TCDC Theme 5 Mind and Body 11-6-10 - Thames

5. Mind and Body
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5.1 The Arts
Since the mid-19
th
century the Thames-Coromandel district has been a magnet for artists and
writers seeking creative inspiration or a refuge from metropolitan life. Lower land prices, beautiful
scenery, and a benign climate have traditionally attracted many talented, thoughtful people to the
Peninsula.
Visual artists, both professional and amateur, have long taken the seascapes and landscapes of
th
the Peninsula as subjects for their work. Castle Rock was particularly attractive to 19 century
artists schooled in the picturesque and sublime traditions of landscape painting, in which
panoramic views conveyed the majesty of nature in contrast with man’s puny presence within it.
Fig. 1: Charles Blomfield Coromandel scene showing Castle Rock, a river and bush 1878
Alexander Turnbull Library G-468
1
J.B.C. Hoyte, [Miners' slab huts in a bush clearing, Coromandel district. Between 1864 and 1867] Alexander Turnbull
Library A-234-012.
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Auckland painter Alfred Sharpe’s watercolour of Castle Rock framed by a grove of kauri came to
be regarded ‘as among the best of nineteenth century landscape productions in this part of the
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world.’ Charles Blomfield, best known for his paintings of the famous Pink and White Terraces of
Lake Rotomahana, chose the same subject for his oil painting Castle Rock, Coromandel, sunrise,
from the Mercury Bay track, painted in 1888 and acquired by the Auckland Art Gallery in the
following year. The Gallery’s curatorial note describes Blomfield as ‘a self-taught painter, [who]
first took up painting while on the Coromandel mining for gold in the late 1860s’. It also suggests
that the ‘scene is a memory from the time spent camping in the bush and exploring the area.’
3
During his time in the district as Commissioner of Goldfields (1852-1853) Charles Heaphy also
painted Castle Rock. In a different vein his 1852 cartoon series ‘How we went to the diggings and
what we did there’ provides a humorous depiction of the arrival of the crew of the Pandora at
Thames. The first of these watercolours is described as ‘A line of naval officers being carried from
a rowboat to the shore, three climbing the rocks beyond, with digging equipment. A number are
falling in the water and all have humorous captions applied to them, including “ye dog Robert”.’
4
Fig. 2: Charles Heaphy Ye landing of ye diggers 1852, watercolour. Alexander Turnbull Library E-299-001.
2
Roger Blackley ‘New Light on Alfred Sharpe’ Art New Zealand 7 (1977) pp. 46-51, p. 49. Sharpe’s painting ‘Castle Rock,
Coromandel’ is reproduced on page 51.
3
Castle Rock, Coromandel, sunrise, from the Mercury Bay track http://collection.aucklandartgallery.govt.nz accessed
9/6/09.
4
http://tapuhi.natlib.govt.nz accessed 19/8/09.
103
Another notable colonial painter, John Hoyte, took the Coromandel for his subject in several
paintings completed during his travels around New Zealand in the 1860s. The painting shown
here (Fig. 3) depicts the hills above Thames looking south across the Hauraki Plains. Dwarfed by
an apparently limitless landscape setting are three miners working outside their mine, while other
small figures cluster about a tent and cooking fire.
Fig. 3: JBC Hoyte Gold mining near Kopu c.1868 Watercolour, with Waihou and Piako Rivers in the distance.
Alexander Turnbull Library C-052-009.
From the 1860s photography was also employed to record the scenic beauty of the region. The
Rev. Dr John Kinder used the fledgling art to capture views such as that in the albumen print
Tapu, Coromandel Peninsula (c. 1868). This work was included in an exhibition of Kinder’s
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painting and photographs held at the Auckland Art Gallery in 2004. A number of Kinder’s
photographs of Coromandel bush scenes are also held by the University of Otago Library in
Dunedin. Kinder’s Coromandel watercolours, including Mercury Island (1857) and Waiau Sawmill,
Coromandel (1861), record a more idealized, serene landscape than in his photographs, although
he was also interested in drawing scenes of topographic interest (Fig. 4).
Fig. 4: John Kinder Entrance to Tairua River between Paku and Pauanui 1857 Alexander Turnbull Library A-113-036
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‘John Kinder's New Zealand’ http://www.aucklandartgallery.govt.nz/exhibitions/0402kinder.asp accessed 26/7/09.
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Professional photographers James and Joseph Foy were active in Thames from 1872, having
studios in Pollen Street. They recorded many of the town’s worthies, and were present at most if
not all of the celebrations and gatherings in the town and wider district, including race meetings,
picnics and sports meetings. Numerous Europeans and Maori of the area were photographed by
the Foy Brothers for cartes de visite, small portraits printed cheaply on paper that people
exchanged and collected.
Fig. 5: Foy Brothers Portrait of a woman from the Aperahama family of Manaia, Coromandel
Alexander Turnbull Library PA2-0717.
Photographer Thomas Middleton ran the Elite Studio in Coromandel for several years from his
arrival in the town around 1895. But it was not until the decades following World War Two that
the district gained the reputation for local arts and crafts that continues to this day.
