add the necessary cubits to its stature without any ill effects upon its physique. There would not be, in any such supposed circumstances as have been mentioned, any need to alter the town’s lay-out to enable it to take many times its present population. There would not be, and
Photo caption – A Typical Sheeprun.
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never will be, any necessity of buying expensive land in the business centre for street widening purposes as has had to be done in many another New Zealand town. Its streets are wide and straight, and are laid out with a symmetry that has prepared the town for all the expansion that the next fifty years, be they never so prosperous, are likely to bring. Breadth and roominess and airiness are the chief characteristics of Hastings’ sixty miles of streets, and of the town’s aspect generally.
As has been said elsewhere in this book, there is neither squalor nor shabbiness in the whole of the borough’s large area. Profiting by the mistakes that its larger and older sisters have made, or had made for them, the founders of Hastings went about their work in such ways as to ensure that Hastings would grow according to a set plan, and not willy-nilly at the whim of anybody that cared to squat in the place. That fore-seeing wisdom has had the most happy results, and equally calculating foresight is being applied to all civic matters by those to whom their care is entrusted to-day. The fortunate consequences of past discretion have made of Hastings a town which in every way has grown along certain definite lines of development, and which by the use of wisdom in its present administrators will continue to do so. There are no archaic survivals of squalid, distorted streets to call for obliteration at the expense of ratepayer as has often been the case elsewhere. There has been no languishing of one area, developed in the early days to the accompaniment of sanguine prophecies of its great destiny, to give way
Photo caption – On the Tuki Tuki.
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Page 19
to another area since found to be the really desirable commercial and residential centre of town. As a result the borough has been developed as it was first begun – according to the principals of rhyme and reason.
Even within the existing borough boundaries, beyond which there is, if it should ever be necessary, almost limitless room for expansion, there is scope for a good deal of commercial and residential development. Excluding the borough’s ninety acres of parks and sports grounds, and its five hundred acres of streets, the average amount of ground to every house and business is over three-fifths of an acre. Its density of population is only 393 people to every hundred acres, and when it is stated that the most crowded town New Zealand had 1100 people per hundred acres to provide with sunlight, domestic gardens, and breathing space generally, it will readily be seen how enviable is Hastings’ position in this respect.
To say nothing of the easily obvious advantages that accrue to those that live in such spaciousness, there is one way in which Hastings’ low density of population affects residents, and it is only slightly less important than the consideration of health and pleasantness of outlook. That is the financial aspect. With so much room to spare, there is no land hunger such as many overcrowded boroughs and cities,
Photo caption – St. Matthew’s Church, Hastings.
Page 20
even in so early a period of their lives as this is, are already beginning to suffer. As a corollary to that fact is the cheapness of residential sites, and yet again the cheapness of rents.
Because Hastings began with a clean sheet so far as errors of past administration are concerned, it has grown up with a financial economy the benefit of which continues right up to the present day. Apart from the replacement of such ancient institutions as a street gaslight service and similar antiquities that every town has its share in replacing, the ratepayers have not once been called upon to pay for the mistakes of their predecessors. There have been no municipal white elephants to exterminate, no financial millstones to cut away. To-day the happy effect of having been left unburdened by any costly errors in the past may be seen in the condition of the municipal finances. The town has been able to progress with a freedom that falls to the lot of few of our colonial municipalities (so often pushed on ahead of their resources, and thus inevitably brought to the stagnation that comes of indiscreet and over-enthusiastic spending) and finds itself to-day in a most rare and healthy state of solvency.
One indication of the confidence with which the Government departments recognise Hastings’ growing importance is provided by the fact that within the last two years Government buildings costing £73,500 have been completed. Those buildings, without the land, include a new high school costing £18,000, a new Public Trust Office costing £13,000, additions
Photo caption – St. Luke’s Church, Havelock North.
Page 21
costing £16,000 to the Hastings Post Office (which is now more than four times it was before those additions were made), and partly at the Government’s cost a new hospital costing £25,000. In addition to those buildings, the Government has recently made a grant of £1600 to enable additions to be made to the existing courthouse, and a grant of £2500 for a new police-station. Other buildings contemplated by the Government, and likely to be built shortly, are a new railway station and a new primary school in the centre of the town. Those facts prove beyond dispute that it is not only the residents themselves that realise Hastings’ status as an important and thriving community, and they form a rather flattering acknowledgment that the town has merited recognition as a community with a future as well as a present progressiveness.
One proof of that progressiveness is given by the fact that four hundred and fifty houses have been built in the last five years, or nearly two a week. This means that one sixth of the total number of dwellings in the borough have been built in those five years. The expenditure on all buildings during the same period was nearly seven hundred thousand pounds, or an average of considerably over four hundred pounds a day. The solidly financial quality of the dweller that constitutes the bulk of Hastings’ population is proved by the amount of money that he is able to spend on building his home, for although the costs of building in Hastings are on a par with those elsewhere, a year’s statistics show that the average cost of every new dwelling in the town is £825.
Photo caption – Angling in the Ngaruroro.
Page 22
THE TERM PROGRESS can be and often is a loose term, and its alleged basis very often does not withstand much scrutiny. But it has a very exact meaning in its application to Hastings. The building of permanent roads and paths, the exceptional smallness of borough rates, the development of parks and playing fields, and similar civic enterprises may induce the ratepayer to feel a good deal of self-complacency as a town builder so long as the municipal purse is not brought into discussion. The gratification that Hastings derives from its financial position to-day is, however, due to the rare circumstances that it can look into that purse and find that though so much has been spent upon improving the town in a score of ways yet its borough finances are in a particularly healthy condition.
That is progress. At the time when this book was written, every municipal account was in credit, and the balance in the general account and in the water account, taken together, created a new record for the borough; and that was in spite of the fact that both accounts had had unusually heavy calls made upon them during the year. The present finances of the borough are in so satisfactory a state that they will allow of many permanent works and town improvements being paid for out of revenue.
Photo caption – Some Hastings’ Herefords.
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Page 25
For some years the council has been steadily developing a most efficient and comprehensive street lighting system, and although that system has now almost reached perfection it has been attended by an ever increasing economy. It is interesting to recall in passing that in an old publication in which reference to Hastings is made, the writer parades with obvious pride the fact that the borough had forty-eighth street lamps – gas lamps, of course. That was twenty years ago. Its present electric system is made up of 460 street lamps, and as has been said it is still being extended. The street lights are arranged in the central overhead style, and special lights for car parking places are arranged otherwise. That excellent arrangement, together with the community system of night lighting shops, results in an illumination whose brilliance, so the town confidently believes, is unsurpassed by that of any other borough or city of New Zealand; and not the least important feature of the system is that its brilliance is equalled by the economy of establishing and maintaining it.
In framing its policy of electric lighting, the council has most successfully and economically combined the utilitarian with the beautiful; or to express it in a different way, has added to the beauty of the town at night, and to the profit of the consumer, while at the same time increasing the scope of
Photo caption – Russell Street, South.
Page 27
its service and cheapening its cost. One of the most successful of the borough’s municipal enterprises has been its establishment of a community lighting service for shops, and that service has been not only mutually profitable as between the shopkeepers and the electric department, but has given Hastings a touch of night time gaiety of appearance to a rare degree. From end to end of its business centre the shop windows are lighted at dark in the summer evenings, and at 6.30 o’clock in the winter, with the result that its business streets, instead of presenting that drab and deserted appearance that characterises so many provincial towns, are given a striking colourfulness and liveliness.
The system has had one very pleasing and most natural consequence: it has enabled the Hastings shopkeepers to exhibit their goods far more enticingly than they could before, and to dress their windows to such artistic effect that with the glamour that bright lights always give, they have been able to make them a most attractive sight. The exercise of the window-dresser’s skill has been encouraged by those means, and as an outcome of his ability to show his potential customer his goods in so advantageous a setting, and during hours when the businessman and the housewife have more time to choose what they will buy when the time for buying comes, both the shopkeeper and the shopper have benefited. But there is another than the utilitarian side to this question; trading advantages apart, the community lighting system has converted the town’s shopping area into a glamorous and perpetually Christmas-like scene of bright lights and gaily furnished windows. At night the shopping streets are a real attraction to residents, and people from other towns have frequently expressed their pleasure at the lively scene presented by Hastings’ rows of lighted shops.
As may well be imagined, community lighting has paid the shopkeeper handsomely; and it has paid the electrical department also. That latter result may not be so easily imagined when it is stated that the charges range from £6 15s. a month, or five shillings a day, for the largest consumer, down to a shilling a month for the small shopkeeper with only one window light. In spite of the fact that in the last six years concessions amounting to over £10,000 have been made to consumers of electricity supplied by the borough, yet the electrical account showed a credit balance of £8,207 on March 31st, 1928.
The charges for current for domestic use averaged nine-pence in 1922, fourpence in 1923, and threepence in 1928. Cooking cost one penny halfpenny in the last mentioned year. Power, in 1922, cost an average of fourpence a unit, in 1923 twopence halfpenny, in 1924 twopence, and in 1928 a penny farthing.
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It is the council’s policy to make reductions so far as circumstances allow; and so favourable is the financial position of the electrical department that further reductions in the price of supply may be made in the year of writing. The average revenue from a five-roomed house for a month is four shillings and twopence, which is the lowest in New Zealand.
One of the ways in which the council has used it street lighting service for the beautification of the town is by the installation of cluster lights, and the illustration so those lights show their greatest effectiveness. They have so successfully achieved the object for which they were installed that the council has decided to make considerable extensions to them, and additional lights of the same pattern are to be erected in Russell Street and Railway Road – two of the main streets in the business area.
The general rate in 1928 was the lowest ever struck in the history of the borough, and amounted to only 1.80 d. Every special rate was reduced in the same financial year. The general rate on the unimproved value during the past eight years has varied between 1.96d. And 2.625d., and in the record year (1928) was only 2d. The total return from the general rate in that year was £12,060.
The lowness of the Hastings borough rates is indicated by the following table: – 1921, 2.52d.; 1922, 2.37d.; 1923, 2.75d.; 1924, 2.625d.; 1925, 2.375d.; 1926, 2.12d.; 1927,
Photo caption – Tomato Growing, Pakowhai.
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1.96d.; 1928, 2d.; 1928-29, 1.80. The total borough rates levied during the past six years are as follows: – 1923, £32,995; 1924, £30,152; 1925, £30,421; 1926, £30,410; 1927, £32,370; 1928-29, £32,275.
THE REMARKABLE WAY in which Hastings has attracted population in recent years is illustrated by the fact that although the increase in the population of the Hawke’s Bay province between 1901 and 1925 (the last census year) reached the high figure of 86 per cent, the increase in the population of Hastings borough alone was 186 per cent.
BUILDING SECTIONS in Hastings consist universally of good, open soil, fully exposed to the sunshine, and are sold at prices which because there is no land hunger in the town are most reasonable. According to information supplied by an expert valuer, sections measuring 62 by 132 feet, or about a fifth of an acre in area, situated half a mile from the post office, cost between £130 and £250 according to locality and desirability, and average £200, or £1000 an acre. Sections of the same size situated a mile from the post office and within the borough boundary cost between £140 and £180, also according to locality and desirability, and average £160 or about £800 an acre. According to other experts’ statements, quarter-acre sections about two miles from the post office cost between £50 and £100, or between £200 and £400 an acre.
Photo caption – Swan Pool, Cornwall Park
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HOUSE RENTS will be most satisfactorily indicated by quoting the following examples selected indiscriminately and extracted verbatim from newspaper advertisements; “To lease for three years. Modern two-storeyed, eight-roomed bungalow. Rental 50s. and rates.” “Houses, two rooms, 16s.; four rooms 25s.; four rooms 27s. 6d.; five rooms 25s; six rooms 30s.” “Four-roomed bungalow, sleeping porch, 27s. 6d.” “Four rooms and conveniences, 25s.” ” Modern six-bedroomed bungalow with every convenience, 30s.” “Several four-roomed houses situated (in various streets between five and twelve minutes’ walk from post office) 22s. 6d. and 25s.” “Three acres and six rooms £2; two acres and seven rooms 37s 6d.” “Small comfortable bungalow, good locality, 27s. 6d.” “Five-roomed house with car-shed and conveniences 25s.” “Eight rooms £2 5s.; five rooms 30s.; four rooms 22s. 6d.; two large rooms and 1½ acres 17s. 6d.”
INFECTIOUS DISEASES. The Hastings borough statistics of infectious disease for the last seven years are as follows: – 1921, 73; 1922, 64; 1923, 61; 1924, 48; 1925, 25; 1926, 55; 1927, 31. It must be pointed out that a general decreasing tendency is shown by those figures in spite of the fact that the population has increased at a high rate.
Photo caption – Cornwall Park.
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Tables of Climate: Temperature
Mean. Max. Min.
HASTINGS 57.7 66.1 49.0
Auckland 59.1 65.5 52.9
Nelson 55.4 64.9 46.0
Wellington 55.4 61.4 49.3
Hokitika 53.1 60.7 45.7
Lincoln 53.0 62.3 43.7
Invercargill 50.8 58.6 41.5
Dunedin 50.7 57.9 43.6
Rainfall
Annual Avge. No. Wet Days.
HASTINGS 32.8 107
Lincoln 25.34 123
Blenheim 30.59 186
Dunedin 30.64 159
Auckland 44.44 184
Invercargill 46.04 190
Wellington 48.11 166
Nelson 55.4 123
Rotorua 55.11 143
Hokitika 116.6030
Sunshine
Hrs. Per annum.
HASTINGS 2487
Nelson 2476
Blenheim 2178
Lincoln 2087
Rotorua 2055
Wellington 2018
Auckland 1947
Hokitika 1928
Dunedin 1659
Invercargill 1604
The wettest months are June (10.8 inches average), July (11.5), August (11.7). On the other hand, no month has an average rainfall of less than 7.3 inches.
Photo caption – Te Mata Park Entrance.
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THE PERMANENT SURFACING of the borough streets and the laying of concrete footpaths have been carried out with the utmost vigour in the last few years. Of its sixty miles of streets, about eleven miles have laid in permanent material, almost entirely hot-mix bitumen. The borough street construction schedule being carried out at the time of writing allowed for a further three miles of hot-mix roading which will have been completed by the end of 1928-29 financial year. The council’s progressive policy is not likely, however, to stop at that point, and there is no doubt that it will be followed until Hastings will be laid with perfect bitumen streets, permanent and dustless, almost entirely throughout the more populous parts of the borough. There are, also, some thirty miles of asphalt footpaths and about thirty-five miles of concrete paths already constructed.
The figures dealing with the length of the permanent roading do not include the Hastings-Havelock North road, which was laid by the council in hot-mix bitumen under arrangement with the county authorities. That road, together with the hot-mix roads in the borough, are perfect examples of road-making – so beautifully constructed, indeed, that one could not imagine anything more splendidly surfaced or more durable looking. They are fine examples of road engineering.
As for the roads beyond the borough, the Highways Board, in November 1928, adopted the County Council’s proposals to put in hand a large schedule of permanent roading, twenty-five miles of which lie in the immediate neighbourhood of Hastings. That work is to be additional to a very important and comprehensive schedule nearing completion at the time of writing.
