Gordon/Golden Downs, Enterprising Ellises and the Kerr Connection
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Motupiko Valley, 1870 |
Robert Hooker’s background
Born at East Horsley, Sussex, England, on 20 July, 1826, Robert Hooker was baptised on 24 September 1826 at the local Anglican church, St Martin’s. The officiating clergyman was East Horsley’s distinguished Rector, the Rev. Hon. Arthur Philip Perceval, who until his death in 1853 served as Royal Chaplain in turn to three British monarchs: King George IV, King William IV and Queen Victoria.
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| St Martins Anglican Church, East Horsley, Sussex |
Robert had eight siblings and was the second son and sixth child of farmer John Hooker (1779-1847) and his wife Fruzann nee Waterer (1789-1848), who had married at West Horsely, Surrey, on 1 August 1815. The unusual first name “Fruzann” is Dutch in origin - perhaps Robert’s maternal grandmother Fruzan Waterer nee Freelove was of Dutch descent? The name was carried on through Robert Hooker's family - as well as his mother and grandmother, Robert had a sister called Fruzann, and the name was also given to his eldest daughter, who gave it in turn to her youngest daughter, though it seems that the latter was more commonly known as “Minnie” or “Mina”.
Robert no doubt grew up working on the family farm and maybe also for other farmers in the area, but during the 1840s England fell into an economic depression and unemployment became rife. In 1848 the New Zealand Company, a British commercial emigration enterprise which had founded the Nelson settlement in 1842, advertised around England offering assisted passages for “agricultural mechanics (a term used for skilled farm workers - ploughmen, shearers, blacksmiths etc), farm labourers and domestic servants”, meaning that if considered suitable emigrants, their fares to New Zealand would be subsidised by the New Zealand Company. With few prospects in sight at home, a number of people took up this offer.
It should be noted that the New Zealand Company was not popular with the Crown as it had ignored warnings from the British Government that it was not to go ahead with its immigration schemes without their approval and had carried on regardless, leading to a number of problems which the British authorities had to later deal with.
Robert sets sail for New Zealand
It's possible that Robert Hooker was inspired by one of those bold New Zealand Company promotional posters to take the chance of bettering himself. His parents had earlier died within a few days of each other- his father on 30 December 1847, his mother on 3 January 1848 - and this may have freed him to follow his own path. At any rate, on February 8, 1849, Robert took ship from Gravesend, London, to Nelson, New Zealand, travelling on the Mariner, which was bound for Otago, then Wellington. He was recorded on the ship's manifest as being on the Assisted Passengers list - Robert Hooker, a single man aged 23, occupation Farm Labourer.
Lt: NZ Coy promotional poster for the immigrant ship Ajax. which sailed from London to New Zealand on 8 September 1848. On 9 March 1849 she called in at Nelson, where 12 immigrant passengers disembarked.
It was a roundabout voyage. The Mariner’s Otago-bound passengers disembarked at Port Chalmers, Dunedin, then the ship transported the rest up to Wellington. From there the passengers for Nelson took passage on the brigantine William Alfred, finally reaching Nelson Haven (now Port Nelson) on 4 August, 1849.
Where he first worked after arrival in Nelson is unknown, but it’s likely that Robert took up employment as a farm labourer at outlying Waimea West, where farming had been established very early on after Nelson’s settlement. In this case he would almost certainly have known, if not worked for, Waimea West’s earliest European farmers, the Kerr family.
Robert Hooker connects with the Kerr and Rae Families
A few years later, Robert’s life would become linked with that of Margaret Kyle Rae, known as Maggie, who was born at Forfar, Angus, Scotland. in 1836. At the age of 7 she came out to Nelson on the ship Prince of Wales with her parents Thomas & Agnes (nee Duncan) Rae and siblings William (aged 12), Elizabeth (10) and Robert (4), reaching Nelson on 21 Dec 1842. Sadly, their mother Agnes, aged 30, died onboard before the ship’s arrival at Nelson.
Rae family legend has it that the Raes were taken under the wing of the Redwood family from Staffordshire, England. Henry Redwood and his wife Mary, along with 9 of their children, arrived in Nelson just 19 days before the Raes on the ship George Fyfe, which docked on 12 December 1842, arriving after what their son-in-law Joseph Ward, who kept an onboard diary, described as "a quite appalling voyage". Among this group was Henry Redwood Jnr, at the age of 19 already an experienced farmer, crack shot and horse racer, who would go on to become a major player in the horse racing industry, not only in New Zealand, but also Australia and Europe. The Redwoods were Roman Catholics and their youngest son, Francis, who trained for the priesthood in France, later became Archbishop of New Zealand.
However, it is unlikely that the Redwood family would have been in a position at the time to take on the care of two young orphans. The women in the party remained on board the ship while Henry Snr set up an enormous canvas tent partitioned with timber and canvas walls on the Waimea West land they had been granted. This property was situated in the area now known as Appleby, named for a fellow Waimea West settler of that surname. The rest of the family then joined him, living in somewhat straitened conditions for the first six months while they built a two-storey cob house named Stafford Place, Although at first obliged to supplement their diet with wild animals they managed to shoot, they soon cleared, drained and stocked their property and before long were supplying the Nelson market with beef, mutton and butter from their farm. The first Stafford Place homestead was later replaced by a larger home also known as Stafford Place which still stands on its original site today.
After his marriage in 1845 Henry Jnr built a home of his own nearby known as Hednesford and around 1851 added a red brick stables nearby to house the growing number of horses which he trained on land at Rabbit Island. In later times the Redwood Stables eventually became derelict, but more recently those red bricks were dismantled and used to build the Stables Restaurant and Tavern in the nearby Tasman township of Richmond, keeping alive a piece of local history.
After living at Appleby for 20 years, the Redwoods moved to Blenheim, though Henry Jnr continued to maintain his Redwood Stables at Appleby as well as several others he had earlier established at key sites around the South Island, leaving trusted employees in charge of them.
Lt: The old Redwood Stables at Appleby
A drawing by Christopher Vine, architect, potter, and longtime Nelson identity.
Confusion about the Raes may have arisen because Robert Rae later worked as a stable lad and jockey for Henry Redwood Jnr at his Redwood Stables,.
The Kerr Family of Waimea West
However, It was in fact recorded by Captain Arthur Wakefield, the NZ Company's first Resident Agent in Nelson, who was impressed by their compassion, that it was the Kerr family, at the time living at their Nelson section, who as sympathetic fellow Scots went to the wharf to meet the bereaved Rae family and take them into their household.
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John Kerr Snr & his wife Janet nee Ramage |
John Kerr and his wife Janet (nee Ramage) had came out from Midlothian, Scotland, on the ship Fifeshire, arriving in Nelson on 1 February 1842 with their six youngest sons - James, David, Peter, John Jnr, known as Jack, Walter and William - and bringing with them their Scottish friends and neighbours, the Tytler family. Experienced farmers, they were regarded highly by Nelson’s New Zealand Company agent, Captain Arthur Wakefield, as a model for those immigrants new to farming, especially after seeing John Kerr give a demonstration of ploughing at what is now Buxton Square.
Not only was Wakefield impressed by Kerr's skill, but he saw in this demonstration an answer to his problem about what to do with the over-abundance of immigrants packing the crowded Nelson township waiting for land of their own and looking for work. He had been dismayed by the lack of prosperous new settlers who could provide employment for them and the large numbers of working class men who had instead arrived on the immigrant ships. These men had been promised steady work and good remuneration by the NZ Company agents, and Wakefield was obliged to dip into the Company coffers, in effect putting them on the dole, and had also in desperation put them to work on road making projects around the town. Some were later sent out to work on roading and drainage projects in outlying areas and the deep drainage channel they dug in boggy Lower Moutere, still known today as the Company Ditch, is a testament to their work.
Showing that nothing is new, Wakefield recorded despondently that a number of skilled tradesmen had headed off to Australia because they couldn't find work in Nelson.
Nelson's First Anglican Church on the Hill
When New Zealand's first Anglican Bishop, George Augustus Selwyn, arrived in Nelson later in 1842, Wakefield saw an opportunity and eventually persuaded the Bishop to authorise the use of Church funds to build an Anglican church on what was originally called by local Maori Piki-mai, but is now known as Church Hill, there by creating more work for immigrants. This would be the first Anglican church to be built in Nelson city. After attempts at taking services in a tent which left the parishioners soaked in stormy weather, the Bishop saw the light! He arranged with Captain Wakefield to purchase two wooden buildings on the hill which had originally served as barracks for the first NZ Company surveyors. The material from these buildings was
then used to build a simple wooden church, which was erected at the top of the hill.
Following the Wairau Affray, there were fears (luckily unfounded) about the safety of Nelsonians, and Church Hill was temporarily converted into a fortified area known as Fort Arthur, with the little church perched at the top. With the Nelson township steadily growing, this first church was replaced in 1850 by a larger and more substantial building on the same site which could hold 300 parishioners. In 1886 arrangements were made for Christ Church on the Hill to become the Cathedral Church of the Diocese of Nelson, with the consecration taking place on 16th February 1887, making Nelson a Cathedral City by Queen Victoria's decree.
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Following Kerr's ploughing demonstration, Wakefield was enabled to send a number of those loose end immigrants out onto the Waimea plains to become farmers and farm labourers, with John Kerr Snr instructing them in farming practices. Wakefield had promptly offered the Kerrs land in the area now known as Waimea West on a seven-year lease, with one year rent free, the understanding being that John Kerr Snr would act as a tutor, helping the new settlers to pick up farming skills. In consequence, in July 1842 the Kerrs became the first settlers in the area, with John Kerr Snr mentoring many of the settlers who followed them in the rudiments of farming. This area had recently been surveyed and subdivided up into what were known as Accommodation Sections for sale to immigrants by NZ Company surveyors John Wallis Barnicoat and Thomas John Thompson and just a fortnight after the completion of this survey the Kerrs had begun cultivating the block allocated to them. The land was poor, but by the second year they had brought it into production, and the ever-hospitable Kerrs' home and barn had soon beoome a social centre for new settlers arriving in the area. Their barn also served as a setting for weekly Anglican services, the first service taking place on 4 December 1842. After fellow Waimea West settlers Messrs Saxton and Tytler donated land for an Anglican church and vicarage it was all hands at work building a new church which was named St Michael's, the first service to be held there taking place on 24 December 1843. It was the first church built in the wider Nelson area and had a further life as a Sunday School after being replaced by the current church on the same site in 1866.
"On this site, Town Acre No 170, John Kerr (Snr) ploughed the first furrow
in the Nelson Settlement on 25 May 1842"
Wakefield also granted John Kerr Snr land in Upper Motupiko, which became the Blue Glen run, managed and later owned after his father's death by John Kerr's son David.
The Rae daughters, Elizabeth and Margaret are recorded in Kerr family history as living with the Kerrs until their later marriages, and their father Thomas worked for the Kerrs as a farm labourer until his death. It seems very unlikely that the Rae sons, the youngest being only 4 years old, wouldn't have also become part of the household until old enough to go out to work - something which happened at an early age for boys back in earlier times.
Both Elizabeth Rae and her sister Margaret later named daughters "Janet Ramage” after Mrs Kerr, indicating a close relationship. Mrs Kerr was widely esteemed for her generous and kindly nature, being later eulogised by the "Nelson Evening Mail" following her death on 9 March 1873 at the age of 81 in an obituary on the following day titled "Death of an Old Old Settler", remarking upon her "hospitality and kindness to all who were in distress, which endeared her to every one of the old settlers in this province." Janet Kerr was buried at the St Michael's Anglican Church graveyard, where her husband had earlier been interred following his death at the age of 78 on 27 December 1862, a grave stone being raised there in his memory.
Thomas Rae's Death
Thomas Rae, who had been working from his arrival in Nelson as a farm labourer at Waimea West, died suddenly on 20 March 1849, seven years after the family’s arrival, leaving his children orphans. It appears that he had been living with and working for the Kerrs at the time of his fatal heart attack, after having been taken into their household at the same time as his children. The person who notified the authorities of Thomas’ death was the Rev. Henry Francis Butt, then based at St Michael’s Anglican Church, just across the road from the Kerrs’ homestead. St Michael’s didn’t have a consecrated churchyard until the early 1860s, so Thomas Rae was buried at Nelson’s oldest cemetery, Hallowell, on Collingwood Street, off Nile Street East. His grave site is unknown, but he is recorded amongst those early settlers known to have been buried there whose names are listed on a board at the cemetery entrance.
Although Thomas’ age at the time of his death was recorded as 40, this was not the case. His age had been noted on the Prince of Wales’ manifest as 35, but he was in fact 40 at the time he emigrated to New Zealand. making him 47 when he died at Waimea West. It was quite common for would-be emigrants to knock a few years off their ages when applying to the New Zealand Company for passage to New Zealand, as younger emigrants were given preference. In fact, both John & Janet Kerr had also massaged their ages well downwards before emigrating to Nelson.
The Rae/ Ray/ Reay Brothers, William & Robert
Sadly, William fell prey to drink and depression, and on 9 October 1895, he died in unusual circumstances whilst under the influence of alcohol. An Inquest held at the time came to the conclusion that he had taken his own life by deliberately lacing his whisky with rat poison. Two days after his death he was buried at the Richmond Cemetery.
William's younger brother, Robert Reay (known as Bob) had been taken up as a protégé by Henry Redwood Jnr, owner of the Redwood Stables at Waimea West, after showing an early talent for breaking in and racing horses. Horse racing was hugely popular as both a sporting and social event during the early decades of Nelson's settlement, and as a rider of note, Robert raced horses for a number of Nelson bigwigs (including Henry Redwood) at various events at the Stoke Racecourse, set up on land opposite the Turf Hotel, the Great Nelson Trail Stakes, and the annual Nelson Steeple Chase established in 1854, followed later by the Waimea West Steeple Chase based from 1868 around the Wakefield Arms Hotel
The Christchurch Racing Connection
Horse racing had also from early on played a significant part in Christchurch's social life and in addition to his Redwood Stables in Waimea West, Henry Redwood established a foothold there in the 1860s, having leased from brothers George & John Willis a Riccarton property called 'Racecourse", which was already being run as a racing stables. Redwood bought "Racecourse" outright in 1874, renamed it “Chokebore Lodge” and sent his head horse-breeder and trainer, Edward Cutts, down from Waimea West to manage it.
Whether William Reay’s move to Christchurch earlier was made in connection with Henry Redwood’s original “Racecourse” venture remains unknown. However, by 1870 his brother Robert Reay had also shifted to Christchurch, where he worked as a jockey and horse trainer, becoming a well-known figure in the Canterbury racing industry based around the Riccarton Park Racecourse. On 3 June 1872 Robert was married at the St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church manse by the Rev. Charles Fraser to Charlotte Higgins, a domestic servant living in Christchurch. Charlotte had been born in London on 5 December 1842, and was a daughter of labourer John Higgins & his wife Gertrude nee Packman. Robert and Charlotte had seven children together.
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| Robert (Bob) Reay (1839-1905) "One of the best horsemen in the country" |
Bob Reay also had an interesting and lucrative sideline during the gold rush boom in the 1870s, when he joined several other riders who would take their horses on a 400 mile circuit (nearly 644 km) and ride them in races set up at various Central Otago goldfields locations. These were enthusiastically welcomed by diggers short on entertainment who were keen to splash their cash and show off their riding skills. An obituary published in the “Press” following his death on 23 April 1905 listed Robert Reay’s achievements, describing him as “A Veteran of the Turf”.