Just beyond the southern boundary of the district Waihi schoolteacher and, later, Hamilton art
gallery director, Campbell Smith set the Christian nativity story in the Coromandel in the late
1950s. In Smith’s series of wood engravings the Holy Family travels from the west coast of the
Coromandel through the Karangahake Gorge to Waihi. Smith has created other engravings with
Coromandel subjects, including a bushman’s cottage at Tairua (1959), a portrait of James
Mackay (1964), depictions of gum diggers (1966/7), and the hills of Hikuai (1970). His 1957
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engraving of the harbour at Opoutere accompanied a tribute poem written by Smith, who is also a
published playwright, at the time of Michael King’s death in 2004.
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Fig. 6: Campbell Smith Alleluja! from The Journey, A Coromandel Nativity Wood engraving, 1957-8.
Modernist artist May Smith retired to Coromandel in 1967, having been introduced to the
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township by her friend, local GP Dr Deirdre Airey (see below). Having studied at the Elam School
of Art in Auckland and the Royal College of Art, London, Smith was a painter and textile designer
who became part of the Auckland literary and artistic group that formed around A.R.D. Fairburn
and Vernon Brown in the 1950s. Her work was regarded as remarkable for its use of colour and
perspective and is collected by museums and private individuals. A 1968 painting by Smith titled
Relic, which is in Te Papa’s collection, appears to show the crumbling remnants of a verandah on
one of Coromandel’s colonial cottages.
New Zealand painter and composer Michael Smither moved to the Coromandel in 1993. He
works in a variety of media, most notably oils, acrylics, and screenprint. His most popular themes
include domestic life, marine life and conservation, and the New Zealand landscape. Smither
currently lives and works at Otama Beach.
6
See Ann McEwan Lines of Light – the wood engravings of Campbell Smith (Wellington: Steele, Roberts, 2007)
Peter Shaw ‘May Smith: Representation & the Freedom of the Imagination’ Art New Zealand 28 available at
http://www.art-newzealand.com/Issues21to30/smith.htm
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In the past Coromandel gold has also paid for investment in the visual arts outside the district,
most notably to the benefit of the Auckland Art Gallery. Glaswegian Scot James Tannock
Mackelvie, one of the more successful investors in gold mining on the Peninsula, was an avid
collector of furniture, books, paintings, miniatures, textiles, ceramics, mosaics, enamels,
glassware and clocks. He bequeathed his collection to the city of Auckland and it forms an
important part of the decorative arts collection of the Auckland War Memorial Museum, with
bequests of paintings and sculpture held by the Auckland Art Gallery and rare books by the
Auckland City Library.
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Fig. 7: Hotonui Parawai, Thames in 1917. Godber Collection, Alexander Turnbull Library APG-0482-1/2-G
The Ngāti Maru meeting house Hotonui is another artistic and cultural treasure in the Auckland
War Memorial Museum collection; one with a much more direct connection to the Coromandel.
The wharepuni was a gift from Ngāti Awa in 1878 to honour the relationship between that east
coast iwi and Ngāti Maru, which had been cemented by the marriage of Mereana Mokomoko to
Wirope Hotereni Taipari. Mereana’s brother, Wepiha Apanui was the distinguished Ngāti Awa
carver responsible for Hotonui, which later fell into disrepair and was ‘reopened’ in the Auckland
War Memorial Museum under the direction of Wirope’s son Eruini on 29 November 1929.
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8
The Mackelvie Collection, Auckland Museum website, http://www.aucklandmuseum.com/?t=303 accessed 7/10/09.
Angela Ballara ‘Taipari, Eruini Heina 1889/1890?-1956’ Dictionary of New Zealand Biography updated 22 June 2007
available at www.dnzb.govt.nz
9
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One of the first creative industries to establish in the district was that of domestic ware pottery.
William Plant arrived in New Zealand from England in around 1865. An apothecary by trade, he
came from a family of Staffordshire potters. He was living and trading in Mary Street, Thames by
1870, and after testing the suitability of local clays for the manufacture of domestic ware, he
exhibited samples in Australia. In 1879 he approached the New Zealand government for funds to
establish a commercial pottery to produce ceramic electrical insulators but received no response.
His equipment was advertised for sale in May 1880 and he died in 1882. Samples of his work are
held by the Thames School of Mines and the Thames Historical Museum.
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Fig. 8: Driving Creek Pottery and Railway, Coromandel © Anne Challinor 2009
In the 20
th
century another enterprising Coromandel resident had a lot more success with the
district’s clay than poor Mr Plant. In 1961 potter Barry Brickell left Auckland in pursuit of his dream
of earning a living from his craft. He was soon followed to Coromandel by other potters and
craftspeople and thus fostered the Peninsula’s reputation for artists’ studios and craft shops.
Brickell is regarded as New Zealand’s ‘most influential potter of the early 1970s’ and his studioworkshop at Driving Creek, site of a gold rush in the 1860s, became a centre for the revival of the
craft of pottery.
10
11
11
His need to shift large quantities of heavy clay across the difficult terrain of
Gail Henry New Zealand Pottery (Auckland: Reed, 1999) pp. 126-127.