AMONG OTHER IMPORTANT WORKS being done by the Borough Council in 1928 was the extension of the borough water supply. The existing reservoir, on the hills at Havelock North, had a capacity of 500,000 gallons, and just before this book was published an additional reservoir, costing £3414, was completed in the same locality with a capacity of 750,000, bringing the total reservoir capacity up to 1,250,000 gallons. That capacity is, it is considered, enough for a good many years to come.
It must be mentioned, also, that in 1928 Hastings was equipped with an automatic fire-alarm system, alarms being installed at frequent intervals throughout the length and breadth of the borough. The installation of that system meant, of course, a saving of some thousands of pounds to the people of the town not only directly by way of reductions in insurance rates, but also indirectly by way of allowing more rapid communication with the fire brigade. The borough has a fire-fighting service that is second to none in efficiency.
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A MILE AND A HALF along a perfect bitumen road from the borough of Hastings is the picturesque little village of Havelock North, surely one of the prettiest and neatest suburban settlements in New Zealand. Its people choose always to refer to it as “the village”, and the name suits it far more fittingly than the word township commonly applied to embryo boroughs, for it is distinct in type from the usual sort of colonial semi-rural settlement. It is tucked away amid orchard and pastoral lands, and two characters are blended in it. In one of its roles it is a suburb of Hastings, and a large part of its twelve hundred inhabitants are Hastings business people. In its other role it is a farming community, and that part of its population consists of active and retired farmers.
In the village itself, which is laid out on the English plan with an artistically rustic village square, and on the hills that lie behind it, are some of Hawke’s Bay’s loveliest homes. In spring, summer and autumn, both in the gardens of its houses and on its winding roads and lanes, are scenes in which Nature exhibits all the glories of flower and tree, and a hundred pleasant walks are to be had along roads to Mangateretere and to Otane, or on the hills above the village. One may ramble about the place in all those directions and yet never tire of the beauty and rusticity of the scene.
Photo caption – Village Square, Havelock North.
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In the village itself are a good hotel, swimming baths, a recreation ground, a bowling green, and tennis courts, and about a mile beyond the village, along the Te Mata road, is the Tuki Tuki river, a fine waterway along whose banks there are countless sheltered and pretty picnicking places. The river is perfectly safe to bathe in, and varies from the shallowness beloved by the non-swimmer to the depth that the expert finds indispensable to his pleasure.
In and about the village are what experts from the Argentine have described as the world’s best fruitgrowing lands, and at blossoming time, or in the ripening season, they are in themselves well worth going to see. Apple orchards, pear orchards, peach, plum and cherry orchards, stretch out far beyond the village, and make a compact scene whose beauty is truly unforgettable. Past those orchard lands and along the main roads leading from the village, or past them up on the hills, one passes in spring and summer through roads and lanes made fragrant with groves of wattle, flowering gums, bluegums, and orange, and at every point cosy cottages and good looking homes peer at you from behind their hedges and gardens. So peaceful is the atmosphere of this charming little place that tuis are bold enough often in the springtime, and sometimes in the summer, to come and sing almost in the village square, and in almost any direction within a mile of
Photo caption – Middle Road, Havelock North.
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the village there are tree shaded fields where you may picnic and listen to them all day long.
Besides its very considerable fame as a fruitgrowing locality, Havelock enjoys a good deal of distinction as a centre of education, and the two splendid girls’ schools – Iona College and Woodford House, and boys’ boarding-school, Hereworth – that overlook it from the hills are known throughout New Zealand for the high standard of the scholastic and social education that they provide.
THERE IS NO MORE LOVELY VIEW of the country that this book has attempted to describe than that from Te Mata Park at the top of the Havelock hills. There is a good motoring road to the park, and to reach it from Hastings or from Havelock one should go along the Te Mata road from the village and turn up Simla Avenue, which is the first road on the right past Hereworth Boys’ School. But if you care to improve upon Chesterton’s philosophy that “it is cheaper to sit in a meadow and see a car go by, than to sit in a car and see a meadow go by” you will walk at least most of the way; and it is a very beautiful and easy walk. Walking or driving the visitor will find the outing worth the taking. There is a regular bus service to Havelock, and there are several means of approach to the hills for pedestrians, though only one for cars. The roads take you gently over pastoral slopes heavily pastured and right to the top of hills that present to you a view of the Heretaunga Plains and Hastings, and of Napier and the sea coast to the north; and on the other side you will see the coast also, and the great white road leading to Waimarama Beach crossing and recrossing the marvellously blue Tuki Tuki river. Though at the highest point, which is known as the Peak, you are only 1320 feet above see [sea] level, you are nevertheless so far above your surroundings that you may momentarily delude yourself into the belief that you are perched on the highest pinnacle of the earth.
The view is truly superb. Everywhere about you are soft tones and shadowy hills, the sea, red roofed houses sheltered among trees, orchards in bloom or colourful with ripening fruit, and pastoral scenes whose beauty is reminiscent of the loveliest parts of the English downs. The plains below are marked out into farms whose rich greenness is contrasted against the darkness of belts of pines, or the dark brown of newly ploughed fields. Up there on the Peak you taste a most exhilarating air, and there are many cosy nooks in the hillsides, or rows of shady trees, to provide secluded and comfortable picnicking places. Both the motor road and the foot tracks are of easy gradients, and both car and pedestrian can reach the Peak without fatigue.
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AN IMPORTANT ENTERPRISE pioneered in New Zealand by Hastings was the establishment of women’s rests. The Hastings Women’s Rest had proved to be a great boon, and has become so widely known for the service that it had given, that the example set by the borough has been followed by many other municipalities throughout New Zealand and Australia. The Rest, of which there is an illustration in these pages, was built by the borough council in September 1921 at a cost of approximately £2500, the money being derived from the municipal funds and from private subscriptions.
Its purpose is to serve as a retiring place where young business women may spend their lunch hour, or as a place of rest and social service to mothers and to all women visitors to the town. Here they may obtain light refreshments, mothers may attend to their children, warm their babies’ bottles, leave their parcels, write letters, read current journals, and attend to their toilet.
The popularity of the institution in the general life of the community may be judged from the fact that up to September 30th, 1928, a total of 240,465 people had made use of it. That figure means that every day since it was opened the institution had given service to just one hundred visitors to it. In the year of its opening, however visitors numbered only 19,976, so that will readily be seen how greatly its usefulness has been realised and taken advantage of. The receipts
Photo caption – The Women’s Rest.
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increased from £115 in 1923 to about £250 in 1928, and during the year 1927 a total of 9071 women were served with refreshments. It is worth while adding that in the last monthly report available before this book was published, it was shown that the attendances at the Rest and at the Plunket Rooms attached to it reached the record total of 5105, or more than one hundred and seventy a day, and that it was the busiest month yet known.
The borough council had found that patronage of the Rest to be increasing so greatly that it is seeking to enlarge its scope and size, and towards that end it has bought additional land on which additions to the building can be made. The proposed extensions will include facilities of the kind already mentioned, with the addition of a sun porch, children’s nursery and play room, as well as an outside playground for children and a separate room for single girls.
The building is situated near the centre of the town, and is in Russell street south about a hundred yards from Heretaunga street. It is of a particularly fine design carried out in roughcast and is splendidly equipped in every way. A rockery, lawns, gardens, and shady trees, set it off most effectively. Seats are conveniently placed about the outside of the building.
The Rest is under the supervision of a resident matron and assistant, and the hours of attendance are from 9.30 a.m. to 5.30 p.m. It has been described by a prominent social worker from America as one of the finest institutions of its kind that she had ever visited in her travels around the world.
Photo caption – Municipal Building and Theatre.
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THE HASTINGS MUNICIPAL THEATRE is a borough enterprise of which the people of the town are particularly proud, and it is, indeed, a proof not only of Hastings’ prosperity but also its great progressiveness. It has been repeatedly remarked by theatrical managers that there are few theatres, if any, in the whole dominion, in which the stage arrangements, the lighting, and all the technical accessories are so generously and conveniently provided as here. It is by no means too much to say that from the actor’s point of view the theatre is most favourably know all over New Zealand. The great depth and width of its stage, the trouble that had been taken to provide facilities for moving bulky scenery and properties into and out of the building, the convenient provision of dressing-rooms on stage-level, are but a few of the features that please visiting theatrical companies.
From the theatre-goer’s point of view it is just as highly estimable, and it is equipped with every comfort and convenience that is usually found in the large metropolitan theatres. The interior decorations are strikingly handsome, the predominating colour being shell pink relieved with crimson plush and grey toned tiling. The total seating accommodation is 1331, the dress circle holding 259, the stalls 502, and the gallery 600. Heating is provided by hot water radiation, and ventilation by electric exhaust fans. The foundation stone was laid on March 21st, 1915, and the whole of the building and furnishings cost £17,000. The exterior design is a fine example of Spanish Mission architecture, and it does the highest credit not only it its designer but to the townspeople who authorised its construction and thus gave to Hastings a building and a theatre of which many a city might justifiably feel great pride. When not in use by theatrical companies or for other entertainments the theatre is used as a cinema, and brings considerable profit to the town.
In March 1928, the end of the financial year, the theatre account showed a credit balance of £4460 after £1750 had been transferred to the general account and after renovations costing £395 had been paid for.
THE COSY THEATRE is a large and up-to-date regular cinema, and is situated in Heretaunga street west. It is a private concern run in conjunction with Hastings Borough Council.
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THE MUNICIPAL BUILDINGS, which adjoin the theatre, are as noteworthy a civic enterprise as the theatre itself. The interior and exterior are of modern Renaissance design and comprise the borough administrative block, the Assembly Hall, the Council Chambers, and a supper room attached to the Assembly Hall. The foundation stone was laid on February 9th, 1916, and the whole building cost £15,500. The entire block is under one roof, and is yet another example of the pride that Hastings takes in the beauty and moderness of its buildings. It stands on the corner of Heretaunga street and Hastings street and its beauty and extensiveness may be judged from the accompanying illustration. The colour scheme is a tastefully devised blending of grey and cream relieved with discreet touches of black, and a roof of red tiles gives the building an unusually pleasing colourfulness. Large glass doors open from the Assembly Hall on to a wide balcony decorated with palms and railed with decorative ironwork. The Hall is used for dances, concerts, and for similar purposes, and seats 900 people. The adjoining supper room is furnished with the most modern and efficient equipment, and holds 180 people seated. As in the theatre, heating is provided by hot water radiation. The council offices and the council chambers are splendidly planned in the most up-to-date style, and are both luxurious and convenient.
Photo caption – Library and Hastings Club.
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THE HASTINGS PUBLIC LIBRARY is a handsome red brick building and is situated in Market street south. It was established by the Carnegie Foundation and is both a reference library and a lending library. A children’s department is situated on the top floor and has a special assistant in charge of it. The library is administered by a committee of the Borough Council, and the best and most modern books are bought month by month both for the reference and for the lending departments. There is also, of course, a reading room provided with a large stock of overseas newspapers and periodicals. There were about 7800 volumes in the lending library, and about 900 in the reference department in 1928, but those numbers are being steadily added to month by month.
THE HASTINGS FALLEN SOLDIERS’ MEMORIAL Hospital, so-called because it was built to commemorate the sacrifice made by three hundred men from Hastings who died in the Great War, was opened on Anzac Day 1928, and both as a hospital and as a memorial is a splendid building. Of the total amount of about £28,000 already spent upon it, £18,579 was raised by public subscription, interest, and by similar means, and approximately £9000 was contributed as a subsidy by the Government. The dimensions of the actual hospital building are two hundred and twenty-four feet by one hundred and thirty-six feet, and together with the adjoining nurses’ home it stands in eighteen acres of grounds on the Omahu road just a few yards outside the borough boundary. The hospital is a particularly handsome and well equipped building, The use of pergolas, large glassed-in sun porches, red tiles, and red bricks with cream facings, in its construction give it an appearance that is a pleasing change from the usually drab and staid type of architecture used in such
Photo caption – Soldiers’ Memorial Hospital
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Page 47
buildings, and the design of the nurses’ home has been carried out to correspond with that of the main hospital. The grounds in front have been laid out with unusual prettiness, and rockeries and flower-beds with large patches of rose-beds here and there give a touch of beauty that is more usual to parks than to hospitals. The addition of particularly well designed stone gateways and fences fronting the main entrance had recently been made. The equipment of the hospital is most modern throughout and fully up to the standard of the very best that the larger hospitals possess.
THE MOTORISTS’ CAMPING GROUND is at Beatson’s Park (see map), the largest park actually in the borough. The park is forty-two acres in extent, and has been described by visitors as the best motor camp in the Dominion. Both as a park and as a camping-ground for motorists it is a most excellent site. For motorists the best approach to it is along Heretaunga street, and the thence along Selwood road, and at the park will be found everything for the touring motorists’ convenience. There is an open-air swimming bath, just inside is a hutment containing boilers for hot water and also hot plunge-baths for women and children. Meals may be cooked on the fire-places provided and a dining-room was being built at the time of writing. Thus a motorist arriving in the town hot and tired may have a dip in the delicious artesian water, get hot water for his tea, and cook his meals
Photo caption – Motorists’ Camp, Hastings.
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without trouble or annoyance. In addition he may, if he happens to have brought his golf-clubs, enjoy a round on the park’s excellent nine-hole golf course referred to elsewhere in this book.
The park is a most desirable place to camp in, for besides the conveniences provided for the motorist, there is playing gear for his children, fine stretches of turf for games, and splendid rows of pines, willows and other trees to pitch a tent under or to rest under. The camp has been most flatteringly referred to by many visiting motorists since its establishment, and will, no doubt, as future seasons pass, become more widely known and found a more general boon even than it is now.
HASTINGS IS GENEROUSLY PROVIDED with parks and recreation grounds, and their total acreage amounts to between eighty and ninety acres. That total does not include the Hawke’s Bay Jockey Club’s racecourse of eighty-six acres, nor the showgrounds at Tomoana, an area of sixty acres situated at half a mile from the Hastings borough boundary; nor does it include Te Mata Park, on the Havelock hills, which has an area of two hundred and forty acres and was a gift to the people of the district. Neither are the many sportsgrounds belonging to clubs included in that total.
The most beautiful of all Hastings’ parks is Cornwall Park, which is twenty acres in extent. In it the formal and the informal are blended with rare discrimination, and together make as fine a park as could be found anywhere. Avenues of cabbage trees and palms, of firs and a score of different kinds of trees, encircle pergolas, flower-beds, and bowers. Two or three hours might be spent in walking about this delightful place before one’s appetite for the sight of beautiful trees, flowers, and birds were fully satisfied, and though it is so near to the centre of town (it is in one of its principal streets) it is as quiet, restful, and satisfying a place to spend a few hours’ leisure in as one could find in any town. At any time of the year it is a pleasant place, but in the time of flowering it is a picture of rare beauty. Its magnificent and infinitely various trees, its ponds of trout and carp, its swans floating lazily on the streams (with many quaint kinds of ducks as their companions), its green lawns, its great flowerbeds, and its many shady arbours, make it a most desirable park that many a large city might covet.
