AUCKLAND AT THE AGE OF 24

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 122, 13 August 1927, Page 24

AUCKLAND AT THE AGE OF 24

This article is I written for THE HUN by Air. E. Doidge, for .}fl years an editor of various Australian Newspapers. Mr. Doidfjc, who is the father of Mr. Fred Doidge—sometime Nero Zealand journalist and now a big fig tire in the London newspaper world —is living in retirement at Vauclusc, Sydney.

■ HAVE been reading with interest a copy of THE SUN, and it occurred to me that one who can speak of Auckland sixty years ago might with advantage tell Aucklanders of their city when it was 24 years old. My family arrived from South Africa on the good bargue Sir George Grey on May 24, 1864. That ship was the first chartered vessel to leave Port Elizabeth direct for New Zealand. My father had a grant of land, somewhere down the coast, which we never saw. Our first residence was a little way down from Government House called the Lyceum. I wonder if any living Aucklander remembers the place? My first glimpse of Governor Grey was on the occasion of the visit of the Duke of Edinburgh. He was a fine man, but misunderstood. I think the Maori heart understood him better than the British intellect. They called him “father,” and there may

be a few, a very few, living of those Maoris who remember. Governor Grey was at that time in his second term of office. It was the inborn kindness of the man that led to his “sugar and blanket” policy in place of bullets. Perhaps the most-treas-ured book in my library is the “Life and Times of Sir George Grey,” which the Pro-Consul sent to me with a line of kindly inscription. But I set out to write of Auckland City. Queen Street Wharf was then quite a long affair. It began, if memory serves, where two hotels stood opposite one another. As you walked from there' to Fort Brittomart, there was a Jacob’s ladder to climb to reach where St. Paul’s stood. Our bay at that time was Mechanic’s, and it was a sheer delight to us children to gather pipis and cockles on the beach. Still more exciting, in the season, was the arrival of the Maoris in war-canoes—l2, 14, and 16 to each —loaded with splendid peaches. Later, when we moved to Freeman’s Bay, dozens of these canoes would be drawn up on the beach in the fruit season carrying the most luscious cargoes. The water then came up to the right bank of the road, which, I presume, is still used to reach Ponsonby. Of course, we had pennies to spend on fruit, but if we hadn’t we got it just the same . . . and “manga manga taipo” would rend the air

from the disgusted vendors. In those days, too, men and boys used to wade out at Freeman’s Bay to spear flounders in the mud where now, I understand, is no mud but reclaimed land. The Maoris would sell flax baskets on the shore for “iccapenny” or a “hirring.” (I wonder if the schooled Maori has learned to get his tongue round the English “S” yet!) My father, an enterprising man, built two houses on the heights of Ponsonby; two-storeyed places they were, almost the first of their kind. They stood close to the site of the Three Lamps where the road turns toward Manukau, overlooking a vast stretch of bushland, only broken by a brickmaking establishment, where I understand there is now a Church of England and, no doubt, a heap of houses. It was at Freeman’s Bay that Iliad my earliest experience of school-life. Is there another man or woman living anywhere in the world who remembers that little school or the two dear matrons (mother and daughter) who kept school there? It was just about the end of the bay before you dip down to the long ascent which I think is called College Street. I remember Bishop Pompailier coming to the little school to distribute prizes, and my impression of the Roman Catholic prelate is of the kindliest.