Three Cheers for Oz

Anyone, I guess, who crosses the ditch notices some differences from the way things work at home.

 

So it should have been no surprise to us to find some improvements on home once we reached Australia.

 

First was the vigilance of the Airport Security people. Our third plane flight was from Sydney to Canberra and we went dutifully through the security check. Margaret was called back and found a friendly staff member holding her favourite nail scissors. Scissors are a 'no-no' on planes, of course, but we had forgotten them, and the check at Auckland had failed to spot them.

 

She reluctantly agreed to forfeit them and they were promptly in the trash-can. Then she was called again, to find yet another pair of small scissors had been located in the bag, Again, after some discussion about how to post them home if we wanted to, we abandoned the dangerous goods and went on our way regretting our forgetfulness.

 

But it made me wonder if our Government might not be better, rather than rushing tighter security legislation or beefing up the GCSB, to make sure the existing security provisions are being enforced first!

 

Out on the road in Adelaide driving our rental, we were soon aware of the petrol prices, which seemed to vary between $1.30 and $1.50 a litre. Even with the exchange rate allowed for, the difference from the NZ price seems a bit much. With the much lower population density in Australia, the cost of making and maintaining the highway system must be higher over there, so road taxes can't be the explanation for the difference.

 

If our Government wants to give everyone a positive impression of the difference between the two countries, they should use their economic levers to make sure that something as essential and universal as petrol is reasonably comparable in price, wouldn't you think?

 

As we do at home, we watched breakfast-time TV in Australia when we had the chance. Not much difference we thought, except that in the weekends it continues as usual, instead of giving the impression, as it does here, that everything has stopped. Over there they have news, current affairs, and comment on Saturdays and Sundays just like any other day. About time we had it here too!

 

So three cheers for the Aussies on that score!

 

***************** 

 PS Have a look at this editorial on the Stuff website:

 

http://www.stuff.co.nz/taranaki-daily-news/opinion/64380607/Two-top-blokes-earn-recognition

 

I reckon Rachel Stewart has hit two nails right on the head!

The MCAA concert

The concert on Saturday afternoon was great. The massed choir, which included a contingent from Wellington, was conducted by Guy Jansen, also a New Zealander, and one of the accompanists was Bev Glover, originally from New Plymouth and a great friend of Margie and her sister.

Also on the programme was the Band of the Royal Military College, Duntroon, (which is a suburb of Canberra) and an operatic soprano won sang like a lark.

I was most impressed by the precision of the choir's performance, their cohesion and above all their great dynamic range. 400 voices canbe expected to belt out a huge sound on the fortissimos, which they did, but in contrast they were able to produce a very moving pianissimo in some of the passages of, for example "My lord, what a morning" or "the Anvil Chorus" from Il Trovatore.

When they were joined by the full band and the 1300-strong audience, in the Australian National Anthem or the finale, Cwm Rhondda, the rafters shook mightily!

The concert was held in the stadium of the Australian Institute of Sport, the only venue large enough.

 

Read more at http://www.malechoirsassociation.org.au/read/388/let-all-men-sing-they-did.html

 

Sunday afternoon and again this morning we have been getting to know two people who may be our distant cousins, April Gaze and her brother Ian. They hail originally from Auckland, but have both lived in Canberra for some years. It will be our United project in the next months to try to establish any links. Both families emigrated from London between 1850 and 1900. It was great getting to know them; we have lots in common.

This morning April took us to the National War Memorial, a most impressive memorial and museum.

Here it is in the distance, seen from the Parliament House side of the lake.

An exciting city

This weekend we have been in Canberra, which is unlike any other city we have visited.

Yesterday we did the "hop on hop off" bus tour of the important sights, places like the parliament, the war memorial and the national museum. We didn't stop at any, we just took photos.

In the afternoon we went to a concert of the men's choir association of Australia. Members from over a dozen choirs from all over the country made up the 400-voice chorale. And they were brilliant!

Family History 4.39

Robinson story

adapted from Robinsons of Rotherhithe by Joanne Robinson

The Morgan Family

It was during this period also that William was involved as a founder of the Baptist Church, helping to compile its constitution and regulations. He would walk to Onehunga to take services and took on the job of Superintendent of the Baptist Sunday School, when it opened in March 1858.

 

His work as a printer, particularly at night, did not allow any improvement in his eyesight and he speculated on the idea of becoming a farmer. Joshua's plans must have helped and he joined in the move to Pukekohe East, again in 1858. The family stayed in Freemans Bay till the whare was built and the town house kept them going with the rent until the farm started producing.

 

When the war came and the family moved back to Auckland in 1863, William stayed on in Drury as War Correspondent for the Southern Cross. But by 1865 he was back setting type for the paper again.

 

When they returned to a new wooden house at Pukekohe East, William was appointed teacher of the school there. However the government stopped teachers' pay in  1867 and he had to give up and turn to other work.

 

In 1870 Jane became ill and died. William remarried later in the year. He eventually died in 1903.

 

Joshua Morgan

Joshua is the most famous of the next generation of Morgans.

 

He was married to Annie Dent in 1888 and in 1892 they had a daughter, Edith Leila.

 

Joshua was a surveyor, and a true pioneer, venturing into bush-clad areas where no white man had been and in some cases no Maori either, paving the way for future roads to remote areas. He could speak and write Maori and his journal is now in the Alexander Turnbull Library.

 

He was working as a Government Surveyor in 1893, with a party engaged in pegging out the route between Taumarunui and New Plymouth through the dense bush of the Ohura and Tangarakau Gorges. According to his diary on 10th January 'he was still suffering from influenza' and on the 1st February 'had wricked his back'. Next day he had 'to lie down all morning with a pain between his shoulders'. On 4 February he was 'still suffering from a pain in the back of the neck.'