Page 49
Its zoo, though it is at present “a miniature affair”, is of no mean proportions; and though it was begun only two years ago it has already in its cages a collection of over a hundred birds and about forty animals. Some of the specimens are of great rarity in this country, and all are certainly of great interest. Egyptian geese, paradise ducks, Chinese golden and silver pheasants, Thibetan pheasants, and pukeko are some of the more interesting and beautiful of the birds; and thar, tortoises, and monkeys are only a few of the varieties of animals that the zoo already contains. Its inhabitants are being added to almost month by month, but even now form a considerable addition to the attractions of the park. There seems to be no doubt that in a very few years Hastings will have a zoo far exceeding in importance its present one. A large part of the park consists of tennis courts, and other parts are set aside for use as cricket pitches in the summer and hockey grounds and Association football grounds in the winter. For the convenience of visitors there are gas-rings for water-heating purposes, and for children there is a paddling pool and a children’s playground equipped with slides, swings and roundabouts. In November 1928, the council put in hand the building of a tea kiosk and a band rotunda in modern Renaissance style, and it will make a fine acquisition not only to the park but to the town generally. The building was to
Photo caption – A Corner of Cornwall Park
Page 50
cost £1225, and the tea kiosk is designed with wide verandahs, serveries, and a women’s rest room. The band rotunda is on the roof and is illuminated by means of light-pillars, the whole roof to be covered, as the weather demands, by a canvas awning.
The land was given to the people of Hastings by the late Ven. Archdeacon Samuel Williams, of Te Aute, whose death occurred during the preparation of the deeds of gift. The transaction was completed, however, by his daughters Miss Lydia Williams and Mrs. Warren of Te Aute.
EBBETT PARK, an area of six acres at the end of Charles street, in Hastings West, was named after Mr. and Mrs. George Ebbett, who gave the park to the people of the borough. One of the main features of this park, which was opened only in 1927, is its magnificent collection of Maori carvings which are illustrated in these pages. In a speech made at the opening ceremony the Right Rev. the Bishop of Aotearoa (the Rev. F. A. Bennett) described the carvings as valuable almost beyond price, and it is true that though they have an assessable value for such purposes as insurance they could never be replaced if they were destroyed. His Lordship said of them, “The park contains some very valuable and beautiful specimens of the highest development of Maori art. While there are many public parks in New Zealand, I do not
Photo carvings – Maori Carvings, Ebbett Park.
Page 51
think there is another containing such splendid specimens of Maori carving. Some of this carving most probably dates back to the Stone Age of the Maori people, and reliable data quite clearly shows some of it to be the work of tohungas who lived over eighty years ago”.
Apart from the carvings, the park has other attractive features, namely its tennis courts and children’s playground. There is a pleasant little patch of shady trees that give added handsomeness to the entrance, and beyond them are the open fields. Tree planting is at present being done, and the park is being generally developed with skill and artistic taste. Like Cornwall Park, Ebbett Park has an excellent set of playing gear for children.
VICTORIA SQUARE, at the corner of Avenue road and Willow Park road, is a pretty little park of two and a half acres, and is tastefully planted with flower-beds, trees, and hedges. It is a pleasantly sequestered spot, and yet only a few chains from the main street of town. There are frequent band performances in the rotunda in the evenings, and, in the summer, on Sunday evenings.
NELSON PARK is Hastings’ principal football ground, though the game is played on the Hastings racecourse and on the High School grounds also. It is six acres in extent and is, of course, equipped with stands, hot showers, and a hot water service, and is situated between Caroline and Karamu roads, having an entrance gate in each. It is used also in summer as an athletic sports ground, and the Hastings Amateur Sports Club, a recently formed but extraordinarily vigorous and enterprising body, and the Heretaunga Sports Club, hold frequent meetings there. As a football ground it has seen many a famous game, and has been the schooling ground of many a famous player. Though Nelson Park does not make the same claims to beauty as are made by Hastings’ other parks, it has earned many a proud distinction in the role for which it was created, and it has sent its sons, if they might so be called, upon many a triumphant football campaign abroad. Followers of the great game will not need to be told that Hastings has won considerable fame as a Rugby centre. There are at present twenty teams playing, and there are eight clubs.
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THE MUNICIPAL FORESTRY SCHEME is striking evidence of the businesslike administration of the borough and of the wisdom that underlies its financial policy. The municipality is the freehold owner of two splendid forestry reserves, one of twenty acres at Bridge Pah [ Bridge Pa ], about four and a half miles from Hastings along the Maraekakaho road, and the other of eighty acres situated on the Mangaroa Block nearer Hastings by in the same locality as the Bridge Pah plantation. The forestry scheme was begun in 1924, and planting was spread over a period of five years, twenty acres being planted each year. At the end of 1928 those operations had ended, and the plantations now contain 53,000 pinus radiata and 19,000 eucalyptus trees in various stages of growth. The great value that this scheme will be to the borough in the near future is easily imagined, and the plantations will undoubtedly be of very great profit to the ratepayers of Hastings.
THE HASTINGS ORPHANS’ CLUB has membership of just on three hundred and has never except during the Great War ceased to flourish since its establishment in 1913. One of the activities of which it is justifiably proud is its charitable work, and in that way it has done an immense
Photo caption – Borough Forestry Reserve.
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amount of useful service to the town. In the ten years from 1918 to 1928 it has raised, or taken part in raising, a total amount of £7,000 in aid of various charities, and it performs such kindly actions as giving concerts to the Old People’s Home and an annual entertainment at the Pukeora Sanitorium. One of the pleasantest parts of its club life is the performing of its orchestra, a most talented combination of more than thirty instrumentalists whose playing has not only given great pleasure to the club itself but to the townspeople generally. Visiting orphans have a hearty and standing invitation to attend the club’s koreros, which are held in the Assembly Hall on alternate Friday nights during the winter months.
There are four men’s social clubs in Hastings; the Hastings Club, in Market street south; the County Club, in Market street north; the Heretaunga Club, in Heretaunga street a few doors on the Post Office side of Roach’s corner; and the National Service Club, in Russell street almost opposite the Railway Station.
THE HASTINGS WOMEN’S COMMUNITY CLUB motto: “For Mutual Help, Education, and Entertainment”’ clearly explains the purpose of its existence. Its object’s are educative, altruistic, and social, and some of its particular aims are to interest young people in the study of music and
Photo caption – Women’s Community Club Rooms.
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literature, to give them an opportunity of meeting famous visitors to the town, and to be in readiness to give practical assistance to charitable organisations and in the arrangement of civic affairs and ceremonies. The club provides outstanding proof that constructive criticism is one of the best foundations on which to build success. It sprang into being almost overnight a little over four years ago, and its origin is found in an appeal contained in a private letter – “Madame Lydia Lipvoska, the great Russian soprano, is to visit Hastings. Can you do anything to rouse public interest?”
The club was formed a little later, but as it was found impossible to proceed without a definite meeting place, rooms had to be taken and rules and regulations drawn up. The club was registered as an incorporated society in April, 1925. As its members and consequently its activities increased, the need for further accommodation became most urgent. To cope with the position it was found necessary to raise the subscription and to impose an entrance fee, but to all intents and purposes the club’s aims and objects are the same now as they were at its inauguration four years ago. It has entertained many famous people, among them their Excellencies the last two Governors-General and their wives – Lord and Lady Jellicoe and Sir Charles and Lady Fergusson – and recalls with pride the public mention of its usefulness by his Worship the Mayor on more than on occasion.
Numerous lectures, music recitals, and demonstrations by experts on all sorts of subjects, have been arranged by the club’s literary, musical, and dramatic circles, and a flourishing play-reading and bridge circle are now much in evidence.
Realising the benefit that such an institution is to visitors and travellers from overseas, as well as to those that come as strangers to the town, the club now belongs to the New Zealand Federation of Women’s Clubs, and so is part and parcel of the great fellowship of clubwomen all the world over.
HAWKE’S BAY RADIO SOCIETY
With the idea of providing themselves with a mouthpiece through which to voice whatever opinions they might have upon radio and its administration, a number of Hastings enthusiasts formed about three years ago what was then known as Hastings Radio Society. Even though it began with only twenty-three members, which was a good proportion of the listeners at that time, the society soon became an important organisation of its kind. Good service was given, grievances were righted as far as possible, and in a general way the society helped greatly in the improvement of reception conditions. As licensees were increasing year by year, so the society rapidly grew. It did excellent work in
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providing licensees with lectures and demonstrations, and at the same time instructed beginners in the mysteries of radio problems. The name of the society was ultimately changed to the Hawke’s Bay Radio Society, and its first president under that name was the Right Rev. F. A. Bennett, Bishop of Aotearoa, who is a keen radio enthusiast and still holds his office in the society.
THE HASTINGS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY holds two shows, the first being the spring show in September, and the second the rose and sweet pea show in November. Those shows are annual events of a high standard, and entries are received not only from many parts of Hawke’s Bay but from neighbouring districts as well. The society’s activities have done a great deal to encourage amateur gardening, and both directly and indirectly have done much towards beautifying the town. Prizes for the best kept and most artistically arranged gardens are given each year, among those prizes being five silver cups to be won outright annually.
THERE ARE NINE FRIENDLY SOCIETIES in Hastings, their total membership numbering 1256 at the end of 1928. Brief details of each are as follows: – LOYAL HASTINGS LODGE, Manchester Unity Oddfellows. Established 1878. Total worth of own funds £14,500. Membership 506. COURT HERETAUNGA, Ancient Order of Foresters.
Photo caption – Queen’s Square.
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Established 1882. Membership 110. STAR OF HASTINGS LODGE, Protestant Alliance. Established 1883. Membership 34. ST JOSEPH’S BRANCH, Hibernian-Australasian Catholic Benefit Society. Established 1885. Membership 90. KIA ORA TENT, Independent Order of Rechabites. Established 1907. Membership 55. EUREKA LODGE, Ancient Order of Druids. Established 1907. Membership 160. KARAMU LODGE, Independent Order of Oddfellows. Established 1924. Membership 17. LOYAL HASTINGS JUVENILE LODGE, Manchester Unity Oddfellows. Established 1926. Membership 75.
THE HAWKE’S BAY JOCKEY CLUB’S offices and racecourse are in Hastings, and the club is one of the oldest in the Dominion, having been established over fifty years ago. Among its founders and earliest supporters may be found the names of W. Shrimpton, G. P. Donnelly, James Watt, J. D. Ormond, George Hunter, and Capt. Russell. Hastings is also the headquarters of the Hawke’s Bay District Racing Committee which supervises racing from Woodville to the East Cape, and the local club is the metropolitan club of the province. The Jockey Club holds seven days’ racing
Photo caption – Hastings Racecourse.
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during the year, and by arrangement with it the Hawke’s Bay Trotting Club, which also has its headquarters in Hastings, holds a two-day meeting each year. In addition to those meetings, the Hawke’s Bay Hunt Club holds a one-day steeplechase meeting.
Hastings and its neighbourhood are famous as the former home of some of the most important thoroughbred breeding establishments in the Dominion, among them being those of the late J. D. Ormond, the late William Douglas, the late William Russell, the late G. R [P?]. Donnelly, and W. G. Stead, T. H. Lowry, and Sir George Hunter. Such great racehorses as Desert Gold, Rapine, Zimmerman, Whisper, Sasanoff, Renown, Pearl, Merman, and Bobrikoff, and such renowned steeplechasers as Morfaa (who went to England and won the Liverpool Grand National), Mutiny (twice the winner and once second winner in the New Zealand Grand National), Denbigh, Waterbury, The Chemist, Mangahaone, Nadador, Gondolier, and a host of others have been trained and bred in Hastings and its vicinity. The racecourse itself is splendidly laid out and the training tracks are unanimously admitted to equal anything of the kind elsewhere in the Dominion. About one hundred and fifty horses are usually being trained on them.
The course consists of about eighty-four acres, and is situated within two or three minutes’ walk of the centre of the town. It is furnished with the most modern and efficient equipment, and the grandstand, stewards’ stands, and tea kiosk, cost some £40,000 to build.
THE HAWKE’S BAY HUNT CLUB’S kennels are situated seven miles from Hastings near Paki Paki on the
Photo caption – The H. B. Hunt Setting Out.
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main Palmerston North-Hastings road, and its property there consists of about thirty acres together with very up-to-date kennels, stables, and a huntsman’s residence. The pack is made up of twenty couples of harrier hounds, some of which were imported from the best harrier packs in England, and which by judicious mating have kept up the pack to an unusually high standard, and have provided most excellent sport. The hunt has a very large membership, and often as many as eighty or a hundred followers turn out to its meets. Hunting begins at the end of March and goes on till the beginning of August. Two meets a week are held, and hunting is done over a wide extent of country bounded on the south by Onga Onga, Waipukurau, and the coast, and on the north by the Eskdale district. The country to be negotiated consists of post-and-rail and wire fences. Mr. H. S. Moss, Box 13, Hastings is the secretary.
THE HAWKE’S BAY TROTTING CLUB was founded in 1919, but did not hold its first totalisator meeting until May, 1925. At first only a one day meeting was held each year, but through the defection of the Poverty Bay Trotting club the local club was able to obtain a second permit and now holds a two-day meeting in June on the Hawke’s Bay Jockey Club’s course in Hastings. The introduction of a ten shilling totalisator has done a great deal towards popularising the sport among the people of the district, and just
Photo caption – Part of Business Area.
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on £19,000 went through the machine at the 1927 meetings. One of the chief aims of the club is to interest outside sportsmen and owners in its activities, and in this way it had been most eminently successful. Some of the best known New Zealand trotters, namely Peterwah, The Shrew, and Padlock, have raced at Hastings, and the club is becoming noticeably more attractive year by year to sportsmen in other districts. The recent introduction of a trotting stallion by a local sportsman will no doubt have a good effect on the sport. The secretary is Mr. A. E. Palmer, Queen Street, Hastings.
POLO HAS MADE its New Zealand stronghold in Hawke’s bay, and the teams that have been raised and trained on the Omahu grounds, Hastings, have become famous throughout the Dominion. The club, of which Mr. H. A. Russell is president, was established in 1892, and for the first sixteen years of its existence used the old trotting course at Stortford Lodge as its polo ground. The club prospered so greatly, however, and the game became so popular in its necessarily limited way, that a twenty acre ground on the Omahu road was brought in 1908, and the ground is still owned and used entirely by the club. It is a well sheltered and beautifully planted field and is furnished with an excellent pavilion. The club first took part in tournaments in 1896, and in 1907 won the Savile Cup, which means virtually the polo championship of New Zealand, from Rangitikei.
Photo caption – Hastings Golf Links.
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The club held it for six years until Mangahao took it from them in 1913. Then Hawke’s Bay won it again in 1920 and 1921 (there were no games during the Great War) and held it almost continually till 1928, when Canterbury beat Hawke’s Bay in Canterbury. The club is especially proud of the fact that it has kept its great game not only alive but vigorously alive, for it is the only club in New Zealand that has not missed a season’s play (excepting, as has been stated, during the War) since its foundation. Hawke’s Bay has some of the finest polo ponies in this country, and that fact, together with the enthusiasm of the players, is bound to keep the game at a high standard in the province.