Robert Hooker goes into partnership with John (Jack) Kerr Jnr
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| John Kerr Jnr (1829-1898) Politician and Run-holder |
Robert Hooker & John Kerr Jnr dissolve their partnership
and become brothers-in-law instead
At any rate, Robert returned to Waimea West, where he and John Kerr Jnr became brothers-in-law when Hooker married Margaret Kyle Rae at the first St Michael’s Anglican Church, Waimea West, on 8 May 1855
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| The first St Michael's Anglican Church, which stood right opposite the Kerrs' homestead |
John Kerr Jnr had earlier that year married Margaret’s older sister, Elizabeth Lindsay Rae at Motupiko on 14 February 1855, with Nelson’s first Presbyterian minister, the Reverend Thomas D. Nicholson, officiating. The exact location of the ceremony is unknown, but it seems reasonable to suppose that it might have taken place at the "Blue Glen" home of Jack Kerr’s older brother Davey Kerr, who is known to have remained a Presbyterian, although his parents had espoused the Anglican cause after settling in Nelson - perhaps it seemed politic at the time to go with the majority being Anglican settlers?
It's likely that the Kerr family had previously all been Presbyterians before leaving Scotland, with Janet Kerr being a daughter of the Rev. Robert William Ramage, a well-respected Presbyterian minister. It appears that Elizabeth Rae had also kept to the Presbyterian faith which she had grown up with, and it’s notable that following her death in 1904 she was buried at the Wakapuaka Cemetery’s Presbyterian Block.
Lt: Mrs John Kerr.
Believed to be a photo of Elizabeth Lindsay nee Rae,
taken around the time of her marriage to John Kerr Jnr.
Kerr and Hooker had amicably dissolved their partnership in the Nelson butchery after Kerr’s marriage, a notice in the "Nelson Examiner" on 31 March 1856 confirming that Hooker was now carrying on the business under the name Hooker & Co, with a new partner, Isaac Freeth.
John Kerr Jnr becomes a hotelier/storekeeper at the Waimea West Village
Jack Kerr had in the meantime bought the "Volunteers’ Arms", John Palmer’s original accommodation house and store at the Waimea West Village, as the small settlement had become known. Kerr set up a butchery and general store there which he ran for a time, aided by his new wife, Elizabeth. They also advertised “Bed and Board for Travellers on moderate terms.”
John Kerr becomes owner of Lake Station at Lake Rotoiti
In 1862 John Kerr Jnr, who had earlier managed the Tarndale Station, became owner of the Lake Station at Lake Rotoiti. This had originally been leased by his father John Kerr Snr in May 1861 from the Nelson Working Men's Sheep Association. Kerr Snr bought the property outright in 1862 and handed its management to his son John (Jack) Kerr, however not long afterwards John Kerr Snr died and John Kerr Jnr took over the running of Lake Station on a permanent basis. Over time he set about increasing his holdings there by buying up land in the vicinity as it became available and Lake Station eventually expanded to take in a vast area running from the Kawatiri Junction to St Arnaud. Jack Kerr initially put in a manager at Lake Station and spent much of his time at Waimea West, where he began his career as a local politician. Later he would serve as a Member of Parliament for the electorates of Waimea West and Motueka. Interestingly, frustrated by the low prices he was getting at the time for his stock, in the 1870s he once again opened a butchery in Nelson from which his own meat was sold.
Lt: "Lake Station", showing the homestead and outbuildings. A pigeon loft can be seen at the entrance - pigeons, like hens, provided a useful source of meat for the table.
Athough a somewhat rough and ready character who spent time after arrival in Nelson doing the hard yards working around Marlborough as a sailor and whaler, John Kerr was a hardworking and inventive man
Through his own energy and enterprise he became a man of wealth, successfully fulfilling his vision of creating his own personal back-blocks empire, and allowing him to travel overseas to places like Australia and the United States, picking up useful connections and ideas from these countries. These connections would also enable him to import trotting horses and fish ova from overseas sources. Appealing to working class settlers who had little in common with the usual more upper-class politicians, Jack Kerr developed a reputation for championing back-country areas when it came to getting amenities like roads and bridges built. Of course, being the shrewd man that he was, he also managed to wrangle some advantage for himself at the same time, like a getting a bridge built for his own property on the ratepayers' ticket.
It seems that early on the Kerr family mostly used Lake Station as a summer holiday home before later settling there on a more permanent basis.
By necessity Jack Kerr did a lot of travelling between Lake Station and Nelson through Tophouse. The licensee of the Tophouse hotel between 1859-1882 was a German immigrant by the name of Adolf Wiesenhavern, noted as being very large, with hands “the size of hams”. He was not a popular proprietor and apparently he and John Kerr at one stage had a major falling out with each other. A story is told of the time when Kerr and Wiesenhavern unexpectedly encountered each other at the Star and Garter Hotel in Richmond, with heated words soon boiling over into fisticuffs. Both were strong men but Weisenhavern was the larger, and the battle royal which took place ended up with Kerr on the floor, knocked silly. When a
tavern employee came to see what all the racket was about, Wiesenhavern is said to have told him proudly in his thick German accent, “That is John Kerr from the Lake Station under the sofa!”
John Kerr Jnr and Elizabeth nee Rae’s Family
John and Elizabeth Kerr had nine children - Agnes, Robert (Bob), Janet Ramage (Ginny), twins Elizabeth (Lizzie) & Margaret (Maggie), John (Jack), Alice, Maud and Helen. The Maud and Maggie Creeks at the Howard goldfield were named for the Kerrs’ daughters Maud & Margaret. They also raised relative Margaret. Pettie as one of their own from her birth in 1857.
Margaret was the daughter of unmarried Scottish cousin Mary Pettie, who had found herself inconveniently pregnant and hastily made a trip to New Zealand to visit her grandparents John & Janet Kerr at Waimea West, in order to avoid the scandal which would have been aimed at her and her family if her indiscretion had been revealed at home. She stayed on in Nelson and married her cousin William Kerr. William unfortunately died young and she remarried, not just once, but twice, being apparently unlucky in her husbands, with all of whom she had children. She was living in Auckland at the time of her death.
With many businessmen stopping at Lake Station during their travels, as the Kerr daughters grew older they had their pick of eligible men. Maud Kerr, who outlived all her siblings, married Motueka merchant James Henry (Harry) Rankin in 1899, her sister Elizabeth having earlier married another Motueka entrepreneur, Frederick (Fred) Craven Batchelor in 1885. Keeping it in the family, Elizabeth’s twin Maggie was married in 1891 to Fred’s brother, Henry Harold Batchelor, known as Sam.
One of John Kerr’s many projects had been the introduction of exotic fish to Lake Rotoiti, and it was while out in a boat checking on the progress of some of these fish that he accidentally drowned in the lake on 3 May, 1898, at the age of 68, with his burial taking place at Nelson’s Wakapuka Cemetery on the 5th of May, 1898. Although there were dark murmurings at the time about possible foul play (it was well known that there was bad blood between Jack Kerr and his oldest son Robert), an inquest held on the day of Kerr’s interment unequivocally ruled the cause of his death to have been the result of an accident. Lake Station was then managed as an estate by several parties, including John Kerr’s son Robert and nephew Arthur Kerr.
Robert Kerr lived on site for a few years, running the day to day business. but Lake Rotoiti and Mount Robert were taken back by the Crown a few years later over concerns about what was regarded as Robert's mismanagement. Today these features and Lake Station itself are included within the bounds of the Nelson Lakes National Park. Robert then took over the licence in 1903 for the Brightwater Hotel, later becoming proprietor of the Turf Hotel at Stoke. He died on 19 January 1915, at the age of 55, leaving behind a wife and young family, and was also buried at Wakapuaka Cemetery, Catholic Block 5. An obituary was published in the “Colonist” on the following day. His widow Mary Cecelia died in 1939 aged 68 and they lie together at Plots 25 & 26.
Jack Kerr’s widow Elizabeth had removed to Washington Valley in Nelson after her husband’s death, probably living with the family of her daughter Agnes, who in 1879 had married Thomas Brown. Elizabeth died in Nelson on 26 February 1904, aged 70, her burial at Wakapuaka Cemetery taking place the following day, the cortège leaving from the Browns' home. The couple lie next to each other at Old Presbyterian Block 1, with John Kerr at Plot 35 and his wife at Plot 36. Elizabeth is commemorated on her husband’s grave stone. An obituary published in the “Colonist” on the day of the funeral memorialised her as “A woman of great kindness of heart.”
Lake Station after the Kerrs
Lake Station was bought in 1936 by James Alexander (Alex) McConochie, second son of early Murchison settler Thomas (Tom) Newton McConochie, who in 1885 had taken up a 1000 acre block of land at Glenhope which he successfully turned into a productive farm called Glenfield. This property later passed to Tom McConochie's oldest son, Newton. Still owned by members of the McConochie family, these days Lake Station covers 1163 hectares and is run as a Hereford beef operation.
Robert Hooker takes over as manager of Bell’s Run
A later notice in the "Nelson Examiner" dated 25 October 1856, announced that Robert Hooker was relinquishing the Bridge Street butchery, and passing it on to his business partner, Isaac Freeth. He then took over as manager of a run in the Upper Motueka area known as Gordon Downs, leased at that time by William Gordon Bell. The Bells’ homestead at Spring Grove (now Brightwater ) was called "Bellvue", but Bell’s grazing run was dubbed Bell Grove and this name still remains locally in the form "Belgrove".
Bell’s Gordon Downs run, situated within the wider area named Wai-iti, was at the head of the Upper Motueka Valley and had previously been occupied by George Duppa, who with William Fox’s permission was running 350 head of cattle and 266 sheep there by 1845. This run was granted to Bell after Duppa vacated the area around 1848. The name Gordon Downs Run associated with it came from an earlier connection with Scottish shepherd William Gordon, who during Duppa’s occupation had been employed by Duppa as his head stockman. During this time Gordon lived near the ford across the Motueka River in a cob bothy of the sort known then as a “mud hut”. Edward (later Sir Edward) Stafford was the official holder of the depasturage licence for this run and in 1848 ran a 500 acre block in the area, with early Motupiko settler and shepherd Thomas Fawcet managing it on his behalf. This was a common arrangement early on, when gentlemen runholders tended to live comfortably in town and employ an experienced, hardy shepherd, generally from Yorkshire or Scotland, to do the hard yards on their behalf.
George Duppa
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| George Duppa (1819-1888) |
A descendant of Bryan Duppa, Bishop of Winchester, who from 1634 served as chaplain to King Charles I
and tutor to the King’s two sons, George Duppa played an active part in the early days of Nelson's settlement and had family connections to both the Wakefield and Fox families. He later became owner of the Birch Hill run in the Wairau Valley and from about 1855 built up the huge St Leonard’s Station (originally known as the Lowry Peaks Run) in the Amuri area - the site today of the Hanmer settlement. Although a resourceful man, full of energy and enterprise and very effective in setting up a number of profitable farming enterprises, he was at times undoubtedly unscrupulous and single-mindedly driven by his openly stated ambition of making a fortune in New Zealand so that he could go home to England, buy back his family’s ancestral estate and live a comfortable life as a landed gentleman.
This he did. Having sold his St Leonard’s Station in 1862 for what was described at the time as a “fabulous price”, in 1863 he returned to England, bought back his birthplace, the Hollingbourne Manor House at Allington in Maidstone, Kent, and returned to one of his favourite sports, yacht racing. Duppa had raced yachts while in Nelson and had a yacht brought out from England for the purpose (likely the yacht “Flying Fish” which he often raced). The first official regatta took place in Nelson in March 1858 and it was noted that George Duppa had been elected as the first President of the Annual Nelson Regatta Committee. Although by then living in the Amuri, Duppa clearly kept up his Nelson connections and made frequent visits back to the city. In 1870 he was married in London to Alice Catherine Miles, a young society beauty with aristocratic connections who gave him three sons and a daughter - the firstborn son, as was a family custom, being named Bryan after the illustrious Bishop.
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| Hollingbourne Manor House George Duppa's ancestral home and his heart's desire. |
On the occasion of George Duppa’s death in England in 1888, the “Nelson Evening Mail” published an obituary which detailed his previous connection with Nelson. It’s interesting to note that Duppa was the first European to settle in the area which he named Oriental Bay after the ship Oriental which had brought him out to Port Nicholson (now Wellington), arriving on 30 January 1840. Like a number of better-off emigrants, he had brought with him in the hold a pre-fabricated house which he set up on arrival and lived in until his move to Nelson.
The Nelson Settlement runs into difficulties:
Rioting in the streets and the Wairau Affray
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Soon after the Nelson settlement was established the New Zealand Company ran into several major difficulties, one being that it soon became clear that many well-off English investors had never had any intention of actually settling around Nelson and providing work for labourers as had been expected. Another was the lack of sufficient suitable land in the small Nelson township to provide enough sections for immigrants who had bought land sight unseen in advance of coming out to New Zealand. It took many decades of reclamation work to bring the city up to its present size.
Rt: "Scene of the Wairau Massacre, Tuamarina, Marlborough." (1851)
Artist: Charles Emilius Gold (1809-1871)
Thought to be the original burial site of the 22 Nelson settlers killed during the conflict with Te Rauparaha and his followers.
The first three NZ Company Expedition ships sent out under the command of former British naval officer Captain Arthur Wakefield to find a workable site for the already named Nelson settlement arrived in 1841. They had found the perfect harbour but the lack of space at the chosen town site meant that a number of New Zealand Company surveyors were rapidly dispatched to check out the hinterlands for satisfactory large tracts of land both near Nelson and further afield. As a result, six blocks of rural land of varying size outside the township, dubbed Suburban Sections, were laid out. These included Suburban North - Wakapuaka; Suburban South - the area south of the Nelson township, including Stoke; Suburban East - the Maitai and Brook Valleys; Waimea East - from Suburban South to the Waimea and Wairoa Rivers; Waimea West - on the other side of these two rivers, and Waimea South - from Brightwater to the Wai-iti River. Motueka and Riwaka were also included in this list.
The Wakefield settlement, which grew from its beginnings as a farm set up by Captain Richard England (another Wairau Affray casualty, killed fighting beside his good friend Captain Arthur Wakefield), became regarded as a township in its own right.
John Cotterell early on found the Tophouse route to Lake Rotoiti, well known to local Māori, and on 21 November 1842 he discovered the Wairau Pass. His description of grassy expanses in the Wairau Valley was later followed by survey parties from Nelson busily dividing up the land for grazing runs. A non-violent but fraught meeting at the time with Ngāti Toa war leader Te Rauparaha, who claimed the Wairau by right of conquest, led to a later violent clash between Nelson hotheads and Te Rauparaha, his nephew Te Rangihaeata and their followers at Tua Marina, dubbed the Wairau Affray. After a nervous Nelson settler accidentally discharged his rifle, inadvertently killing Te Rauparaha's daughter, Te Rongo, who was also Te Rangihaeata's wife, all bets were off and the tomahawks came out, resulting in the grruesome deaths of 22 Nelson settlers, including Nelson’s popular New Zealand Company agent, Captain Arthur Wakefield. and John Cotterell himself. Some members of the Nelson party managed to escape into the hills and returned to Nelson to tell the sorry tale. Those killed were later buried at the site of their deaths by Nelson friends, and a cairn was raised at Tua Marina in their memory.