 

There was just one entry on 5 February: 'Stayed in camp all day'. The last entry, 24 February,, 'the wind NE showery. Blowing hard. The men split about 90 pegs.' The following day Joshua was desperately ill. Urgent medical care was needed, but he could not be moved. Fred Willison, one of the party, set off for help, walking in record time through dense bush twenty miles along Maori tracks and crossing swollen rivers, then by horseback to Waitara. He took a doctor back tom Tongaporutu and pushed on to the bush camp, only to find that Joshua had died.

 

His mates buried him on the hillside above the river a few metres from where the highway now runs. His grave and the memorial have become a landmark in the Tangarakau Gorge and the Automobile Association have erected a sign near the river bridge carrying the details of his history and death.

 

Annie and her daughter were waiting in Kaimata; they later moved to Murrays Bay, and when she died her ashes were placed on Joshua's grave sixty years after his death.

 

My sketch of the grave site. I have visited it several times. If you are travelling along the "Forgotten Highway" between Stratford and Taumarunui it is very close to the road at the Tangarakau River Bridge.

 

Sketching Again

 

 

 

From Life

 

This time I managed to do a few sketches "on site". This one is done outside the Post Office in New Plymouth looking across the street to the buildings, including an Art Deco one on the corner of Devon Street.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

During our week at Hurworth Cottage for the Garden Festival, I took advantage of the odd lull in visitors to sketch the cottage in its garden and bush setting as it was over the weekend.

 

 

A few years ago we acquired a lovely set of table mats with original sketches of Paris cafes on them. Here is my attempt at one of them. The cafe's name would be, in English, something like "Cherry Ripe".

 

 

 

 

 

And finally another of those travel photos, this time of afternoon tea at a London café on the corner of Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road, a few steps from where our ancestors lived on the edge of Bloomsbury near St Giles.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Doing your bit for the real world

Community matters

Not History this time

Yesterday we had breakfast at church. Not just any church, but the Taranaki Cathedral.

The Cathedral people are serving breakfast on Tuesday mornings. We normally have Spencer on Tuesday mornings, so the three of us dropped in at the Cathedral and had breakfast there. They are doing it to raise money, to help Medecins sans Frontieres, one of the voluntary organisations sending medical aid to the West African countries affected by Ebola.

Margaret had pancakes with maple syrup, Spencer and I had porridge. Spencer had orange juice, Margaret and I had coffee.

I felt a bit hypocritical, sitting there in comfort, with well-fed people all around me, all enjoying rich food while we glowed in the self-satisfaction of "doing something" about the Ebola tragedy.

Still, in the present state of the world, we can do nothing else that may help. Thank goodness someone is at least making an effort to raise some funds to send to help!

BUT, and I have some buts, this is only a drop in the bucket. As we all know there are many other helping projects that need to be planned, put into operation and supported.

I am a passionate believer in democracy, and I am increasingly worried about the numbers of important jobs around our community and around our world that are being left to the voluntary organisations and their whimsical efforts.

The kind of democracy I believe in means that some jobs, the essential ones, like seeing that children do not die of diseases like Ebola, are the responsibility of us all, not just the soft-hearted or the conscience-stricken affluent like us. 

That means that to say we really live in a democratic nation or world, everyone must contribute through a government system that ensures that everyone pays a fair share of tax. If not, our elections may be democratic but our society does not live in a democratic way.

If people can opt out of helping the dying and the ill, if people can neglect their starving and homeless neighbours, if people can renege on "it takes a whole village to raise a child", their democracy is a sham. Bob Geldof made a similar point in his TV interview yesterday.

If you want to see how this plays out on a world scale, plug yourself in to the UN Development Programme that Helen Clark runs, at http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home.html

Yesterday I wrote about Hurworth Cottage and the need for volunteers there. I have set up a Facebook Group to start people thinking about the possibility they might like to help. If this is you, then how about joining the group, and we will contact you next year with more details.

Doing your bit for history

Taranaki Garden Festival 2014

Hurworth Cottage this week

One of the fun activities we occasionally get mixed up with is helping at Hurworth Cottage.

This is a Historic Places property a few kilometres south of New Plymouth. The cottage, built in 1856, is set in a small clump of bush and garden which appears out of a wide expanse of Taranaki farmland. Cows graze contentedly on all sides, and one can catch a distant glimpse of sea and blue horizon on most sunny days.

Like most Historic Places properties, there is never enough cash to do the job properly, so we are working with shoe-string resources when we volunteer to help with the Garden Festival programme at this time of the year.

The garden, which is being restored to something resembling a nineteenth-century cottage garden, is done by an enthusiastic gardener paid for about 'half an hour' a week, whose wife was formerly the "Property Host". The operation is now managed by a Property Host on about the same rate. Another guy mows the lawns when necessary.

There are a handful of volunteers who help at any working-bee, mainly weeding, two or three times a year, and man the operation with the Property Host during the week-long Festival, when visitors from far and wide pour through the gates rain or shine.

Volunteers help with three main jobs: welcoming and informing visitors, and answering their questions, operating a basic café under a gazebo, and selling merchandise from the display tables on the verandah.

Welcoming visitors involves helping them find their way around, explaining the bare bones of the history of the place, and sorting change and things like that.

The refreshment tent has home-made cakes and slices, cool drinks and tea and coffee. Volunteers need to keep the water boiled, pour the drinks and sell the eats.

The display tables have a few locally home-made lines like preserves, ceramics, lavender products, and so on, as well as a few higher priced items from further afield marketed by the Trust.

The people who visit are touring a selection of outstanding gardens, chosen for their quality. So many of them are more interested in the vintage plants such as the roses rather than in the history of the cottage and its original owners. Others, however, have special interests in history or the local ramifications of the story of the property.

