Auckland’s Early Days

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 932, 27 March 1930, Page 8

Auckland’s Early Days

HON. E. W. ALISON’S MEMORIES EIGHTEEN hundred' canoes in the Waitemata—drunken revellers fast in the stocks outside the gaol—public hangings—the sale of Rangitoto for £ls. . . , These are but some of the recollections of the Hon. E. W. Alison, M.L.C., described to the Auckland Credit men's Club at a luncheon yesterday. Closely associated with the growth of this City, in which he has lived all his life, Mr. Alison knew the town intimately in the early ’sixties and his - memories of the growth of the Dominion’s largest eity are particularly interesting.

Hr. Alison’s first clear recollection of Auckland goes back more than 60 years to when, as a boy of nine, he used to row across the harbour from Devonport with his father. Along the waterfront, which then extended from where Fort Street now stands to Fort Britomart, a high cliff at about the foot of Anzac Avenue, Maori canoes and rowing boats were drawn up. Their owners often were encamped on the present site of the I Victoria Arcade and along other ! portions of this area above the beach. There were then about 1,800 canoes ; on the Waitemata Harbour. [ Stocks were in use in those days, and hangings, which were in full view of the public, took place in front of the gaol. The first execution took place about 80 years ago, the victim heing a Maori named Maketu, who had been found guilty of murder. Although Auckland at this time had a population of about 2,000, very few lived across the harbour. A ferry service which was subsidised to run to Shoal Bay, Devonport and Northcote, carried a total of only 16,522 passengers during the year 1865. Four large banks served the Eity during the middle of the ’6o’s—the Banks of New South Wales, of Otago, of Auckland, and the Commercial Bank of New Zealand. Later, however, a financial depression which affected the City in 1887 caused the failure of numerous business institutions, and would have been the cause of the Bank of New Zealand closing in 1894 bad not the Government come to its aid. THE EARLY PRESS Auckland’s first newspaper was printed in a mangle. It was “The New Zealander,” which was founded in 1845, but had to cease publication 19 years later. Only two dentists practised in Auckland at this time, and painless extraction was unknown, Mr. Alison has cause to remember. However, those were happy days in some other respects. There was no income-tax, land-tax or death duty, nor were stamps required for any deed, receipt or cheque. This was a time of progress in transport and commercial communications. The first sod was turned on railway construction work in 1868, on the Auckland-Drury line. In 1872 the Parnell tunnel was pierced and the end of the next year saw

the completion of a branch to Onehunga. . It was not until 1908 that the Main Trunk line from Auckland to Wellington was completed, and a regular service begun. Improvements had been carried out on the seaward side, too, during this period. The newly-established Harbour Board had improved the wharves and begun to cut down Fort Britomart Point, reclaiming the foreshore along to Queen Street with the spoil. Auckland’s first transport system was of horse-drawn trams, the service opening on August 11, 1884. The first horse race meeting was held at Epsom in 1842. A further slump in business in the late ’6o’s had left poverty ki its train, and farmers were unable to sell their produce at a profitable price when the discovery of gold on the Thames fields brought wealth and employment to many. Mr. Alison remembers that huge yields of gold were common at many of the mines, one returning half a ton of gold in a fortnight from a face which was almost pure metal. Within two years of the first discovery there were 15,000 goldseekers at Thames,*all earning excellent wages. Auckland was indeed a lively place when they came to town. CATCHING A SHARK The capture of a big man-eating shark in the harbour is another memory of Mr. Alison’s youth. He noticed the shark swimming around a horse’s carcase as it was drifting down the harbour toward the Rangitoto Channel. There was a blacksmith at Beddoe’s Shipyard at Devonport, who had been a whaler, and he at once gathered together eight men in a whaleboat and set off to harpoon the visitor, then some distance away. He had lost none of his skill, and drove the harpoon into a vital part of the huge fish, which immediately dived so deep that the bows of the boat were being dragged under water by the line. Eventually the shark became exhausted and was towed ashore opposite the Masonic Hotel at Devonport. It was a huge fish, measuring 16ft lOin from tip to tip, and had five rows of teeth edged like a saw, measuring from three-quarters of an inch to two and a-quarter inches. It was found to contain three large tins of red herrings, a horse shoe, several pieces of corned beef and a mediumsized stingray. It is thought to have followed a ship from Sydney.