Sands of time by John Lawson- Continuing our occasional history series, we look back to Whāingaroa a century ago – 1924 (Part 2)
Other concerts held in Whāingaroa in 1924 included one in November by Raglan Bowling Club with one at Raglan Town Hall, followed by a 1900 comedy, “Brown with an E”. Neither the play, nor its author are now well known, but both were popular in the 1920s and 30s. Other concerts were held by Raglan Horticultural Society, Te Uku Anglican Church Guild and for Dr. Barnado’s Homes.
Ted Earl played the violin and formed a small orchestra, which was often at many of the dances and concerts, including the New Year carnival fancy dress ball in the Town Hall. Earl’s Cabinet-making was a business he started in 1924, when the family moved to Cox’s Bay and he leased the saddler’s shop in Bow St, which had started in 1916, but was losing business as cars replaced horses. During the depression there was little demand for cabinets, so he later became a fisherman and then set up a cafe at the wharf.
Raglan Carnival Club had Entertainment, Sports, Equestrian and Aquatic committees and their New Year event included a sack nightdress race, motor driving competition, greasy boom and model yacht race. AroAro recreation ground, which had been converted from a “ti-tree swamp” in 1921, was used for equestrian sports on New Year’s Day, and for athletics the next day, with cars parked at the ground.
Congregational Church Sunday school entertainment. Te Uku Anglican Church Guild raised £50 from a jumble fair at Te Uku Hall.
There were Tennis and Ladies’ Hockey Clubs at Raglan, Te Mata and Okete. Raglan Tennis Club asked for a rates rebate as it leased two sections of Harbour Board property, but the Town Board took no action.
Raglan Bowling Club built a 30ft x 12ft pavilion, which was replaced in 1955. There was also a Raglan Gun Club.
On 29 November Raglan Horticultural Society’s 11th annual show was opened by Raglan’s Reform Party MP and Minister of Internal Affairs, Richard Bollard, who said “I revelled in being seized with Raglanites, for the little town was plunging ahead faster than many imagined. . . . I congratulate the Town Board and people on the appearance of the town. It has in a few months undergone wonderful improvement, especially in the lay-out of the principal street.” He also said that, despite a £1.8m budget surplus, there was a continued need for economy, but he hoped the new Dairy Control Board would get higher butter and cheese prices. The show’s needlework, cookery and vegetable sections were described, “as being the best yet displayed”, though it was noted fewer swedes were being grown. There were over 100 prizes at the show, for everything from best Gamekeeper potatoes to best crochet.
Te Hutewai had an increasing number of children, who had to walk 5 miles to Te Mata school. The new school was built mainly due to Charlie Munns’ work. At the opening he told the Minister that settlers wanted cheaper manure and good transport to the Waikato. He was told “one of the finest things Mr. Massey had done for the country to secure a share of the output of phosphates from Nauru. . . People who left the attractions of the cities and settled in the backblocks deserved every consideration from the Government and the community in the way of providing postal, telephonic, and transport facilities, and so long as he was in Parliament his sympathies would go out to those hardy settlers. New Zealand, he regretted, had people who were disinclined to work, but he felt sure that if they were sent to Te Hutewai they would either have to work or get out.” The school was built by Jim Meekings on a 3½ acre site, still “fringed with virgin bush”. It remained until burnt down in 1958.
Kauroa School, which had 17 pupils in 1923, taught by William E. B. Davies, moved from Okete Church in 1924, when the auctioneers built a saleyards lunch room and farmers said they’d pay to make it big enough for a school. It remained in use until 1930, when a new school was built.
Raglan and Te Mata School Committees formed a combined committee to deal with education in the district, which included efforts to obtain a Junior High School.