It was also a disaster for Te Rauparaha, who fearing heavy duty retribution following this calamitous event decamped from his bases at Kapiti Island, Port Underwood and the Wairau, and with his followers removed permanently to ancestral lands at Manawatū in the North Island. Did he feel any regret about Captain Wakefield's death? Te Rauparaha knew Wakefield well. They had met a number of times while jointly dealing with situations where there was misunderstanding between Māori and Pakeha, and had sailed his canoe into Nelson Haven on several occasions to parley with Wakefield.
A little-known but noteworthy factor contributing to the Wairau Affray was bitterness amongst the Māori community over the brutal murders at Port Underwood of a high caste young Māori woman who was one of Te Rauparaha's relatives, and her small son. The identity of their murderer, a Pākehā whaler, was well known, and the subsequent lack of justice at the Wellington Magistrate's Court when he was allowed to go free led to much resentment, especially after the Magistrate was heard to remark as an aside that "it was only a Māori girl, after all."
Yet another significant issue for the fledging Nelson settlement was a financial collapse soon after the Wairau Affray which led to the New Zealand Company’s demise in 1844, with its home office in England pulling the plug on its Nelson colony and cutting off the flow of money which had previously supported it. This meant that payments to labourers as promised for their work on civic projects ceased abruptly, causing much distress and unrest amongst those affected. In consequence workers and their wives rioted in the streets of Nelson - a wake up call for the authorities, who scrambled to find other options for them. Hardship throughout the district was rife at this time, with many desperate settlers on the brink of starvation.
Duppa comes up with a cunning plan,
Duppa had moved to Nelson from Wellington in 1842 and settled at Section 51 on the north bank of the Wairoa River. Having access to plentiful family funds, he immediately began importing good quality stock, including pedigree horses, from Australia for his new farming enterprise and before long was supplying Nelson with meat and dairy products. He would later develop a lucrative trade exporting the pedigree horses he bred at his St Leonard’s Station not only to Canterbury but to Australia and Europe, where they were much sought after.
Always a man with a eye for the main chance, during the 1844 financial crisis Duppa came up with a cunning plan, adopted by his friend William Fox (later Sir William), who had been appointed the New Zealand Company’s new Nelson agent following the death at the Wairau of his predecessor, Captain Arthur Wakefield.
Duppa and the Allington Estate
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| Allington on the Waimea Plain, Nelson. The farm of George Duppa Esq. in the early 1840s Artist: William (later Sir William) Fox (1812-1893) |
Fox had been struggling to help keep labourers and tradesmen financially afloat by finding them piece-meal work, and this idea appealed to him. Duppa’s scheme (which went down like a lead balloon with those who’d already paid for their land), meant that better-off settlers would be granted free land on the outskirts of Nelson in exchange for employing a good number of labourers. Duppa, of course, was one of the first to benefit, acquiring a further 800 acres of land on the northern side of the Wairoa River, quite possibly land he had already been squatting upon.
He did fulfil the obligation to take on local labourers in exchange, being recorded by the “Nelson Examiner”
on 5 July 1845 (see item “Harvest Home”) as employing around 50 “workpeople” on his estate, which he
had named "Allington" after his homeplace in England. And yes, it was the norm at the time for country dances to last from early evening until dawn the next day, with a supper in the evening and a breakfast at dawn the following morning provided by the local ladies. A room would be set aside for children to sleep in and monitored by various mothers taking turns to keep an eye on things.
The Allington estate would pass through a number of hands over the years. Duppa was advertising in the “Nelson Examiner” on 11 November 1848 that having already sold the bulk of his land at Allington, he was now selling the Allington home block with its homestead, farm buildings and 80 acres of fenced land. The amount of land at Allington varied widely over time as various owners sold or bought back sections of the original farm.
Allington and “Lightband Jackson”
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| Martin Wales Lightband (1832-1914) |
A shoemaker by trade, Ben Jackson made his fortune in Nelson after joining forces with an entrepreneurial immigrant called Martin Lightband. The Lightbands were a staunchly Wesleyan family from Worcester, England. Lightband's father, George Wales Lightband, had connections with tanning and shoe manufacturing businesses in England and was the first to establish a tannery in Nelson, on land bought from the NZ Company, sited where the Brook Stream meets the Maitai River, soon after arriving in Nelson on 25 October 1842 with his family on the ship Thomas Harrison,
His son Martin served as an apprentice there and the first Lightband family home, known as Bethel, was built nearby. This was later replaced by a grander home known as Wainui House, which still stands today on its original site at the corner of Domett & Nile Streets.
Mention must also be made of Martin's adventurous younger brother, George William Wales Lightband, who also served as an apprentice at his father's tannery before heading to Australia and the Victorian goldfields in the early 1850s. It was George Lightband who in 1856 made the very first South Island discovery of payable gold at Golden Bay in the area then named for him - Lightband Gully.
Legend: "Two Miles West Of This Spot At Lightband's Gully The First South Island Discovery of Payable Gold Was Made In 1856".
Nevertheless, by 1882 George had returned to the Nelson area and settled at a property in Brightwater, where he established various successful enterprises, including an orchard and brewery. Brightwater's Lightband Road in the vicinity of his former property was also named for George Lightband, who drowned in an unfortunate boating accident off Rabbit Island in 1909.
Martin Lightband and Ben Jackson had set up in a business together at Trafalgar Square dubbed "Lightband Jackson", selling both custom-made and imported shoes and boots, which became a great success. This enabled Ben Jackson to fulfill his ambition (one common to a number of English settlers until they discovered how much hard work was involved) of becoming a propertied country landowner when he later moved firstly
to Eighty-Eight Valley, then bought the Allington estate near Brightwater.
By mutual agreement Jackson and Lightband dissolved their partnership in 1865, with Lightband then carrying on the business by himself under the name Lightband & Co., as well as going into politics. However, the two always remained close friends and had become in-laws as well after Lightband married Jackson's daughter Sarah Jane at Allington on 5 April 1855. Sadly, only 4 of their 12 children lived long enough to reach adulthood. Sarah, who had by then been ill for some time, died in 1882 during a trip to England .
After he returned to New Zealand Martin Lightband moved to Christchurch, where he married Mary McDowall Stuart at Opawa on 1 March,1883, their only child, a son named Stuart, being born in Nelson on 14 March 1884. During this time spent in Christchurch Martin Lightband acted as senior partner for a business he had set up in the city several years earlier, which was run in partnership with Robert Allan, the man on the ground. This business was known as Lightband, Allan & Co., leather merchants, tanners and shoe manufacturers. However, later ongoing employment issues and workers' strikes caused difficulties leading to the business eventually becoming bankrupt, the factory and plant then passing into new ownership in 1889. At this point Lightband returned to Nelson with his wife Mary and youngest son.
Martin Lightband remained connected with Wainui House in Nelson, this family property having at some point apparently ended up in his possession, until his death there in 1914. His life was commemorated at the time by an obituary published by the "Colonist" on 19 August, 1914. He was buried at the Wesleyan Block, Plot 134, at Wakapuaka Cemetery with his mother, Mary Ann Lightband, who had died in 1890. His second wife, Mary, lived on at Wainui House until her own death at the age of 83 on 22 July 1928. She was buried on 24 July 1928 at the Wakapuaka Cemetery, Anglican Block, Plot 029.
Meanwhile, after selling Allington Farm to Robert Hooker in 1863, Ben Jackson had moved to a property at 425 Alton Street in Nelson where he lived until his death at home in 1876 at the age of 75. His widow Mary Ann stayed on there until her own death 10 years later.
William Gordon and Gordon Downs
Travellers were known to have stayed with Duppa’s head stockman William Gordon on an informal basis while passing through the Wai-iti Valley, with Gordon’s reputation for brewing a mean batch of hooch being well known, and before long the area became known as “Gordon Downs” after him. Local historian Jeff Newport noted that there was a place of accommodation at Gordon Downs in 1846, which was likely a reference to William Gordon’s dwelling. Travellers’ accounts confirm that even well after Duppa had removed from the area, Gordon’s mud hut (by then abandoned) was still being used as a shelter by those journeying through the area on the way to Tophouse, the Wairau, and back. One such account, titled "Excursion to the Wairau" was published in the "Nelson Examiner" on 3 January 1847.
Although Gordon Downs later underwent a name change to Golden Downs, William Gordon is still recalled today by various other features in the area also named for him - Gordon’s Knob, Gordon’s Road, Gordon Creek and the Gordon Range.
Robert Hooker petitions the Provincial Council for the right to
set up an accommodation house at the Gordon Downs ford
Soon after becoming manager of Bells’ run in 1856, Hooker applied to the Nelson Provincial Council, established in 1853, offering to build and run an accommodation house at Gordon Downs if granted a land reserve and a guaranteed payout of £50 for the yet-to-be-built accommodation house if he later decided to move on. No doubt Hooker was regularly encountering travellers passing through the run on their way to and from Tophouse and the Wairau and being aware that they were still dependent on William Gordon’s abandoned old cob hut at the ford as a shelter and stop-over point, had spotted a potentially lucrative business opportunity.
It seemed like a good bet. Farming partners Nathaniel Morse and Dr John Cooper had driven the first mob of sheep through the Tophouse Pass into the Upper Wairau Valley in 1846 and also built the first Tophouse, However, Nelson needed more markets for its livestock and following this event, various parties set out to see if they could discover an accessible route through Tophouse to Canterbury., This was not a problem easy to solve because several parallel ranges, two of them 8,000 feet high, separated them.
The search for a route to Canterbury: Dashwood & Mitchell
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| The Canterbury Plains and Waimakariri River (1850) Artist: Frederick Weld (1823-1891) |
In 1850 a breakthrough was made by the first party from Nelson to reach Canterbury. This party consisted of Edwin H. Dashwood, Esq., formerly an officer with Her Majesty’s 10th Regiment of Foot in India, for whom Dashwood Pass in Marlborough was later named, and Captain William M. Mitchell, a British Army officer who was at the time on leave from service with Her Majesty’s 84th Regiment of Foot in India.
Taking with them a mule and a horse to carry their gear and accompanied by an old whaler called Harris and his dog, on 27 April 1850 Dashwood and Mitchell set out on their arduous journey via the Tophouse Pass. Dashwood, who had a farm at Lower Moutere, just outside the Motueka township, had previously consulted elderly Motueka Māori, whose reminiscences led the explorers along a route following the river valleys. They climbed to the top of the Waihopai stream, crossed the divide by way of the Acheron Saddle and made their way down the Acheron River, where they stayed for a week exploring the area. Reaching the Clarence on 11 May, they then followed the Hossack River to the Hanmer and Waiau Rivers. From there they made their way through the Canterbury Plains to Port Cooper (now Lyttleton), struggling through swamps, speargrass and storms along the way. The Christchurch settlement was still in the planning stages at this time, the first settlers not arriving at Lyttleton until 16 December, 1850.
Captain Mitchell wrote a detailed account of their travels and travails, which was published in the “Nelson Examiner” on 3 August, 1850. The weather was often wet and as winter approached, temperatures dropped to freezing. Although Harris’ weka-catching dog was a godsend, they ran out of food - essential supplies were lost when their mule slipped on steep terrain - and Mitchell almost drowned while trying to ford the Clarence. Although he was rescued by Dashwood, their only compass was lost during this near disaster. They were in dire straits when fortuitously spotted by John Scott Coverall, then running the large, isolated Motanau cattle station in the Waipara/Hurunui area, which later became part of William Acton-Adams’ huge holdings. Coverall took them back to his home, where they spent several days recuperating and were given more provisions to take with them. Needless to say, they made the return trip to Nelson by ship! Maybe this gruelling venture finished Mitchell off - his death on 25 June 1851 at Madras, India, was later noted in the “Nelson Examiner”.
Dashwood and Mitchell were hailed as heroes, and there followed a great scramble by would-be runholders from Nelson to claim land and obtain depasturage licences in the Awatere, Clarence and Amuri areas. By 1853, 135,000 sheep were grazing on rolling grasslands from the Waipara River to Queen Charlotte Sound, at sheep stations ranging from 5000 to 90,000 acres in size. In that year alone 5000 sheep were driven southward through the Dashwood Pass. Before long their original route would be passed over in favour of easier ones discovered by incoming runholders like brothers Francis & Edward Jollie and Frederick Weld, who gave their names to the Jollie and Weld Passes, but this didn’t detract from Dashwood and Mitchell’s achievement. They were the pathfinders.
The influx of former officers from the British Navy and both
British and Honorable East India Company army regiments.
When it comes to Nelson’s early history you can’t avoid tripping over former officers from the British Navy and both British and Honourable East India Company Army regiments. This was not coincidental - many who found themselves at a loose end upon retirement from the above services had read Charles Flinders Hursthouse’s glowing propaganda written on behalf of the NZ Company, and from its foundation in 1853 the Nelson Provincial Council had made it known that officers retired from service with the H.E.I.C., the British Army and the British Navy would be given special deals if they chose to move to the Nelson district. These included a cash incentive and cheap land, providing they agreed in exchange to stay for at least two years and defend other settlers if necessary - the Wairau Affray had left lasting anxiety around possible Māori aggression. A number took up this offer, with a relatively large group settling around the Ngatimoti/Pangatotara area in the Motueka River Valley. Two of these immigrants, former H.E.I.C. Army officers, James George Deck and Major Robert Mercer Paton, were instrumental in establishing branches of the Plymouth Brethren in the Motueka/Nelson region, and indeed throughout New Zealand.
The further search for other viable routes to the Awatere and Canterbury
As further discoveries opened up other viable routes from Nelson to Canterbury more suitable for the
passage of stock, traffic passing through the Gordon Downs ford increased markedly.
Duppa and Hunter-Brown pioneer the Wairau Gorge route
As it happens, George Duppa, acknowledged as a superb horseman - he had ridden his horse Hairtrigger to victory at the first Nelson Anniversary Day Hurdle Race around Church Hill - is believed to have been the first to ride a horse through the Wairau Gorge.
Rt: The formidable Wairau Gorge, 1875.
Artist: John Gully ( 1819-1888)
He was accompanied on this venture by Charles Hunter Brown, a old Nelson acquaintance who, like Robert Hooker, had arrived in New Zealand in 1849 on the Mariner, but at the time of this ride owned the Double Corner run near Leithfield in Canterbury. Duppa and Hunter Brown left Tophouse on 25 April 1856, arriving in Christchurch 10 days later, none the worse for their long journey. Stock from Nelson had been previously driven overland by way of the Awatere, but the Wairau Gorge route soon became more popular despite heading up into more taxing high country at times, as it cut the distance required to reach Christchurch by at least 150 miles (over 241 km).