Douglas Lloyd-Jenkins At Home – A Century of New Zealand Design (Auckland: Godwit, 2004) p. 245
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Driving Creek led him to build a small tramway. Expanded and developed, this is now a tourist
attraction in its own right.
Deirdre Airey was a General Medical Practitioner in Coromandel for 25 years (1960-85) and was
inspired by Barry Brickell to express herself through earthenware clay. Working alongside him at
Driving Creek, she produced hundreds of bas-relief tiles with religious themes reflecting her adult
conversion to Catholicism. Airey’s Stations of the Cross are in her parish church, St Colman’s, in
Coromandel. An exhibition to celebrate her work was mounted at Hauraki House in Coromandel
in 2004 and Michael King once described Airey as ‘an influential part of a Coromandel arts and
crafts subculture.’
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Fig. 9: Deirdre Airey The Annunciation undated. Waikato Museum
The Thames goldfields first appear as a fictional setting in 1952 when E.H. Audley’s Islands Float
at Eleven was published, followed by Catherine Hay’s Frenchman’s Gold (1955). In the same
decade a younger readership was catered to with Gypsy Michael by Ronald Syme (1954), in
which a runaway boy escapes from a Maori war party at Opotiki, is aided by the German
missionary Carl Volkner and then finds his way to the goldfields of Thames where further
adventures ensue.
13
12
Rachel Garden et al, ‘Deirdre Airey: Artist in Clay: A Project by the Friends of Deirdre Airey’
www.waikatomuseum.co.nz/ accessed 30 May 2009.
13
Nelson Wattie “Gold” Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature (Auckland: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 209211.
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Historian, cartoonist and novelist James Sanders published High Hills of Gold, described as ‘a
conflict-ridden tale of Thames’, in 1973. Much better known English novelist Fay Weldon visited
Coromandel as a child in 1939 to spend holidays with her father, local general practitioner Dr
Frank Birkinshaw. She recorded memories of the visit in her autobiography Auto da Fey in
2002.
14
Fig. 10: Barry Mitcalfe Uncle and Others 1980
Barry Mitcalfe’s Uncle & Others was published in 1980 by Coromandel Press in conjunction with
Dunedin’s Caveman Press. Mitcalfe and his wife Jacqueline had moved to Coromandel five years
earlier. The book used a pencil drawing by May Smith, Coromandel Hills, as a cover illustration
and featured a poem of the same name. Mitcalfe published six books under the Coromandel
imprint before his death in 1986. The Press operated from the corner of Rings Road and
Frederick Street in Coromandel. Mitcalfe is best remembered for his translations of Maori
literature and for his work as a peace activist and environmentalist. He was a founding member of
the Coromandel Lobby Against Indiscriminate Mining (CLAIM), established in 1979 to stop
opencast gold mining on the Peninsula.
15
Acclaimed biographer and historian Michael King and his wife, book editor Maria Jungowska,
moved permanently to the east coast settlement of Opoutere in 1993. Having first experienced
the Peninsula during a memorable childhood holiday, and again as a young journalist working in
Hamilton concerned about conservation and development, King returned to the Peninsula as a
14
Weldon stayed in the Coromandel Colonial Motel.
Hallie King et al ‘Claim Coromandel Lobby Against Indiscriminate Mining’ In Search of the Rainbow: The Coromandel
Story, ([Auckland]: Wendy Pye, [2002]) pp. 187-188.
15
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refugee from the urban rush. As King described in the 1993 publication The Coromandel,
beginning in around 1983 he and Jungowska bought a section of regenerating bush, ‘built a
house and gradually ordered [our] lives so it would be possible to live and work there.’
16
King and
Jungowska died in a car accident in 2004. Their house is now owned by the University of Waikato
and is used as a writers’ retreat.
Fig. 11: Barry Brickell Michael King and Maria Jungowska Memorial Opoutere 2008
5.2 Sport and Leisure
Prior to the arrival of Europeans, Maori pursued their own traditional sports and leisure activities,
many of which have been revived as part of the contemporary renaissance of Maori culture.
Accounts are to be found in the reports of Pakeha ethnographers and others of Maori enjoyment
of games using string (mahi whai), poi and sticks (tī rākau), as well as dance (haka), and the
singing and composition of many different types of waiata. Haka and waiata were and remain
integral parts of Maori culture, often conveying details of the performer’s whakapapa and usually
composed and performed for specific occasions and then retained as integral part of an iwi or
hapu’s identity.
Song, dance and games were also part of European settler culture. As with Maori, these
pastimes expressed Pakeha heritage and identity and were often performed competitively and on
special occasions, such as anniversaries. The private teaching of music and dance were often
16
Michael King The Coromandel (Auckland: Tandem Press, 1993) p. 26.
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among the first types of lessons to be instituted for children in the new European communities of
the district.
Children’s games were brought with families from the ‘old countries’. Many remain familiar, others
less so, among them kites, spinning tops, hopscotch, marbles, knucklebones, skipping, followthe-leader, rounders, and buttons (played with brass buttons thrown against a wall; the boy
whose button bounced furthest won). Out of school hours, life as a child was an adventure few
modern parents would countenance for their own children:
During the weekend there were hills to climb, and goats to chase with bows and arrows .