A loan of £2500 for a 300 feet concrete footbridge was supported on 10 April by 104 votes to 11, though formal transfer of Papahua to Raglan Town Board wasn’t until 18 August. Papahua was described as having, “a gnarled old totara tree growing halfway along, which is perhaps the sole remainder of an old forest”. The Board fenced 22 acres and volunteers planted lupins on the dunes, a belt of pines and sowed Buffalo, Indian Dooby, Agrostas, brown and red, rat-tail and marram grasses. Lockie Gannon & Worley won the footbridge contract for £2,833, though Thompson & Farrar put in a bid for £2,492. There was protest at accepting a tender for more than the loan and at “a very largely attended meeting . . . a motion condemning the action of the board was passed”. In the end the bridge was built by Mr A. Jane of Hamilton, under the supervision of Mr O. R. Farrar. Mr Bollard, when he officially opened the bridge on 15 May 1926, said its correct name was Te Kopua, because it passed over the Kopua Stream. By 1947 concrete was flaking from the bridge and it was replaced in 1963, according to one account, because salt water and black sand were used for mixing the cement.
A proposal to borrow £500 for improvements to the bathing enclosure and beautification of the park was also carried, the voting being 101 for, 14 against. In 1924 the Board also built a wooden Town Board Office, Library and Ladies’ Rest Room.
At the 1924 Raglan Co-operative Dairy Co annual meeting, one of its directors, William James Lusty, a Te Uku farmer, who came from Gloucestershire in 1908 and had moved to Te Uku in 1916, tried again to persuade farmers to send their butterfat to Frankton. In March 1922 he’d been told by Raglan County Raglan County Council chairman, Campbell Johnstone, that he was speaking “absurd twaddle”, when his request to cut the Raglan wharf fee for butter exports was rejected. In 1923 Campbell Johnstone again turned down the request, despite being told the wharfage was double that at most other ports, saying the county had a number of small harbours to maintain and Raglan was the only one making much money. On 31 July 1924, 19 farmers met at Te Uku Hall, bought a lorry for £201, paid the driver £4 a week and, from 5 August, sent their cream to the NZ Cooperative Dairy at Frankton, though both dairies paid the same and 130 farmers remained with the Raglan factory.
The next month Campbell Johnstone said it was, “the worst thing that had ever happened to Raglan”, because 20 miles of County roads were being damaged, rather than 5 miles. In November 1924 he moved a motion to halve the charge on butter at Raglan wharf, from 5s to 2s 6d per ton. His U-turn was reported as, “actuated to a material extent as a protest against the recent action of certain of the Te Uku settlers who in the transfer of their supply from Raglan to Frankton were utilising a greater length of county road than was warranted.” The cut was unanimously agreed to, but the Frankton suppliers didn’t return and eventually, in 1939, the Wallis St factory closed. The high freight cost was a factor in the closure, together with the need to replace machinery and better wool prices; sheep in Raglan County doubled from 213,446 in 1924 to 426,227 in 1939.
| Year | Tons of butter |
| 1915 | 17 |
| 1916 | 61 |
| 1920 | 78 |
| 1921 | 92 |
| 1922 | 149 |
| 1923 | 220 |
| 1924 | 235 |
| 1925 | 200 |
| 1926 | 229 |
| 1927 | 264 |
| 1928 | 266 |
| 1929 | 325 |
| 1930 | 386 |
| 1931 | 404 |
| 1932 | 437 |
| 1933 | 529 |
| 1934 | 595 |
| 1935 | 468 |
| 1936 | 570 |
| 1937 | 578 |
| 1938 | 523 |
| 1939 | 429 |
Raglan butter making rose steadily to 1924, but then suffered a few years setback, as in this table. Quality remained good, with Raglan butter ranking 4th out of 21 at the 1924 Auckland A&P show, and it was profitable, with a new £1000 manager’s house and a direct expansion cooler being added in 1924.
Ngatiawa was launched in 1906 at D.J. Dunlop’s Port Glasgow yard. At 451 tons and 152.5 ft x 27.1 ft, she was newer and larger than the usual Raglan steamer, the 412 ton Rimu of 1898.
