WHERE EXHIBITION WILL STAND

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 150, 21 March 1939, Page 7

WHERE EXHIBITION WILL STAND

History Of “The Sands” AREA ONCE OFFERED TO CITY FOR £2OO Few who visited the grounds of the Centennial Exhibition on Sunday to listen to the band playing for the first time in the soundshells would be able to visualize what the 200-odd acres covered by the site of the exhibition and the Rongotai aerodrome were like before settlement spread there. Imagine the one and only road across the isthmus, between Evans and Lyall Bay, as a narrow, winding and rutted road, impinged upon by bullrushes and flax tufts straggling along it above high-water mark on the Evans Bay side. This was the highway to Crawford’s farm, and Crawford’s farm in those days comprised the whole of (Miramar, Rongotai, Lyall Bay and Kilbirnie South. The homestead of the Crawfords was reached by a hill road that took off from the flat in the vicinity- of the Evans Bay power station and climbed the hill, to descend on the other side and go on to the homestead, which was near the present site of t.be Wellington Gas Company’s works. Some of the more hardy youth _ ot half a century ago or more used to visit the Miramar of those days on foot. It took a good hour and a half to two hours to reach Worser Bay, attainable by climbing the Seatoun Heights near the Star of the South Convent and descending by the same route as the present road to the pilot station that sheltered in the northern corner of the bay. That was high adventure. Older residents can remember that area without a house other than the pilot’s and the boatshed on the beach, cut off from the wide world, with only the sea, the sky and the everlasting hills to bound the view. There were rabbits and a few hares on the peninsula, but the lads of those days could nnt afford shotguns or snares, so the animals went their way undisturbed. All that could be done was to bathe and fish off the rocks — there were no wharves then —and on the way home gather bundles of flax with which to make whips for spinning tops. But to return to the exhibition site. The whole of this area, from Evans Bay to Lyall Bay, was then almost a terra incognita to the people of Wellington. As there was only a rough bullock road over the Constable Street hill it was a long way and it was only on rare occasions that the more venturesome lads from the city thought of spending a day in its seemingly vast desolation.

Sea of Rolling Sand

Boys could lose themselves very easily in this area, which was nothing more than a sea of rolling and uneven sand dunes, with little in the way of vegetation except rushes and flax, which seemed to flourish in the sand. And these dunes liad a way of shifting. A three days’ southerly gale could effect quite a change in the topography of the area, so that small boys who had been out before could not find their way without climbing the highest dune and spying out the land. There were, of course, no houses at Lyall Bay whatsoever, no Onepu Road, and only a rough track along the foot of the :-- hills,-roughly ■. -.the ’ line now followed by the Queen’s Drive. This isthmus, roughly covered by South; Kilbirnie, Rongotai and Lyall Bay, was not such a wilderness to Mr. Coutts Crawford and his sons, nor to those who rode on horseback. Indeed, it was related by the late Mr. James Ames that there was a rough race meeting held in the heart of “The Sands” as far back as 1555, when officers of the British regiment then stationed in Wellington took part as gentlemen riders; and that about the time of the meeting a great earthquake took place, and the waters of Cook Strait rose under its influence and swept across the course, the receding tidal waves leaving many thousands of fish stranded along the ocean shores. City Loses a Bargain. To most people the colloquial name of the exhibition-aerodrome area was “The Sands.” It was toward the end of Mr. Joseph Dransfield’s term of office as mayor, in 1873, that this area of land, not then 'included in tli<* Crawford estate, was offered to the city'council by the Provincial Government at fl an acre, or £2OO for the ' lot. When Mr. C. H. Borlase, Mr. Dransfield’s successor as mayor, took office one of the first things placed under his notice was this offer. The position was explained to him, and as soon as he grasped it he pooh-poohed the very idea of paying a sum like £2OO for ‘‘a lot of useless sandhills.” So the city lost a magnificent endowment, for it was immediately bought by the late. Mr. 11. D. Crawford, and proved profitable to his heirs. A touch of irony is lent the history of this land as the city council later paid the Crawford Estate £2OOO for the privilege of running a sewer through the land. <