Robert Hooker’s offer to set up an accommodation house at the
Gordon Downs ford is accepted
With the safety of travellers and drovers in mind, it seems that Hooker’s offer to set up an accommodation house at the ford was speedily accepted by the Provincial Council, as shortly afterwards he was granted a 260 acre accommodation reserve. This was where he built the first official accommodation house, of cob construction, sited close to where William Gordon’s old hut had stood between the Motueka River and Gordons Creek, near the ford on the north bank of the Motueka River and just north of where Janson’s Bridge currently crosses the river and in the area presently occupied by the local Gun Club.
Accommodation reserves varied in size, but were in effect farms which provided the means for an accommodation house to be self-sufficient, - to raise animals and grow vegetables and crops for feeding guests, their mounts and stock - and with room to build stables and barns. It was also expected that securely fenced “travelling paddocks” would be made available, so that drovers passing through could keep their mobs of sheep or cattle safely contained during an overnight stay. Although its name was officially recorded as the Upper Motueka Hotel, Hooker’s establishment was always known as the Gordon Downs Accommodation House.
The Family of Robert Hooker and Margaret (Maggie) nee Rae
Robert & Margaret Hooker would have 5 children, all daughters - Fruzann Elizabeth (1857-1888), Louisa (1859-1915), Janet Ramage, known as Jessie (1861-1874), Elizabeth Agnes (1863-1880) and Ada Edith, known as Edith (1866-1920), the first being born at Gordon Downs. Louisa and Janet were born at Waimea West, possibly at the Kerrs’ Waimea West home, Elizabeth in Nelson and Edith at the Bell Grove Inn at Wai-iti.
The Gordon Downs Accommodation House becomes a
significant stopping point along the route to Tophouse.
The Gordon Downs Accommodation House rapidly became a significant stopping point along the trail from the Waimea plains through the Wai-iti Valley and Rae’s (later Reay’s) Valley and Saddle, following what became known as the Bullock or Stock Track up Kerr’s Hill to Kikiwa, then up another steep hill to Tophouse and on to the Wairau Pass. Although Kerr’s Hill (jokingly dubbed Berneyboosal by Dr (later Sir) David Monro in early days) had been named for John Kerr Snr, it became more closely associated with his son David (Davey) Kerr, who first managed, then following his father’s death in 1862, owned the large run called Blue Glen near the top of this steep hill.
How Kerr Hill got the nickname "Berneyboosal"
On one occasion Sir David Monro and David Lindsay were returning to the Wairau from Nelson and they whiled away the time by making up nonsense rhymes as they made the steep climb up to the Blue Glen homestead, situated at the top of Kerr Hill. Monro made up the following:
When I get over the hill I stop
To dine on Berneyboosal chops
To which Lindsay replied
'Tis but a fool would give refusal
To dine on chops at Berneyboosal
This was later repeated for the Kerrs' amusement and appealed, with the quirky name Berneyboosal being attached to the hill for a number of years before it became better known as Kerrs' Hill and, in more recent times, simply Kerr Hill.
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The Hookers settle in at the Gordon Downs Ford
The Hookers provided accommodation and meals for travellers, plus stabling and fodder for their horses, and manned the crossing, sending across a well-trained horse to bring travellers over the ford if they were on foot, and raising a red flag on a flagstaff as a warning if conditions were too dangerous for a crossing to be attempted. Hooker had also been granted a publican’s licence and with it a guaranteed profit, the early settlers being inordinately fond of their hard liquor!
The Gordon Downs Accommodation House was also a significant stopping point during the 1860s and ‘70s for diggers heading to the Buller and West Coast goldfields.
The Original Diggers’ Route to Murchison
“In the 1860s, before the Hope Saddle was opened, the diggers trudging from Nelson came up the Wai-iti or Motueka Rivers to Gordon (now Golden) Downs, crossed “Berneyboosal” (Kerr Hill) to the Motupiko, then tramped up Rainy Creek and over to the Buller River at Station Creek. Then they continued up the Howard, over the Porika Track to Lake Rotoroa, and down the Mangles Creek to Hampden (now Murchison)”.
Blue Glen, Big Bush and Tophouse
Davey Kerr's Blue Glen Homestead, with house centre back
Between Blue Glen and Tophouse stood what was known as the Big Bush, an extensive heavily timbered expanse of beech forest through which travellers had to cautiously wend their way for around 10 miles (nearly 17 km).This was an area which was often boggy and was originally corduroyed with logs coated in a clay mix to help prevent horses and vehicles slipping, however accidents weren't uncommon. The Big Bush fell victim to a blow down during a ferocious gale on the evening of 29 July, 1867, a contemporary report noting that “scores of acres of dense forest were left without a tree standing.” Although now much reduced in size, some of the remaining bush in this area today is regrowth forest dating from that time.
Although not an offical accommodation house, the Blue Glen homestead also provided stores and accommodation for travellers, as did those at the Roundell and Lake Station runs. This was a nice little earner until the more popular Hope Saddle road through the Clark Valley to Murchison and the Buller opened up around 1879 and traffic through the old route dropped away. Unsurprisingly, when construction of the Hope Saddle road had been proposed in the early 1870s, John Kerr of Lake Station and John Rait at the nearby Roundell Accommodation House had both joined forces to vigorously but unsuccessfully oppose it. Deciding it was a lost cause, Rait moved on in 1874, later setting up the Hope Junction Accommodation House on the main road through to the Buller, not far from the site of the later short-lived Kawatiri railway station. The Roundell Accommodation House carried on for a while with Henry Hudson as proprietor, but as had been feared, custom fell off as travellers took to using the Hope Saddle route. John Kerr eventually bought the Roundell run to add to his own holdings.
The Old Canterbury Track
“If you've ever made the trip through Molesworth to Hanmer from Tophouse via the Upper Wairau and Clarence rivers you've done the old 'Canterbury Track' "
Originally an old Māori trail, it became the main horse highway and drovers' route between Nelson and Canterbury during the mid to late 19th and early 20th centuries”.
From Tophouse travellers could go through the Wairau Pass to the Awatere and Marlborough or on to Canterbury - the latter being the trail followed for many years by drovers taking stock through to various sheep stations along the way or on to Christchurch via Hanmer (then the St Helens Station) for sale at the Addington saleyards. Conditions along these routes could be brutal, and in 1860 the Nelson Provincial Council authorised the building of several back country accommodation houses to provide shelter for travellers. Accommodation houses of cob construction at Tophouse, the Rainbow/Wairau Junction, Tarndale, and the mouth of the Acheron River were all built by master jack-of-all-trades, Edward (Ned) James. Some of these buildings can still be seen today, though their original thatched roofs have been replaced with metal roofing.
The dangers of early river crossings: The death of Henry Augarde
On the 4th of July, 1861, Ivanhoe Augarde and his younger brother Henry ignored a warning from another traveller who’d been told by Maggie Hooker that the river was very high and it was too dangerous to attempt the crossing at the ford. Noting that the Hookers had not yet raised the red flag on the flagpole at the crossing - the standard warning that conditions at a ford were too dangerous to attempt a crossing by any means - the Augarde brothers decided to carry on regardless. However the flow was strong enough to force their horses off their feet, and although Ivanhoe managed to swim his horse across to the other side safely, when he looked back be saw his younger brother knocked from his saddle by a wave and swept away while struggling to get his horse over the river – a good example of the dangers posed by New Zealand rivers to early settlers, the reason why drowning became known as the “New Zealand Disease” and settlers clamoured for bridges to be built. Ivanhoe searched along the river in vain for his brother Henry, then raised a search party which after an extensive hunt discovered and retrieved Henry's battered body near the river's edge, well downstream from where he had fallen in.
The Hookers and their accommodation house were mentioned at the inquest into Henry’s death, his brother commenting that it might have been avoided if the red flag had been raised in warning as was usually the case at the ford if the river was running too high for safety, and was in fact one of the obligations attached to Hooker's tenure at the Gordon Downs Accommodation House.
A memorial was later erected near Gordon Creek, close to the Gordon Downs Accommodation House, to record two nearby drownings, one being that of Henry Augarde, the other of an unnamed man. Although marked as a historic archaeological site, over the years the original standing stone slab deteriorated into a heap of crumbled stones. Plans have been made in more recent times to restore it to its original state, though to date this has not yet happened.
The dead man’s older brother and companion, Ivanhoe (Ivy) Augarde, would himself be the subject in 1868 of a sensational back-country murder-suicide known as the “Tarndale Tragedy” (Tarndale was a large early run which later became part of the Molesworth Station).
The Rae/Reay Name Mystery
A mystery remains as to whom Rae’s Valley, Rae’s Valley Stream and Rae’s Saddle were originally named for, and over time the name became mistakenly attributed to a later family living in the Gordon Downs area whose surname was Reay. First mentions of the Rae Valley and Rae Saddle appear in the early 1860s, when it was proposed to put a road to Tophouse through the area. It seems quite possible that Robert Hooker might have earlier named these features for his wife’s family, this being forgotten after the Hookers moved on.
The was also mention in 1859 of a valley along the Gordon Downs trail known as Hooker’s Gully, which was almost certainly named for Robert Hooker.
Dodgy Dealings: Robert Hooker buys William Bell’s Gordon Downs Run
It was also in 1859 that Hooker bought the lease from William Gordon Bell for the whole of Bell’s run at Gordon Downs, which had by then grown to about 2500 acres. William Gordon Bell, who had been granted a Crown lease for the land around 1851, had handed its management to his son, James Bell, for the first couple of years. However, father and son fell out with each other over what the father regarded as his son’s excessive consumption of alcohol, and thereby hangs a tale, not necessarily to Robert Hooker’s credit. In 1853 Bell had employed William Lechner as manager, followed in 1854 by Alexander Ogg, who was replaced in the role by Hooker in 1856.
The story in the Bell family lexicon goes that in a fit of rage William Bell had told his son James that if he was caught drinking again, he (William) would sell his run to the first person who asked for it. It appears that not long after this outburst, an opportunistic Robert Hooker, upon becoming aware that James had since been spotted the worse for wear after a binge in Motueka, promptly ratted him out to his father. To his family's shock and dismay, William Bell immediately made good on his threat and agreed to sell his run to Hooker, in effect evicting his son from his home. A tough time followed for James Bell and his family, and it’s believed that after leaving the area James never had any further contact with his father.
Somewhat ironically, it appears that James’ unforgiving father William Gordon Bell died on the evening of 6 April 1870 after accidentally falling from the cart he was driving while under the influence of liquor.
Robert Hooker goes on a Real Estate buying binge
In 1860 Hooker applied to the Nelson Provincial Council for, and was granted, 2000 acres of Crown leasehold land adjoining the former Bell run.
Around the same time he also acquired three large tracts of land south of the Gordon Downs area, including some sections in Norris’ Gully. This land extended far enough to adjoin David Kerr’s Blue Glen Run at the head of the Motupiko Valley and had been sold to Hooker by English land agent Arthur Robert Oliver, acting on behalf of English investors who had bought it sight unseen and wanted to cash in.
Oliver, who brought his wife Jane and family with him, lived for some years in the Motupiko Valley, and became closely involved with the local community, serving as a Representative on the Nelson Provincial Council in 1865 and in 1876 being appointed the first County Clerk for the newly formed Waimea County Council. He was known for importing and installing a mill for grinding grain at his property which he made readily available for local residents to use, very handy in times when more isolated settlers had to make their own bread from scratch. Oliver left Nelson permanently in 1878, settling at a property called Ashburton which he'd bought around 1871 as a family home at Rohais, in the Island of Guernsey.
By now Robert Hooker in effect owned most of the area later known as the Gordon Downs Estate, and had also added the 100 acre Spring Bank Farm in the Wairau Valley to his holdings when its former owner, Donald McCallum, put in up for sale in 1862.
Why did Hooker become obsessed with acquiring more and more land? Was he just land banking? As already mentioned, a number of settlers from England held as their ideal the model of the English county aristocracy, where the size of landholdings equalled commensurate prestige, and it seems that anyone who was anybody in Nelson at that time just had to have a Wairau Valley or Awatere property to their name. It’s quite possible that Hooker may have been bent on climbing the social ladder when in 1863 he bought from Ben Jackson the prestigious Allington property once owned by George Duppa, close to Belgrove, where he could interact more readily with the Nelson worthies who frequented the horse races held in conjunction with the Wakefield Arms. The ubiquitous John Sharp was also a devotee of the Waimea South Steeplechase and often served as Judge at these races.
Hooker does a U-turn and sells his recently acquired holdings,
including the former Bell's Run
However, a short time later Hooker suddenly went dramatically into reverse and started selling off much of the land that he’d not long since acquired - perhaps the ill health he later mentioned when he put the lease for the Bell Grove Inn up for sale lay behind this move? In 1863 he put up for sale the Spring Bank Farm in the Wairau Valley, which he’d just bought the previous year, and in 1864 sold the lease for Bell's Run of 2500 acres to the partnership of Herbert Edward Leadham & Welbore Ellis. Leadham later became the brother-in-law of lawyer William Acton-Adams who was at various times owner of a number of sheep runs in the Upper Motueka and Amuri areas, including the Tarndale Station, which he originally ran in partnership with John Kerr Jnr. After buying Kerr out, he incorporated Tarndale into his Molesworth run. Acton-Adams married Leadham’s half- sister Harriette Leadham in 1869.
In 1864 Leadham was recorded as running 3500 sheep on Hooker’s former run, but it seems that Ellis bought him out, with the two later taking each other to court in Nelson over various issues relating to the transaction. Welbore Ellis then formed a new partnership with Graham Lord Greenwood, a son of Motueka pioneers Dr Danforth & Sarah (nee Field) Greenwood. The two styled themselves Ellis, Greenwood & Co., with Greenwood being the man on the ground and acting as manager.
Welbore Ellis arrives on the scene
Welbore Ellis, Esq., formerly a Captain with the British Indian Army, had come out from England in the early 1860s. He was the first member of the well-to-do Ellis family to come to Nelson, bringing with him his wife Catherine Vaughan nee Gabb, whom he had married in June 1861. This trip to Nelson may in fact have been partly in the nature of what was then known as a “bridal tour”. Welbore had undertaken, on behalf of his uncle, Richard Ellis, a prosperous London-based stockbroker, to sort out an option on land his uncle had bought sight unseen in England as an investment, the deal being that a property would be allocated upon the investor’s arrival in New Zealand. This was a common arrangement used during the early days of Nelson’s settlement, not neccessarily with satisfactory results.
Why Nelson? Richard Ellis Snr already had a family connection with the area - his wife Susanna Maria nee Barltrop was the sister of Henry Sturz Barltrop, who in 1842 had arrived in Nelson from London via Wellington as a passenger on the ship Indemnity, and become a well respected businessman in the Nelson township. After Welbore settled at Lower Wakefield (today’s Wakefield Village), Barltrop stood as guarantor for him as a person eligible to vote in local elections.
Welbore buys the Treeton property at Wakefield for himself &
Section 54, Square 5, in the Motueka Valley for his uncle.
Upon arrival in Nelson, Welbore bought Treeton, a freehold property of 48 acres at the outlying rural settlement then known as Lower Wakefield, with Upper Wakefield at the time comprising the area known later as Wai-iti. This included a dwelling house, outbuildings, gardens and orchards, and 25 acres divided into grass paddocks, with the remainder in native bush, and was his base while staying in the Nelson area.