. . There was swimming down by the Burke Street Wharf or in the booms near the
racecourse. There were glorious mud fights on the flat near the wharf, with every
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prospect of a hiding when one got home with muddy clothes.
Fig. 12: The Gold Diggers’ Song Sheet music cover, 1868. Alexander Turnbull Library PUBL-0041-1
Hotels and other outlets for the sale of beer and liquor were often among the first commercial
buildings constructed in the new settlements of colonial New Zealand. Shows by travelling
musicians, actors and other performers were always popular, and several hotels included
theatres or halls able to host such performances. Thames and Coromandel benefited from their
17
David Arbury Children on the Goldfield (Thames: Metallum Research, [1999]).
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close proximity to Auckland, which was the principal New Zealand port of entry for Australian and
other international theatrical troupes.
18
At least three theatres opened in Thames during the height of the gold rush. The Shortland Hotel
on the corner of Pollen and Grey Streets, once described as the first ‘proper hotel’ in the town,
was opened by John Butt on 29 August 1867.
19
His American Theatre adjoined the hotel and was
a major venue for performances by entertainers such as Johnnie Hall and his wife Emily
Wiseman.
20
The Theatre Royal in the Royal Hotel in Grahamstown opened with a performance of
Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing. The Royal was described as being ‘crowded nightly and
is unquestionably the only legitimate Temple of Drama in the District [offering] Tragedy, Comedy,
Drama, Opera, Burlesque, and Farce (see Bills of the day). Stalls, 5s; Boxes, 2s; Pit, 1s. No halfprice.’
21
Both the hotel and theatre were destroyed by fire in July 1903.
22
The Academy of Music (or Musical Theatre, as it was also known) was attached to the Pacific
Hotel in Grahamstown and promoted itself as an ‘elegant and popular place of amusement . . .
crowded nightly by an enthusiastic audience’.
Kennedy Family musical companies.
24
23
Performers included the Carandini Family and
The Theatre was also used for lectures and other
functions.
In mid-1869 the goldfields singer and entertainer Charles Thatcher began his third and final tour
of New Zealand in Auckland before moving on to the Thames goldfields. Performing at the
American Theatre, his humorous lectures on life on the Australian goldfields, illustrated with 15
large scenes painted on canvas, proved very popular, as did his support acts, his wife Madame
Annie Vitelli, a soprano singer, and the pseudo-Irish comedian Joe Small.
25
As Eldred-Grigg
reports in his Diggers Hatters & Whores, Thatcher had taken the Thames-Coromandel gold fields
as a subject for his wit when he visited Otago in 1862:
That Coromandel is a hoax
There can’t be any doubt
And shipping agents foster it
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By sticking bills about.
18
Howard McNaughton ‘Drama’ Oxford History of New Zealand Literature (Auckland: Oxford University Press, 1998) p.
323.
19
Althea Barker ‘Thames Hotels’ www.thetreasury.org.nz accessed 4/10/09.
20
LP O'Neill (ed.) Thames Borough Centenary Souvenir (Thames: Thames Star, 1973) p. 29.
21
‘Thames Illustrated Mining Map, Published by E. Wayte’, Ref. Auckland City Library, NZ Map Number 4531, transcribed
at http://freepages.history.rootsweb.ancestry.com/ accessed 3/10/09.
22
Zelma Williams and Johnny Williams Thames and the Coromandel Peninsula: 2000 years (Thames: Williams
Publishers, 1994) p. 161.
23
‘Thames Illustrated Mining Map, Published by E. Wayte’.
24
O’Neill, p. 29.
25
Herbert Roth ‘Thatcher, Charles Robert’ in A. H. McLintock (ed.) An Encyclopedia of New Zealand (1966)
http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/ updated 22 April 2009.
26
Hugh Anderson The Colonial Minstrel (Melbourne: F.W. Cheshire, 1960) p. 124, quoted in Stevan Eldred-Grigg,
Diggers, Hatters & Whores: The Story of the New Zealand Gold Rushes (Auckland: Random House, 2008) p. 164.
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Thatcher was reacting to a view common at the time in Otago, largely promulgated by the Otago
Daily Times and expressed by diggers from the Otago field who were disappointed after travelling
to the northern fields following inflated reports of gold in the Auckland papers. When the
Koputuaki field was opened later in 1862, it too proved a chimera, with little gold and that found of
poor quality.
In Coromandel, the Garrick Club produced amateur dramatic and musical entertainments in such
venues as the Coromandel Hall.
27
Garrick Clubs were active in many New Zealand centres from
the 1860s through to World War One.
On the east coast, Whitianga’s ‘Pig & Whistle’ grog shop served timber workers and gum diggers
from at least the mid-1800s, producing whiskey from its own still.
28
Thomas Carini opened the
first licensed premises in Whitianga in 1867 on the site of the present-day Whitianga Hotel. The
Empire Hotel was built in 1883 and the Mercury Bay Hotel, also known as the Upper House,
29
opened in 1872. Neither has survived to the present day.
