Early Years of the Young Qualtroughs from the book "A Quota of Qualtrough" 41-47

 

IT WAS spring in New Zealand when the jaunty Mermaid swept into Auckland waters well ahead of her illustrious rival, the Maori, on 19 October, 1859.

 

Triple-coned Rangitoto, awesome guardian of the Waitemata, a volcanic peak merely dormant, dominated the other half-dozen of inshore islands.

 

"Waitemata? It means 'sparkling waters'."

 

The translation rippled through the ship as excitement mounted. The end of the voyage!

 

 

 

 

Looking South from Queen Street (Auckland) Wharf in the 1850s. A similar scene must have greeted the QUALTROUGHs on their arrival in 1859. In the foreground is the Queen Street and Shortland Street intersection. Partington's Mill is in the background.

 

Old gravures show Auckland of those days with wooden jetties on a shoreline no longer in existence, high up in what is now a multi-story Downtown of Auckland City. There were buildings -the first warehouses and business offices, hotels, private guest-houses, a few shops and silhouetted on the skyline, Partington's Mill. Here and there, a horse-team drawn cart, a bullock wagon, a saddled horse, await further orders and pedestrians moved grace-fully on cobbled streets. The men, in narrow-legged trousers, longish jackets and high hats, escorted ladies in full skirts, bonnets and often with parasols. Pictures which included Maoris showed them in European clothing with tattooed faces, many of them bewhiskered, some with long greenstone ear pendants, somewhat incongruous in their satirical anachronisms.

 

Grafton Gully - no bridge as yet - had masses of feathery tree ferns, tall kahakiteas and puriris, topped by an occasional kauri in silhouette, highlighted by a stand of golden kowhai in bloom.

 

There was much open space among the stolid brown buildings, land that sloped away to open country which rolled towards green hills and blue skies on a long horizon.

 

Auckland in October, warmth in the sun and a brisk sea breeze scudding clouds that held suggestions of a passing shower across the slender neck of land separating the Waitemata from the Manukau. On the waterfront investigating seabirds, keen and exultant in their discoveries, must have touched chords of memory for the immigrants whose home shores were far away.

 

James had been allotted Crown land out from Papakura, about 45 kilometers southward from Auckland, in the Hunua bush. Exactly where we haven't been able to ascertain. It comprised approximately120 hectares on the arithmetic of the 40-Acre Scheme.

 

After the preliminaries and formalities of landing and the business at the Land Office, the Qualtroughs were introduced to a bush settler-farmer who lived about two kilometers away from their allotment. He was to take them by bullock cart to their land and give them a hand settling in. James paid him £1 (sterling) a day, which he did not consider excessive in view of the work and time involved; and no doubt for the useful information he could impart.

 

Papakura was on the Great South Road, which had evolved from the portage tracks of the Maoris to a highway metalled as far as Drury. There was actually a daily coach service from Auckland to Drury, run by a Mr. William Young. It was known, grandly, as the "Auckland, Papakura and Drury Diligence."

 

It would not have accommodated the Qualtroughs and their possessions, though, for according to THE NEW ZEALANDER, issue dated 23 December 1857, it was capable of carrying …. "nine substantial yeoman or traders and even nine ladies (provided their several courses of vestments were not open to Mr Punch's rebuke) with comfort and without distress to their horses." The PUNCH reference was to a topical joke taken from the famous magazine which was eagerly-awaited reading from 'Home'.

 

From James Cowan's SETTLERS AND PIONEERS comes the following information on the Qualtroughs' first night in the bush - and New Zealand.

 

"…. The height and thickness of those trees and the density of branch and leafage amazed the stalwart stranger who stood gazing at them, axe in hand. Their boughs stretched far overhead, they were looped together with a rigging more intricate than a ship's; cable-like grey ropes, round as hawsers and as strong, hung down from the hazy ceiling, like ropes in some woody belfry. "

 

"…. The axeman walked out from the bush fringe to the tents gleaming against the dark of the tall timber. In the little camp there were two tents and a tarpaulin shelter for the piles of baggage trunks, shipboard chests, boxes of food stores and a hundred supplies."