He was offered, as his uncle Richard Ellis’ agent, the choice of either a section of one acre in Wellington or a freehold block of land in the Upper Motueka area. He took up the latter option, buying Section 54, Square 5, Motueka Valley, which was sold to him by John Sharp,
John Sharp, Auctioneer and Land Agent Extraordinaire
Motupiko and the Upper Motueka Valley
The unproductive Upper Motueka and Motupiko areas came within the category classed by the Nelson Provincial Council as “Waste Land” - open, scrubby areas with vegetation struggling to grow in the deposits of gravel, silt and sand common to the district and known as Moutere gravels. The land had also been burnt out by successive wild fires in the past and consisted mainly of fern and native grasses interspersed with cabbage trees, mānuka bushes and flax. This meant that making large runs available for sheep and cattle was considered the only viable option - the size of the acreage compensating for the lack of quality grazing. Initially land grants were handled by NZ Company agents Captain Wakefield, then William Fox, but later such runs tended to be parcelled out by the Provincial Council, through land agents like John Sharp, as fixed term Crown leases rather than being sold outright, with the lessee having to first obtain a depasturage licence (right to graze the land) before being permitted to run stock. The value of the lease was paid to the seller by the incoming lessee if one of these runs was passed on, and arrangement made for the depasturage licence to be transferred. Buyers would often take out a mortgage to pay for a lease, and at times a seller would leave part of the price “on mortgage” to make the sale more appealing.
In 1863 a Waste Lands Board based in Nelson was created, and from this time on it was ruled that all ordinary business relating to sales, leases and disposal of Waste Land should in future be carried out under the auspices of a Commissioner of Crown Lands. Note that a Crown Lease differed from a Crown Grant, which related to freehold land sales. Leasehold land could sometimes be freeholded if an agreement was reached with the Provincial Council, the Commissioner, or later the appropriate local Land Board.
Job done, Welbore Ellis returns with his family to England
With all apparently settled, it seems that Welbore Ellis may have passed the Gordon Downs run on to his uncle, Richard Ellis Snr in England as an investment (possibly conveniently forgetting to mention the outstanding mortgage), then put all his goods, chattels and livestock up for sale in 1864, with land agent John Sharp advertising the Treeton property to be sold or let in 1865. Exactly when Welbore left Nelson is unclear, but by 1866 he was back in England with his family, the Ellises by then having acquired a daughter, Edith, born at Treeton on 29 November 1863. A son, Richard, was born in Gloucestershire, England on 7 June 1866, and a second daughter, Rosina, followed in 1870.
Welbore Ellis died in 1876 at his up-market terraced home on Royal Parade, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, and as was often the case with gentlemen’s estates, settling all the details of his affairs took some time. It appears that he left various debts unpaid at the time of his death. A notice placed in the “Nelson Evening Mail” on 31 May 1878 invited any unpaid creditors in Nelson to take part as plaintiffs in a joint court action against Welbore’s estate which was being put together in England. Possibly attempting to escape these same importunate creditors, following Welbore Ellis’ death his widow and children emigrated to Australia, where they settled permanently around New South Wales.
Subsequent owners of the Treeton property at Wakefield.
After Welbore’s departure, Treeton was then leased for a while by former Indian Army officer, Captain John Tyson, who bred Arabian horses.
Lt: Treeton Park in 1893 when owned by the Faulkner family.
Tyson was another keen yachtsman and both owner and captain of the 584 ton ocean-going ship Magna Bona, with which he brought freight and passengers out to Nelson from London between 1863-1866. As well as making the run from London to Nelson and back, this ship also traded around New Zealand and as far afield as South America, however in August 1866 she was condemned and sold at a port in Chile which she had managed to reach after springing a leak during a rough passage around Cape Horn. Tyson had then travelled on to England, presumably to sort out the insurance details around his lost ship in London, but died there unexpectedly, soon after his arrival.
Treeton then passed in 1867 to Thomas & Annie Price. The Prices moved to Carterton in 1873 and Treeton sat empty until bought in 1877 by Charles Faulkner and his sons, Henry & Frederick, who renamed it Treeton Park. The name Treeton, given by its first owner in memory of his English hometown of Treeton in South Yorkshire, still attaches to Wakefield in the property development known as Treeton Place in the hills behind the Wakefield township, but what was the original Treeton property is now better known in Wakefield as the Faulkner Bush Scenic Reserve.
Charles Augustine Baker Gabb buys Hooker’s Motupiko land
In 1872 Hooker sold the large block of Motupiko land he'd bought from Arthur Oliver to Welbore Ellis' brother-in-law, Charles Augustine Baker Gabb, from Abervegenny, Wales, around the time of Baler Gabb's marriage on 4 July 1872 to Eliza Nugent Cundy. Born at sea on 7 January 1850 during her family's outward bound voyage to Nelson on the ship Lady Nugent, Eliza was the youngest child of John and Harriet Cundy. After their arrival at Port Nelson on 10 May, 1850, her father, a builder by trade, took up land at Stoke.
Charles Baker Gabb built a home on the river flats near the area later known as Tapawera and settled there with his wife for a few years, with their first child, daughter Blanch, being born there in 1873. They would have six children altogether - five daughters and one son, David Augustine Baker Gabb. Charles Baker Gabb became involved in community affairs while living at Motupiko, and was noted in 1873 as having been elected a member of the Upper Motueka Valley Road Board.
Lt: Charles Augustine Baker Gabb (seated) with his only son, David.
It’s not clear exactly when Charles Baker Gabb arrived in Nelson, but he was noted in 1867, aged 22, as a keen horseman, taking part in local horse races, and in 1870 undertaking a trip to the Mt Arthur Tableland, then in the throes of a short-lived gold rush. He was accompanied by Ngatimoti resident Charles Biggs and storekeeper Reuben Waite, godfather of the West Coast gold rushes. This was no stroll in the park, as the only way up from the Graham Valley at that time was via the vertiginous Lodestone route, so steep that would-be diggers, often lugging 70-80lb swags upon their backs, frequently had to use both hands and feet to ascend it.
Also in 1870, Baker Gabb was appointed a Race Steward for the hugely popular Waimea South Steeplechase events. These were based at the Wakefield Arms hotel, with events taking place over a three-mile course with 25 obstacles to be negotiated and a goodly amount of prize money at stake. It’s likely that Baker Gabb already knew of Hooker through his brother-in-law Welbore Ellis, though he must also have become acquainted with Hooker personally as a fellow Race Steward. The ubiquitous John Sharp was also a devotee of the Waimea South Steeplechase and often served as Judge at these races.
The Baker Gabbs were a Welsh family of ancient provenance, with aristocratic and Roman Catholic connections. The given name “Augustine” which appeared often in the wider family was used in recognition of a distinguished ancestor - the Venerable Augustine Baker, a 16th century Benedictine scholar and mystic. A number of adventurous Baker Gabbs spread out around the world, emigrating from Wales to South Africa, Australia, Brazil, Belize, India, the United States, the West Indies and New Zealand.
In 1875 Charles Baker Gabb sold the 3 blocks of Motupiko land he’d earlier bought from Hooker to Campbell Ellis, Field & Co., who were by that time owners of the Gordon Downs Estate. Baker Gabb then moved to the North Island with his wife and family, still farming, firstly around New Plymouth, then Wanganui and finally at Hastings in the Hawkes Bay. He also set up a side line in business as a Land & General Commission Agent, continuing to dabble now and then in Upper Motueka real estate in conjunction with Nelson land agent John Sharp. Charles Baker Gabb died in 1930 at the age of 85 and was interred at the Hastings Cemetery. His first wife Eliza had died in New Plymouth in 1894 and lies at the Te Henui Cemetery in New Plymouth. He married secondly in 1896 to Mary Montgomery, who died in 1944 and was buried at the Karori Cemetery in Wellington.
The Gordon Downs Run goes up for sale again in 1872
The back-country property, known variously over time as the Gordon Downs Run, the Gordon Downs Station, or the Gordon Downs Estate, had been put up for sale on behalf of the mortgagee (possibly John Sharp) in 1872, when it was advertised as a 17,000 acre block, consisting of 7000 acres of freehold land, plus 10,000 acres of Government leasehold land with an option attached to renew its 14 year lease when it came up, along with 4500 sheep, 100 head of cattle, 5 station houses, plus improvements including a dwelling house, cow shed, woolsheds, dipping tanks etc.
Graham Greenwood had moved on by then and been replaced in the partnership by Edmund Arthur Field, possibly a Greenwood relative.
Graham Greenwood
Greenwood had headed off to the Collingwood goldfields in 1864, hoping to a make enough money to buy a farm of his own. He did extremely well with his alluvial claim at Richmond Hill, being one of the few to make a fortune there. Perhaps as a favour, in 1866 he bought a farm in the Waiwhero Valley between Lower Moutere and Ngatimoti from Plymouth Brethren evangelist James George Deck, a family friend who had moved to Wellington to live in 1865 and needed the money. Unfortunately this property, still in existence at 545 Waiwhero Road, Ngatimoti, and known currently (2024) as the Lodge at Paratiho Farms, was situated on poor land and Greenwood lost his hard-earned gold trying unsuccessfully to bring it into production. After doing a stint on the West Coast as a mine inspector, he gave up on both farming and gold mining and returned to the Nelson area, where on the 6th of August 1879 he married Isobel Martin, a daughter of Hugh Martin, who owned the Hayes Estate at Stoke. Greenwood then took up the position of Official Assignee in Gisborne, which he held for many years before retiring to Christchurch, where he died on 4 August, 1916.
Richard Campbell Ellis takes over the Gordon Downs Run
The Gordon Downs Station didn’t sell in 1872 - perhaps Richard Ellis Snr had dealt with the outstanding mortgage? However, by 1874 it had passed into the possession of Welbore Ellis’ nephew and Richard Ellis Snr’s third son, Richard Campbell Ellis (always known as Campbell), then aged 26. He was the first of three of Richard Ellis Snr’s sons who became involved with the Gordon Downs Run. Richard Ellis Snr had died in 1873 and maybe Campbell had been delegated on behalf of the family to sort out affairs in New Zealand. A half-share of the run was offered for sale in December 1874, though it doesn’t appear that this offer was taken up either.
Campbell Ellis goes into partnership with his brother Fred
Campbell Ellis later advertised in 1878 that by mutual agreement he was dissolving his existing partnership with Edmund Field, who was returning to England, and going instead into partnership with his younger brother, Louis Frederick (Fred) Ellis, for the Gordon Downs Station.
Fred Ellis married in 1890 to Mary, daughter of Wellington entrepreneur Samuel Rowley. They had one child, a son named Richard Cecil Vernon Ellis, born in 1893, who became a clerk by profession and settled in Sheffield, England, where he died in 1979. The Ellis brothers’ partnership having broken up in 1891, Fred moved with his wife to Riwaka, on the outskirts of Motueka, the couple having first been farewelled by the Motupiko community at a special get-together held at the Belgrove Hotel. He later took up farming in the Hurunui area, but by 1911 had returned with his wife and son to England to live. Fred Ellis was aged 63 when he died on 8 September 1920 at his home, 4 Porteus Road, Paddington, London, and is thought to have been buried at the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea Cemetery, Hanwell, London.
Campbell Ellis’ brother Robert joins the team at Gordon Downs
Another of Campbell Ellis’ younger brothers also came out from London to Nelson. Robert Ellis (known as Bobby), an inventive and entrepreneurial man, moved to Motupiko, where he set up a successful flax-milling operation on the river flats near the site of the present Tapawera township.
Robert Ellis’ land, taking in much of the Motupiko Valley, likely comprised part or all of the 3 blocks bought earlier by Hooker from Arthur Oliver, which had been added to the Gordon Downs Run when sold on in 1875 to Campbell Ellis, Field & Co by Charles Baker Gabb.
Although he had originally intended to make a career as a naval officer, Robert Ellis instead came out to Nelson around 1884, when he was in his early twenties. At first he had gone into partnership with his brothers Campbell and Fred, but when the partnership was dissolved in 1891 he claimed as his share Baker Gabb’s former Motupiko block at the Gordon Downs Run, and based himself there for a number of years.
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In 1875 Charles Baker Gabb sold the 3 blocks of Motupiko land he’d earlier bought from Hooker to Campbell Ellis, Field & Co., by that time owners of the Gordon Downs Estate. Baker Gabb then moved to the North Island with his wife and family, still farming, firstly around New Plymouth, then Wanganui and finally at Hastings in the Hawkes Bay. He also set up a side line in business as a Land & General Commission Agent, continuing to dabble now and then in Upper Motueka real estate in conjunction with Nelson land agent John Sharp. Charles Baker Gabb died in 1930 at the age of 85 and was interred at the Hastings Cemetery. His first wife Eliza had died in New Plymouth in 1894 and lies at the Te Henui Cemetery in New Plymouth. He married secondly in 1896 to Mary Montgomery, who died in 1944 and was buried at the Karori Cemetery in Wellington.
Campbell Ellis and his Family
Campbell Ellis lived and farmed in the Gordon Downs area for the rest of his life, and in 1888 donated land from his homestead block for use as a site for the first Gordon School. The following year he married schoolteacher Ada Annette Cole, whose mother Lucy Emily Cole nee Augarde was a sister of the unfortunate Augarde brothers, Henry and Ivanhoe. Campbell Ellis and his wife had 3 children - son Edward Campbell Ellis and daughters Annette and Rosalie.
After the Ellis brothers’ partnership broke up in 1891 various blocks of land from the Gordon Downs Station were sold off, but Campbell Ellis held on to his separate homestead block of 1475 acres, known as Gredington Manor. He had bought this on his own account in 1876 from English emigrant Benjamin Blower, who was at the time about to move to Auckland. Blower had named it after a much-admired manor house situated on the Welsh border, close to his former home in Shropshire. Gredington Manor sat at the head of the Wai-iti Valley near Gordon’s Knob, in the area originally known as Upper Wakefield, then the Wai-ti Valley Settlement, but renamed Hiwipango by the NZ Post & Telegraph Department in the early 20th century. Apart from an brief abortive attempt at retirement in Stoke, this was where Campbell Ellis lived and farmed until his death in 1931.
Robert Ellis at first lived in Baker Gabb’s old house, but in 1897 he built a new home known as Boscobel, one of several houses in the area constructed from mud bricks he had made himself using a pug-mill he’d set up near the river. He later moved to Brightwater, where he ran a flour mill, and in the early 20th century erected his own generator-operated power plant using water from the nearby Wairoa River to both run the mill and provide lighting for his own and other Brightwater homes. In 1924 he closed the flour mill and formed the Waimea Electric Supply and Manufacturing Company Ltd which suppled electricity to the wider Waimeas until 1933, when his company was taken over by the Waimea Electric Power Board.
Robert Ellis had married Mary Anne Kate Evans from Motupiko at the Nelson Cathedral on 9 July 1889, and they had a family of five. Two sons, Henry and Howard, served at the Western Front during WWI, with Henry, their oldest child, being killed in action at Armentières, France, on 30 March 1917. The shock of this loss possibly contributed to Kate Ellis’ own death on 27 October the same year. Premature deaths among bereaved parents of WWI war casualties were not uncommon and the notice of her death on pg 4 of the “Nelson Evening Mail” on 30 October 1917 made a point of recording that she died “carrying her sorrowful loss to the grave.”