The polo grounds are only a short distance from Hastings, and are on the corner of the fourth road on the left from Stortford Lodge on the Omahu-Fernhill road.
SWIMMING is one of the strongest sports in Hastings, and its following is extraordinarily great, especially for an inland town. The Maddison baths and the Mahora baths and Parkvale baths are situated in the borough, and are excellently suited to the holding of open-air carnivals. There are also first-rate baths at Havelock North. Each of those four baths is used by a swimming club; the Maddison baths, which are only a few hundred yards from the Post Office, by the Heretaunga Club, the Mahora baths by the Mahora Club, and the Havelock baths by the Havelock Club.
Photo caption – Parkvale Golf Links.
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THE HERETAUNGA CLUB is the oldest swimming club in Hastings and the largest is Hawke’s Bay. It was begun in 1919 with a membership of only twenty-seven, but so popular has it made the sport of swimming that its membership to-day is over 250. It claims, and no doubt very justly, to be one of the most active and progressive swimming clubs in this country, and its collection of cups and trophies for annual competition is commonly reputed to be one of the finest owned by any amateur sports body in New Zealand. It has produced several Dominion champions and has done an immense amount of valuable service in encouraging the learning of swimming.
Other large and progressive swimming clubs are the Mahora and the Havelock North clubs, both of which have well equipped and roomy baths.
THE HASTINGS GOLF LINKS are 191 acres in area and are at Bridge Pah, only four and a half miles from the Hastings Post Office (see map). They make ideal golf country, for not only does their natural formation provide an excellent lay-out, but by reason of the fact that the subsoil consists of pumice and sand, golf may be played in comfort even after days of continual rain. The membership now numbers three hundred men and women players, and the clubhouse is a large, roomy, and handsome building in which are excellent dressing rooms for men and women players, an extensive dining-room, and living quarters for the caretaker. Lunch and afternoon-tea are obtainable on any day in the week, and the green-fees are two shillings and sixpence a day. The club is always ready to welcome visiting golfers, and invites them to make full use of the links and the clubhouse.
There are also excellent links at Waiohiki, near Taradale, the exact locality being shown on the map.
HASTINGS IS PARTICULARLY FORTUNATE in having a nine-hole golf course actually within its borough boundaries. The links are in Beatson’s Park (the motorists’ camping ground), which had an area of forty-four acres. The advantage of this combination of golf links and camping ground will be obvious to visiting motorists. For those that are not visiting motorists and need a conveyance to the links there are the Havelock North and the suburban buses passing within easy reach of the park gates, the local suburban buses going right up to them. The course was designed by A. J. Shaw, the well known professional and 1926 and 1928 champion, and provides among picturesque surroundings sufficient hazards to make the game as interesting to a scratch player as to those on longer handicaps. The Parkvale Club welcomes visitors, and particulars as to daily green fees as well as monthly and annual subscriptions may be obtained at the golf house.
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THE HASTINGS TENNIS CLUB is chief among the tennis clubs of the borough, and has fifteen splendid courts in Whitehead road, only a few minutes’ walk from the centre of the town. The club has a membership of just on two hundred and is a most live and enthusiastic body. Both the club and the courts enjoy more than a merely local renown, for it was on the Hastings courts that the only Australasian championships ever played outside the four chief cities were held. That was in 1912, at which time the championships were four-yearly. The 1912 tournament in Hastings was made famous on that occasion by the participation of the great English team composed of Dixon (captain), Beamish, Lowe, and Parke; and again, in 1922, the courts were given the honour of being chosen as the venue of the New Zealand championships when the Australian women’s team took part. Those are not the only distinctions, however, that the Hastings courts have earned, for they have produced several New Zealand champions at various times. The club holds a yearly tournament usually for three days from Boxing Day onwards, and also takes its turn in the allotment of the annual Hawke’s Bay championship tournaments. Needless to say, the club will always be pleased to give a warm welcome to visiting players at tournament times or otherwise.
THE WEST END TENNIS CLUB, though only recently formed, is having a prosperous career, and has its courts on Ebbett Park. There is also a fine club, with splendid courts at Havelock North.
THE PARK TENNIS CLUB has a membership of about 160, and has eight first-rate doubles-courts and one
Photo caption – N.Z. championships at Hastings.
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singles-court at Cornwall Park. There is a well built and roomy pavilion available for the exclusive use of the players, and members of affiliated clubs are always welcome as visitors.
BOWLING is strongly supported in Hastings and has a particularly popular following. In the borough itself there are three clubs – the Hastings Club (membership 100), situated at the corner of Railway road and Lyndon road, one minute’s walk from the post office; the Kia Toa Club (Membership 50), situated in St. Aubyn street west; and the St. Leonard’s Club (membership 50), whose green is in Heretaunga street west, near Stortford Lodge. There is also a bowling club at Havelock North. All these clubs have excellent greens, and give the most hospitable welcome to visiting bowlers. Each is a member of the East Coast Bowling Centre, which hold annual centre tournaments at New Year and Easter.
THE HAWKE’S BAY RIFLE ASSOCIATION, which has been in existence for twenty-five years, is the principal of the several rifle-shooting organisations in its district. The association holds an annual prize meeting during the Easter holidays and in addition holds other important fixtures such as the Coleman Memorial Shield shoot (the Coleman Shield, by the way, is beyond dispute the most magnificent trophy in the whole of the Dominion), and the Hawke’s Bay rifle clubs’ championships. The association’s competitions take
Photo caption – A Hastings Bowling Green.
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place on the Coleman range, at Roy’s Hill, near Hastings, and those competitions, especially the Easter meeting, bring competitors from all over New Zealand. The range is most excellent and its natural features and its equipment make it ideally suited to its purpose.
There are several rifle clubs in the province, the most important of them being Okawa (Hastings), Waipukurau, Napier, and Taradale clubs, and the recently formed Hastings Territorial Club. The members of those clubs carry out voluntary weekly practice for nine months of the year, and the leading marksman in each club compete at various provincial meetings and at the National Rifle Association meeting at Trentham.
THE OKAWA RIFLE CLUB (Hastings) was formed at the coming in of the territorial scheme in 1909, and originated from a meeting of the Hastings Rifle Volunteers and the Hawke’s Bay Mounted Rifles. The popularity of rifle-shooting in Hawke’s Bay had just at the time received an impetus from the Hawke’s Bay Mounted Rifles’ winning the New Zealand teams ‘ championship at Trentham and the South Island championship at Christchurch, and the enthusiasm that was as a consequence infused into the club at its beginning has never waned and is maintained to this day as strongly as ever. Its very successful career has included the winning of several championships and shields. The club has a membership of eighty, and has its own conveyance to take members out to the range at Roy’s Hill. Its trophies include the Lowry Belt and five cups. Visiting riflemen are most welcome at all times to attend the club’s outings.
THE HASTINGS MINIATURE RIFLE CLUB holds evening meetings in the winter, and serves a most useful purpose as a training establishment for the out-door rifle-shot.
THE HASTINGS CHAMBER OF COMMERCE, which celebrated its twenty-first birthday in 1928, has given consistently valuable service towards the building-up of Hastings’ commercial and civic life, and is most willing at all times to give information to enquirers from any quarter or to visitors to the town. The rooms of the chamber are in Queen street, and meetings are held on the third Monday in every month.
THE HASTINGS ROTARY CLUB, first founded in April, 1924, meets in the lunch hour every Friday at the Y.M.C.A. rooms, Market street, North.
MISCELLANEOUS ORGANISATIONS having their headquarters in Hastings, and not otherwise referred to in this booklet, are as follows – Social: Havelock North Women’s
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Guild, Havelock North Art Club (annual exhibition), Hastings Citizens’ Band, Hastings Women’s Choir, Women’s Division of N.Z. Farmers’ Union, Hastings W.C.T.U., Hastings G.F.S. (care of the Vicarage), Hastings High School Ex-Pupils’ Association, Hastings R.S.A. (Mr A. A. Ford, secretary), Hastings District Nursing Association, Haumoana Beach Improvement Society, Hastings Poultry Breeders’ and Cage Bird Society (annual show). Sporting: Hawke’s Bay Boxing Association, Heretaunga Anglers’ Club, Heretaunga Sports Club (professional), Rovers’ Cycle Club, Hawke’s Bay Gun Club (grounds at Longlands), Hastings Homing Club, and the Hastings Women’s Croquet Club. Farming and allied organisations: Hawke’s Bay Farmers’ Union (Mr. D. Balharry, secretary), Aberdeen Angus Cattle Breeders’ Association (Mr. J. A. Fraser, secretary), Jersey Breeders’ Club (Mr J. L. Masterson, secretary), and H.B. Council, N.Z. Horticultural Trades Association.
DEER-STALKING, ANGLING, and similar sports, may be enjoyed near Hastings and on the hills on the edges of the plains. In the case of sports that it is necessary to seek at a distance from the town some kind of transport will of course be needed by the sportsman, but he need not necessarily have his own car. Motor-coach and car services run frequently to every settlement, and effectively cover the whole of the country districts surrounding Hastings. Every kind of sporting equipment can be bought in the town, the shopkeepers of which have large stocks of the best material.
Red-deer are numerous in the mountainous country, Inland Patea being perhaps the best known stalking ground
Photo caption – Entrance Cornwall Park
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and accessible by motor. Stalkers deciding to try the Inland Patea district would be well advised to seek permission from the owners of the high-country stations on which the deer run. Camping on the grounds is by far the best way if one wants value for the time spent on a stalking expedition. A good base camp should be erected and then for convenience a small flying camp can be packed into the heart of the country. The flying camp can be moved as occasion warrants and provisions enough to enable the stalker to stay out for a few days can quite conveniently be packed into it. Such a system obviously makes for an increased range of action. Pack-horses can usually be hired from the high-country station owners, and the stalkers should push back as far as possible to get the best results. The country is fairly high and rough, but should present no difficulties to those who are sound in wind and limb. Though the Hawke’s Bay district cannot boast of the finest heads, many of the stags found in its stalking grounds carry quite excellent antlers. Stalking opens as a rule about the end of March and closes in the middle of June. The license fee is £2, and the license allows the shooting of an unlimited number of hinds and of four stags of not fewer than ten points.
WILD PIGS are plentiful all through the deer forests and provide splendid sport.
GREY DUCK, BLACK SWAN, godwits, Californian quail, and pheasants may be shot in various parts of the Hastings district.
Photo caption – Stalker’s Camp in the Hills.
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Grey duck are fairly evenly distributed all over the district, and quite good bags can often be killed on the various rivers and lakes (see map). Black swan and Californian quail are fairly numerous in some localities, and local sportsmen will always be found willing to assist with advice sportsmen visiting the district. Godwits may also be taken in season, and provide excellent sport for the sure gunner. Pheasants are not numerous but a brace or two may sometimes be procured by those who are prepared to work hard. The best localities for both pheasant and quail can be reached easily by motor. Hares are plentiful throughout the district. In all cases when shooting is to be done on private property, permission must be obtained from the owners. The shooting season opens on May 1st and closes at the end of June.
TROUT FISHING can be had in many parts of the district, but in nearly all cases some means of transport is essential in order to reach the best water. The Tuki Tuki, Ngaruroro and Tutaekuri rivers provide the best sport, and as a rule the angler will find that the further he travels towards the source of the river the better the sport and the larger the fish. To those who wish to leave the beaten track the upper reaches of the Ngaruroro and the Tarawaru [ Taruarau ] rivers offer good sport. The fishing is hard and the going rough, but the fish run fairly heavy. Those travelling so far afield should camp if they would make the best of their time. The Tuki Tuki and the Tutaekuri rivers provide comfortable fishing without hard wading. In both rivers
Photo caption – Trout from the Tuki Tuki.
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rainbow and some brown trout allow of excellent fishing, and are free takers of the fly or of artificial minnow or spoon. The fish in those two rivers do not run particularly heavy, however, about a pound and a half to two pounds being the average weight. The fishing season opens on October 1st and closes on April 30th.
THE SEA FISHING is fairly good. Kahawhai provide the best sport with rod and line when the shoals begin to congregate at the mouths of the rivers during the summer. They can be taken with spinning tackle from the shore, or by trolling from boats, and schnapper [snapper] can be taken from the beaches by handlines. The more adventurous fisherman takes launch to the kidnappers and to the reefs off the coast in search of bigger game such as kingfish and sharks. It is advisable to seek local advice before undertaking the Kidnappers trip, and other trips far off the coast, because of the difficult weather conditions sometimes encountered.
THE HASTINGS HIGH SCHOOL was first opened on March 3rd, 1927, and was built to replace the former technical school, a building which the growth of the town’s population had made wholly inadequate to local needs of secondary education. So greatly did the school’s population and reputation for scholarship increase, however, that even at the time of its opening it was found to be too small to accommodate all the pupils that enrolled, and temporary
Photo caption – The Tutaekuri River.
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classrooms had to be provided. The school’s change in status from that of a technical high school to that of a high school gave to Hastings every requirement necessary to a thorough and complete local secondary education, and as an added consequence gave the town a considerable local importance as an educational centre. The school opened with a roll of 246 boys and girls, of whom 126 were newly enrolled and the attendance soon afterwards grew to over 300.
The principal is Mr. W. A. G. Penlington, M.A., and the staff consists of twelve other men and women teachers. The curriculum includes commercial and agricultural courses as well as the classical course, and in all those subjects the school has achieved a distinction of which it might well be proud.
The accompanying illustration, while showing the reader that the school is a building of handsome and modern design, has a failing common to all illustrations in that it does not give a just impression of the size and beauty of the surrounding twenty acres of grounds and playing fields. Few schools, particularly State schools, in New Zealand are so fortunately placed in the matter of roominess of surroundings, and the size of the grounds has enabled the board of governors to lay out tennis courts, basketball courts, cricket pitches, running tracks, football fields, a shrubbery, and gardens. Though at the time of writing barely eighteen months had elapsed since the school was opened, the gardens have assumed excellent shape, and there is ample scope for their development into one of the beauty spots of the town. In the matter of the moral tone and bearing of its pupils, the Hastings High School had earned no small credit, and its growth and its increasing success in sport and in scholarship are well-being
Photo caption – Hastings High School.
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assured. The staff has proved itself most able and devoted. Education and games are developed in their just proportions and with an equal success; and the children are most fortunate in having an up-to-date, well planned school situation in ideal surroundings.
HEREWORTH BOYS’ SCHOOL, Havelock North, is a Church of England school whose objects are to train the character through religion, work, games, and social companionship, and to awaken the young intelligence rather than to serve a purely scholastic purpose. Its success in achieving those objects has given it a considerable reputation, and a preparatory school for boys between eight and fourteen years of age who are intended to enter the larger secondary schools of New Zealand, the English public schools, or the Navy, it has done most admirable service. The present Hereworth School is a combination of the privately-owned Hurworth School in Wanganui (founded in 1901) and the Heretaunga School (founded in 1882) which were amalgamated in 1927. The school is vested in a board of trustees and its board of governors is chosen from the Diocese of Waiapu.