Reactions vary. Most folks admire the cottage and its setting, and all are impressed with the garden and its development. The story of Harry Atkinson and his family, however, raises some different comments. Some who have really learned about the events of the 1860s and the decades following find attitudes of those days unpalatable, and you can understand that.

Many settlers who had emigrated from the United Kingdom saw Maori as uncivilised, and less worthy than themselves. Some who got to know Maori neighbours well realised that human beings are much the same everywhere. But the others were keen to see the race die out and the land fall into the hands of the better-qualified Europeans. It is this attitude that is condemned by the thoughtful visitors, as it was by the more aware of the nineteenth century arrivals.

So there are plenty of interesting discussions to be had and people to meet. We hope the Historic Places administration will be able to install a kitchen to enable us to run the café more efficiently.

And that more volunteers will be interested in joining our team.

Rush hour at Hurworth during the Garden Festival

 

Family History 4.38

Robinson story

From Robinsons of Rotherhithe by Joanne Robinson

 

 

The Morgan Connection

It must have seemed an exciting adventure for Jane as an eight year old to leave her home and sail with her parents, brother and two sisters to the other side of the world. Jane was born in the same area of London as her father, Paradise Street in Rotherhithe, on the 8th of December 1834, and probably had some form of schooling. Although it was still not common for girls to receive instruction in anything other than domestic duties, Joshua valued education and all of his children were literate.

 

As she grew older Jane would have been needed to help with the cooking, cleaning and the care of the little ones, especially when her mother was engaged in extra work at Government House. Jane would have already gained an appreciation of the work and hardship of pioneer life when she met her husband to be, William Morgan.

 

William Morgan had only been in the country seven months when he married Jane, at St Andrew's Presbyterian Church in Auckland on the 27th of December 1853, she at the age of nineteen and he twenty-seven.

 

William came originally from Leeds in Yorkshire, being born on the 3rd of December 1826, with his adult occupation being that of compositor (type-setter in a printing works). He set sail for the Victorian goldfields in June 1852 on the Tippo Saib, not with any ideas of instant wealth, but on doctor's orders to improve his general state of health. Neither his health nor his finances improved there and in disgust after eight months he sailed to Auckland on the William Woolley arriving on the 23rd of May 1853 with the express idea of catching a ship back to England.

 

We do not know why he elected to stay in New Zealand. Maybe he did not have the funds to pay for a fare back to the homeland immediately. He found employment as a schoolmaster and later on the local press, first with the New Zealander and then the Southern Cross (later the New Zealand Herald).

 

William would have met his future wife at Church. Although the Baptists worshipped with the Presbyterians, as they had no church of their own at this stage, they probably tended to congregate together socially. This would have been the only way for young ladies to meet eligible young gentlemen. Joshua no doubt thought that a young, industrious, teetotal Baptist would make a suitable husband for his eldest daughter and as she was a minor, his approval was required.

 

They made their home in Wellesley Street in Freemans Bay. William described it as 'a rum-looking estate'. During the first five years of their marriage, William worked for the Southern Cross as a compositor. Four children were born to them during these years: Thomas (1854), Nellie (1856), Joshua (1857) and Eliza (1859).

 

As William himself said in his journal, Jane was kept busy 'with gowns to make , and baby's frocks, and shirts, and napkins to make and many other domestic affairs to attend to.' He initially seems to have had an unrealistic view of marriage as he says:

 

I had notions before I was married - how I would read to my wife and talk to her - and how she would read and talk to me - how I would endeavour to instruct her in matters in which I was conversant and she was not - how we would take evening strolls together and attend evening meetings. But I have found most of these things knocked on the head. Not that we are unhappy or discontented. The reverse. But the thing is there is no time for these things.

 

(In 1963, William's Journal was published by the Auckland City Council Libraries Department, edited by N M Morris, under the title of The Journal of William Morgan.)

 

 

Family History 4.37

Robinson story

Joanne Robinson's book: Robinsons of Rotherhithe continues

Depression and Recovery

After the war the country was in a depression, money was scarce and there were many business failures in Auckland. The farm produce would have provided very little income.

[This was the stage at which Charles Gaze's saddlery business in Otahuhu failed as well, and the family went to Whangarei in search of work on the kauri gum diggings of Northland. That is where my grandfather, Frederick William, was born. But that venture also was unsuccessful and they returned to Auckland just in time for the recovery (late 1867)]

However in 1867 news of the Thames goldfields was to save Auckland. Once again men had money in their pockets to buy goods and the farmers were able to fell more bush and restock their farms with cattle.

Joshua became active in all affairs of the district. When in 1873 the first school committee was formed to take over from the Church committee in running the school, Joshua was one of those elected. He also served a long term as Superintendent of the Sunday School of the little Pukekphe (later Pukekohe East)  Church. Despite the settlers' hard lives they found time for social occasions and a report of the annual festival of the Sunday School in 1876, under Joshua's stewardship, shows life was bearable:

The annual festival of the Sunday School under the Superintendance of Mr Joshua Robinson was held on Thursday 17 February.  The weather was superb and it was quite a gala day, a general holiday being observed. The numbers of youngsters was extraordinary. There must have been 200 children present and nearly 100 of older growth. All were welcome and there were many visitors.

I have been furnished with the amount of eatables consumed on that occasion.... There were 200 ham sandwiches, 200 buns, 150 fruit pies, 3 dozen loaves, 50 pounds of cake (22.5 kg), 8 pounds of butter, 20 pounds of sugar, 3 pounds of tea, 5 buckets of milk, 20 pounds of lollies, and 20 pounds of nuts. The cost of the feast was about 10  pounds ($20).