 

"While he (James snr.,) had explored the bush edge and tested the tree-temper with eye and nose and axe, his family had reduced the miscellaneous loads from the bullock-dray to some order against the night."

 

"…. Most of their land was covered with standing bush - a tall forest of red and white pine, puriri, rata, kohekohe; on the hills the great kauri; but timber of no use to the pioneers after enough had been pit-sawn from it for the home buildings. The rest would have to go up in smoke and add to the fiery pall which would presently cover most of the bushland sections."

 

Betsy's most vivid memory of that first night in the bush was of the meal that the mosquitoes made of their faces - "the stinging flies" they called them.

 

Their neighbour (unnamed) came around the next morning to tell them he had arranged with a group of Maoris down at Papakura Creek to build the newcomers a nikau whare to live in until they could put up a more permanent dwelling.

 

"…. Two cheerful young Maoris came up and greeted the pakehas. Both could speak some English. They set to on a neat whare with beautifully-made walls of nikau, palm leaves, artistic as well as useful, with a thick roofing of fern-tree fronds. By the end of the second day, with the assistance of the white family in cutting, fetching and carrying, there was a rain-tight house, one that would be cool in hot weather and warm and windproof in cold…."

 

"….gradually the settler and his family fitted themselves into the conditions of the country, on the edge of the interminable forest. It was not so very difficult for these country-bred folk. They cut their way slowly into the bush with the nearby Maoris to call upon for help and bush-sense. When a little ground was cleared the neighbour lent them his bullocks and plough. To the Maoris a few pounds of tobacco and gifts of clothes were more acceptable than money."

 

James Cowan observes that the friendly and helpful spirit of the Maoris helped mightily in establishing immigrants on the land in the first two decades of British settlement. Unfortunately it did not last. He writes

 

"In the third year of the MERMAID family's life in the bush the Waikato was began. The kindly Maoris of the South Auckland country were forced into the struggle…."

 

"…That unhappy check to the peaceful subjugation of the bush and the winning of a livelihood from the newly-turned soil altered the course of life for many a border family. The tragedy of war, like so many far greater wars before and since, could have been avoided. At any rate, the frontier settlers and the Maori farmers were not the warmakers."

 

 

Perhaps the rumblings of war were behind the decision of James to change his land. We can only speculate on the reasons. Perhaps the distance from church and school played a big part, for James was a deeply religious man, well-educated and keen for his children to be educated.

 

Perhaps he realised that to turn virgin forest into farmland would take more years of prime-of-life than he felt he had left to him. Perhaps the isolation was too much for Catherine and the girls.

 

Documents show that James Qualtrough, farmer, of Papakura, purchased land at Pakuranga from Alfred Buckland, stock and station agent, on 4 December, 1860. He bought 118 acres 32 perches (47 hectares) on the main Panmure-Howick highway for which he paid £1,180 (sterling).

 

An early picture of the farm of James and Catherine QUALTROUGH at Pakuranga – the girl against the tree was never identified, 

but it is presumably one of the Qualtrough daughters.

 

East Tamaki, Howick and Pakuranga were already well settled. The populace included retired soldiers, men of the Royal New Zealand Fencibles who, on leaving military service, were given a cottage and an acre of land.

 

Thousands of immigrants were to arrive in the Auckland areas in the 1860's and Tamaki-Pakuranga land was favoured for its relatively easy access by water or across country>to the port of Auckland, about 23 kilometers away.

 

The area was good land for wheat and vegetable growing, with ready markets at Howick where troops were stationed, and in Auckland itself. Wheat was transported in sacks to Partington's Mill -known as the Victoria Flour Mills - and butter and eggs were sold.