Rimu returned to the Raglan run in July, with her usual 3pm Monday afternoon departures from Onehunga for Raglan and Kawhia. As in most years, the ships ran a fishing excursion to what is now officially named Kārewa / Gannet Island, and were delayed by gales, once leaving almost a 3 week gap. In March about 60 fat lambs were swept overboard on one rough trip and in June, “Owing to the continuous delay of the steamer this week, the rep. football match, Raglan v. Kawhia has been postponed indefinitely.”
When the match was eventually played, Kawhia Won, as they had in 1913, 1915, 1920, 1921 and 1923. There was a draw in 1908 and Raglan won in 1923. Another match at Waitetuna had Te Mata and Moerangi drawn, but Te Mata protested that the goalposts were not the regulation width, being only 9ft apart. Raglan Rugby Union rejected the complaint.
Felling of the bush was still going on and areas “were being recovered from fern and tea-tree, and blackberry that were allowed to go back” during the 1880s slump. The former Te Akau station bush, from Waikato Heads to Raglan, had been felled by 1924 and a few old burns there were cleared during the hot weather in January/February, as well as, “numerous new burns in other parts of the Raglan district”. The continued importance of the industry was to be seen in a chopping event at the Te Mata sports, where “Mr J. Bishop cut off a portion of the first and second toes of his left foot, but in spite of this went on with the work and won the prize.” A tramway in the MakoMako Valley was proposed to mill timber there.
Similarly, on Karioi, bush was being felled. Raglan Sawmilling Co was formed in 1919 to mill rimu on Karioi. However, in December the sawmill company couldn’t pay timber royalties to the county for damage to the roads and the manager was gaoled for a week, for being drunk in charge of a car. It was later claimed none of the mill’s directors had any practical experience of milling, paid too much for it and had poor equipment and management. In 1928, a fire swept through Te Hutewai, destroying the mill.
Two more early settlers died in 1924. Elizabeth Wallis was born on 3 November 1835, the eldest child of James Wallis, the first local missionary. She died on 11 December 1924 as Mrs. Elizabeth Reddick Watkin, in Sydney, aged 89. She remained in Whāingaroa until 1857, when she married Rev. W. Fletcher and went to the Fijian mission. He died in 1881 and in 1897 she married Rev. W. J. Watkin.
William Parsons Cogswell died on 13 December 1924 on his Te Uku farm. He was born in 1829, the eldest son of a large Wiltshire woollen manufacturer. He reached Taranaki in 1853, walked to Te Uku as its first settler and joined the militia in the 1860s wars.
Although delayed by Whatawhata bridge being too weak to carry trucks laden with telephone poles, it opened with over 30 telephones connected. Official opening by Mr Bollard and the Postmaster- General, J. G. Coates, was on 29 January 1925. Raglan Post Office was also repainted in 1924. Its postmaster, R.C. Galbraith, served from 1 April 1924 to 25 April 1929.
Te Mata also had phones. At a committee meeting on 24 August 1924 it was estimated that they owned 43 miles of phone lines at £4 per mile – total value £172.
In August Baddeley & Blechynden, the Auckland architects, called for tenders to build the reinforced concrete St. Peter’s Church church. Building started in October. On Sunday 11 February 1923 Bishop Averill had laid the foundation stone of St. Peters and he (by then Archbishop Alfred Averill) dedicated it on 3 May 1925. The church was described as being, “a conspicuous object to those approaching Raglan by sea.” When the church was built the navigation beacon, which had been on the site, was moved to Long St. Now, a century later, $256,054 is being spent to raise it further for another building.
Council is paying for the current change, but in 1924 the Church of England parish had to fund the costs. A building fund bazaar at which Father Christmas arrived by motor car and the vicar’s aeroplane made several ascents, had needlework, produce, sweets, toys, jumble, novelty, afternoon teas and ice cream stalls, and raised £85; the church was free of debt when it opened.
Whāingaroa became more like its current state in 1924, with road building and bush destruction, but it was still largely self-reliant and it was still to be another 5 years before the passenger steamships ceased to call.
For previous Sands of Time articles see – 1923, 1922, 1921, 1920, 1919, 1918, 1917 and pt 2, 1916, 1914, 1913, 1912, 1911, 1910