The first local body in the Franklin area was the Pukekohe Road Board. For some of the far flung settlements and farms the roads and tracks were their lifeline, the only means of communication with neighbours and supply from town. Joshua served time on this important body too.

He continued to farm at Pukekohe East until 1880, when at the age of sixty-nine he and Elizabeth returned to Auckland to live in Elizabeth St Ponsonby.

Joshua's Baptist religion was always a guiding light and he was one of four (another being his son-in-law, William Morgan) who founded the Baptist Church in Auckland. He served as Senior Deacon of the Auckland Tabernacle and was a constant attender of Sunday and weekday services, walking over two miles to and from to attend, even up to the week before he died.

Back in 1842 he had been one of the founders of the Auckland Total Abstinence Society and became a Trustee of the property, of the association's Central Mission or Temperance Hall in Albert Street.

His obituary in the Weekly News described him as 'the father of teetotalism' and he was ranked the 'oldest abstainer in the city'. It further tells 'of a man of unbending integrity who owing to his useful life and simplicity of character was greatly esteemed by all.'

It was only eight years after leaving Pukekohe East that Elizabeth died at the age of seventy-five, on 29th June and she was taken to be buried at the Church in Pukekohe East. Nineteen years later, on the 7th of June, when Joshua died at the age of eighty-eight, he too was taken from his daughter Sarah and son-in-law George Plummer's residence to the Auckland Railway Station and then on to Pukekohe, 'where settlers who braved the inclement weather were gathered in force to do honour to the departed.' He was buried with Elizabeth, the inscription on their tombstone reading:

IN MEMORY

of

ELIZABETH

Beloved wife of

JOSHUA ROBINSON

Who Died June 29 1888

aged 76 years

He giveth his beloved rest

Erected by her loving grandchildren

ALSO

JOSHUA ROBINSON

Her Husband Died 7 June 1899

aged 88 years

'For ever with the Lord'

Family History 4.36

Robinson story

Joanne Robinson picks up the account of Joshua Caleb's early life

After the War

The visit of the Maoris that Joshua Caleb relates and the first signs of trouble occurred in 1860. It was not loing after this that the families received word it would be dangerous to remin in the bush and the women and children in particular should be removed. They buried many of their possessions in the garden and had a hard time of it getting to Drury along the muddy road. This warning proved to be a false alarm and after three weeks the Governor issued a notice for 'the settlers to return to their homes.' So once more they set out for Pukekohe.

In May 1863 war was declared in Taranaki and by July the Waikato war had begun. The Robinsons and Morgans did not immediately leave their farms, however when another settler and his fourteen year old son were found murdered at Ramarama, word was circulated around the isolated homes and the Pukekohe settlers mustered at Runciman's property, three quarters of a mile north of the church.

They were refused a military escort by the army authorities and the Government did not seem interested in the settlers, so leaving their cattle and stores behind they once again made their way over the narrow bush track to Drury, where they took refuge in the Presbyterian Church.

 

Joshua and family along with Jane and family spent the rest of the war period in Auckland, with Joshua again working as a carpenter as there was no income from the bush property. It was probably during this period of time in town that the older girls met their prospective husbands through the Baptist Church.

 

[There is a story in our family that when the family arrived in Auckland from Pukekohe East in 1863 they stayed in the stone cottage in Mt Eden Road opposite Onslow Road. - FG]

 

Joshua seems to have remained impartial on the Maori question. He had often  attended to sick children and injured Maori people prior to hostilities commencing, and the nikau whare was used as a casualty station by both sides during the fighting. A taiaha along with a Maori mat was left across the doorstep as a sign of friendship and protection. This taiaha is still in the possession of the family. The house was never damaged and Joshua was indeed fortunate as most of the other settlers' houses were destroyed, and for many it meant starting again from scratch at the end of the war.

 

William Morgan did not return to his farm until January 1865 and it is assumed Joshua returned at much the same time. The families returned later that year, Elizabeth and the children to a new seven-roomed house. Its weatherboards were of pit-sawn totara and were morticed together instead of being nailed.

 

In front of the house are Watkin's wife: Mary Helen, and children: William, Archie, Helen, Colin and Ivan

Archie was killed in action in World War I; Colin became a teacher and was Deputy Principal at Takapuna Grammar School when I was on section there from Training College in 1955.

[Joanne, who compiled the book from which these extracts have been taken, married Alan Robinson, whose father, Stan, was the eldest son of Joshua William, whose father, Watkin, was Joshua Caleb's younger brother. Interesting from our family's point of view is that Alan's mother was a Barriball, a great-grand-daughter of Margaret's great-great-grandfather's brother. He settled in Auckland, and eventually in Waiuku. -FG]

Democracy in action

Labour's Leadership Race

Last night we attended the Hustings meeting in New Plymouth to hear the four candidates for the Labour Party Leadership.

Here is the Daily News report of the meeting:

http://www.stuff.co.nz/taranaki-daily-news/10713411/Taranaki-unsure-on-Labour-race

Leadership is a fascinating idea. What are the essentials for a successful leader? There seem to be as many answers to this question as people who ask it.

Certainly these four people are all good contenders.

If you look at paper qualifications, CV and so on, you have to put David Parker high on the list. He has run the largest law firm in the South Island, led business start-ups from Go to success, and been an effective minister in a previous Labour Government. But he gives an unsettling impression of holding back, of being a little diffident, which doesn't impress some of those who are looking for a forceful, decisive front man.

Nanaia Mahuta comes across as a person of the people. She hails from Huntly, after her childhood education in the UK; she knows what it is like to deal with the problems of living in a regional industrial centre. She carries the important contribution of being a woman, Maori and, in the old cliché, she calls a spade a spade. Because of the high proportion of Labour Party members who have Maori or other minority (eg Indian) backgrounds, she has a claim for support as leader.