 

For 15 years (1850-1865) access to Auckland across the Tamaki River depended upon a punt operated by a Joseph Williams. According to records this was a pretty uncomfortable, dangerous experience for those forced to use it. The punt was often holed, or its guiding chain broken; and the transport of stock by punt could mean delays of an hour or more. There was a strong current at the point of crossing and mishaps were common.

 

In his book OLD MANUKAU, historian A.E. Tonson writes:

 

"…. The traffic crossing in 1862 was quite considerable and the daily average was about 180 settlers and children, 58 horses, 23 carts and 100 cows and sheep."

 

Prompted by dissatisfaction from the settlers, the Tamaki Bridge Act was passed in 1864 and a bridge was put across the river in 1866. A.E. Tonson writes:

 

"…. The settlers were able to cross on a new 19 span bridge built of materials brought over from Australia. Costing 17,025 pounds sterling, the bridge was 576 feet in length and with a width of 21 feet and at the Pakuranga end was a swivel apparatus which opened to provide a passage of 40 feet for large vessels."

 

"…. In 1916 a new 800 foot concrete bridge was opened and this remained until demolished in 1963 after being replaced in 1959 by the present bridge."

 

A.E. Tonson draws a graphic picture of the bridge in use in early days. viz:

 

Traveling to town from Pakuranga was quite an event in the early years and on Fridays, dressed in their best, the various families with horse and trap would head for the city market. The toll to cross the bridge was sixpence for a horse and cart. As cutters used the river, it was often a race to reach the bridge before the gates were closed and the keeper cranked the span around."

 

Not all town goers went in style. It was quite common for the young and sturdy to walk the distance there and back, sometimes carrying a 25-kilo. sack of flour on their shoulders on the return journey.

 

A school was not officially established in the locality until 1869 - weekly fees 9d for seniors, 6d for juniors - but James had his younger children taught privately, paying one shilling per week per pupil. The schoolroom was set up in the teacher's home.

 

James was a prime mover in having the Methodist Church at Howick, then a predominantly Catholic population, moved to Pakuranga for the use of faithful Wesleyans. (See chapter on the history of the church.)

 

James and Catherine died in the same year - 1881 - and both are interred in the graveyard on the site of the church before it was moved to the Howick Historic Village.

(See Jame's Death Certificate)

(See Catherine's Death Certificate)

 

Jame's will in pdf format

 

We don't know too much about life at Pakuranga between 1860 and 1881. Certainly it was not a land flowing with milk and honey if James and Catherine had expected such, which is most unlikely.

 

Although the land was fertile there were two exceptionally bad winters between 1860 and '63 and the latter year also saw the outbreak of the Waikato Wars which disrupted the lives of all families. Within three months of war being declared, on July 12, all able-bodied men between the ages of 16 and 55 were on active service. Youths under 16 and men turned down for active service trained for the Home Guard.

 

Although Pakuranga was not actually attacked, Maori raiders killed isolated settlers and looted their homes as close to the settlement of Howick - where the Militia was stationed - as Whitford and Maraetai. A family named Trust (how ironic.) were massacred only a couple of miles from Howick in a particularly brutal and unjustified killing.

 

The Waikato Wars ended officially in 1864 and Auckland areas at least settled into peace. But the year of fear had imprinted itself into the minds of the young Qualtrough children for both Thomas and Emily, though aged only 12 and 8 respectively at the time, told tales of burying valued possessions in the front garden of their house in case the family had to flee to safety. Tommy, though so very young had duties with the Home Guardsmen should the area be attacked, fetching and carrying guns and water - so he said. Memories of his help being much appreciated might have been a little dramatized in true 'boy' fashion.

 

The farm was still financially encumbered upon James' demise. James Jnr. took it on although he himself had a small piece of land at Karaka. By this time Willy, Richy and Tommy had gone off to seek their fortunes in the Waikato, which was forging ahead as the Golden South of the 60's and 70's.