The school grounds are fifteen acres in extent and are both artistically and usefully laid out; that is to say, in such a way as to give the boys’ a justifiable pride in and affection for their school’s appearance, and at the same time to give them full scope for the development of organised
Photo caption – On the way to the Sale.
[Advertisement]
Hereworth School
HAVELOCK NORTH
A Preparatory Boarding School for Boys between the ages of 8 and 14.
Situated on the lower slopes of the beautiful Havelock Hills, with Gardens and Playing Grounds 15 acres in extent.
For Prospectus and full Particulars apply to the Headmaster –
TELEPHONE 103, HASTINGS
[Advertisement]
“IONA”
Presbyterian College for Girls
HAVELOCK NORTH – HAWKE’S BAY
Registered Secondary School
Accommodation for 100 boarders and a limited number of day girls.
Primary and Secondary Department. Pupils prepared for Ass.Bo.R.A.M. and R.C.M. Music, Trinity College Elocution, and all Government and University Entrance Exams.
Beautiful and healthy situation in wonderful climate.
Fees include instruction in arts and crafts, dressmaking and speech training.
Pupils of all denominations received.
Applications for Prospectus should be made to:
The Secretary,
P.O. Box 287,
Hastings, H.B.
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and individual athletic development. The school buildings are most up-to-date, and the fact that the board sought the advice of Sir Truby King in designing them is an assurance that their healthiness has been given careful attention. The situation is two hundred feet above sea-level in one of the healthiest parts of New Zealand’s healthiest and sunniest district, and one of the school’s most valuable possessions where health is considered is a twenty-five yards swimming bath.
Besides the headmaster (Mr. H. E. Sturge, M.A.) there are five resident masters, a matron (who is a trained nurse), and an assistant-matron. Non-resident masters and mistresses teach music, singing, dancing, carpentering, and boxing. At the beginning of the year the school had ninety boarders and ten day-boys, but it is probable that for the sake of uniformity of discipline in the practice of taking day-boys will shortly be discontinued.
Extensive grounds and modern building are not, however the most important attributes of a school. The great thing is the spirit, and that of Hereworth is splendid. By a judicious fostering of comradeship between the masters and boys; and by making suitability of character in dealing with young boys, and breadth of outlook, necessary qualifications in its masters, Hereworth had ensured a fine all-round education.
IONA COLLEGE is a Presbyterian boarding and day school for girls from the age of eight years and upwards, but although it is the property of the Presbyterian Church it accepts pupils of other denominations and allows them to attend their own places of worship. The school is a fine
Photo caption – A Roadside Scene.
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two-storeyed brick building situated some four hundred feet above sea-level in a most healthy locality, and stands in twenty-five acres of land less than a mile from Havelock North Post Office.
Iona’s aim is to prepare girls to deal with the practical affairs of life, and to that end pupils are given a very thorough training in subjects that will qualify them to take an intelligent part in the lives of their own and of other countries. In addition to teaching the subjects usual to such schools, Iona College pays particular attention to such other subjects as handicrafts, Scripture, drill, dancing, music, class-singing, speech-training, and dressmaking. Latin and the more advanced mathematics are taught only to girls taking the matriculation course. Special attention is given to the teaching of elocution and voice production. French is taught with the special object of enabling pupils to speak and read the language, and the classes are taken by a thoroughly trained teacher. Art classes which, in their advanced stages, include leather-work, wood-carving, silver-work, book-illustrating, and outdoor sketching, are taught also by competent instructors. Music classes are held, and a school orchestra had been formed for pupils studying instruments. Vocal music is taught only to suitable pupils.
The building comprises class-rooms, sitting-rooms, art-room, music-rooms, practising-rooms, dining-hall, assembly-hall, and hospital. Fine flat playing fields for tennis, hockey, and kindred games are at the disposal of the pupils, and there are eight asphalt tennis-courts and concrete swimming-baths seventy-five by forty feet. Miss Irene Stollery is the headmistress.
WOODFORD HOUSE stands in thirty-eight acres of grounds on the hills above Havelock North, and is four hundred feet above sea-level. The general aim of its teaching is to provide a sound education on modern English lines, and above all to develop character and to foster literary appreciation and artistic talent rather than to prepare its pupils for examinations. Girls are prepared for matriculation if desired, and the general curriculum is so broadly designed as to include household arithmetic, elementary book-keeping, and dressmaking. Special attention is given to English literature, music and art. Close personal supervision of such studies and pastimes as develop health, character, and social training, is a feature of the policy of the school, and the underlying principle is to make of each girl a useful and gracious woman in whatever position she may fill. A special effort is made to widen the sphere of her interests and sympathies by her knowledge of history, geography, and current events, and to keep her in touch with the highest ideals in personal and social life through literature, music and art. The
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school is solely a boarding-school, and, as a general rule, no girl over fifteen years of age is admitted. There is a preparatory school for the younger girls but both it and the senior schools are in one establishment. The school has also its own chapel, a very beautiful building which was consecrated in 1928.
QUEENSWOOD SCHOOL is a preparatory boarding and day school for boys and girls, and is a proprietary establishment of which Miss Rixon is the principal. Its aim is to provide a thoroughly good and general education and to promote both the morals and the physical welfare of its pupils. The ordinary curriculum includes such subjects as swimming, physical culture, nature study, divinity, games, leather work, raffia work, and dancing. The school is divided into upper school, lower school, and kindergarten, and boys are admitted between the ages of five and nine years, and girls from five years upwards.
THE STATE PRIMARY SCHOOLS in Hastings are four in number, and there is also a convent primary school attached to St. Joseph’s Convent in Heretaunga street east. The State schools are so situated as to provide conveniently for residents in every part of town, one being in the
Photo caption – Woodford House School.
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central part of it, one at Mahora, one at Hastings west, and one at Parkvale. The Parkvale School is the model school for the Hawke’s Bay Education District, and is under the headmastership of Mr. G. H. Lord. As an illustration of the loyalty and devotion of the Hastings school committees and parents of pupils, it is worth mentioning that in Hastings West a sum of £700 was raised by subscription and by various other voluntary means for the purposes of improving the school grounds and for furnishing the interior of the building. The Mahora committee and parents raised the sum of £1075, with which they paid for the construction of an open air swimming bath, and some £700 more for the general improvement to the grounds. The Parkvale school committee has raised some hundreds of pounds for ground improvements and for school furnishings. In every case, the work that the committees have done has been highly creditable to them; and the appearance of the borough has been greatly improved by the beautifying schemes that have been carried out in the school grounds. The Mahora and Central schools have swimming baths in their own grounds, and there is a swimming bath in Beatson’s Park only a few yards from the Parkvale school.
Photo caption – Part of Zoo, Cornwall Park.
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MANY PLEASANT DRIVES and walks may be taken in the neighbourhood of Hastings, and it may add to the convenience of visitors to give a brief description of a few of them. (Readers are referred to the map in the front of the book.)
For instance, nothing could surpass as an example of rural beauty the little village of Havelock North and its surrounding hills, river, and orchard lands. There is little need to name any one specific route as the best to follow from the amateur tramp’s standpoint the more indefinite the direction the better. Up on to the hills, or along the Otane (middle) road from the village or along the Te Mata road to the Tuki Tuki river, or along the Lower or Mangateretere road (that is the road passing the Havelock Post Office) there is plenty of scope for the walker; and there is an infinity of good and pretty places to stop at to eat a snack when fatigue creeps on – plenty of grass-edged roads, or lanes, or the river-bank.
THE MOTORIST, with his greater distance-devouring powers, will want perhaps to pass on beyond Havelock North. There are many and desirable routes to take. The Havelock Otane road is rich in pretty nooks and corners, and there is no need to go very far beyond Havelock North village before delightful picnicking or lunching places are found. The motorist should take warning that on entering the village he will have to choose his road carefully, for half-a-dozen roads lead out of it. The Otane road (or, as it is sometimes described, the Patangata road, for it joins the Hastings-Palmerston North road at both places) is not the road that
Photo caption – Hastings West Primary School.
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turns, going from Hastings, immediately against the wall of the hotel, but is the road that runs off at the less sharp angle on the other side of the rest-room. Along the Otane road lie not only picnicking places but a very picturesque alternative route to or from Hastings. Four miles from Havelock along that road and on the right is the locality know as Mount Erin – not because it is a mountain, for it takes it name from the name of a well known sheep station. Here is as delightful a picnic ground as could be found, and because of its beautiful wood of poplars, its wild flax, and flowering trees it is a favourite beauty spot.
Five and three-quarter miles from Havelock North the road runs to the base of the hills, which here present an extremely pretty scene, and then the Otane road turns sharp to the right over a concrete bridge, and then follows the foot hills somewhat tortuously but quite safely. There are two offshoots from the main road, and then a concrete bridge before the Otane road leads to the right. If it is wished to go on to Patangata, the motorist should keep on and pass another road on the right also leading to Otane. The road thence to Patangata is easy to follow, and is shown by signposts. All the way along this route the surface is excellent, and need cause the motorist no discomfort or anxiety in driving. The road undulates and winds in an interesting way, and affords many exceptionally pretty views of the Tuki Tuki river and of the splendid pastoral country that runs beside it.
COMING IN THE OTHER DIRECTION (from Patangata to Hastings via Havelock North) the road need cause no confusion. A turn uphill to the left should be taken at the
Photo caption – Poplar Avenue, Pakowhai.
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Patangata hotel, the road to the right over a concrete bridge being avoided. A side-road turns to the left towards Otane at a point slightly less than two miles further on, and should be passed unless it is wished to rejoin the main Palmerston North-Hastings road. The road now being described is quite unmistakable and follows the hills along for a considerable distance. Where it runs into the hills at a short distance past the offshoot to Otane a road to the left over a bridge has to be avoided and the road to the right followed. The road to Havelock North is now definitely indicated by its nature, and a sharp turn to the left at the Havelock hotel leads along a bitumen road to Hastings.
THE MAIN PALMERSTON NORTH-HASTINGS ROAD is perhaps more direct and easier driving than the Patangata-Havelock North road to Hastings, but is hardly such a picturesque route. However, it is interesting and pleasant, and leads straight on through Dannevirke, Takapau, Waipukurau, and Waipawa. Soon after passing Waipawa coming towards Hastings, Te Aute is approached and the Maori college and its adjoining residence are on the left. The college is one of New Zealand’s principal Maori colleges, and has a history and a tradition of the highest repute. The residence is one of the most charming examples of early colonial architecture that could be encountered anywhere. The road from Poukawa to Hastings’ borough boundary, a distance of twelve miles, was in the process of being tar sealed when this book was in the press. The motorist will need no directions to be able to follow the road, hence, for
Photo caption – A Pastoral Scene.
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it is obviously the principal road. The steep hill on the Hastings side of Pukehou railway station should be watched, however, for though by no means dangerous it calls for caution. It is worth while, especially on a sunny day, to pause at the top of the hill to view the countryside. It is of rare beauty at this point; and nowhere, probably, in the whole district will the visitor find a more lovely view of the plains that begin here to spread out towards and around Hastings. The scene is truly unforgettable, and is made up of one of the loveliest blending of hill, plain, lake, and farmstead, that one could imagine.
ON REACHING PAKI PAKI, which is four miles from Hastings, the road should be watched. As you approach the settlement there is a very pretty little stone and masonry church on your right. At the corner just beyond it, turn to your left, go on a few yards, and take the road that goes off sharp to the right. That is the direct road to Hastings, and follows the railway line past Messrs. Borthwicks’ freezing-works, which are on the left. The road going straight on ahead just as the turn to the right comes into view leads to the Maraekakaho road which, via Stortford Lodge hotel, is an alternative route to Hastings.
If instead of turning to the left just beyond the church you cross the railway line and drive straight on, you will be able to travel to Hastings via Pukahu and Havelock North –
Photo caption – Waimarama Road from Te Mata Park.
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certainly a pleasant alternative. Paki Paki is of considerable importance as a Maori settlement, has a Maori Church and meeting house, and has been the scene of many a famous tangi when great rangitiras have passed away.
Just on three miles along what has been referred to as the direct route through Paki Paki, the beginning of the borough is marked by a railway crossing, but the road into the town is of bitumen and is readily apparent. The Hastings High School is seen through the trees on the right a few yards after getting on the bitumen.
A CIRCUITOUS BUT UNUSUALLY PRETTY route from Paki Paki to Hastings may, as has been stated, be taken by crossing the railway line, before reaching Paki Paki corner, and going straight on (the road is indicated by finger-posts) through either Pukahu, a most delightful little rustic settlement, from which the road leads to the left to Hastings, or else via Havelock North, where the turn to Hastings goes sharp to the left at the Havelock hotel.
ALSO GOING VIA PUKAHU is the road branching at right-angles to the railway line at the borough boundary coming from Paki Paki – a point that is indicated by the beginning of the bitumen street. These offshoots are recommended more as routes for short drives about the town than as worth taking when a direct entrance to Hastings is the chief aim of the motorist.
Photo caption – Te Aute Maori College.
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ANOTHER VERY INTERESTING DETOUR from the principal motoring roads may be made by going along the Hastings-Havelock North-Te Aute road to the main Hastings-Palmerston North road. The title “Te Aute road” may tend to mislead the visiting motorist and it may be explained that the name is merely a survival from the days when the road was of more importance than it is to-day. Its function nowadays is to act as a minor connecting road between Havelock North and Paki Paki and Te Aute is now embodied in the main Hastings-Palmerston North road. The Havelock North-Te Aute road lies over a good surface and is dotted with some pleasant pastoral scenes. Going from Hastings, turn sharp to the right at the Havelock North hotel and follow the road that is nearest to the hotel. That route lies through Pukahu and is easy to follow to Paki Paki.
THERE ARE SEVERAL OTHER attractive drives to take without going very far beyond the borough. The Tuki Tuki river is rich in pretty localities for camping or for an afternoon’s outing, and there is a particularly pleasant spot at Kahuranaki. To reach it you should follow the directions for going to Waimarama until you reach the junction of the roads just on the other side of the big bridge. Then, instead of taking the road on the left, turn to the right along the Elsthorpe road until you reach a corner. From that point, keep straight on, following the river bank the whole way.
Photo caption – The Lake, Tomoana Showgrounds.
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The directions from then on are difficult to give to the stranger as the locality has no very definite points by which to identify it. There will be no difficulty, however, in getting directions on the way. Kahuranaki is one of the most delightful parts of the whole river, and abounds in beautiful patches of river scenery. There is also some first-rate trout-fishing there.
A DRIVE ALONG THE MARAEKAKAHU [ MARAEKAKAHO ] ROAD will also be found full of pleasures. About four and half miles out of the town are the Hastings golf links at Bridge Pah [ Bridge Pa ](a Maori settlement), and just beyond is the Maori Agricultural College. Just before reaching the college the road to Raukawa branches off to the left, as shown on the map, and is an exceedingly pretty route though some of the district’s finest sheep country, and past some of its finest country homes. Branching off to the left at the Maraekakahu war memorial, where the main road leads straight on, is the Tikikino [ Tikokino ] road which goes past Greenhill and other pretty localities. It is a very attractive road, and if the motorist cares to go on the longer drive to Tikikino he will be well pleased with the beauty of the countryside. The return route to Hastings may be taken via Waipawa.