When Andrew Little stands up to speak, he immediately takes control. And he kicks off his speech with a joke, which has the audience relaxing. He, too, has an impressive record: former President of the party, former EPMU General Secretary who knocked heads together and drove a fractured organisation to become the most effective union in the country, and the only contender who has talked to every one of his caucus colleagues. Later on his voice tended to turn hoarse, and he sometimes drops it so low as to be inaudible at the back of the conference room.

Grant Robertson is the candidate who claims to represent a new generation of leadership, and certainly something has to change if Labour is to return to its former status as an effective political force. With Jacinda Ardern as his preferred running-mate, he should certainly appeal to a wide cross-section, both inside and outside the party. Friendly and personable, he presents as an ordinary bloke, although I think his brain and past achievements are far from ordinary, and I voted for him last time. Don't write him off in the future, even if this time round the popular vote goes to one of the others!

Whichever party you support, leadership is a key issue. Do you favour a Muldoon-type tyrant or a Bolger-type friendly Kiwi person? I have always preferred the clear thinking of a Bill English to the sloppiness and vagueness of a John Key. Obviously lots of people disagree. Key clearly strikes a chord with them.

Some day I'll post my conclusions on this conundrum, if I reach any in  this lifetime!

Family History 4.35

Robinson story

Joshua Caleb's account

War comes to Pukekohe East

On 15th July 1853, Father went to Drury and on attempting to return home was stopped by a squad of soldiers., who informed him that as some men had been killed by the Maoris, it would be dangerous to go on, so he must stay in the township. When he told them of us left at home however, they allowed him to pass.

Immediately he arrived with his news we made preparations to leave the house. Having buried the crockery and other utensils and warned the settlers in the immediate vicinity, we left the farm and in company with our neighbours, each burdened with some bundle of supposed necessities, trudged out towards the open, eventually stopping for the night at Mr Runciman's farm.

Jane Morgan

My eldest sister (Aunt Jane) was carrying someone's little child. After a time a neighbour took the child and gave her his gun to carry instead. She was more scared of that locked gun than of the peril from the Maoris, for we were getting used to Maori scares.

Once before we had left home in a hurry, when we fled and camped for the night at Mr Burt's homestead - a single-storey weather-boarded house with real windows and verandahs!- which seemed to us a very fine residence. When morning came, thirty or forty uninvited guests were assembled there, cold and hungry. Mr Burt came and asked, "Shall I put the potatoes on?" We didn't wait after that but readily accepted a Mrs Luke's invitation to go with her and share a meal. Mr Burt was afterwards referred to locally as 'Shall-I-put-the-potatoes-on?' with the emphasis on the 'shall'.

In the little church, the one meeting place of the scattered settlers of the Pukekohe East district, the service was drawing to a close. The small congregation rose to sing the last hymn of the morning service, and then after a short prayer began slowly to saunter out.

As the first boy reached the door he turned back and said, "Look! Soldiers!" These were troublesome times, for the Maoris were unsettled, so the troops in their red tunics came straggling slowly along the bush road in front of the little church on their way to Tuakau. Their intention was to push the natives across the Waikato and to keep them out of mischief there. It was supposed to be a surprise attack, but there was not the least element of surprise in it, for the Maoris being as good scouts as fighters knew of their approach almost as soon as it began.

Before leaving Ramarama the soldiers had been served out a three days ration, which included a three days supply of rum. Now in those days rum was to a soldier what sweets are to a small boy of today, an irresistible temptation, something to be got outside of as soon as possible, and so many of those straggling past our little group of worshippers were the worse for drink. As they passed along the track, those whose bush sections were in that direction made haste to follow them.

To march along with the soldiers is great fun to some people, especially small boys, and I was not fourteen years of age. My brothers and sisters and I followed on for about a mile until we came to our home. This spectacle of a portion of Her Majesty's Army was to us in our lonely lives a great event, so we talked of soldiers all that day. Meanwhile the troops passed on to Tuakau, but instead of surprising the natives, a surprise awaited them, the Maoris knowing what the soldiers purposed, and becoming incensed at such action, had moved quietly away and by taking a Maori track had been travelling parallel to the English troops, but in the opposite direction.

Family History 4.40

Robinson story

adapted from Robinsons of Rotherhithe and family traditions

 

Joshua Caleb's Family

 

When the family returned to Auckland during the wars of the sixties, Joshua Caleb stayed there, and did his training as a painter and paperhanger with his brother-in-law, Charles Hill of Hill and Plummer. During the next ten years he prospered because by 1875 he had acquired two properties, one in Wellesley Street and a three-roomed house in Wellington Place.

 

He married on 13 April 1875 from Wellesley Street. His bride was Mary Ann Meneer Tremain, the eldest child of Edwin and Ann (nee Meneer) Tremain, who emigrated in the late fifties from Cornwall. The village they came from is Egloshale, now almost a suburb of Wadebridge. Egloshale is built around a street that runs away from the Camel river from the village church. Its name means 'Church by the river'.

 

When Mary Ann was a girl, her task on Saturday mornings was to help her mother to carry sand from the river so that, after they had swept up the last week's sand from the mud floor of the kitchen, a new clean lot of sand could be spread in a traditional pattern for the next week. Kel Tremain was another later member of the family.

 

The wedding took place at the Beresford Street Congregational Chapel, and they set up house in the Wellesley Street property. The first decade of married life saw four children arrive: Edwin in 1876 (he died of TB in 1904), Felicia Ann Tremain in 1878 (who married William Bigelow), Harold in 1880 (he was killed at Messines in August 1917), and Ernest in 1884 (a teacher for many years in the Waikato).

