THE NORTH ROAD

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 2, 4 January 1939, Page 8

THE NORTH ROAD

IN THE FORTIES

HISTORY OF A HIGHWAY

BACK TO THE OLD ROUTE

(Written for "The Post" by P.M.) I When the new coastal road from [ Plimmerton to Paekakariki is comI pleted the main north road will rej turn to the centuries-old route of Maori and white man and the motorist of the future will speed where the pioneer traveller, on horseback, or more often on foot, made his laborious way up the coast. . The present Main North Road, which reaches Paekakariki through the monotonous Horokiwi Valley, was not constructed until 1848. It was then known as "Captain Russell's Road." The history of this, Wellington's first main highway, is well worthy to be recorded. It is bound up with the story of Wellington's little war of 1846, of the capture of the Pahautanui Pa, and the Battle of Horokiwi Hill. The first stage in the history of this road extends to the year 1846. Before then all travellers used the coastal route, spending the night at the Porirua or Taupo Pa, with the whalers, or later at Whaler Tom's house of accommodation for travellers. No foot '. trod the forest fastnesses of the Horokiwi. Valley, except perhaps an occasional Maori snaring pigeons or hunting pigs. In 1846 the white man first advanced his frontiers towards this valley. Fort Paremata was built on the grassy spit of land near the new traffic bridge. Its crumbling remains can still be seen there. With the fort as his base young Lieutenant McKillop, a midshipman of H.M.S. Calliope, mounted a gun on the long-boat of the Tyne and "strolled up and down the harbour bombarding hapless hostiles, and puncturing the atmosphere with cannonballs." : THE MAORI MOVES IN. For the Maori had moved into the uninhabited Horokiwi Valley. The wily Rangihae'ata had established himself in a strongly-built pa on the green hill at Pahautanui, where the Angli : can Church stands today. He was in open revolt against the white man and in this strong key position he was a menace to the safety of the Hutt and Wellington settlements. The pa was surrounded by a strong palisade, fifteen feet high, but like most Maori pas, Matai-taua was most vulnerable from behind. Accordingly, when McKillop had thoroughly spied out the position of the pa from the deck of his. gun-boat, Governor Grey sent out an expedition from the Paremata Redoubt and also a company of militiamen over the hills from Boulcott's Farm to attack the pa from the rear. The militiamen entered the pa on the morning of August 1, 1846, only to find it deserted. Governor Grey arrived there the same afternoon, accompanied by Captain Stanley, of the Calliope. Rangihaeata had taken to the hills. The story of the campaign that followed is well known. After the Battle of Horokiwi Hill, in which Ensign Blackburn lost his life, the power of Rangihaeata was finally broken. He and his women and camp followers spent miserable months campaigning in the ranges without food or shelter. Finally he entrenched himself in the swampy country between Manawatu and Horowhenua and there, ingloriously, he fell a victim to measles and died. AN ADVANCED IMPERIAL POST. The next stage in the story of the Main North Road now begins. Pahautanui Pa became an advanced Imperial military post? covering the construction of the north roadto Paekakariki. When the Imperial troops advanced from Paremata to join the militia in the Horokiwi campaign Lieutenant de Win ton occupied the pa. Ten days later he was reinforced by a detachment of police under. Sub-Inspector Strode. At first the post was garrisoned by the 65th Regiment—three officers and .one hundred men. The officers were Captain R. Newenham, Lieutenant T. F. Turner, and Assistant Surgeon T. E. White. Next year, in 1847, the 58th Regiment replaced the 65th. Road-making activities were pushed ahead. In 1848 Captain Russell and a detachment of the 58th were engaged in this work. The post was finally abandoned in 1850. Captain Russell's road was then completed as far as Paekakariki and the post no longer served any useful purpose. SOCIETY IN THE WILDERNESS. A traveller who, in 1847, spent a night at the little military colony, has left this amusing account of society on the edge of a forest wilderness: — "Nearly the entire space within the palisade of the pa was now occupied by ne&t wooden huts, painted blue and shingled. Captain R., with his wife, a lieutenant, and the assistant surgeon, J with their wives and an ensign, formed the society of the pa; and a very j lively and agreeable society it was. The ladies were all young and pretty, and on the best terms with each other; Mrs. R., with her frank gaiety, being the life and soul of the little party. As for the officers, they did not, with the exception of Captain R., get through their time so easily—in fact they, were mortally bored. What, indeed, had they to do? The doctor, in that provokingly salubrious climate, had no patients to cure, and the subalterns, since the Maori war was over, had none but routine duties to perform, which on detachment service are usually light enough. There was no hunting, and nothing to shoot but parrots, pigeons, and tuis. However, they did what the; could; they fished and boated, pulled down almost daily to Paremata Point, where there was a detachment of the 65th, to compare notes with the major and ensign, the latter of whom ingeniously contrived to kill a good many hours in the education of a talking tui, and laid schemes for obtaining leave to go to Wellington, which was another London Or Paris to an unfortunate subaltern buried in the bush at Pawhatanui."