Her husband Robert Ellis died on 4 March 1935 and both he and his wife lie at the St Paul’s Churchyard in Brightwater.
The Gordon Downs Run as it looked in 1891
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| Map of the Gordon Downs Estate depicted in 1891 at the time of the Ellises' sale that year. |
Possibly as a way of divvying up shares equally amongst the three brothers, in March 1884 land from the estate was offered for sale in lots, and a number of such sales continued to be advertised over the following years, including sale of the property following the break-up of the Ellis brothers’ partnership, advertised in four lots of the “whole of the Ellis Brothers’ Valuable Estate in the Upper Motueka Valley known as the "Gordon Downs Estate”, which took place on 31 January 1891.
One of these lots, the 4000 acre block named Riversdale, was bought from the Ellis brothers by George Reay, (no relation to the Rae/Reay family) whose surname superseded the original Rae of Rae’s Valley and Rae’s Saddle. Reay, who had arrived in Nelson with his wife and family around 1881, at the time owned and lived at the Allington Farm in Brightwater, described then as being of 363 acres in size, and he operated Riversdale as a sheep run, with his son Richard (Dick) Reay in charge . In December 1900 George Reay advertised both the Allington Farm and the Riversdale block for sale. The Riversdale run was sold in 1908 to Nelson auctioneers, Bisley & Co., who in 1916 onsold it to the Lands Department. Before long this would become part of the area subdivided for Soldier Settlement.
However, this still left three blocks of the Gordon Downs Run unsold, and these three blocks were still being advertised for private sale throughout the year in 1898, with John Sharp acting as the agent.
The Glen-iti Run at Gordon Downs
Interestingly, it appears that in 1903 Elizabeth Kerr bought the large Glen-iti Run, situated in the area near the bottom of Gordon's Knob, following the death at Foxhill of its long-time owner, James Martin Kerr (known as Martin), third son of David & Margaret Kerr of Blue Glen. Perhaps she saw it as an investment or maybe had it in mind as a business to be run by one or more of her sons, however she died in 1904 and in 1908 the Glen-iti Run was sold to Archibald Admore. Problems followed, with Mrs Kerr’s estate, in conjunction with the Public Trust, then becoming subject to a court case initiated by land agents Bisley & Co over unpaid costs relating to this sale.
Admore soon moved on, selling in 1909 to George Augustus King from Canterbury, who also quickly decided that farming wasn’t for him and by 1912 had passed the property on to his sons George Augustus King Jnr and Richard Meers (Dick) King, who married Frances Elizabeth Violet Mitchell in Invercargill in 1916. and had two children born at Glen-iti - Richard Jnr and Kathleen, known as Isobel. Dick King was still farming sheep on the Glen-iti Run at what was by then Golden Downs in 1943, but his land was bought out soon after by the Golden Downs Forest Service, and by 1946 he had returned with bis wife to his home town, Christchurch, where he died in 1969.
Dick King’s older brother George, later Lt-Colonel George Augustus King, had earlier joined the NZ branch of the Legion of Frontiersmen, a volunteer paramilitary organisation popular throughout the British Empire at the beginning of the 20th century. He served with distinction at the Western Front during WWI, being awarded both the Croix de Guerre and the DSO. He was in command of the Pioneer Battalion when killed in action at Passchendale on 17 October 1917 and was buried at Ypres by the Maori Battalion.
What happened to Robert Hooker and his Family
The Gordon Downs Accommodation House and its 260 acre Accommodation Reserve had not been part of the deal when Hooker transferred his run to Leadham and Ellis. Accommodation houses and their attached reserves came at that time under the purview of the Nelson Provincial Council until its demise in 1876 and could not be sold unless they had become redundant. However, the leasehold and goodwill from the business could be sold if the Provincial Council agreed to transfer the accommodation licence to a suitable new proprietor. The Provincial Council also controlled the issue of publicans’ licences. Later on accommodation licences would be issued instead by the appropriate local Land Board and publicans’ licences by Licensing Committees. Although the publicans’ licences for most accommodation houses and hotels in what is now the Tasman district came under the control of the Motueka Licensing Committee, in earlier times Motupiko was linked to the Wangapeka Licensing Committee.
In 1863 Hooker had bought from Ben Jackson, by then ready to retire, the Allington farm which had been George Duppa’s old estate, named after the area in England where Duppa’s family home was situated. Allington originally consisted of Sections 1 & 2 Waimea East, situated near Brightwater and close to the Wairoa River. At that time the property included an island (since vanished) in the middle of the Wairoa River, known as Allington Island. This was a popular spot for locals hunting rabbits, much to the annoyance of its various owners - Hooker being among a number who put notices in the local newspapers threatening (to no avail) to prosecute trespassers . When the Allington farm was later owned by George Reay, for a time Allington Island became known instead as Reay Island.
Nevertheless, after selling the leasehold of his 2500 acre Gordon Downs Run in 1864, minus the accommodation house and its reserve, but with the addition of the adjacent 2000 acres he’d also been leasing, Robert Hooker had also taken over the lease for the Bell Grove Inn, a licensed accommodation house later known as the Belgrove Tavern, and its attached farm of 100 acres, noted as being 24 miles (ca 39 km) from Nelson and on the Buller goldfields route. The Hookers then moved into the hotel, where their youngest daughter Ada (always known as Edith) was born in 1866. Probably realising he had taken on too much, in 1865 Robert tried to sell the Allington farm, but had no takers. He then tried instead to lease out Allington with limited success, as tenants tended to be unreliable and constantly defaulted on rental payments.
The Hooker family moved back to the Allington farm around 1869, after Robert announced he was putting the lease for the Bell Grove Inn and its farm up for sale due to his ongoing ill health. The Hookers then lived at the Allington homestead while John Disher and his business partner Robert Collins ran the farm on their behalf. On 15 July 1874 the Hookers’ third daughter, 13 year old Janet Ramage (known as Jessie), died at the Allington home. She was buried at the St Paul’s Churchyard in Brightwater.
By the following year Robert Hooker had leased Allington Farm to Francis Robert Rives Jnr. from Auckland, a fellow Waimea Steeplechase Steward and racehorse owner. Rives spent a lot of money on both horse racing and upgrading Allington and as a result was unfortunately declared a bankrupt in 1877. Hooker had meanwhile moved to the Sunnybank farm in Wakefield, Waimea South, a property 18 acres in size which included a 9-room home known as Bank House and was situated close to the Wakefield Railway Station. However further bad luck soon followed when his wife Margaret, then aged 39, died suddenly and unexpectedly at Sunnybank on 15 June, 1875, her lifeless body being discovered by farm worker Daniel August Danielson. The cause of her death was noted as being the result of asthma and hepatitis. Maggie Hooker’s funeral took place on Thursday, June 17, but her burial place is as yet unknown.
The remaining Hookers move to Taueru
Hooker then put Sunnybank on the market and after finally selling it in 1878 moved to the North Island to live at the small settlement of Taueru, near Masterton, taking with him his two youngest daughters, Edith and Elizabeth.
Hooker’s hoped-for fresh start was marred by the death of his fourth and youngest daughter Elizabeth, then aged around 17, who died at Taueru on 18 November 1880, a couple of years after arriving there with her father and sister Edith. She was the first of the Hooker family to be buried at the Archer Street Cemetery in Masterton.
Robert Hooker had been following his two other daughters who had moved to Taueru earlier - Fruzann and Louisa. Fruzann had married on 15 October 1874 to her father’s friend John Disher, who was then managing the Allington farm. He was a widower with a young family and quite some years her senior at the time of their wedding. Her sister Louisa had accompanied Fruzann as a companion and to help out with child care, as three of Disher’s children from his first marriage to Leah Lines were part of the group. Louisa later married English immigrant John Hall Taplin at the Dishers’ Taueru home on 21 November 1881, the service being conducted by the Rev. James McKee, then minister of the Presbyterian Church at Masterton.
Known as Jack, John Hall Taplin was the son of John Taplin Snr and his first wife Ann nee Hall and was one of three brothers from Enstone, Oxfordshire, who settled at Taueru, the other two being James Henry Taplin and Arthur Taplin. All three lie at the Archer Street Cemetery in Masterton and left descendants around the Masterton area.
John Hall Taplin, who had a business as a general carrier, and his wife Louisa nee Hooker had 4 children - Ethel Louise, Margaret Kyle (likely named for her maternal grandmother), Olive Mary and Eric John.
John Disher’s father, Scotsman Robert Disher, had been among the second wave of Waimea West settlers. Initially settling for several years in South Australia, where among other things he worked as a publican, he later moved with his family to Nelson, arriving on the ship Marchioness in 1855. After farming for a time, he became well-known as a hotelier, being for many years a popular proprietor of the Trafalgar Hotel in Nelson. His son John followed his father into the hotel business - he ran several hotels over the years, including the Wheat Sheaf and the Star and Garter at Richmond, the Spring Grove Hotel at Brightwater and the Miners’ Arms in Nelson, but was eventually declared bankrupt in 1870.
After making the shift to Taueru Robert Hooker appears to have led a quiet life. He first served for a time as the local pound keeper, taking over this position from his son-in-law John Disher, then was noted in the 1880s as being a local sheep farmer. Later on he ran an accommodation house at Taueru for a number of years.
Robert Hooker’s Death
Robert Hooker died on 1 January 1901 at the age of 74, having outlived most of his family. It appears that he was at that stage living with his daughter Louisa and son-in-law Jack Taplin at Lower Taueru. Louisa died in 1915, having outlasted all of her sisters except for Edith, both of her parents, and her husband John, who had died in 1905. She was buried with her husband at the Archer Street as were his other daughters Elizabeth, Fruzann and Louisa.
Both the Masterton and Nelson newspapers recorded his death. the ‘Nelson Evening Mail” noting on 2 January 1901 that “the late Robert Hooker was the brother-in-law of Mrs (Elizabeth) Kerr and formerly of Nelson.” Although the inscription on Robert Hooker’s gravestone has his name recorded as “Robert John Hooker”, his baptismal record (see entry No 89, top lefthand page) shows that he had in fact only been christened with the single Christian name “Robert”.
The sad story of Fruzann (nee Hooker) and John Disher’s family
Hooker’s oldest daughter Fruzann’s 13 year old step-daughter Margaret Elizabeth (Maggie) Disher had also been buried at the Archer Street Cemetery following her death at Taueru on 27 June 1882.
Fruzann herself died at Taueru of a heart attack in 1888, leaving behind 7 motherless children, one being only 9 months old, plus her remaining step-children. The story of the children’s fate is a heartbreaking one. Their father John Disher had set up as a shopkeeper, establishing the Taueru Store in the township. However, after he had been declared bankrupt (again) in 1887, he was obliged to put the business up for sale and had left his family, heading off to join the goldrush at Cullen’s Creek in the Mahakipawa Valley, Marlborough, in desperate hopes of recouping some of his losses.
Upon receiving the news of his wife’s death, Disher returned to Taueru and carted off all his children, except for young Eva, up to Nelson, where he parcelled them out amongst various acquaintances, with limited success. Several of the children fell ill and had to be hospitalised. The two oldest girls soon went into domestic service, with the rest being eventually sent to the Nelson Orphanage. Eva, though, was passed from pillar to post around Taueru, this including a short stint with her Aunt Edith and uncle, David Anderson. As she grew older she was often hard-heartedly “put out” on the street on her own, sometimes during the night, because her father kept reneging on payment for her keep, and would often be found in the morning huddled up in the Taplins' porch.
When Eva was 10 years old she was taken in permanently, if somewhat grudgingly, by her Aunt Louisa and uncle, John Taplin, after Taplin successfully prosecuted his brother-in-law for Eva’s upkeep.
The sad story of Eva and the other Disher children was taken up by the “Wairarapa Daily Times” on 9 May 1891, in an article on page 2 titled Destitute Children: A Disgraceful Case
Their indigent father John Disher died aged 54 on 7 May, 1895, at Mangaweka in the Rangitikei, a small Wairarapa settlement established in the mid-1890s in anticipation of the arrival of the main trunk railway. Disher was buried at the nearby Ohingaiti Cemetery in Marton. It’s likely that he may have been living at the time of his death with his oldest son by his first wife, Robert John Disher, who was recorded as marrying Sarah Jane Caroline Moorcock at Mangaweka in 1894. Robert John Disher and his wife Sarah later developed a prosperous farm at Mahiihi in the Waikato, which was in time passed on to their sons.
Robert and Maggie Hooker left multiple descendants through their daughters Fruzann Disher nee Hooker, Louisa Taplin nee Hooker and Ada (Edith) Anderson nee Hooker.
Edith Hooker and the Anderson brothers
Ada Hooker, always known by her second name, Edith, married twice - firstly on 9 Dec 1884 at her brother-in-law John Taplin’s Taueru home to John David Anderson (known as David), with whom she would have 5 children. The Rev. William Edward Paige, at the time Vicar of St Matthews Anglican Church at Masterton, conducted the wedding service, with Edith’s father Robert Hooker and sister Louisa Taplin acting as witnesses. Edith and David Anderson, a waggoner by trade, lived in the Masterton area for around 13 years, but with David becoming chronically ill, they decided to join his family at their Pleasant Creek farm in Southland for support. However, it appears that this trip may have been too much for David Anderson, an obituary published in the “Otago Witness” on 26 October 1887 recording that on 11 October 1897, just four days after their arrival, he had died at his parents’ home.
Edith then married secondly in 1901 to David’s younger brother, Robert (Bob) Anderson, with whom she had a further 4 children, making her combined family at one and the same time step-siblings and cousins.
The Andersons were a Scottish family from Mousewald, Dumfrieshire, who after arriving in New Zealand had settled at Hokonui in Southland. Several members of the family were interred at the Winton Cemetery including Edith’s first husband David, whose plot was later shared by his parents, David Anderson Snr & Jessie nee Robson. When Edith died in 1920 she too was buried at the Winton Cemetery, but in the same plot as the youngest of the children from her first marriage, Jessie Louisa Anderson, who had died in 1914 at the age of 19. An inscription on their memorial which gives her name as “Edith Anderson“ also records the sacrifice of Edith’s son Charles (Charlie) Robert Anderson, from her first marriage, who was killed in action in France during WWI. Donald (Don) Anderson, another son from her first marriage, also served overseas during WWI, but survived to return home.
Meanwhile, back at the Gordon Downs Accommodation House…
The Gordon Downs Accommodation House carried on its business for many years after Robert Hooker moved on, passing firstly around 1866 to Thomas (Tom) MacFarlane (surname variously spelt McFarlane & MacFarlane), a Scotsman born in Glasgow in 1837. Following the death of his wife Margaret nee Scott in 1856, his father Thomas MacFarlane Snr had emigrated to Nelson, taking with him 3 of his sons, Thomas Jnr, Charles and John. Thomas Jnr is recorded in 1861 as living in the Nelson area and working as a sawyer, and was married at Waimea South on 27 June that same year to Emily Jane (Emma) Trass, with whom he had 6 children. Sometime after taking over the licence, Tom MacFarlane knocked down the cob accommodation house built by Hooker and replaced it with a large two-storey brick building, with 9 bedrooms for public use as well as as dining and sitting rooms. It appears, though, that the expense incurred may not have resulted in the increased custom he’d hoped for - MacFarlane got into deep financial strife and was declared bankrupt in September 1869.