 

In 1885 the family moved to Jervois Road, Ponsonby, and Joshua ran his business from there. The shop was valued at 28 pounds ($56) and another building in College Road at 22 pounds ($44). His staff varied from two to twenty, depending on the amount of work. Five more children were born there: Caroline in 1885 (later Mrs Judd, who we used to visit at Matawai, in the hills west of Gisborne), Watkin 1890 (who married Dora but had no children), Arthur, who only lived seven months in 1893, Harvey in 1895 (father of Owen, Graham and Pam, Mrs Poole, wife of Richie), and Amy Emma Jane in 1898.(Mrs Noble).

 

In 1912, Joshua and Mary Ann moved to Seymour Street in Ponsonby, although they still carried on the business from the Jervois Road property. Joshua had also bought property at Waikumete. His properties were worth 900 pounds ($1800) by this time.

 

Their last move was to Westminster Road, Mt Eden and it was there that Mary Ann died in 1916. Joshua moved to 17 Banks Street, next door to his brother-in-law John Newman. For the rest of his life he lived with Felicia Ann and William and their family. He died in April 1927.

 

He was very involved with both the Baptist Church and the temperance movement.

 

The village of Egloshale, looking down the street towards the church and the Camel River

 

 

Family History 4.34

Robinson story

Joshua Caleb's account continues

Farming at Pukekohe East

Near the house we had a pig tethered. In good condition too. But one night he got away into the bush trailing his legrope behind him, and though we hunted everywhere we could not find him. Months later we discovered him minus the leg on which the rope had been, calmly eating our vegetables and stumping along on his remaining three legs.

One wet day some time afterwards while some men were out pig hunting their dogs ran down and killed a three-legged pig, which turned out to be our Stumpy. Word was sent to Father and off we went to get him. When we reached the spot there was another pig smelling round old Stumpy. The dogs gave chase and after an exciting hue and cry the porker was cornered and killed. Alas! This was no wild pig but Mr Morgan's sow Lady Grey. Of course the men were disappointed so Father gave them half of Stumpy, and the other half, which lacked a ham, we carried home for ourselves. No-one could call Stumpy a profitable pig.

It was at this time that the Maoris began to get dissatisfied, and rumours of their dissatisfaction grew apace. To try to discover the truth of these rumours Father went one day to see some neighbours. As I was making my way through the bush that day, I came across a group of natives talking excitedly and immediately made for home and told Mother what I had seen. This made us very anxious till Father came home.

He had not been in the house long before the Maoris came trooping in and behaved in a very threatening manner, evidently disappointed to find Father at home. They cast covetous eyes at our stock of goods which lay on slabs across the roof beams, but not being sure of their position, they took nothing and after a time went off. They tried to persuade Father to go to tuakau with them, but presently two of the party whom we knew warned him not to do so, as that place was full of troublesome Waikatos. Moreover they promised that if there were any danger in the future, to give us warning in good time.

For three years we worked on the farm growing crops of wheat and oats and grass seed, chiefly rye and cocksfoot. The grass we cut with a sickle, tied into bundles, and threshed with flails. The seed we harvested, sold readily, and the money so gained was very welcome.

Each year we felled more bush, all hands participating in the work, the girls chopped the underscrub while Father and we boys felled the trees. The bush was beautiful from a scenic point of view, but individual trees, especially giant ratas, were very hard to fell. We felled everything. Nowadays it is the custom to chop only trees up to three feet in diameter (900mm), but in my young days everything from the slender tangled supplejack to the giant rimu and rata had to be felled.

Sometimes, sheltered by surrounding trees we would come upon luxurious groves of the nikau palm. It seemed a shame to destroy such stately loveliness. The solemn stillness in these sequestered places, the subdued light filtering through the arched fronds of the nikaus, the many columns of the pillared like trunks, reminded me of some stately cathedral or temple of the gods. Such groves are to be found only in  the sheltered places of the bush, the wind scarred veterans sometimes found in cleared places are lone survivors, bravely striving against the wear and tear of the unkind elements. To behold these delicate palms in all their pristine loveliness, seek them in some sheltered nook, the holy of holies as it were, of the bush.

When at times we desisted from our toil, we boys found refreshment in the pith of the leaf butts of the nikau, and in  times in the fleshy inflorescence of the tawhara. The first was a nutty flavoured substance, the second a good substitute for a vanilla ice.  We always had sufficient to eat, but our youthful appetites welcomed anything edible the bush contained, as an addition to our diet.

More Travel

Maragaret's Fiftieth

A Quick Trip to Aussie

 

Margaret decided she didn’t want a party this time, but instead wanted to celebrate with her brother and sister-in-law in Noosa. John and Stella had at last settled there, and John was commuting to Gympie where he was working for a private organisation which had taken over the Commonwealth job creation and training functions. We also took Marg's Mum, Ruby, with us; she stayed with John and Stella for another couple of weeks after we had moved on to Sydney. 

 

We all celebrated Marg's birthday at the local Surf Club and you can see us in the photo waiting for our lunch to be served.

 

As it turned out, friends from New Plymouth, Ian and Jocelyn Gabites, were also holidaying on the Sunshine Coast and they joined us on several occasions.One day we went for a tramp with them through the National Park, the photo caught us discussing which track to follow.

We visited the area with John and Stella, the highlight of our stay being a trip to Fraser Island, which has the distinction of being the largest sand island in the world. We saw a stream which flowing quietly over its sand bed, but we had to concentrate and look very carefully to see that there was any water at all. We caught sight of a dingo in the distance on the beach, and a wreck on the sand about the high-tide mark.

