Family History 1.105

Gaze History:NSG Memoir

76 Kolmar Road, Papatoetoe

Noel in 1965

 

This house had been the homestead of a small farming property on the edge of what was then the Papatoetoe Town District (population 2500). It was about a mile from the railway station, which provided one form of regular transport to the city, and not 500m from the Great South Road at Hunter’s Corner, where half-hourly buses also went to the city. The farmlet had been owned by a distant cousin of Mary’s, named Dreadon. 

When the Gaze family moved there in 1942, the farmlet had just been subdivided and some of the fences had to be moved to the new boundaries.  All around were empty sections right through to Shirley Road, which was then unsealed, and there were no proper footpaths, although there was a rough small-metal footpath running the other side of the street down to Great South Road and then along to the school at St George Street.

 

 

The grass grew high in the summer along the ditches on either side of the streets, and the Great South Road was simply two car widths of concrete roadway.  This was well before the first motorways were built in the late 50s. Housing was interspersed with vacant sections and small grazing areas.  All semi-suburban housing gave out 500m down East Tamaki and other roads to the east.  North of Shirley Road was farmland apart from the Grange Golf Course and the Waitemata Brewery, until you came to the Tamaki River and the beginnings of Otahuhu. 

Kolmar Road house around 2000,

the front porch was open when we lived there

In the other direction, there were several open farmland areas before you came to the denser housing of Papatoetoe proper about 200 metres before the intersection with St George Street opposite the picture theatre. 

The house itself had been built about the time of the First World War, and was spacious indeed after the Ruarangi Road house.  It had a hall as long as a cricket pitch down the centre, which terminated in the bathroom and a back porch.  To the left as you entered the front door, were two bedrooms, and then a passage leading to the side verandah and doorway.  Then another bedroom which opened off the side passage.  Behind that, and opening off the back porch, was another small room. 

To the right of the front door was another bedroom and behind that a large lounge ending in a bay window, and with a verandah opening along the eastern side of the front bedroom.  Behind the lounge was the living room, with a totally enclosed verandah off it.  This verandah had windows round two sides and served as a dining room.

 

Behind the living room was the kitchen which gave access through the back door to the back porch.  Across the yard from the back porch (which was glassed in) was another building, containing the washhouse and lavatory.  The lavatory even had a concrete waiting area under cover which was useful if it was raining and someone else was in residence.  The yard which separated the two buildings was concreted. 

To the west of the washhouse building and a little way away was the garage and a second smaller shed. The main garage was directly level with the front gate and was approached by a long drive.

The total section area was more than 3000m³; to the west of the drive was a row of native trees and a row of orange trees. Other trees and ornamental shrubs were scattered around the flat lawn areas. 

At the back of the section was a fenced-off area which became the chicken-run; it had been part of the house-paddock for the cow while the farmlet had been operating. 

In order to buy this new property, Noel had to raise a mortgage from the Auckland Savings Bank, and Mary’s great-uncle Albert Brown, who was a member of the Board of the Bank, came to inspect the property.