Family History 1.133

Gaze History:
NSG Memoir

New Zealand at the turn of the Century (Part I)

When Noel was born in Auckland in 1902, New Zealand was celebrating the end of the Boer War, the first time New Zealanders had sailed overseas to fight for their Empire.  A popular Liberal Government had introduced the first version of the Welfare State.  Cities up and down the country were installing electric tramcars as the main form of public transport.  By 1910 the North Island Main Trunk Railway joined Auckland to Wellington by a faster journey than had ever been possible: previously you had to take a train from Wellington to New Plymouth, a steamer from there to Onehunga, and a train the last few miles to Auckland. 

The balance of population and influence was finally tipping away from the south.  In the Nineteenth Century, the economic power was in the hands of South Island people: Dunedin firms, founded and built by the Gold Rushes, later living off the backs of high country sheepfarms, and similarly Canterbury landed wealth, were the background of the leaders of industry and politics. 

But slowly the North Island, by fair means and foul, was being cleared of forests and Maoris, and the dairying industry was beginning to prosper. Kauri extraction, mining, gumfields and flax-farming had all had their day. The first half of the twentieth century saw a massive expansion of investment and effort in the development of small farms each milking cows and supplying a newly-built local dairy factory to churn butter for England. The building of the Main Trunk Railway was the symbol of this growth. 

People now had time for leisure activities. Rugby was a growing sport; bowling greens were being established.  Tennis courts were being put down everywhere.  Women’s sport was on the increase.  Mary and Doris and their friends played basketball (outdoor netball) and tennis.  Mary’s sister, Win, played cricket for Auckland. 

The port of Auckland was becoming a modern centre.  Large wharves were being built along the waterfront to handle the steamers, and multi-storeyed buildings were being built along Queen Street to house the numbers of merchant firms.  Suburbs were spreading out across the farmland to the south of Newmarket and Mt Eden and Grey Lynn. Several suburban boroughs were founded in the first decade of the century: Epsom, Mt Eden, Mt Albert, Onehunga, One Tree Hill.  When Fred and Julia married in the nineties, the new subdivision was at Bellevue Road; by the time Mary’s family moved back to Auckland from New Plymouth twenty years later the growing edge was south of Balmoral Road.