 

To reach Fraser Island we travelled by bus up the road north and then caught a ferry over the short channel between the Queensland mainland and the island. The photo shows me with the bus waiting on the beach to board the ferry. Our journey home was along the long straight beach on the coast north of Noosa to Teewantin, which is a western suburb of Noosa town.

 

Another very interesting trip John and Stella took us on went to a local lookout at the top of Mt Tinbeerwah, and then to see some of the projects John had been working on with the trainees his company was working with: a tourist steam railway project, and the refurbishment of several country community halls, like this one.

After four days in Noosa, John and Stella drove us to Nambour, where we caught a local train to Brisbane, to stay in an inner city hotel, and the next morning we walked over to the main station to board the Express service for Sydney. This train travels on a newly-built standard-gauge line between the two capital cities, and covers the hilly country to the south of Brisbane and then across the more open country in Northern New South Wales. Queensland normally uses the same gauge as New Zealand (just over a metre), while NSW has the winder standard gauge (about 1400 mm).

By the evening we had reached the coast at Coff’s Harbour, where we stopped for a couple of nights to explore the district. We liked Coff’s Harbour, it reminded us of home. There were banana plantations nearby and a sheltered marina in the harbour itself. 

 

We hired a car (a Kar as it turned out) and drove around the district. In the process we caught up with one of Margie's second cousins, Blair Burnard, and his family for morning tea. Again the local Surf Club was a good place to socialise.

The next day we continued our train trip, eventually reaching the Hunter Valley and the last leg to Sydney, where Terry and the grandchildren met us and took us to their newly-acquired house in Cammeray, near the public school the children were attending at that stage. 

 

The highlight of our stay in Sydney (Karen was visiting her folks in the UK) was a day trip to see our friends, Bev and Les Glover in Orange. Fortunately, there is an express train service to Dubbo and back each day, so we were able to leave Sydney around 7 am, spend four hours on the train to Dubbo, have four hours in Orange over lunch, and return to Sydney in the late afternoon. 

 

 

We took the three grandchildren with us on this journey, and we all enjoyed the day. Bev had made special preparations to entertain the children, including giving Nina a quick lesson on her piano, and showed us the town and the mountain view. The photo shows us at the top. Bev told us they have snow on this mountain in the winter.

 

 

The kids loved the train trip, as you can see from the photo of them on the train, and so did we. We caught sight of kangaroos in the paddocks. The rail line passed quite close to the stadium being built at Homebush for the Olympic Games.

 

 

Another day we had friends Martien and Anne Kelderman, who were living and working in Sydney, come and visit us over coffee.

 

 

So you can see we packed quite a lot of social activity in to our few days in Australia - it was a fitting celebration for an active half-century!

 

 

 

Frank, Margie, Penny 6, Nina 10, Terry, and Rowan 8.

 

Family History 4.33

Robinson story

Joshua's account

A New Farm

Runciman's farm, where our goods were stored, was partly cleared and near the house a fine orchard had been planted. Father had had fifteen acres of bush felled, but when we arrived we felled a small area of light bush that grew on the top of a hill. Here we built our first house of the stems of fern trees or punga, placed upright in the ground. Along their tops we placed pole plates, roof beams and rafters fashioned from small saplings, and thatched the roof with the leaves of the nikau palm.

At one end of the house was a big wooden chimney, the lower part and the hearth lined with stones, and the fireplace would hold a log of generous proportions. There was no stove but we had camp ovens. At first the house floor was of earth, but as Mother did not like it, Father split palings and put a floor down and also lined Mother's room. There were three rooms in all, with two nikau whares as store rooms.

One of the first jobs we had was to make a garden. It was hard work getting out the green stumps and roots, but at last a small patch was cleared and thoroughly cultivated with spade and hoe. Father split more palings with which we completely fenced the garden to keep wild pigs and other animals out. We sowed potatoes and other vegetables suitable to the climate and ground, and on the new soil grew some excellent crops. We planned an orchard too, and I have never tasted such luscious peaches as those we eventually obtained from our peach trees.

About March of that first year on the farm we burnt the fifteen acres felled by the bushmen before our arrival. When most of it had gone up in smoke and flames, all members of the family who could be spared for outside work, had to busy themselves in logging up and making fresh fires of half burned wood, until everything except the stumps was cleared up. Father who was a very strong man excelled at this work, using a sapling about fifteen feet long (4.5 m) in logging up. Before leaving town he was of generous proportions, but the strenuous work on the farm soon took away flabbiness and he looked what he was, a strong healthy man.

The bushmen who had felled our bush, had known that Father was a Baptist and a religious man, so they carved what I suppose were to them humorous verses on the trunks of several prominent trees. One I can remember was:

"Stop, sinner, stop! Before you go.

Else you will fall into eternal woe."

And another:

"The way to Jordan."

We sowed wheat and oats and grass on the bush burn and got good results. The wheat and oats we threshed with flails, and ground the wheat into flour in a steel hand mill. From this flour we made our own bread in  a camp oven.

As we had a goat and two kids we were able to have milk. There was such an abundance of food in the bush that the goat would come home groaning at every step, with sides so distended as to appear on the point of exploding. We imagined our garden safe from prowling animals, but one morning we saw the goat followed by her two kids walking serenely along the top of the fence. They certainly looked ornamental, but the sight was displeasing as it showed the garden was not as secure as we believed.

Family History 4.32

Robinson story

Joshua Caleb continues:

Pukekohe East

When I had been at Mr Stables' school some four years, my father, who had been doing very well in his carpentry business, decided to go farming, mainly for religious reasons. There had been some trouble in the church he attended and his faith in a minister had been shattered. In order to get away from the worry of it all, he and his son-in-law, Mr Morgan, bought a farm at Pukekohe, which now belongs to two of their descendants. (Uncle Watkin and cousin Tom Morgan).

