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.