THE CONTINUATION of the main Maraekakahu road (the road at the right of the war memorial) crosses the Ngaruroro river a few yards past the settlement, and thence goes to Kereru and Big Hill at the foot of the Ruahine ranges. From Hastings to Kereru is about thirty-two miles; but it is a drive worth taking – rich in good and varied scenery which includes several pretty and easily negotiated gorges.
Photo caption – Sunrise, near Cape Kidnappers.
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From the beginning of November to the first week in December one of the most splendid sights in the whole district is the gorge just before reaching Kereru, for in that month the whole gorge, from top to bottom, and as far as the eye can see in either direction, is a blaze of golden broom. A day’s outing never brought a greater delight than that wonderful scene will give, and the whole surroundings set it off most handsomely. It is a sight to be remembered. There are several small areas of bush at Kereru and they will be found fully worth while going to see.
OTHER PLEASANT AND SHORT DRIVES may be found on the road leading along the Ngaruroro river from Fernhill (four miles from Hastings), notably to Ohiti – a great blackberrying district, incidentally, and extraordinarily pretty.
It was thought unwise to make the map in this book confusedly detailed by the inclusion of side roads, and they have for the most part been omitted. Nevertheless, side roads encountered along any of the routes recommended as being worth while driving over may be explored with safety, and there are many delights to be found in them. Indeed, if the motorist is out for the day’s leisurely exploration he will not want to be guided by a map except so far as to enable him to find the main connecting roads, and the map shows those clearly.
Drives worth while taking further afield are along the Moteo road to the Tutaekuri river, and on to the Hakowhai-Rissington, and Dartmore [ Dartmoor ] roads; through Taradale on to the Puketapu road, and thence on to the two former roads; to Puketitiri (besides the road shown with an arrow on the map, Rissington road is an alternative) where there are hot springs, extensive native bush, and a licensed hotel. The hot springs, however, entail some walking.
From Napier the main roads to Taupo, Rotorua, Gisborne, and Wairoa branch out.
THE GANNETRY AT CAPE KIDNAPPERS deserves particular reference not only because of its interest from a nature study point of view, but also as providing a wonderfully entertaining and scenic outing. Gannets are not, of course, a rarity in this country, but they are so nearly a rarity, and their habits are so interesting, that some trouble and exertion are well warranted when there is an opportunity of seeing them. It is said that Cape Kidnappers is the only place at which the gannets nest and breed on the mainland, and there they assemble in countless thousands in the breeding season. The rocks are then white with their massed plumage and there is no other place in New Zealand that presents such a vast and concentrated assemblage of them. They gather there in the spring, begin laying in October (usually towards the end), and carry on the hatching process for thirty-three
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days. It is worth mentioning the curious facts that of the two eggs that are laid, the female hatches one and the male the other. The gannet is a bird of varying moods that may with wisdom be explained to the intending visitor. During the time when they are sitting on their eggs, the birds are so docile and friendly that they may be lifted from their nests and handled with impunity; but so soon as the young are out the parents become quite vicious, and are at such times not beyond attacking intruding birds or human beings. The gannets leave for distant parts after the young are able to care for themselves, and they do not return until the next breeding season. The most suitable time for a visit to the Kidnappers is in November and early December, but access by road goes only to Clifton beach (which is reached via Haumoana) whence it is necessary to walk, beginning preferably at the first ebbing of the tide, some four or five miles. The walk is by no means strenuous and both for the interest at the end of it, and for the many beautiful seascapes that it affords, is certainly worth undertaking.
THREE MOST EXCELLENT BEACHES lie within easy motoring distance of Hastings, namely Haumoana, Te Awanga, and Clifton, which adjoin one another. They are on the northern side of Cape Kidnappers, and Ocean beach and Waimarama beach are on the southern side. The three first named beaches provide a most pleasurable day’s outing, and at all of them are excellent fishing, safe bathing and boating and, in short, all the joys that expansive and open beaches allow. These is also fresh water bathing at the mouth of the Tuki Tuki river where it joins the sea at Haumoana. A frequent motor service runs to Haumoana in the spring and summer months, and at most reasonable fares. The place is
Photo caption – Te Awanga Beach.
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connected with Hastings by telephone, and there is a store there as well as a hall, church, and post-office. Furnished and unfurnished cottages and baches may be had at Haumoana and Te Awanga beaches, though it is advisable to make early enquires for them.
BESIDES THE BEACHES AT HAUMOANA, Te Awanga and Clifton, which, as shown on the map in the front of this book, adjoining each other, and lie within a few minute’s drive of Hastings, there are two beautiful beaches further away from the town – Ocean Beach, about fifteen miles from the borough, and Waimarama beach, some four miles beyond that and in the same direction. Both are particularly well worth seeing, and are among the most beautiful sandy beaches on the East Coast. Along the same road is the Maraetotara stream with its beautiful waterfall and native bush. They also make an ideal place for a day’s outing.
THE ROAD TO ALL THREE PLACES leads out from Havelock North. Upon reaching Havelock from Hastings, turn to the left on to the Te Mata road, the road on the far side of the war memorial plot. Go straight on, passing Hereworth Boys’ School on the right and a number of small side-roads on either hand, until, just beyond a noticeable turn to the left, and a dip where the Te Mata wine cellars are seen on the left, you come to a cross-roads. Turn sharp to the right up a slope and go straight on till you come to the large wooden bridge crossing the Tuki Tuki river on your left. After crossing the bridge turn to the right. Soon after reaching the other bank a road turns to the right to
Photo caption – Haumoana Beach.
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Elsthorpe, but the Waimarama road begins just after the next bridge is crossed and goes up a hill known as the deviation. Follow that road to the Maraetotara bridge, where, to reach Maraetotara, a turn to the right should be made. The Waimarama road, however, keeps bearing to the left, and two or three miles further along is a road to the right which goes on to Waimarama. The road that continues on from this turn-off is the road to Ocean Beach. To reach Waimarama, go straight on through Waimarama village, and the route to the beach is then easy to follow.
WAIMARAMA IS UNDENIABLY THE BEST of all the beaches that are conveniently accessible from Hastings. It is the most magnificent beach consisting of well over three miles of clean, pure sand, and lies in a well sheltered position at the foot of hills that effectively shelter it from all but the seaward winds. Excellent fishing, bathing, and boating, may be had at almost any point of its great length, and there is many a pleasant walk to take over the surrounding country. Waimarama is nineteen miles from Hastings over a first-class road and there is no better place in the whole of Hawke’s Bay for a day’s excursion, or for week-ending, or for a long holiday. Cars run regularly from Hastings all the year round at very reasonable fares. There are a store and a post office at the settlement, which is connected with Hastings by telephone. A large number of summer beach houses have been built there for Hastings people, some of whom live at Waimarama for several weeks every year.
OCEAN BEACH lies between Waimarama and Cape Kidnappers, fifteen miles from Hastings, and it also is a delightful and sandy beach set in pleasant and picturesque surroundings.
Photo caption – Waimarama Beach and Bare Island.
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The head of the Argentine commission of experts, which visited New Zealand in 1926, declared just before the commission left New Zealand that the lands surrounding Hastings were the finest fruit growing in the world.
AT LEAST so far as the export trade goes, Hawke’s Bay fruitgrowing industry is looked upon as only about four or five years old. Yet in those years it has attained second place among New Zealand’s fruit producing areas, and the value of the 1928 crop was estimated at a gross value of about £200,000, or a nett value of about £120,000. Four years ago the quantity of fruit railed from Hastings, the centre of all Hawke’s Bay orchard lands, amounted to only 8289 tons, yet the amount railed at the time of writing was 14,796 tons. The district’s exportation of apples and pears increased from 20,436 cases in 1925 (the first export year) to 195,360 cases in 1928 – an increase of 855 per cent, and a greater increase by 250 per cent than that of any other fruit exporting province. Apart from citrus fruits which in Hawke’s Bay are grown almost wholly for domestic use, and excepting cherries and apricots, the orchards of Hawke’s Bay grew
Photo caption – Pears in Bloom, Flaxmere.
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greater yields of fruit per tree than the orchards of any other part of New Zealand. In apples, pears, peaches, nectarines and plums, as shown in the tables at the end of this article, the district was easily first in yield per tree, was second in apricots, and third in cherries. The area of new orchard to come into bearing formed a greater percentage of the total orchard acreage than that of any other district, thus showing that this district will inevitably increase its fruit production in a correspondingly increasing ratio.
About eight acres of new orchard have been planted in each of the last eight years, which means that between 9500 and 10,000 trees annually are now coming into bearing to swell the district’s output to what will in time be enormous size.
Because he is able to take his fruit over distances which at the longest are yet short and along good roads to the Hastings railway station or to the cool-stores in that town, and thus escape with only one handling of his fruit before it reaches its destination; because the cool-stores of Hastings, having accommodation for 120,000 cases, thus allow the grower to hold his fruit in reserve even until December; and because there is only one freight (the rail freight) to pay on consignments; the Hawke’s Bay grower has been able to take almost complete command of the North Island markets. The good roads, the shortness to the railhead, the ease
Photo caption – A Hastings’ Apple Crop.
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and speed and cheapness of road transit, and the minimum requirements of handling, all combine to his advantage in the export trade, of course, just as effectually as they do in his operations on the local markets.
Through the existence of several excellent co-operative marketing concerns in Hastings the orchardist is able to obtain the widest possible distribution of his crop in New Zealand markets; and the same firms being the proprietors of the town’s cool-stores are able to afford their customers the most effective help in handling and selling their crops.
Almost every commercial orchard in Hawke’s Bay’s fruitgrowing area is semi-suburban to Hastings, and Hastings is the depot and railway centre for the great fruit crop that these orchards bear. It is solely in Hastings that the capacious cool-stores, the Government orchard experts, and the fruitgrowers’ important co-operative association are established, and the town is not ungrateful for the good fortune that has made it the central point of the industry’s activities. The people of Hastings realise that to have fringed about the borough boundaries an industry earning £12,000 net income in one year, with definate prospects of large annual increases, is of no small benefit to the town; and the growers on their part feel that Circumstance has been on their side in providing them with some of the best imaginable fruitgrowing lands at a short distance over good roads to cool-stores and railway facilities.
The fertility of the district’s fruitgrowing lands is remarkable. In one instance an orchard yielded a thousand bushels of Sturmer apples per acre not once but several times. Other orchards in the same area have almost equalled that astonishing production, and the owners ascribe their success
Photo caption – Fruit Special Leaving Hastings.
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not to having fluked upon any better land than exists in other parts of the district, but solely to the use of up-to-date methods of treatment, to good cultivation, and to getting the maximum response from the soil. Some of the very best of Hawke’s Bay’s fertile land is that upon which orchards have been established and the writer is informed on the authority of an expert from whom many of the details of this article are derived that with good orchard management yields of a thousand bushels an acre could be equalled and perhaps exceeded by many orchardists in the district.
Climate and geographical position graciously combine with the soil’s fertility to bring about the happy state that has been described, and the district has amply proved itself to be the very ideal of fruitgrowing land.
One special feature that has shown itself as the results of the vigorous growth of the Hawke’s Bay orchards is related to the export trade. It is a whim of the South American devotee of the apple that he likes his apple large. That whim suits Hawke’s Bay among all the fruit growing districts of New Zealand most conveniently and admirably. At the present time South America is taking certain quantity of large dessert apples, and Hawke’s Bay growers, on account of the robustness of their trees, are able to provide just what the South American wants in that class of fruit as well as in others, and thus has secured a large share of the Dominion’s trade with those people.
The following table illustrates the tremendous increase in the Hawke’s Bay fruit crop in the last five years, the figures representing quantities railed from Hastings: –
Tons Percentage Exported
1928 14,796 30 per cent.
1927 11,082
1926 11,349
1925 11,567 4 per cent.
1924 8,289
Increase 1928 over 1924, 76 per cent.
EXPORT SHIPMENTS PER DISTRICTS
The following is a summary of apple and pear export shipments, the percentages of increase shown in the right-hand column relating to the four leading centres only (N.Z. Fruitgrowers’ Federation’s report, 1928): –
1925 1926 1927 1928 Increase over 1925
Bushels Bushels Bushels Bushels
HAWKE’S BAY 20,436 100,326 65,211 195,360 855%
Auckland 9,497 56,680 16,180 66,291 598%
Nelson 158,639 457,935 389,244 603,270 280%
Otago 35,956 76,911 39,505 84,000 133%
Marlborough 3,875 17,600 11,569 33,044
Poverty Bay – 6,986 4,079 24,259
Wairarapa 3,937 10,156 12,905 13,159
Canterbury 541 2,391 – 200
Page 97
(Note: the Otago figures did not include pears. The number of cases exported in 1927 from that district was 1197, and the 1928 figure has been estimated at 4,000.)
It would make this article entirely valueless as an account, however brief, of Hawke’s Bay’s fruitgrowing industry, if one omitted to mention the extremely important bearing that the growers’ own organisation, the Hawke’s Bay Fruitgrowers’ Association, has had upon the development of orcharding. After twenty-nine years of existence it finds its membership not dwindling but actually increasing, and at the present day it comprises at least ninety-five per cent of the commercial orchardists of the district. A little over two years ago the allegiance of its members and the success of its co-operative trading enabled it to build new and handsome brick offices and stores in Hastings, and around those premises the fruit industry of the district may be said to be almost entirely centred.
The association exists for a threefold purpose: Firstly, for trading in orchardists’ requirements, which are bought in the best and cheapest markets and sold, with the smallest margin of profit, to members of the association, and secondly in establishing itself as an educative centre for the propagation of fruitgrowing knowledge – a system which includes lectures by experts of incalculable benefit to growers. The third but not the least valuable of the roles assumed by the association is that of guardian and advocate of the grower in matters with which he could not hope, working alone, to deal with any degree of success. But that its usefulness is not confined merely to wheedling concessions from Governments nor to educating the fruitgrower is shown by the fact that at the end of the last financial period of fifteen months the association put through a turnover of £26,000 among its 320 members. That is excellent business for a concern dealing exclusively in sprays, tools, cases, and similar fruitgrowing requirements, for the association does not in any way handle or deal with growers’ crops.
Looking forward to the days to come, it may in all confidence be asserted that Hawke’s Bay will take an increasingly important share in any future developments of New Zealand’s export and local fruit trade. Already its export trade has increased phenomenally in only four years; it has hundreds of acres of some of the Dominion’s best land planted with trees (some seventy thousand of them) that have yet to come into bearing; it has also many hundreds of acres of land eminently suited to fruitgrowing situated just as advantageously in respect of fertility, transit, and climate, as are the district’s existing orchards.
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The following tables show the yields per tree in the various fruitgrowing districts of New Zealand:
APPLE YIELDS PER TREE.