Fig. 13: Whitianga Town Hall
Thomas Carini also built the Carini Hall, across the road from his hotel. As a venue for more
temperate entertainment, it was used by the Whitianga Band as a practice and performance
venue and became known as the Army Drill Hall during the Boer and First World Wars. The hall
was also a site of commercial activity where salesmen visiting the township from Auckland would
show off their wares. A second hall, the Athenaeum or Mill Hall, was built in 1885 in Monk Street.
It boasted a supper room and lending library, and was also used as a Sunday School. After
27
Review dated Monday 23 September 1872, published in the Coromandel Mail and reproduced in In Search of the
Rainbow, p. 213.
28
Jenny Bithell Guide to the History of Whitianga (Whitianga: A.J. Bithell, 1980), p. 22.
29
Ibid, pp. 13-14.
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burning down in 1945 it was replaced by the Mercury Bay Hall, which remains an important
community facility to the present day.
30
Gold attracted miners to Thames and Coromandel and they brought with them a natural desire to
slake their thirst, to soothe disappointment and, less frequently, to celebrate success. Numerous
hotels sprang up to help miners relax and to relieve them of their wages. Indeed, during the
1870's, some 112 hotels opened for business in Shortland and its sister township of
Grahamstown across the Karaka Stream.
The festive season of 1867 was the first to be celebrated after the initial rush on the Kuranui
strike. Pollen Street, the main street connecting Shortland and Grahamstown, was the site of
great festivity. On New Year’s Eve 1868 free drinks were offered by the local hoteliers concerned
that miners might decamp to the bright lights of Auckland to celebrate their successes.
Prostitution was also part of the goldfields scene. Like the local publicans, sex workers, among
them young Maori women, were kept busy entertaining the young male revellers.
The young Maori women were much in demand and were soon the focus of attention
among miners eager to spend their hard-earned wages. Many of the newly rich,
intricately tattooed young [Maori] men, now dressed in European fashion, joined in the
festivities with gay abandon. The kauri floors of the hotels had to be sturdy to withstand
the constant stomping of the burly dancers’ boots and the more than occasional fracas
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was enjoyed by all.
In the late 1860s or early 1870s Margaret Glenn, aged 13 years, was described by the Thames
Criminal Court as ‘the associate of common prostitutes’ but was likely one herself.
32
The sale of
sexual services by a woman was not in itself illegal at this time, although the purchase of such
services was. Vagrancy laws were used to keep sex workers off the streets, and many were
arrested for being drunk and disorderly.
33
After the frenzy of New Year’s Eve in Thames the first few days of 1868 were devoted to
Caledonian sports and horse racing on the flat land in front of James Mackay’s residence. A
stand was constructed and competitions ranged from foot races and quoits to sword dancing,
tossing the caber and whale boat races. Ngāti Maru chief Wirope Taipari led a haka that ‘brought
an uproarious response from the crowd’ and waka races were conducted on the Firth.
34
30
Ibid, p. 11.
Thames and the Coromandel Peninsula, p. 74.
David Arbury Prostitution on the goldfield (Thames: Metallum Research, [2001]). The Thames Criminal Court records
for the period 1868 to April 1881 have not survived, hence the uncertainty of date.
33
Eldred-Grigg, p. 390.
34
Williams and Williams, p. 74.
31
32
115
Fig. 14: Daily Southern Cross, 27 December 1867, p. 1, http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/ accessed 17/09/09.
From the 1870s Auckland Anniversary Day, 29 January, was celebrated in Thames with a
Protestant Sunday Schools gala, beginning with a parade of children with banners and flags from
Shortland to Parawai Gardens. Games, lolly scrambles, races and a sumptuous picnic followed.
Anniversary Day 1875 saw ‘350 Anglican children, 250 Wesleyans, 230 Presbyterians, 155
Baptists, 90 Primitive Methodists and 50 Congregational – a total of 1125 children, plus adults
assembled at Parawai Gardens.’
35
Fig. 15: Band Rotunda, Victoria Park, Thames © Anne Challinor 2009
35
Arbury, Children on the Goldfield.
116
Parawai Gardens were public gardens where visitors could buy cream teas, strawberries, and
enjoy the walks and entertainments. Similar gardens were at Victoria Park in Grahamstown, and
at Tararu. A Band Rotunda was opened in Victoria Park in Thames on 10 November 1902.
36
The
Rotunda became a popular venue for open-air performances by brass bands such as that of the
Hauraki Regiment.
A sure sign of the slowing of the gold rush and consequent fall in population was the reduction in
the number of hotels, down to only 41 in Thames by the mid-1880s. By the turn of the century,
with gold mining further in decline, Thames could boast a population of only around 4,000, down
from its peak during the rush of an estimated 20,000. However, with the opening of the
Coromandel field in the 1890s, that township underwent its own rapid growth. In the census of
March 1901, Coromandel was recorded as having a population of 4168 Europeans and ‘between
six and seven hundred Maoris’.