William Morgan

[A letter from the Commissioner of Crown Lands, Auckland, dated 15 June 1861, states that on the 16 April 1858, an allotment 26, Parish of Pukekohe, containing 220 acres, was disposed of by William Aitken to Joshua Robinson, carpenter, William Morgan, compositor, and James Hamilton, baker, all of Auckland, as tenants in common for consideration of 221 pounds ($442). On the morning before Christmas 1858 these three set out for Papakura by conveyance, then walked to Walter Runciman's, one to two miles from their farm. They stayed over night and next morning went to see their farm, then walked back to Auckland.

On February the 29th 1859 the land was divided into individual lots. On the 5th of October of that year, Joshua, Ellen Robinson and William Morgan (Jane Elizabeth's husband) set out, staying again at Runciman's overnight, to take up residence on their land. The next seven weeks were spent clearing land, building two houses (raupo whares) and planting potatoes.

On the 29th of November James Hamilton disposed of his share of the farm to Joshua and William, who divided it in two so each had 110 acres with a road frontage. In the first week of December both families left town for the bush. Of Joshua's children William was 22 and would marry in another two years, Elizabeth was 19, Ellen 15, Sarah 12, Joshua 10, Watkin 8, Amy 3 and Jane the eldest married to William Morgan had four children, Thomas 5, Ellen 3, Joshua 2 and Eliza nine months.]

In those days there was a railway to Onehunga, but only a coach service to the road end at Drury. Before leaving town Mother presented her friends with a collection of Island curios - native spears, clubs, shells, bows and arrows and a remarkable bamboo flute which the natives play with the nose. These had been given her from time to time by two apprentices of the mission ship John Williams, who visited us whenever the ship came to Auckland.

Having taken the coach to Drury, we there hired a cart to take our goods to Runciman's farm, about two miles from the bush farm which was to be our new home. On one part of the journey we crossed what was known as Swing-Swong Bridge. It was a primitive structure, bridging a small creek a few yards wide. Poles had been laid across the creek from bank to bank, ti-tree spread across these, then a layer of earth, more manuka, and another layer of earth on top. This was neither a strong looking nor an imposing structure. The coachman, who seemed to have his doubts about it, whipped up his horses before coming to it and crossed over as quickly as possible, hoping, I suppose, that if anything did break, their speed would carry us across to safety. Now a solid concrete bridge carries the heaviest traffic on the South Road, across the gap that Swing-Swong once spanned.

Family History 4.31

Robinson story

Joshua Caleb's account continues

Joshua Caleb as a boy

Shortly before we again shifted, first to Parnell and then to Victoria Street, I had my first adventure. A long flight of steps led up to the front of our house and down this I rolled and broke my nose. Mother made it shapely again by often pinching and pressing it.

My first school was one conducted under the auspices of the Wesleyan Church, by a Mr Singer. His assistant, Miss Phillips, was the infant teacher. Our tuition cost a shilling a week (10 cents). Afterwards I was sent to a secular (ie non-denominational) school conducted by Mr Stables.

We boys on the way to school passed the gaol, then at the foot of Victoria Street, but although we have seen the scaffold being erected never witnessed an execution, as Mother kept us at home until the victim had paid his debt. Men were hanged in the public view as the sight was supposed to act as a deterrent to any would-be criminal. Public hangings were abolished when the gaol moved to its present site at Mt Eden.

At Mr Singer's school the elder boys sometimes taught the younger ones. On one such occasion the boy in charge summoned me to come out and be caned. There was a screen drawn across the middle of the room dividing the boys from the girls, but of course the girls had means of looking through it. My sister, then a big girl, heard this boy call me out and cane me. Immediately she left her place in class, walked up to the boy in charge of we youngsters and administered summary justice, by soundly slapping his face.

I was once very fond of a new velvet cap, so looked about at school for a new peg on which to hang it. When time of dismissal came I had forgotten where I put it. While I was hunting for it a boy gave me a shove and my ear hit hard on one of the wooden hat pegs. It caused me considerable pain, both then and a long time afterwards. Of course I forgot all about the cap.

When at Mr Stables' school he promised that anyone who could get to the top of his class and remain there for three days, would be promoted to the next class. I managed to stay at the top of my class for the required period, but because some of my work was not up to the required standard, he neglected to promote me. I remember the great anguish of soul I experienced over it, but although I thought it was an injustice at the time maybe it was for my good.

Mr Stables was a strict disciplinarian, yet once I placed several matches on the floor in such a way that anyone walking out would stand on them and cause them to explode. By and by a boy was called out , and at almost every step, bang went a match. There was a great uproar and I felt very guilty but of course when the teacher asked for the culprit I knew nothing of it. However someone told on me and I received the punishment so richly deserved.

I remember someone threw a cap up so that it lodged on the wall between the weatherboards and the lining, which ceased at about ten feet from the floor. Our teacher, seeing the cap there, determined to find out the perpetrator of this sin against school rules, so kept us in asking occasionally that the guilty party confess. He never did find out , for with evening came our parents wondering whatever could have happened and raised as it were the siege or blockade. I thought then that Mr Stables was very strict and determined, but he had his good points too and often neglected to punish us when we deserved.

We had a habit of doing sums on one side of our slates and of drawing cannon on the other. It was a proud boy that secured a slate pencil with a vein of red running through it, for in odd moments when the master was not too much in evidence, he would draw a cannon. We'd scrape some of the red part of our pencil into powder, place it in the cannon's mouth, then showing it to the next boy blow the powder over him. At times the master would wander casually down and sit beside a boy whom he had seen drawing on  his slate instead of doing his lessons. While examining his work, the master continually pinched the culprit and requested to be shown the work of art on the reverse side of his slate, and then with a final pinch order him to get on with his work.