Number Trees Total Bushels Average per tree
HAWKE’S BAY 139,341 365,585 2.63
Gisborne 13,505 23,269 1.72
Nelson 518,349 651,529 1.23
Auckland 27,253 28,251 1.03
Wellington 35,290 34,712 .97
Nth. Auckland 249,322 238,244 .95
Marlborough 42,092 39,992 .95
Canterbury 173,808 148,429 .85
Taranaki 1,291 880 .68
Otago 237,293 138,009 .58
Westland 1,460 540 .37
Southland 360 80 .22
PEARS.
HAWKE’S BAY 32,446 98,382 3.03
Gisborne 918 1,733 1.88
Taranaki 58 81 1.39
Wellington 3,154 3,929 1.24
Nelson 33,355 39,038 1.17
Canterbury 14,550 16,368 1.12
Nth. Auckland 21,124 22,453 1.06
Marlborough 736 557 .75
Auckland 7,315 4,973 .68
Otago 21,779 14,345 .65
Westland 410 210 .51
STONE FRUITS.
Peaches Nectarines Plums Apricots Cherries Totals
HAWKE’S BAY 1.90 1.58 1.72 .90 .26 6.36
Gisborne 1.68 1.25 1.24 1.32 .08 5.57
Canterbury 1.14 1.15 1.37 .88 .49 5.03
Otago .83 .69 .77 .32 .40 3.01
Nelson .55 .61 1.00 .25 .17 2.58
Auckland .44 .52 .97 .42 –
N. Auckland .40 .41 .72 .03 –
Marlborough .32 .33 .34 .31 .12
Wellington .18 .35 .94 .67 .15
Taranaki .06 1.15 1.64 – –
Westland – – .15
Southland – – .06
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BEEKEEPING, both as a separate industry and as an auxiliary to fruitgrowing, has developed very considerably in Hawke’s Bay during the last few years. It has grown particularly rapidly in the district that lies about Hastings borough, the reason being that there are so many fruit farms in that area. The Hastings climate is very well suited to beekeeping, particularly as it enable the bees to get an early start owing to the early blossoming of willows, fruit trees, wattles, and other trees. There are approximately seventy apiaries in the Hastings district, and their yield compares most favourably with those of other districts.
THOUGH DAIRYING AND FRUITGROWING PROSPER exceedingly and are the utmost value among Hawke’s Bay industries, it is from the pastoral industry that the district derives it main income. By wool and by meat the people of Hawke’s Bay live, and nowhere is that truth more vividly shown than in the rapidity of the growth of Hastings. As the centre of the most fertile of the farming lands of the province it has prospered marvellously in the last twenty years and has in every way at least kept pace with the great development that has been common to most New Zealand towns. It was the pastoral industry that brought the province into being, one might almost say, and it is certainly that industry that keeps it in vigorous life. Its fat lambs and sheep and cattle and its crossbred wool have for many years
Photo caption – Typical H.B. Beef Cattle.
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been famous in New Zealand and beyond the seas, and no part of this Dominion is more admirably suited to the growth of those very valuable products.
Among Hawke’s Bay wools the long wools predominate, and only a small proportion of the clip is of the merino-cross fine wool type. Years ago there were many excellent Lincoln clips taken off the district’s farms, but the Lincoln and other breeds have nearly all been crossed with the Romney, which is now generally accepted as being the most suitable clip for the Home market. No finer quality of crossbred wool is produced anywhere in New Zealand.
A very large percentage of the Hawke’s Bay lambs fattened for export are by Southdown rams, and the introduction of the Southdown blood has resulted in the production of lamb and mutton of the type that has become the favourite of the London markets. Because of its richness of soil and its warm climate, Hawke’s Bay is particularly well suited to the fattening of stock for export. But stock fattening is not the only branch of the pastoral farming that has given distinction to the province.
Hawke’s Bay is more heavily stocked than any other New Zealand Province, yields the second highest average weight of fleece, and in the period from 1922 to 1927 was the only province in any of those years to average a fleece as
Photo caption – H.B. Show Mutton in London.
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heavy as nine pounds in weight, the Hawke’s Bay average in the years mentioned being 9.03 lbs. That weight is made the more striking by comparing it with the New Zealand average, which is 7.66 lbs.
In several places throughout this book have been given figures to show the tremendous productivity of the district. That productivity has several causes behind it, and among the greatest are fertility and climate. The province has the longest annual period of sunshine (2487 hours) in New Zealand; an annual average rainfall the figures are derived only from those places in which Government records are kept) of slightly under 33 inches; the maximum average temperature is 65.5 degrees, the average minimum 49.0, and the mean temperature 57.7 (Napier figures). The highest maximum is 75.5 and the lowest minimum 41.5 degrees. In the two wettest months the average rainfall is 11.5 and 11.7 inches, and in no month is there a higher average than 7.3 inches.
Thus it will be seen that the climate is ideal not only from a residential but also from an agricultural and pastoral point of view. It combines a mild but strong and well sustained sunshine with a rainfall which, while it is fully adequate to the needs of every kind of farming, is not heavy enough to cause annual periods that could be called wet seasons. Also, clean and clear but not too drastic frosts occur throughout the district and have what might well be described as the medicinal and tonic effct [effect] of checking and disciplining a growth which the soil’s great fertility might otherwise make rank, and of sweetening and invigorating the pastures. The existence of three fairy large rivers all within
Photo caption – A Havelock Cattle Station.
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a few miles of Hastings, together with their innumerable tributary streams, are valuable factors in adding to the fertility of the lands through which they flow; and on the Heretaunga Plains which reach out of Hastings those rivers and streams are being increasingly used for irrigation purposes during those infrequent seasons when Hawke’s Bay, in common with almost every other part of the world, is affected with a cyclic dry period. Many farmers are now irrigating not alone in dry seasons but even in the very best of season for they have proved to themselves that in spite of the perfection of the climate at its best, productivity may yet be increased substantially. The plains near the town are adapted to irrigation to a degree that Nature herself could hardly improve upon.
The district’s climatic conditions and its well measured and temperate rainfall, together with the simple irrigability of the land, compose an important explanation of its extraordinary productiveness. But there is another reason of equal importance, and that, as has been pointed out, is the fertility of the soil. An expert in land valuation, himself a farmer of long experience, referred in this way to Hastings’ neighbouring pastoral lands: “I would not say that there is no land in New Zealand that is more fertile. I know one or two more fertile places: one at so-and-so for instance, and another so-and-so. But they are only small and, one might say, accidental patches, But the Heretaunga Plains are the next most fertile lands in this country; and there is this fact – that there is no other area of land where extensiveness and universality of fertility are found combined in such a degree as they are here”.
Photo caption – Calves in Lucerne.
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“The immense fertility and the great variety of the crops that can be grown on the Heretaunga Plains have given this district some of the finest pastoralists in the world”, said a resident English expert, “and I know of no other place where you will find such splendid cattle”.
It should not be necessary, however, to quote specific authorities to prove the contentions that have been set forth, for they have proved themselves year after year. The farm products of Hawke’s Bay are their own advertisement, and they have successfully advertised themselves the world over.
The district is capable of producing any kind of crop that can be grown in New Zealand, but it has the far more rare capability of producing those crops in remarkable profusion and quality. Apart from its well know pre-eminence in crossbred wool, lamb, beef, mutton, and fruit, the district has a more limited by equally high fame from its ryegrass seed; and yet again seems likely to make a reputation for itself in maize-growing. That latter branch of farming in Hawke’s Bay has now risen from being more or less a domestic pursuit to considerable importance, and on a farm situated on the outskirts of Hastings a yield of one hundred and twenty bushels an acre was taken in the 1928 season. Though it is by no means claimed that such a yield is typical of the whole of the maize-growing areas of the district, it need not go long unrivalled; for with equal skill and care there are neighbouring lands that could do as well. As it is, that yield is equal to the most exceptional yields obtained anywhere in the Dominion.
Though the very extensive and fertile plains on which Hastings is situated are an outstanding characteristic of the Hawke’s Bay province, the fine pastoral hills which make a
Photo caption – A Hastings Jersey Herd Wintering.
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background to the town and which skirt the plains have a reputation of their own and are commonly recognised among pastoralists as being ideally suited to sheep farming. Remarkably free from barrenness, cultivable to uncommon extent, and affording accommodation for natural shelter and for the planting of shelter-belts while yet lying open to the sun, they carry some of the finest and largest flocks in New Zealand; flocks whose quality in meat and wool has been proved not only by the prices that they bring in the stock markets but also by their successes at agricultural and pastoral shows.
The hills grow both English and native grasses. Ryegrass and clover are the commonest grasses on the flats, and are supplemented by maize, lucerne, and magnificent root and pumpkin crops. Lucerne does astonishingly well in the Hastings district and gives several cuts a year. Indeed, all those crops grow with exceptional vigour in the land surrounding the borough and Havelock North, and only one particular feature among supplementary crops are the crops of pumpkins.
Some of them are little short of phenomenal, and the writer has seen on a farm four miles from the town a maize and pumpkin crop growing together out of the same ground with a profusion which would have been remarkable in either even if each had been grown separately.
Photo caption – Harvest Time near Hastings.
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According to the 1928 Year Book the total occupied area in the Hawke’s Bay County was 937, 170 acres, of which 509,969 acres were classed as cultivated and 427,201 acres unimproved. The barren and unproductive land amounted to only 14,030 acres, or 1.49 per cent of the total occupied land. Of the 4516 farms in the Hawke’s Bay Land District, 2185 are in the Hawke’s Bay County, the whole of the land district comprising 2,085,499 acres of occupied farm lands.
Though wheat-growing is practised only on a small scale at present, the statistics for the year now being quoted show that the Hawke’s Bay province produced the second highest pulse and oat crops in New Zealand ; and the county had 4804 acres of the provincial total of 11,823 acres in those crops and a corresponding proportion of the yield. The county grew also the largest area of ryegrass in the Dominion.
The fact that Hawke’s Bay produces the second heaviest fleece in New Zealand has already been referred to, and that fact, together with the other facts that it is the most heavily stocked province and shears three hundred sheep per thousand acres more than any other province, enables us to work out that the return of wool from a thousand acres of Hawke’s Bay land produces 10,907 lbs. of wool as against the next highest district total of 8,104. That statement does not make any pretence of claiming a corresponding predominance in the
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richness of sheep land per acre; but, since the classification of “sheep shorn per thousand acres” includes all occupied areas such as wheatlands, orchards, and so on, only to show the dominant share that pastoral pursuits take among Hawke’s Bay industries. The district’s pastoral predominance over other parts of New Zealand is similarly shown by the fact that it shears 1311 sheep per thousand acres as against the Dominion average of 537.
The following table shows the number of sheep and cattle, including dairy cattle, carried per acre of occupied farming area, the average weight of fleece, and the weight of wool per thousand acres in the leading farming districts of New Zealand. This table is made more illuminating when the table of fruit production, at the end of the article dealing with fruitgrowing, is read with it:
Cattle and sheep per acre. Average weight fleece in lbs. Lbs. of wool per 1000 acres.
HAWKE’S BAY 1.49 8.32 10,907
Gisborne 1.20 7.77 8,104
Wellington 1.20 8.39 8,557
Taranaki .68 7.66 3,760
Canterbury .61 7.35 3,738
Southland .61 6.75 3,172
Nth. Auckland .44 7.07 –
Marlborough .44 7.60 3,009
Otago .44 7.15 3,646
Auckland .41 7.19 –
Nelson .37 5.95 –
Westland .06 6.00 –
Beef cattle increased to a very large extent in Hawke’s Bay in 1928, and with so wonderful a season as the district experienced in that year it is certain that the beef industry will have been given an impetus such as it has rarely experienced in the past. The Aberdeen Angus and the Hereford are the principal beef breeds in the Hawke’s Bay district, and it is in Hastings that the Aberdeen Angus Association has its New Zealand headquarters. The Aberdeen Angus was first established in Hawke’s Bay so far as New Zealand herds are concerned, and it has enjoyed an amazing prosperity there. Twenty-five per cent of all the herds of that breed in New Zealand are in the Hawke’s Bay province, and the names of such breeders as J. Armstrong, W. A. MacFarlane, and A. S. G. Carlyon are famous in the cattle world both here and overseas. Mr Armstrong has the second largest Aberdeen
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Angus herd in New Zealand, and has won forty championships and 103 first prizes. Other well know Aberdeen herds are those of Messrs. Herrick Bros., Mr. T. May, Mr. Meech, and Mr. Kinross White. The last-named breeder is the New Zealand president of the association.
Hawke’s Bay has sent many famous Angus bulls and Angus cows to Australia, Chili, [Chile] and elsewhere, and has won great renown the world over for its cattle. It is, as an agricultural writer recently described it, “the stronghold of the blacks”.
The Hereford is hardly less firmly established and well favoured in Hawke’s Bay, and there are a large number of splendid herds of that breed already is existence, and being rapidly built up, in many parts of the district.
HAWKE’S BAY’S REFRIGERATING and meat-killing industry is bound up closely with its pastoral industry; indeed, the two are really one, for it is impossible to imagine any pastoral prosperity, no matter how rich the land or how wonderful the wool, without the meat export trade to go hand in hand with sheep and cattle raising. The refrigerating industry of Hawke’s Bay is centred almost entirely about the outskirts of Hastings, for of the four meat works in the province three are situated within four miles of the borough boundary. As may easily be imagined, those works represent an enormous capital investment, and they give employment
Photo caption – Freezing Works, Whakatu
Page 110
to about one thousand residents of Hastings and its suburbs. In weekly wages alone they pay out something like £145,000 a year, and almost the whole of that great sum is a direct source of revenue to Hastings businesses.
The 1928 season in Hawke’s Bay was probably a record for the whole pastoral and agricultural history of the province, and the fruit crop, the wool clip, meat slaughterings, and dairy products, all shared in creating that record. It was a wonderful year. To deal with meat killing and refrigerating alone: The 1928 output of all four works (which is barely complete, but complete enough for all general purposes) shows that in comparison with the 1920 output it was 96.9 greater. It was a truly phenomenal year for lambs, the killings of which were 127,000 greater than those of 1927, which themselves were a record. In comparison with 1920 the increase was 340 per cent. The total of all killings was 125,100 greater than those of 1927, the previous record year, and it was a particularly good cattle year.
The manufacture of manures, tallow, and chemicals of various kinds, and such subsidiary products as skin and hides are themselves a rich harvest apart altogether from meat production, and amount in value to (probably) £200,000. The total value of the products of all the Hawke’s Bay works must have been little less than two million pounds sterling in the 1928 season.
