JAMES BROWN'S DRAY

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 152, 24 December 1929, Page 8

JAMES BROWN'S DRAY

In these days, when the Hutt Va ley includes three boroughs, it i hard to realise that some eighty yeai ago the pioneer settler trekked int the upper valley by so thin a trai that his dray ceased to become a con veyance and had to be conveye( (man-carried) for miles througl bush and over foothills. Then, as now, the river washed at the foot oi the eastern hills at the waist of the valley—what is now called the "gorge," between Silverstream and Taita. Somewhere near Taita Mr James Brown (the settler-to-be) anc his Lower.Hutt friends, Messrs. Gal loway and M'Ewan, found that the river bluffs offered no thoroughfare for a vehicle, so they carried wheels and body (separately) of the draj through a track that deviated up on to the hills upstream of Taita, dipped into Stokes Valley, went up hill again, and reached the uppei valley flats at what is now Silverstream brickworks. Here the hard bitten pioneers—at least two of whon seem to have been Scots—converted the components into a dray onct more, and the result was the found ing of Upper Hutt. No mention ol the year is made in the story of this happening, incorporated in the biographical notice of the late nonagenarian settler, Mrs. Elizabeth Martin (Mr. Brown's daughter), publish ed in the "Evening Post" yesterday. But a narrative left by one of the founders of Greytown makes it clear that in 1853 Mr. Brown's tavern al Upper Hutt was an oasis for this later party of pioneers, who (instead oi going round the coast via Muka Muka in the wake of the first Wairarapa sheep men, 1844) crossed over the then new Rimutaka track (about four feet wide) with the aid of pack bullocks. Without being certain as to the year; one is inclined to think that the founder of Upper Hutt reached there in the 'forties, perhaps after the Maori disturbances (Boulcott'a farm) had died down. Wellington was founded in 1840, and during that first decade an immense amount of work was done, even in the rough and forested hinterland, and in spite of Native disputes. Nearly eight decades have since passed, and can it be said that our relative progress, all things considered, has been any greater than that of the first comers? They had trouble over the road through the "gorge"; so have we. Even in this year of grace that road is a narrow ledge; the pushing away I of the river by an embankment is still only talked about; and the same may be said of the alternative schemes of tunnelling, or of diverting the road to the western bank, leaving the eastern ledge for the Waterloo railway extension. If the energy and the imagination of the pioneers had played a part in the administration of public affairs in recent years, transport in the Hutt Valley would not be as planless as it is to-day. The "gorge" presents the not very difficult problem of a bluff on the eastern side of the river and low flats on the western. West is a single line railway and the narrow Western Hutt road; east lies the only through road and the projected route of the double railway from Waterloo. The problem should be approached from the standpoint of making the most judicious use of both sides of the river, and not from the standpoint that the road traffic of the Hutt Valley and the hinterland (Wairarapa and Manawatu) is to be served indefinitely by one narrow artery on a narrow ledge. There is still an opportunity to create on the western bank a through route to the Wairarapa that need not cross a railway anywhere on the Wellington side of the Wairarapa lowlands. And if congestion east of the river is going to increase at the present rate, why not face the major question now? Why wait for the centenary of Mr. James Brown's dray?