Family History 1.134

Gaze History:

NSG Memoir

New Zealand at the Turn of the Century (Part II)

Again the symbol of this development was the expansion of the tramway system.  What had started as a public horse-drawn transport system to link Auckland with its second suburb of Ponsonby developed into a wide-spread, rail-based, rapid transit system that efficiently moved most of the working population of Auckland from home to workplace in the morning and back home again in the evening.  All by the power of the electric generation station on King’s Wharf. 

On the North Shore the trams when they came would be steam-powered.  But the population was so sparse there that the trams were uneconomical and failed during the depression of the thirties. 

The early years of the century also saw a flourishing of education in Auckland. The previous generation under the Education Act of 1877 had established primary schools throughout the region. The Auckland Grammar School, which had started in the middle of the previous century as a boys school was now co-educational and its buildings covered an extensive site in Symonds Street near the Wellesley Street corner. 

 

By 1916, Noel’s first year of secondary schooling, the imposing new building of Auckland Grammar School in Mountain Road had been built for the boys and before long the girls went off to their own school on the other side of town.  The old site was converted for use as the Auckland University College. New Zealand in those days had two universities: Otago University and the University of New Zealand, which was made up of the Colleges in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.