37
The Coromandel Brass Band was formed by 1876, and was associated with the Coromandel
Rifle Volunteers. The Hauraki Brass Band was likewise associated with the Hauraki Rifle
Volunteers, formed in 1897 and based in Thames. The Coromandel band became the
Coromandel Silver Band and continued to perform until the mid-1990s. Its history is celebrated in
the Coromandel Silver Band Museum, located in Woollams Avenue, Coromandel. Another band,
the Thames-Hauraki Brass Band was formed in 1899 and may have been formed from the
Hauraki band.
38
In accordance with the general growth in leisure and health activities taking place in New Zealand
from the 1880s, the European inhabitants of the Coromandel Peninsula pursued a wide range of
sports. Clubs were established to promote rugby, basketball (now known as netball), tennis,
rowing, gymnastics and cricket. The first rugby game between Thames and Auckland took place
in September 1873, a 10-a-side match played over 2½ hours with Thames the victor. The
Thames-Auckland rivalry continued for many years.
Arthur Kenrick, manager of the Coromandel Branch of the Bank of New Zealand and President of
the town’s School of Mines, was active in most of the above-named sports and played
representative rugby in Thames, as is recorded in his entry in the Cyclopedia of New Zealand,
published in 1902.
39
36
‘The Thames En Fete’ Grey River Argus 12 November 1902, p. 4.
‘Coromandel’ The Cyclopedia of New Zealand [Auckland Provincial District] (Christchurch, 1902) p. 871,
www.nzetc.org/ accessed 7 June 2009.
38
‘Thames’ The Cyclopedia of New Zealand [Auckland Provincial District] (Christchurch, 1902) p. 875, www.nzetc.org/
accessed 9/09/09.
39
It should be noted that personal entries in the Cyclopedia were paid for by the subjects and based on information
supplied by them. ‘Thames’, The Cyclopedia of New Zealand p. 900, www.nzetc.org/ accessed 7/6/09.
37
117
Fig. 16: Arthur Robert Lomas of Thames played 15 matches for the All Blacks, from 1925.
Alexander Turnbull Library Eph-A-PICTURE-CARDS-Wills-Footballers-selection
By 1900 the Thames Cricket Association comprised the Tararu, St. Alban's (founded 1878) and
Foundry clubs. Also active in the town were the Thames Football Club, the Hauraki Rowing Club,
and the Thames Athletic and Gymnastic Club. The Thames Jockey Club was established in about
1875 and built a racecourse at Parawai with grandstand seating for 500. The Thames Poultry,
Pigeon and Canary Club was established in 1895 and hosted an annual show. The Hauraki
Rowing Club was already well established when its entry appeared in the Cyclopedia in 1902.
40
Annual regattas for ‘four-oared gigs’, whaleboats, skiffs, and sailing vessels had been held at
Thames from at least the early 1870s.
41
A tennis club was founded in Coromandel in 1885, with courts leased and then eventually
purchased by the club in 1932. A Turf Club was organised around 1881, in association with the
Auckland Jockey Club. The town’s bowling club was formed in 1909 and from at least 1922 its
lawns were also used by the Croquet Club. Golf was played at a course known as Green Hill from
th
1921, with the present course in Hauraki Road occupied from 1960. The mid-20 century saw
many new sports clubs open in the town, including a pony club (est. 1962), and clubs for
badminton (est. 1980), basketball (from 1970s) and netball (from 1950), soccer (1980s), axe men
40
Ibid, p. 874.
‘The Thames Regatta’ Daily Southern Cross 4 January 1871, p. 3. Regattas were held at Thames and Coromandel on
17 March 1886. Observer 20 February 1886 p. 22.
41
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(circa 1966), pig hunting (1990), recreational fishing (2000) and swimming (2000). After
Coromandel Air Services Co. Ltd was formed in 1976, and the Coromandel airfield opened, an
Aero Club was set up in 1977 to take advantage of the facilities and to take a shareholding in the
new company.
42
In Whitianga tennis courts were in use by the 1890s, with a new court opened in Albert Street in
1905. Competitions were held with the Coromandel club.
43
A tennis club was formed in Colville in
1935, using a court formed on land behind the Memorial Hall. The club moved to its present
location in 1948.
Fig. 17: Colville Tennis Club Pavilion, Colville
th
Horse racing was also enjoyed at Colville around the beginning of the 20 century. Races were
organised by the Cabbage Bay Native Racing Club using an area near the township known as
Goudie’s Paddock. Organised horse racing began in Mercury Bay in 1881 with the formation of
the Mercury Bay Jockey Club, with the course laid out by Thomas Carini on land in what became
Racecourse Road. Training took place on Buffalo Beach.
44
As a tourism and holiday destination, Coromandel has always benefited from its proximity to
th
Auckland. As that city grew in the late 19 century and witnessed the growth of a leisured middle
class, the Coromandel became a popular recreational destination. Men in particular were keen to
engage in outdoor pursuits such as fishing and the hunting of species introduced to the Peninsula
42
Derek Barnsley ‘Aero Club’ In Search of the Rainbow pp. 227-228.
Bithell, p. 23.
44
Ibid, p. 43.
