VISIBLE HISTORY

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 1, Issue 99, 11 December 1939, Page 6

VISIBLE HISTORY

ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO

THE WOMEN'S COURT

One nundred years ago, in December 1839, tlie main contingent of the New Zealand. Company's emigrants were on the high seas, on board the Auron, the Oriental, the Duke ol Roxburgh, the liengal Merchant and the Adelaide. While the passengers looked out at the cold waters of the South Atlantic, or tried to sight the misty outline of Saint Paul Island in the Southern Indian Ocean, they were confronted by the thought of the numerous useful and elegant articles they had carefully stowed away in the hold. For them there was no notion of any cherished piece of furniture, old picture or fragile china being too good for use in the wild land they were bound for, simply because, with the confidence of inexperience, they already visualised it as tamed, prosperous farmland that they had brought into cultivation within a few months. It Avas many

laborious years before these dreams became reality. A Striking Interior. Perhaps the most complete reconstruction of the everyday life of the early settlers r\t the Centennial Exhibition is provided by the two crowded interiors in the Women's Court. The raupo wliare labelled 1810 faithfully displays the amazing contrast of the earliest years of settlement, the traces of refinement amidst the most uncouth surroundings. In the crudest of huts there is a table, chests and chairs that would not have been out of place in the London drawing rooms from which they came. They remind us that taste in furniture was still excellent in 1810. Then there are the ordinary utensils of the time —the camp oven whose ticklish habits had to be mastered with so many tears and so much heart-breaking disappointment The oven let In below the fire, an immediate ancestor of the range, the iron or copper cooking vessels, the wooden cradle on its rockers, betraying seraphic innocence of Plunket methods, and the archaic pattern of the sewing-machine in lady' ; delicate hands, all build up the atmosphere of a simple early New Zealand home, still looking backwards, however, to the culture and leisure of the Old Country. Greater Refinement. The interior of some ten or fifteen years later, which stands along-

side the 1840 homes in the Women's Court at tlie Centennial Exhibition is definitely more comfortable than the raupo wh are. but hardly more charming. One is immediately struck by the decay in taste so notorious in the Victorian era. The very congestion of this apartment is a faithful reproduction of the actual conditions of the day, which the pictures, the genuinely old windows, and the "gothie" chairs, not to mention the wallpaper, build up in the mind of the beholder. The excellent historical section of the Women's Court is completed by a collection of exhibits under glass —old china, snuff-boxes, lace and dresses. As the eye strays over these nleasantly preoccupied with the laborious and teasing needlework with which everything from weddingdresses to tea-cosies Mas adorned last century, I lie attention lingers for an instant on a candle snuffer or an 1841 cheque on the." Unio.i Bank of Australia, which established its fir.st New Zealand branch in 1840.