After struggling on for a while, in 1871 MacFarlane sold the accommodation house licence on to William Francis Fogden Snr, an English immigrant from the town of Portsea in Hampshire, who before settling in Nelson had as a young man set sail for Australia in 1853, drawn, like many, by the lure of the Victorian gold rush.
Family records note that Thomas MacFarlane Jnr drowned "without trace" in the Motueka River. The actual date appears to have become lost, but it must have been sometime after his last confirmed sighting on 2 June 1877, when he was noted as having just completed a section of roadworks he'd been working on. In 1877 the protocol for death by misadventure was an inquest held with the body and a doctor present along with several local worthies as witnesses to the conclusion reached as to the cause of death. Because in Tom MacFarlane's case there was no body, no inquest could be held, and therefore no official record could be made of his death. His widow Emma may have received an official dispensation when she remarried at the bridegroom's home on 13 May 1880 to Joseph Price of Foxhill, for whom she had been working for some time as housekeeper aftyer being left with 6 children and no form of support after her husband's death. She went on have a further 5 children with Price. Both Joseph Price and Emma were buried at the Foxhill Cemetery following their later deaths.
Perhaps the unnamed drowned man commemorated along with Henry Augarde near the site of the old Gordon Downs Accommodation House was Thomas MacFarlane?
Following Hooker’s successors, MacFarlane, then Fogden, who left to take up farming at Foxhill in 1879, a Mr Green briefly took over the Gordon Downs Accommodation House, being replaced in 1880 by Scotsman Robert (Bobby) Stewart, who for many years ran the accommodation house with the able assistance of his sister, Sarah. A popular proprietor, Stewart set up a chair system on aerial wires as a way of enabling travellers to get across the river safely, though of course drovers and those on horseback still had to cross at the ford.
The Inquest into the Death of George Fairweather Moonlight
Although the Gordon Downs Accommodation House was described in the “Colonist” article dated 11 October 1884 as “Fogden’s”, it was in fact during Robert Stewart’s tenure when an inquest into the death of legendary prospector George Fairweather Moonlight was held there on September 18, 1884. Moonlight, who had disappeared around the 15th of July that year while out prospecting for gold, had been the subject of a lengthy and intensive search. His body was eventually found on 16th September near the head of Cow Valley, through which a tributary of the Hope River ran, and from there it was taken to the Gordon Downs Accommodation House. As his body showed no signs of trauma, it was ruled that he had most likely died from exposure, the weather at the time he went missing having been very wet and cold. Moonlight was buried at Wakapuaka Cemetery in Nelson, next to his wife Elizabeth, who had died in 1882. They lie at Anglican Block 8, Plots 48 and 49. An impressive memorial commemorating both was raised at the burial site by Moonlight’s many friends.
The Gordon Downs Accommodation House and the Nelson Institute
After Stewart retired in 1902 the Gordon Downs Accommodation House went through several proprietors of short tenure, probably due to dropping custom and its increasingly substandard state.
In 1895 the Gordon Downs Reserve and its attached accommodation house had become part of a 2000 acre endowment of Upper Motueka Valley land offered by P.M. Richard “King Dick” Seddon’s Government to the Nelson Institute, thereby becoming one of the assets, or possibly liabilities, in the Institute Trustees’ portfolio - the accommodation house’s condition had deteriorated badly over the years, with the Institute Trustees’ solicitor being taken to task by the Motueka Licensing Meeting in 1901 over its poor shape.
Robert Stewart had been firstly replaced briefly by John Kerr Jnr, who was the Hookers’ nephew, being a son of Jack and Elizabeth (nee Rae) Kerr. John Kerr Jnr took over the Gordon Downs Accommodation House in 1903, and was followed in 1904 by George William (Bill) Sharpe, who transferred the accommodation licence to Henry (Harry) Fieldes in 1906. Fieldes was followed in March 1908 by Henry Homes, who had previously run the White Hart Hotel in Richmond. Homes only stayed for a year before transferring his licence to Robert (Bob) Stratford in March 1909. Stratford, who remained the proprietor for several years and was the last to hold a licence to run the accommodation house as a hotel, moved at some point to a home built at Golden Downs in the area known as Roughns, which he offered for sale in 1917. This was probably the property called “Fernihurst” at Roughns (later Wellington) Gully, later taken up around 1920 by WWI veteran Stan Blow from Wellington and his Scottish wife Elizabeth. After Blow and his wife walked off the property in 1926, it was sold perforce to the NZ Forest Service and for a time served as the first Golden Downs Forest Service headquarters.
Jack Disher takes over the Gordon Downs House and Reserve
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| WW1 veteran John (Jack) Disher |
The accommodation licence for the old Gordon Downs Accommodation House had lapsed by the time Fruzann (nee Hooker) & John Disher’s son Alexander John (Jack) Disher, a WWI veteran, brought things full circle in 1919 by taking over the lease for the hotel and its attached farm which had so many years previously been run by his grandparents Robert & Maggie Hooker. As had happened with the Roundell Accommodation House, custom at the Gordon Downs Accommodation House had dropped away to an untenable level over the years as travellers took to using the Hope Saddle route by preference. The surrounding area had by then become known as Golden Downs, but although some repairs had been made to the Gordon Downs Accommodation House in 1908 before Homes moved in, the rebuild promised years before by the Institute’s solicitor had still not materialised by the early 1920s. However civilisation in the form of a gravelled road being built by the Waimea County Council through the Wai-iti Valley was recorded as having reached the accommodation house by 1902.
In 1925 the Institute finally came to the party, having resolved at its Annual General Meeting that year that there was enough money in the kitty to deal with the Gordon Downs Reserve. They settled on a plan to have an older wooden building on the site demolished and the accommodation house converted into a comfortable five-roomed cottage, with a small attached lean-to for the Post Office and telephone bureau. When the Government decided to back the planned State Forest at Golden Downs and revoked its original endowment, the Nelson Institute did some astute haggling with the Public Works Department in 1931 over compensation for the loss of the Gordon Downs Reserve and its attached house, which netted it what was then the respectable sum of £2,150.
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| Only known photo of the Gordon/Golden Downs homestead, taken after its alteration in 1925 to a one-storey house. |
Jack Disher had by this time already terminated his tenancy with the Institute. Disher had been hit by falling sheep prices around 1923, and had been struggling to pay the required rental for the Gordon Downs Reserve to the Nelson Institute, so as well as running his own farm he had taken up the position of manager at a farm and Jersey stud known as “Tillingdown” on Oxford Street in Richmond. This property was owned by Dr Hubert Oscar Washbourn (known as Pete), who had a keen interest in breeding a line of pedigree Jersey cows. After Dr Washbourn died suddenly and unexpectedly in 1927, much to the shock and dismay of his many grateful patients, his Jersey stock and 114 acre farm were put up for sale. “Tillingdown” was then bought by Jack Disher, who moved there with his family when he left Golden Downs.
How Gordon Downs became Golden Downs
The name change from Gordon Downs to Golden Downs is believed to have come about during the first decade of the 20th century when the NZ Post and Telegraph Department, all-powerful at the time, was on a roll, setting up post offices in back blocks all around the country and rationalising area names in order to avoid confusion over where mail should be sent. The policy was to replace common names, often with Maori ones, perhaps because they were less likely to be duplicated. In this case there were already several post offices in New Zealand using variants of the name “Gordon”. At any rate, someone had the bright idea of just altering a letter in the name, and it was the Golden Downs telephone office that had opened in 1903 at the old Gordon Downs Accommodation House, with Walter Kerr as telephonist. This is likely to have been John Kerr Jnr's brother, Walter Smith Kerr, who had been farming at Blue Glen around this time but later settled at Foxhill.
A Belgrove-Tophouse Mail Service is Established
From 1891 when a post office opened at Tophouse, an informal and erratic mail service had operated between Belgrove and Tophouse, with travellers passing through via Tophouse receiving a small remuneration for taking a mailbag with them from the Belgrove Post Office and dropping it off at the Tophouse Accommodation House. In 1909 Motupiko resident Arnold Meads was appointed mail contractor, followed a year or so later by John “Johnny” Banks who for many years ran a regular once weekly service, firstly by horseback, but later using a 2, then 4 horse express. Sometimes he carried passengers, who would be obliged to get out and walk when they reached the steep Reay Saddle! The mail run was a day-long affair - Banks would set off from the Belgrove Post Office at 9 o’clock in the morning and arrive at Tophouse around 6 o’clock in the evening, staying there overnight and returning to Belgrove the next day. In conjunction with this service, a Golden Downs Post Office was established at the old Gordon Downs Accommodation House, joining the telephone office which had been set up there earlier.
The Push to get a Bridge built at the Golden Downs ford
Lt: A heavily laden Forestry Service truck crosses the Motueka River at the Gordon Downs ford.
It's likely that concerns for the safety of the mailman (and that of his precious mailbags) were what led locals to unsuccessfully petition the Waimea Council in 1909 for a bridge across the Motueka River at the site of the ford close to the old Gordon Downs Accommodation House. In may 1922 the Waimea Councilfinally announced that the contract for a bridge had been signed off, with the completion date given as 26 January 1923. However, by 1942 this bridge was recorded as being dangerously unsafe, and vehicles were still having to drive across the Motueka River at the ford.
It was eventually replaced by a much sturdier structure known as Janson’s Bridge, built by the Golden Downs Forest Service and still standing at the same site over the ford today. This bridge was named for well-regarded Golden Downs State Forest employee, Roland (Roly) Janson, who from 1940-1945 was the first to hold the position of Forest Officer in Charge, and during those WWII years also served as officer-in-charge of the Golden Downs Forest Service Home.
Johnny Banks continued to operate as mail contractor for many years,
graduating to a motor car in 1920
The Golden Downs Post Office at the former Gordon Downs Accommodation House closed around 1928 and it wasn’t until a new State Forest Service’s Golden Downs Headquarters opened in 1946 that another Golden Downs Post Office was set up to serve the growing population there.
The Soldier Settlement Scheme, Post WWI
A Soldier Settlement Scheme for returned soldiers who wanted to take up farming (a country-wide initiative) had been set up on land at Golden Downs purchased by the Government, which included a block of land from the Kerrs’ Blue Glen Run and also the Riversdale property once farmed by Dick Reay, which had originally been part of the Gordon Downs Run. This land was divided up into sections and interested veterans were able to go into a ballot for one of these leasehold blocks. As with many of these inadequately planned post-WWI Soldier Settlement Schemes, often established on poor land in isolated back country areas and taken up by returned soldiers with little or no farming experience, the Golden Downs one was a failure. In 1929 the plight of the soldier settlers there was brought to the attention of the House of Representatives in Wellington by George Black, at the time Member of Parliament for the electorate of Motueka. The Golden Downs Soldier Settlement was eventually finished off by the approaching Great Depression, with the subsequent steep drop in prices meaning that sheep farming was no longer a viable option. Pressure from the State Forest Service hastened its demise.
The Advent of the Golden Downs State Forest
The NZ State Forest Service, established in 1919, had been planning for some time to set up a series of State Forests throughout New Zealand in areas designated “Waste Spaces”, and had already acquired a block of Crown land in Motupiko in 1920 with this in mind. However, it may have came as a shock when Leon MacIntosh Ellis, Director of Forests, disclosed that Golden Downs was one of these designated sites. With little choice and a certain amount of bitterness, between 1927 and 1942 the WWI veterans sold off their farms to the State Forest Service, with their land being taken over for the development of an extensive new pine plantation to be known as the Golden Downs State Forest. As a plus, it turned out that pine plantations thrived in those difficult Moutere Gravel soils
The first property to go was Stan Blow’s already abandoned “Fernihurst” farm at Roughns (later Wellington) Gully in 1927 and for a time Blow’s former home served as the first Golden Downs State Forest Headquarters. Set up under the auspices of the State Forest Service, the Golden Downs State Forest would then provide work for the unemployed during the Depression years.
The Arrival of the Unemployed Relief Workers
As the returned servicemen departed, a new lot rolled into Golden Downs - Depression-era Government-sponsored unemployed relief workers. Unlike the soldier settlers, who had earned their chops fighting for King & Country, the relief workers were not on the whole as readily accepted by the local community. Some men coming from towns clearly had a miserable time, having had little or no experience with manual labour outdoors. There were complaints that their weekly wages were inadequate and that with most of the tree planting being done in the winter months, they were working up to their necks in wet fern, while living in tents with bare board floors and fern bedding. Of course, a nanny-state style Government edict forbidding the sale of alcohol to relief workers may well have contributed to their misery! A number returned to their home towns, stating that they preferred outright poverty to what they described as semi-starvation and impaired health.
A letter to the Nelson Evening Mail written by Blenheim’s Mayor expressing concerns about the poor treatment of Blenheim relief workers at Golden Downs stirred up a hornet’s nest, receiving in response a robust rebuttal via the “Nelson Evening Mail” from Dick King, who had by then been running sheep on the Glen-iti Run at Golden Downs for many years, and also from a concerned Blenheim citizen who had visited the workers’ camps as a follow-up to these complaints. Both maintained that the relief workers received adequate wages from the Forest Service, were well fed at the communal kitchens, and that their timber-framed tents were substantial, provided with bunks with straw mattresses, fireplaces and chimneys and well-supplied with firewood and water.
Work on the Forestry block stalls during WWII
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During the Second World War progress on the forestry block almost ground to a halt as the work force was drastically reduced, with large numbers of men throughout the country being deployed to the various war zones overseas. However a post-WWII initiative employing English immigrants and displaced Polish refugees at Golden Downs was a success, the Poles especially soon fitting in. Many came from rural areas in Poland and being well used to manual labour and working with heavy horses, they quickly adapted to forestry work at a time when petrol was still being heavily rationed post-war and horsepower had once again come into its own. Photo above taken in the horse logging days shows taking a break L-R R.B.Gilooly, G. Condon, and Snow Whiting taking a break. The horses were "Plugger", "Bob" and "Tommy".
Jack Disher and his Family
When he took over the lease for the former accommodation house in 1919, Jack Disher had became by default postmaster for the Golden Downs Post Office, which continued to run from his home with various locals in charge until about 1928, when the service passed to a mail contractor. Disher also supplied the various Forestry work camps with meat from his farm while they established the Golden Downs State Forest, which would grow to become one of the largest exotic forests in New Zealand, second only to the Kaingaroa State Forest in the Bay of Plenty.
In February 1925 Disher married at All Saints’ Church, Nelson, to Mary Eloise Goodwin, whose parents Herbert (Bert) Goodwin and Bertha nee Page had each served in turn as proprietor of the Riwaka Hotel from 1904 to 1924; firstly Herbert, who had to rebuild the hotel following a devastating fire in 1906, followed after his death in 1919 by his widow Bertha, until she retired in 1924 to Milton Grove in Nelson, taking her daughters Mary Eloise and Kathleen with her.
Lt: Bert Goodwin's "Riwaka Hotel", rebuilt following a destructive fire in 1906.