43
119
by the acclimatisation movement. In the 1890s a Whangamata hotel advertised itself in the
Auckland Weekly News as a base for ‘fishing of all kinds, pheasant and duck shooting in season’,
with a return voyage to Whangamata from Auckland costing £2.
45
The Mercury Bay Game Fishing Club was established in 1923 to take advantage of the
Peninsula’s excellent offshore fishing grounds. American Zane Grey, the well-known author of
western novels, set up a fishing camp at Whaler’s Cove on Great Mercury Island from 22
December 1928 until 13 March 1929. He had previously fished out of the Bay of Islands, but was
to return to Mercury Bay twice more, in 1931 and 1932. His presence in the Bay drew many other
sport fishermen to the area. After going into recess during World War Two, the club restarted in
1947 and continues set fishing records to the present day.
Fig. 18: Zane Grey in his launch at Mercury Bay, undated.
Alexander Turnbull Library ½-044545-F
Mercury Bay is of course also famous as the home of the Mercury Bay Boating Club under whose
banner financier Michael Fay mounted a challenge, both on the water and in court, for the
America’s Cup in 1988. The Club’s 1992 challenge, managed by yachting legend Peter Blake
was also unsuccessful but was marked by a set of commemorative stamps issued by NZ Post in
January of that year.
45
Beverley Williamson, Whangamata: 100 Years of Change (Paeroa: Goldfields Print, 1988) p. 21.
120
Fig. 19: 1992 America’s Cup Challenge Stamps, issued 22 January 1992
5.3 Invention and Discovery
Pre-European Maori culture and technology was based around the sophisticated use of wood,
th
stone and bone tools and weapons. Prior to the late 18 century, the extensive earthworks of pa
were constructed entirely with traditional tools. With the arrival of European technology, however,
Maori society and culture in the district began a rapid period of change and adaptation, just as it
did in other parts of New Zealand. The arrival of the gun and European methods of construction,
to cite just two examples, were to change the social and physical landscape of iwi on the
Peninsula dramatically.
European technology arrived on the peninsula with James Cook in November 1769, in the form of
his vessel and the tools and equipment he and his crew brought ashore to observe the transit of
Mercury. Such observations required sophisticated scientific equipment, including sextants,
compasses and other measuring devices. At a more mundane level, Cook’s crew used steel and
iron tools to gather food and botanical samples from the land and shore, and muskets and other
weapons were used for hunting and to defend the crew from possible attack by Maori.
121
Fig. 20: Comet ‘a’ photographed by John Grigg in Thames in May 1901.
By permission of the Carter Observatory, Wellington
A century after Cook, Thames resident astronomer Henry Severn attempted to record the transit
of Venus. Severn was an experienced astronomer who owned and used observatory quality
instruments. Unfortunately, cloudy skies on the night of 7 December 1874 prevented him
observing the transit, as they did for all but one of the international astronomical teams in the
country at the time.
46
Severn’s efforts were not in entirely in vain, however, as he is credited with
reviving John Grigg’s interest in astronomy. Grigg had arrived in Thames in 1868 and by the 1882
had constructed a private observatory equipped with a 3.5-inch refracting telescope. A skilled
inventor, Grigg became one of New Zealand’s pioneer astrophotographers, discoverer of a
number of new comets in the southern skies, and popularised astronomy through his newspaper
columns and by opening his observatory to the Thames public. In 1906 he was elected a Fellow
of the Royal Astronomical Society in recognition of his work.
47
Lucy Cranwell and Lucy Moore, botanists with the Auckland War Memorial Museum, became a
familiar sight in the Colville area during the 1930s as they undertook surveys of the alpine plants
of Te Moehau, the highest peak in the Coromandel Range (841 metres). Another frequent
46
Wayne Orchiston ‘Henry Severn: Thames' Other Nineteenth Century Astronomer’ Southern Stars (2001) pp. 8-10.
Wayne Orchiston 'Grigg, John 1838 - 1920' Dictionary of New Zealand Biography http://www.dnzb.govt.nz/ updated 22
June 2007.
47
122
scientific visitor to the Coromandel was Gilbert Archey, who was appointed Director of the
Auckland Institute and Museum in 1924. The rare Archey’s frog (Leiopelma archeyi), endemic
only to the Coromandel Peninsula and the Whareorino Forest west of Te Kuiti, was named for Sir
Gilbert in 1942, twenty years after he had published a paper on native frogs while still at
Canterbury Museum.
48
Fig. 21: Archey’s Frog
5.4 The Great Escape
The shadowy tents beneath the pines
The surfboards and the fishing-lines
Tell that our life might be
One of simplicity . . .
So children burn the seastained wood
And tell the present as a good
Knowing that bonfires are
Important as a star.
49
M.K. Joseph
th
In the second half of the 19 century, Thames and the Coromandel Peninsula were destinations
evocative of promised prosperity from gold mining, the timber industry, farming, fishing and other
rural occupations. With the establishment of regular ferry services from Auckland in the 1870s the
district also became a place for a holiday escape. Since the opening of the district to travel by
48
John Morton ‘Archey, Gilbert Edward 1890-1974’ Dictionary of New Zealand Biography http://www.dnzb.govt.nz/
updated 22 June 2007; ‘Native frogs’, http://www.nzfrogs.org/ accessed 18/11/09.
