Family History 4.28

Robinson story

from Robinsons of Rotherhithe by Joanne Robinson

Joshua Caleb's diary continues

 

Joshua Caleb

Early Parnell

After a great deal of searching and enquiring Father secured a small house in Parnell on the track which was then the road to Onehunga.

[This house that Joshua Caleb refers to, was not the house they lived in when first landing, but the allotments Joshua and Caleb purchased from Mr Beveridge on which they built two small houses. A type of class distinction evolved in early Auckland with Official Bay being kept for officials and government people. A passport from the Surveyor-General was required to live there.

Mechanics Bay was kept for mechanics, ie carpenters, those with a trade as opposed to farmers and labourers. The only place available for these people was Commercial Bay or further out into the bush. The main traffic route was across a bridge at the eastern end of Mechanics Bay, up Mechanics hill to the village of Parnell and then along the track, later to be the Manukau or Epsom Road to Onehunga.

Later still rocks were blasted out of Khyber Pass to make a more convenient direct route. Joshua and Caleb's houses were built on this main Parnell route. They had both done well to secure for themselves such a position and to obtain so much work, as Auckland at the end of 1842 was in a major depression.]

Having settled Mother and the children in their new home, Father proceeded to Cornwallis on the Manukau Harbour. He had to walk to Onehunga (then a Maori pa) and then travel by canoe to Cornwallis where his company's timber mill was to be erected. The work lasted some six months or so and then ceased, for the mill management found that the machinery or the methods employed were not suitable, and that for a time at any rate, it was useless to continue operations.

The situation of the Onehunga pa was ideal. The soil was rich, volcanic and very productive. Fresh water was plentiful. The sea in the vicinity made travelling to distant parts by canoe easy. The Maoris from this locality used to travel long distances. To get in to the interior they paddled their canoes to Waiuku, or some creek in that vicinity, until they could proceed no further by water. Then they would drag their canoes across the flat land between the Manukau and the Waikato River until they could launch them again, and by ascending that river, penetrate far into the interior.

By making this portage from Waiuku, the Maoris were able to use the great arterial waterway, without undertaking the hazardous task of crossing the Manukau and Waikato bars, and avoided the voyage down the boisterous West Coast.

The abandonment of Cornwallis was unfortunate, for work was extremely scarce, and men were glad to get work roadmaking at half a crown [25 cents]  a day. Food produced locally was cheap enough, but money was far from plentiful. Supplies of flour and other goods came from Sydney and even England, so that the price of imported foodstuffs, clothing, tools, etc, was so high as to be beyond the means of the majority of settlers.

As the natives supplied wild pork, potatoes and fish fairly cheaply and Mother kept a few milking goats and some fowls, we had plenty to eat and drink, but to buy clothes and other necessities ready money was needed. For this reason Mother, for a time, undertook light duties at Government House, at that time the residence of Governor Fitzroy. She always bore a scar on her hand caused through the smashing of a window pane that she was cleaning there.