The freezing industry in Hawke’s Bay sprang from a little concern at Tomoana, but before dealing with local origins we may turn back for a few interesting moments to those historical years when the whole pastoral world found itself at the dawning of an era that ranks with the greatest economic developments that mankind has ever seen. What we in the dominions as producers, and the people of Britain and Europe as consumers, owe to refrigerating may be more vividly realised if we let our imaginations conjure up a picture of what our economic conditions would be without our trade in frozen meat, butter and fruit. In a booklet compiled by the secretary of the Hawke’s Bay Farmers’ Meat Co. we obtained the following information:
“Before the establishment of freezing works, the position was that in Australia and New Zealand there were flocks of sheep and herds of cattle which were rapidly multiplying with no outlet for the enormous surplus after local wants had been satisfied. The only way in which this surplus could be turned into value was by boiling down and canning. On the other hand, the teeming populations in the Northern Hemisphere were crying out for meat, and Great Britain, among other countries, were faced with the serious problem of keeping her flocks from sinking too low and at the same time satisfying as well as could be the demand for meat. To devise some means of bringing the great meat resources of Australia and
Page 112
New Zealand to the door of consumers in Great Britain taxed the genius and finances of several men, till, after experiments in the direction of preserving with chemicals, fats, and oils, the application of artificial cooling solved the difficulty. The first freezing works in the world was established at Darling Harbour, Sydney, in 1861, by Thos. S. Mort, with whom was associated the French engineer Nicolle.”
The first freezing works in New Zealand was established at Burnside in 1881, and the first shipment by steamship was made in 1883. To revert to Hawke’s Bay beginnings; in 1880 Mr. William Nelson, who is still alive, established a small factory for boiling down, and in the next year added meat-preserving to his enterprise. In 1883 his factory was absorbed in a freezing works financed by New Zealand and London capital, and in 1884 it made its first shipment of frozen meat.
Needless to say, the works has been enlarged tremendously since those days, and now has two great competitors – the Hawke’s Bay Farmers’ Meat Co. (owned by the farmers themselves) whose works is at Whakatu, and Borthwicks, whose works is at Paki Paki. From the small beginnings made by Mr. Nelson has grown an industry which is one of the greatest sources of wealth to the province.
The following table shows the killings of mutton, lamb, and cattle during the last nine years to 1928:
Year Sheep Lambs Cattle Totals
1919-20 455,000 164,000 10,500 629,500
1920-21 494,000 483,000 5,900 982,900
1921-22 494,000 534,000 6,500 1,034,500
1922-23 339,000 572,000 18,000 929,000
1923-24 415,000 525,000 18,000 958,000
1925-25 476,000 504,000 28,000 1,008,000
1925-26 481,000 593,000 37,000 1,111,000
1926-27 507,000 596,000 11,500 1,114,500
1927-28 491,000 727,000 25,600 1,239,600
The number of bales of wool sold in the past two seasons is shown according to district of production as follows: –
1926-27 1927-28 Percentage Increase
Wellington 109,670 115,462 5%
Hawke’s Bay 91,325 101,325 10%
Otago 71,159 78,895 10%
Canterbury 75,973 75,010 –
Taranaki 58,838 58,038 –
Auckland 46,143 47,620 3%
S. Canterbury 29,169 31,525 8%
Southland 26,226 30,755 17%
Poverty Bay 3,310 1,862 –
Marlborough and Nelson 246 165 –
Page 113
The numbers of bales exported were: –
1927 1928
Wellington 139,642 143,513
Napier 105,818 107,005
Christchurch 105,589 93,165
Dunedin 66,261 78,102
Wanganui 63,158 63,359
Auckland 59,063 52,838
Timaru 41,724 42,659
Invercargill 36,553 38,069
Gisborne 26,563 29,569
Oamaru 3,477 3,800
New Plymouth 1,410 1,662
Nelson 1,080 655
Note: It is estimated that about 6,000 bales of Southern Hawke’s Bay wool are shipped from Wellington.
THE HAWKE’S BAY AGRICULTURAL AND PASTORAL SOCIETY’S showgrounds are a little over one mile from the Hastings Post Office, and are generally considered to be unsurpassed by any showgrounds in this country. They are sixty-two acres in extent and were opened in 1925 by his Excellency the Governor-General, Sir Charles Fergusson. Although they are so new, however, the society is not; for it first came into being, as now constituted, sixty-six years ago, when its first show, comprising seventy-three exhibits, was held at Havelock North. The new grounds are in every way ideally suited to their purpose. From the scenic point of view alone they are superb, and are fringed about and subdivided by streams and by rows of splendid pines, willows and poplars. In one corner of the grounds is the beautiful Waikoko Lake, a tiny sheet of water fringed with shady trees under which hundreds of visitors picnic at show-time.
The grounds are equipped with most extensive accommodation planned and built on the most modern lines, and every kind of show exhibit has room provided for it in a generous degree. The oval, in which parades and horse jumping events are held, is one of the things of which the society is particularly proud, and justifiably so, for it is as extensive and well arranged as any showground oval could be. There are also two very large parking areas for cars, and necessarily so, for the show attracts a far larger number of cars than does any other event in the whole province. As an illustration of the extensiveness of the exhibits it is worth while relating that the space occupied by machinery exhibits alone amounts to 85,000 square feet, or just on two acres. Covered sheep-pens, a lofty and airy produce-hall, a public hot-water service, and all the most up-to-date accommodation and equipment usual to the best showgrounds are extensively provided at Tomoana.
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The society holds two shows; an autumn show in March and a spring show in October of each year. There is also an annual ram fair held on the grounds usually in the last week in January. Each year seems to bring with it a record in attendances or in exhibits or in both, and at the 1928 show the attendance was a record. On that occasion 23,846 people attended, an increase of 429 on the 1927 figures.
The membership of the society increased by 166 in 1926, 209 in 1927, and 167 in 1928, so it is evident that it is not only the public that finds the society’s activities increasingly attractive. In 1926 the society spent £605 on ground improvements, £1259 in 1927, and about £2300 in 1928 – a total of about £4,200 in the three years – and yet at the end of the 1928 financial year had a net balance amounting to over £30,000 of assets over liabilities, that surplus including £1400 in cash. Few agricultural and pastoral societies are in such a happy financial state.
Besides being used for the spring and autumn shows, the grounds are used also for the annual ram fairs which are held during the last week in January. The yardings at those fairs vary between six and eight thousand, and attract buyers and entries from far afield.
THE PLACE TAKEN BY DAIRYING in respect of Hawke’s Bay farming industry is of ever increasing importance, and the district, thought not having yet reached such proportions as the famous dairying farming districts of Waikato and Taranaki, has achieved no small degree of rank in dairy production. But the most noteworthy phase of that production is the rapid increase that was made in the last few years. It has not long been in full profit, and for a good many years was kept within rather strictly limited bounds because of the fact that lands now coming into occupation as dairy farms were until comparatively recent years parts of large sheep runs. Those areas, however, at last began to be sub-divided, and there are many properties that within the next few years will inevitably undergo similar treatment and be cut up into smaller holdings suitable for dairying.
There are two chief Hawke’s Bay dairying centres – one in the southern part of the province and the other around Hastings. The northern dairying district is served principally by the Heretaunga Co-operative Dairy Company, whose factory is in the borough of Hastings. Smaller factories exist at Clive, Waipukurau, Wairoa, and Waiohiki, and the numbers of their suppliers range between thirty and four hundred. The Heretaunga Company, however, has eleven hundred suppliers, and comprises over fifty per cent. of the northern Hawke’s Bay total. Within twenty miles of the borough it has about twenty to one ratio of suppliers and
Page 116
within, say, fifteen miles of the borough, handles about seventy five per cent. of the dairy produce of the district.
Those facts are given to show that when the company’s progress in production is quoted, the progress of the industry round about Hastings will be shown simultaneously. Thus it makes rather striking reading to state that whereas in 1900 (by which time the district’s dairying industry was just about able to stand on its own legs) the company’s pay-out was £2682, in 1928 it was approx £200,000. In seven years the company’s output has risen from 413 tons to 1237 tons – almost to a ton a three hundred per cent. increase. Natural restrictions will not allow that increase to go on at such a ratio for endless years until the figures become fantastic, and obviously there are limits to future dairy production as there are to every kind of production.
But one fact is certain, and that is that the existence of a perfect climate and almost perfect soil are such as are found in and about Hastings, and the increased availability of small holdings of dairy farming, will bring about a dairy production which, while it cannot, as had already been pointed out, swell the ratio in keeping with that of past years, will steadily and inevitably progress until it becomes a source of considerable wealth both to the individual farmer and to the district.
It was not until 1892 that the idea of establishing a co-operative dairy company was suggested, and the then secretary of the Hastings Farmers’ Union, who were the sponsors of the scheme, was sent out to canvass the district. The entire result of his arduous work was that he enlisted two hundred cows in the service of the proposed company, which was then formed with a capital of two thousand twenty-shilling shares. Towards the end of 1896 the company built its factory and office on a two acre site.
In 1901 the price of butter-fat had risen to between sevenpence halfpenny and eightpence, and it was in that year that the Heretaunga Dairy Co. Bought out the first opposition company at Stortford Lodge, the capital being increased to £5000. Until the beginning of 1904 the company struggled hard to keep going, and had passed through three or four years of almost profitless business.
Then it began a new life. In the 1906-1907 season the output of butter was eighty-two tons, and the cash paid to suppliers rose to £5928. In the next year the output reached seventy-one tons, and cash amounting to £5790, and bonuses and dividends amounting to £825 were paid to suppliers. In the next season the payments were respectively £7500 and £490. Thus, in seven years the company had more than trebled its payments. In 1910, so greatly had the company
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HERETAUNGA BUTTER
A LARGE LOCAL INDUSTRY
THE HERETAUNGA
CO-OPERATIVE DAIRY COMPANY,
which operates
HAWKE’S BAY’S LARGEST DAIRY FACTORY
at
STORTFORD LODGE, HASTINGS
is the most Important Butter Manufactory in the Province.
Output 1921: 412 tons. 1928: 1237 tons.
Pay-out 1900: £2682 1928: £200,000
We give the Best Deal to Producer and the Best Service, in Quality and in Price to the Consumer.
Secretary: H. R. von DADELSZEN, – Phone 1369
Factory Manager: W. A. TIMMS. – Phone 140
Page 119
prospered, that two privately owned factories some distance from Hastings were bought out. During that year 235,007 lbs. of butter-fat at tenpence halfpenny a lb. were paid for, and for the first time in its growing industry the company entered the export trade. Of its total output of 115 tons it exported 1644 boxes at a return of £4321. In 1911 the output had risen to 121½ tons, which was sold Oat an average price of elevenpence halfpenny. In 1914-1915 the company adopted a home separating scheme – an innovation from which it received immediate benefit.
In the year 1921 the company built its present excellent buildings, which it confidently feels are as up-to-date and efficient as any factory in the Dominion. The factory is fully equipped to handle an output of 1600 tons of butter a year.
Any reference to Hawke’s Bay’s exports of dairy produce is necessarily limited to the exports from the northern part of the province, namely from the district between Waipukurau and Wairoa; for the southern part of the province exports pretty well all its butter and cheese through Wellington. The northern district’s exports may, however, be taken alone as exactly indicative of the progress that the whole of Hawke’s Bay has made in dairy production.
Only two of the northern Hawke’s Bay factories export cheese, and during the period of March 31st, 1928, they exported 3240 cratesO as against 1697 in the previous year, an increase of over 90 per cent.
The figures given below show how greatly the dairy production of Northern Hawke’s Bay increased in the last two seasons, though it must be pointed out that the 1928 figures include approximately 16,000 cases from a factory which the previous season exported through Wellington. Even without that extra quantity, however, the increase in butter alone is shown to be just on 22,000 boxes.
The local (Hastings) factory, which is one of seven exporting through Napier, had over a forty per cent share in the Northern Hawke’s Bay export trade, and its net return for butter increased from £79,600 in 1927 to £113,000 in 1928 – an increase of almost forty-two per cent. The total net value of the Northern Hawke’s Bay’s export trade alone rose from about £199,000 to about £283,000 in the same period.O
In 1900 the company’s output was about 150 tons and its pay-out £2682. In 1928 its output was 1237 tons and its pay-out about £200,000.
The export figures are as follows, the 1925-26 season being omitted because Northern Hawke’s Bay first became a grading centre in the middle of that period: –
Page 120
Boxes of Butter:
1926-27 1927-28
July – –
August – 790
September 2195 4108|
October 5179 8706
November 7200 11609
December 6707 12491
January 6282 11703
February 5410 7213
March 3281 6990
April 1185 6773
May 199 4593
June 50 653
Totals 37688 75629
IN THE 1928 SEASON
HAWKE’S BAY’S 70,000 PEOPLE PRODUCED
£2,500,000 worth of wool,
£2,000,000 worth of meat and by-products,
£200,000 worth of fruit, and
£600,000 net worth of dairy produce,
BESIDES
TIMBER, HONEY, BACON, WHEAT, BARLEY, GRASS-SEED, AND OTHER LARGE AND VALUABLE CROPS.
Hastings is the Centre of
The Fruitgrowing Industry, and railed away the whole of the Province’s crop – the second largest in New Zealand.
Of the Freezing Industry, three of Hawke’s Bay’s four Freezing Works being within four miles of the Borough;
Of Seventy Per Cent. of Northern Hawke’s Bay’s Dairy Lands. The Heretaunga Factory (Hastings) has trebled its output in the last six years.
HASTINGS IS
The Healthiest Town in New Zealand, and
Is one of the Lowest Rated Towns in New Zealand.
URBAN POPULATION, 15,000
Linotyped & Printed in Hastings by Lovell & Painter, Queen St.
SOME FACTS RELATING
TO
HASTINGS & DISTRICT
LOWEST DEATH RATE IN NZ
LONGEST ANNUAL SUNSHINE
PLACID & MILD CLIMATE
HIGHEST FRUIT YIELD PER TREE
WORLD’S BEST ORCHARD LANDS
(ARGENTINE EXPERT)
HEAVIEST AVERAGE FLEECE IN NZ
MOST STOCK FED PER ACRE
FINEST CROSSBRED WOOL
LOW RATES & LOWERED YEARLY
WEALTHY & PROGRESSIVE
FINE MOTORISTS’ CAMP
TROUT, DEER, WILD PIGS
HASTINGS AND DISTRICT HAWKE’S BAY
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Description
Other surnames – Beamish, Dixon, Kinross White, Lowe, Lowry, Meech, Parke, Warren
Subjects
Format of the original
BookDate published
1929Publisher
Lovell & PainterPeople
- D Balharry
- Reverend F A Bennett
- H S Bone
- F S Budd
- G Davies
- G P Donnelly
- William Douglas
- Mr and Mrs George Ebbett
- Sir Charles and Lady Ferguson
- A A Ford
- Sydney H Greaves
- Lord and Lady J Harvey
- Sir George Hunter
- Lord and Lady Jellicoe
- Madame Lydia Lipvoska
- G H Lord
- W A MacFarlane
- G A Maddison
- J L Masterton
- T May
- Mrs A McConnell
- G R McKenzie
- Thomas S Mort
- Mrs H S Moss
- J D Ormond
- A E Palmer
- W A G Penlington
- William J Robertson
- A Rosenberg
- H A Russell
- William Russell
- J W Shaw
- W Shrimpton
- W G Stead
- Miss Irene Stollery
- W A Timms
- H R von Dadelszen
- James Watt
- Henry Williams
- Archdeacon Samuel Williams
- B M Wilson
Accession number
977/2290/47015Supporters and sponsors
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