49
M.K. Joseph ‘Mercury Bay Ecologue’ quoted in King, p. 3.
123
th
th
railway and motor vehicle in the late 19 and early 20 centuries, visitor numbers have increased
steadily, until the present day when the populations of many of the peninsula’s towns increase
fourfold over the summer months.
Since the 1930s and 1940s increasing numbers of visitors to the Peninsula’s many beaches have
changed the social and physical complexion of the Coromandel. One-time campers have become
bach owners and, sometimes, permanent residents. Many former baches now serve as
permanent homes, modernised and made more comfortable while retaining their essential bach
feeling, a refuge from the mainstream. Elsewhere brand new holiday homes have brought the
comforts of the city to the beach and the bush. With the growing popularity of the beach holiday in
the mid-20
th
century, new coastal communities grew up. At first these appeared haphazardly,
perhaps where a road descended from the hinterland to a sandy beach. Later in the century,
planned communities were developed with wide streets and specific building guidelines.
For some who have chosen to move permanently to the Coromandel Peninsula from elsewhere
in New Zealand and the world at large, the area has become a place where they can pursue a
wholly different way of life. Since the 1970s, artists and those seeking an alternative way of life,
one that is rural, remote, perhaps more attuned to the natural environment, have also settled on
the Peninsula.
Fig. 22: Tram baches at Waikawau © Anne Challinor 2009
124
Auckland based paddle-steamers plied the Hauraki Gulf from 1868, delivering miners and freight
to the gold fields, a journey of as little as four hours in the fastest vessels of the 1870s. From
1890 the Union Steam Ships paddle steamer Wakatere was the most prestigious vessel on the
run, and was often used for special excursions. The Wakatere was replaced by the steamer
Rangitoto in 1920. Regular freight service between Thames and Auckland ended in 1963,
replaced by motor transport on improved roads.
Riverboats connected Thames and Paeroa from around 1880, linking with a coach service to
Hamilton and the rail line to Auckland. Thames was also part of the summer excursion route
th
popular with holidaymakers during the latter part of the 19 century. In the summer of 1889-1890,
for example, New Zealand Railways offered round-trip excursions by rail to Te Aroha from
Auckland, returning via coach to Thames and from Thames to Auckland by steamer for a cost of
st
34 shillings (1 Class) or 28 shillings (2
nd
Class). The tickets were valid for one month, allowing
time to enjoy the hot springs at Te Aroha or explore the Thames hinterland.
50
Fig. 23: Whangapoua Beach, Coromandel, 25 August 1972 (detail)
White’s Aviation Collection, Alexander Turnbull Library WA-70514-F
50
‘New Zealand Railway Tours’, Auckland City Library, NZ Map Number 6573.
125
The opening of the Kopu Bridge in May 1928 provided easier access to the Peninsula for
holidaymakers from Auckland. A passenger service car had already begun operation in the mid1920s, using a vehicular ferry across the Waihou River at Kopu. Even after the bridge was
opened the journey was initially challenging, with vehicles having to back up the Razor Back at
Pokeno on the return run to Auckland.
The opening of the Kopu-Hikuai Road in 1967 had an equally profound impact upon local and
holiday traffic accessing the Peninsula. Coastal towns such as Tairua, established as a port for
the timber industry, quickly became popular bach communities. Better roads also allowed the
development of resort towns such as Pauanui.
Fig. 24: Matarangi street scene © Anne Challinor 2009
For those Kiwis for whom a bach at Pauanui or Whangamata was not the answer to their
Coromandel dream, the Peninsula has also been a refuge from the modern world for over 40
years. A number of intentional communities or communes have been developed on the Peninsula
since the 1960s, among them Wilderland, established in 1964 by Dan and Edith Hansen. Dan’s
father Ray was one of the founders of the Beeville community, which had earlier been established
on the plains north of Morrinsville in the mid-1930s.
Other alternative communities to be established on the Peninsula include Opuhi (est. 1970),
Moehau (est. 1974), Karuna Falls (est. 1975), Te Whanau Hou (circa 1975-1990), Whareroa (est.
1978), Mahana (est. c.1978), Motu Moana (est. 1979), and Te Kauae O Maui (est. 1980).
51
51
Some
Simons, p. 123.
126
were communes in the sense of sharing finances, food, and labour, while others were alternative
communities, owned by resident shareholders. Some were founded on shared spiritual beliefs,
such as the Mahamudra Centre, established in 1981 as a Tibetan Buddhist meditation centre,
and the Havalona Trust (est. c.1982) ‘originally formed by a group of naturopaths and esoteric
teachers in the late seventies’.
52
Some have operated for many years, others existed for shorter
periods and have since vanished. All have a common desire to forge a new life for their residents
in the idyllic surroundings of the Coromandel Peninsula.
Fig. 25: Wilderland Shop, south of Whitianga © Anne Challinor 2009
52
‘Havalona Trust’, http://prometheus.co.nz/ accessed 7/6/09.
127