The lethargy here described must have belonged to the period before road-making operations were commenced. In 1850 Mrs. Godley, wife of John Robert Godley, the founder of the Canterbury settlement, was able to drive through to Paekakariki with her husband in her bright yellow dog-cart. A hostelry was now established at Pahautanui, and here she spent the night. She says it wasj "somewhat cleaner and better than the other houses of entertainment on the road." Their bedroom had no ceiling and peeps of light showed through the roof. "We sat with the door open," .she says, "to get the smoke to go up the chimney. It was all very clean, the furniture including a wash-hand-stand, and two little beds whidh were screened off into a bedroom. We had some very good fried pork and potatoes, and plenty of eggs; and for

dinner, tea, and breakfast, for five, besides two horses, paid only £1 65."

She mentions meeting a 65th officer who was "in charge of a company now occupying the military post." He met them on the road, introduced himself, and invited them up the hill to see the stockade and to call on his wife. "They invited us to dine and drink tea, and spend the evening, which we firmly but respectfully declined." Next day her party pushed on up through the "striking bush scenery of the Horokiwi Valley" to the magnificent view at the top of Paekakariki Hill. She was surprised to see the country "dotted over with little cultivations and native pas, some deserted but some in full activity."

At the, bottom of the hill there was another hotel known as "Scotch Jock's," although it was kept by an ex-whaler called Nicholls, who, like almost all the old whalers, had married a Maori wife. Ten years later, in 1861, James Crawford, on his trusty nag "Blunderbuss," descended from the famous belvedere of Paikariki to the small hostelry "where resided •Pluto' and other mythological heroes of the whaling age of New Zealand." THE OLD BEACH ROAD. Captain Russell's road ended *at "Scotch Jock's." From Paekakariki the beach was the traveller's only road to Taranaki. For many years all the land as far as Rangitikei was cut off from settlement. The villages of its Maori owhers dotted the sandhills. There were many swift-flowing rivers. Some of these the traveller had to ford as best he could. At others there were ferries, leased by the Government to a local ferryman, who was usually a Maori. These ferries were often negligently kept, and if the rivers were swollen, days and sometimes even weeks- were wasted on their Along this, the Old Beach Road, the red coats marched to the Taranaki Wars, and in the sixties Cobb and Company established a regular coach service along the beach from Wellington to Wanganui. Here is a delightful description of the Old Beach Road in the days of Cobb and Company's coaches. It was written by R. A. Macdonald, whose father kept an accommodation house on the beach at Horowhenua. COBB AND COMPANY'S COACHES. He speaks of the coach speeding down along the wide beach "at a slashing ten miles an hour,- past. a heterogeneous procession of men and stock, everything giving way. to her Majesty's mail. Stockmen mv charge of mobs of wild-eyed station steers for the Wellington butchers, mobs of sheep, long1 lines of drays carrying potatoes and corn to Wellington from the pas along the coast, droves of pigs, a smart buggy behind a pair of clipping trotters belonging, to one of the Rangitikei squatters; a settler for the Foxton ? Block passes with the whole of his possessions heaped on a bullock dray, on which also find a place his wife and a long string of children. Swaggers, drovers, pedlars, all the traffic, and all'the trade of a great highway before the railways were, a collection which to modern eyes would appear of the strangest, the coach rattles past."