Jack Disher had a Motueka connection - two of his sisters had earlier married Motueka businessmen. Disher had settled with his family at the Tillingdown farm in Richmond by 1931, his rented Accommodation Reserve of 2724 acres, along with the converted former Gordon Downs Accommodation House, having passed from the Nelson Institute to the Golden Downs State Forest Service that same year. The Dishers, who had two children, Mary and Robert, while living at Golden Downs, moved permanently to Levin in the Horowhenua in the 1940s as part of a family group which included Disher’s widowed mother-in-law, Mrs Bertha Goodwin, and unmarried sister-in-law, Kathleen. Jack Disher died at his Levin home on 3 April 1960, and was interred two days later at the Old Levin Cemetery, R.S.A. Row 7.
Time Runs out for the Gordon Downs Accommodation House
After the Dishers departed, the converted Gordon Downs accommodation house, which in time ended up sitting between two State Forest workers’ camps - Gordon Creek Camp and King’s Camp - became home over the years to various Forestry employees who lived there with their families. It was eventually demolished in 1962, perhaps ahead of the removal of the Golden Downs State Forest Headquarters and Village to Tapawera. A number of forestry workers and their families lamented this move, which split up a well-established and close-knit community at the original site. Many still recall happy days growing up at the old village and working with their mates for the Golden Downs Forest Service.
And so vanished a significant part of Upper Motueka’s history dating back at least 104 years, leaving only as a reminder of past dangers a historic site marker and some crumbled stones, the remains of the memorial which had been erected near Gordon’s Creek, marking two 19th century drownings in the nearby Motueka River. The location of the Gordon Downs Accommodation House and memorial site are recorded as Archaeological site N28/12.
Jack Disher’s sisters Caroline and Eva - the Motueka Connection
Adding to the Motueka connection begun by their Kerr cousins, two of Robert and Margaret Hooker’s granddaughters (and Jack Disher’s sisters) married into Motueka business families.
Alice Katherine Disher (known as Caroline) married on 31 May 1896 to Harold Ledger Goodman, a member of the Goodman family bakery business established on Motueka’s High Street in 1867 by Harold’s grandfather, Thomas Goodman. This business would flourish and expand over the years to become in more recent times the Australasian conglomerate Goodman Fielder Enterprises, associated with Sir Pat Goodman and his brother Peter. Caroline Goodman nee Disher named her first daughter Fruzann, in memory of her own mother.
Caroline’s younger sister Eva Agnes Disher, (the unfortunate orphan), was married by the Rev. A. Grant at the Presbyterian Church in Dannevirke on Wednesday, 26 October 1904, to William Arthur Coppins, founder of the enterprising Coppins’ family business, originally set up in Motueka as a saddlery but these days operating on Motueka’s High Street as Coppins Great Outdoor Centre, specialising in cycles and outdoor gear, along with products for the maritime, aviation, industrial and horticulture industries.
Fin
Sources
“Nelson Evening Mail”, 11 December 1926
Pg 36 (Supplement)
See also
Original edition with photographs of significant early Nelsonians
Passenger list for the "Mariner"'s 1849 voyage to New Zealand
Per Roots Web
See Assisted Passengers
Hooker, Robert, Farm Labourer - disembarked at Nelson.
The New Zealand Company
https://nzhistory.govt.nz/keyword/new-zealand-company
Newport, J.N.W. (Jeff), “Footprints” (1962)
Chapter XIII Gordon Downs and Golden Downs pp 153-4
Includes information about the Gordon Downs Accommodation House and its proprietors.
See also
Newport, J.N.W. (Jeff), “Footprints Too” (1978).
Chapter 26, Farming at Golden Downs and Graham Valley, pg 173
Recollections of life for a soldier settler at Golden Downs before the State Forest took over. Also references a map dated 1861 held by the State Forest Service, showing large areas south from Motupiko in the Motueka Valley, and indicating those sections purchased by Robert Hooker from Arthur R. Oliver.
Brereton, Cyprian Bridge, “History of the Nelson Institute”
Acquisition of the Gordon Downs Accommodation House and its attached Reserve
See Ch X: Very Difficult Times, pp 52-3. Pub. 1948 by A.H. & A.W. Reed, Wellington, NZ.
See also
Brereton, “History of the Nelson Institute”
Ch XV: The Great Earthquake, pg 70.
Agreement reached with the Golden Downs State Forest in 1931 when the Nelson Institute accepted, after some deft haggling, the amount of £2,150 as compensation for the loss of the Gordon Downs Reserve and its converted accommodation house.
“Ward, John & Cooper, Don, “Golden Downs Forest Nelson, 1927-2004”. Ch 1 1844-1926: Pioneers, Settlers and Farming, pp 1-7
Funeral notice for Margaret (Maggie) Hooker - burial to take place Thursday 17 June 1875 (Died at home 14 June 1875, aged 39 years). NEM 16 June 1875
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NEM18750616.2.12.2
Margaret (aged 7) came to Nelson on the ship “Prince of Wales” on 31 December 1842.with her parents Thomas & Agnes and siblings William (12) Elizabeth (10) & Robert (4). Agnes Rae, the children’s mother, died at sea not long before the ship arrived in Nelson.
See: Neale, June E.
“Pioneer Passengers: To Nelson by Sailing Ship March 1842- June 1843”. First pub. 1982, reprinted 1989. Printed in Nelson, NZ, by
General Printing Services, Anchor House, 258 Wakefield Quay.
List of passengers on board the ship Prince of Wales, pp 167-168.
See p. 168 for the Rae family
George Reay, owner of Allington Farm ca 1881-
https://www.theprow.org.nz/yourstory/the-reays-in-brightwater/
Notes
* Nelson Suburban Sections and The Waimeas
Soon after Nelson’s settlement it became clear that expansion into the surrounding countryside would be needed to accommodate anticipated growth and allow for farms to feed to the projected population. Outlying areas were surveyed, divided up and labelled. Three Suburban sections located in the best lands in the vicinity of the Nelson township were marked as follows - Suburban North was the area around swampy Wakapuaka, Suburban South was the land south of the town out to Stoke and just beyond it, and Suburban East was a small district including the Maitai and Brook valleys.
The more distant flat and fertile Waimea Plains, known jointly as the Waimeas, were also divided into three blocks as follows: Waimea East extended from Suburban South (around the Stoke area) to the Waimea and Wairoa Rivers, taking in the settlements of Wai-iti, Belgrove and Foxhill. Waimea West took in the areas now known as Richmond and Appleby. It was on the other side of the Waimea and Wairoa Rivers, and extended to the Moutere foothills. This was the best land of all the outlying areas, the fertile soil having been cultivated over centuries by Maori using traditional regenerative practices for their kumara gardens. Waimea South’s northern boundary was the Wairoa River, the southern boundary Spooner’s Range and it included Spring Grove/Brightwater, and the small settlement of Wakefield, founded about 25km from Nelson in 1943. Originally the site of a large farm called Pitfure owned by Captain Richard England, it was then named after the cathedral city of Wakefield in West Yorkshire, but after the death that same year of the popular NZ Company’s Nelson agent , Captain Arthur Wakefield, during the Wairau Affray, the name became seen as a memorial to him. Wakefield’s friend, Captain England, was killed at Tua Marina alongside him.
* * There may have been some confusion with the story of Mary Coster, who eloped to NZ in 1842 with her husband John Coster after marrying against her parents’ wishes, and the couple moved to Nelson. After John was killed on 4 June 1843 during the Wairau Affray, Mary was left a widow with a baby and no income. She and her baby were then taken in and cared for by the Redwood family until she got back on her feet. Mary remarried to Richard Wallis, and she and her husband later ran a well-regarded orphanage known as the Wallis Family Home at their home, Hulmers, on Hursthouse Street, Lower Moutere.
https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/2w6/wallis-mary-ann-lake/
Possibly adding to the confusion, Maggie Hooker nee Rae’s brother Robert (known as Bob Reay) became closely involved with horse racing , and from early on worked for Henry Redwood at the Redwood Stables (it’s possible that his older brother William also worked at the Redwood Stables). Bob Reay later moved down to Christchurch where as a trainer and breeder of horses he became a well-known figure in the racing industry centred around the Riccarton racecourse.
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/CHP19050425.2.41
* * * Only 3 members of Richard & Susanna Maria (nee Barltrop) Ellis’s family came out to New Zealand - Richard Campbell Ellis, known as Campbell, Louis Frederick Ellis, known as Fred, and Robert Ellis, known as Bobby. In her history of Waimea South, “More Wakefield Spuds” (pg 305), Marion J. Stringer incorrectly named 3 other Motupiko residents, Jane Kinzett nee Ellis and Stead Ellis and his son Harold Lewis Ellis, as being members of the Ellis family associated with the Gordon Downs run.
Links
Early Waimea West Settlers (includes Kerrs and Redwoods)
http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-NHSJ03_03-t1-body1-d7-d3.html
Obituary George Duppa
Old Nelson Settlers NEM 12 Jan 1888, pg 2
“Cob homes, a reminder of our early history”,
Article by Steve Bagley, Dept. of Conservation published in the
“Marlborough Express”, October 26, 2017.
Newport, J.N.W. (1981) Journal of the Nelson & Marlborough Historical Societies, Vol 1, Issue 1,
Dissolution of partnership between Robert Hooker and John Kerr, butchers at Bridge Street, Nelson and business name change to “Robert Hooker & Co.”
“Nelson Examiner” 11 June 1856, pg 4
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NENZC18560611.2.15.1?query=hooker%20%20Kerr
Robert Hooker advises he has passed the Bridge Street butchery on to Isaac Freeth as he is leaving immediately for the Wairau.
Nelson Examiner, 1 Nov. 1856, pg 4, col 1
Provincial Council 1858 –see “Public Reserves Bill”
Permission granted to extend Robert Hooker’s occupation of the Gordon Downs Accommodation House and its Reserve.
“Nelson Examiner,” 30 Jan. 1858, pg 3
Report of the proceedings of the Nelson Provincial Council meeting held on Jan. 21, 1858.
Notification by W. G. Bell of the transfer of his Gordon Downs run, including land and stock, to Mr Robert Hooker.
“Nelson Examiner” 8 February 1860, pg 2
How Robert Hooker acquired William Gordon Bell’s Wai-iti run
Williams nee Bell, Jean (author)
The Bell Family Affair: A history see “A Very Sad Story’, pg ix
Application by Robert Hooker for a depasturage licence for 2000 acres of leasehold land adjoining the former Bell run at Gordon Downs.
“Nelson Examiner” 14 July 1860, pg 2, Column 3
The Original Diggers’ Route to Murchison
“In the 1860s, before the Hope Saddle was opened, the diggers trudging from Nelson came up the Wai-iti or Motueka Rivers to Gordon (now Golden) Downs, crossed “Berneyboosal” (Kerrs Hill) to the Motupiko, then tramped up Rainy Creek and over to the Buller River at Station Creek. Then they continued up the Howard, over the Porika Track to Lake Rotoroa, and down the Mangles Creek to Hampden (Murchison)”.
See: Nolan, T. (1976) “Historic Gold Trails of Nelson and Marlborough”, Wellington [N.Z.]; London : A.H. and A.W. Reed.
Newport, J.W.N. (Jeff) Wairau Valley Field Trip
Following and giving a description of the route taken by early explorers and settlers from the Waimeas by way of Reay’s (originally Rae’s) Saddle to Gordon (now Golden) Downs.
Nelson Historical Society Journal, Volume 3, Issue 1, October 1974. Publication details: Nelson Historical Society (Inc.), October 1974, Nelson.
Cob Houses, a reminder of our early history.
Article about the back country accommodation houses built along the Wairau and Canterbury trails by the ubiquitous Edward (Ned) James, written for the Stuff website by Steve Bagley, Department of Conservation
Inquest into the drowning of Henry Augarde Jnr.
“Nelson Examiner,” 10 July 1861, pg 2
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NENZC18610710.2.9?query=inquest%20augarde
Murder and Suicide at Molesworth: the tragic and true story of Ivanhoe Stanley Augarde. Author, Bruce Reid
Prow website: Stories from the Top of the South
http://www.theprow.org.nz/yourstory/murder-and-suicide-at-molesworth/
Topo map of the Upper Motueka Valley pinpointing Golden Downs, originally known as Gordon Downs. and showing the line of the old Stock Road up to Kerr’s Hill.
https://www.topomap.co.nz/NZTopoMap/nz39235/Golden-Downs/Tasman
“For Sale: “Spring Bank Farm” Wairau Valley, Dec. 1862
“Nelson Examiner & NZ Chronicle”, 31 Dec. 1862
Advertisements, pg 1: Landed Property.
See “Farm for Sale”
Robert Hooker no longer living in the Motueka Valley
See Waimea South residents no longer eligible to vote. (1864)
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NENZC18640507.2.15.3?query=hooker%20motueka%20valley
Robert Hooker offering for sale “Sunnybank”, his Wakefield home and 20 acre home block in 1866.
Nelson Examiner & NZ C , 21 July, 1866, pg 1
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NENZC18660731.2.2.3?query=hooker%20motueka%20valley
New route to Marlborough via the Rae Valley
“Colonist”, 26 May 1868
https://digitalnz.org/records/4656691?search%5Bpage%5D=2&search%5Btext%5D=rae+nelson+nz
“Nelson Examiner” 23 Jan 1847, pg 187
Mentions that “from Nelson —- a party on horseback or on foot, with pack-horse or mule to carry the baggage, may reach the mud hut, the late residence of Mr. William Gordon, stock-keeper to George Duppa, Esq., in two days”.
Description of a journey from Nelson to Marlborough, passing through Foxhill and stopping at Hooker’s Gordon Downs accommodation house before continuing through the Big Bush near Kikiwa and on to Tophouse and the Wairau Pass. Hooker’s extensive range of alcoholic beverages clearly won the travellers’ approval!
“Nelson Examiner” , 26 November 1859, pg 3
Spring Bank Farm in the Wairau Valley for sale
Apply Robert Hooker, Allington
“Nelson Examiner”, 17 Sept. 1863, Pg 1, Col.3
Advertisement: Waimea South Steeplechase, Thursday, February 23, 1871, giving the schedule of planned events. Robert Hooker appointed a race steward along with Henry Redwood, John Kerr and Charles Baker Gabb. Commission agent John Sharp appointed the judge.
(“Sov” was an abbreviation for sovereign, a British gold coin which was valid currency in NZ at the time)
“Nelson Examiner”, 30 January 1871, pg 2.
For Sale by Public Auction
Gordon Downs Run, Motueka Valley
“Nelson Examiner & NZ Chronicle”, 20 April, 1872, pg 2
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NENZC18720420.2.3.1?end_date=31-12-1874&items_per_page=10&query=GORDON+dOWNS+sTATION&snippet=true&start_date=01-01-1842&title=NENZC
Thomas Rae, born in Scotland in 1808 as per death record or 1812 if we go by his given age (35) on passenger manifest of “Prince of Wales”, died at Waimea West on 20 March 1849 and was buried at Hallowell Cemetery (aka “The Old Burying Ground”) at Shelbourne on Nile Streets, Nelson. In use from 1844-1885, this was Nelson’s oldest cemetery and had earlier been the site of a Maori urupa or burial ground.
Find a Grave record:
https://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=65390726&ref=acom
Note: It was not uncommon for would-be immigrants to knock. a few years off their ages when applying to the NZ Company for passage to New Zealand, as younger people were given preference
Death of the Hookers’ third daughter Janet Ramage aged 13 at “Allington Farm”
NEM 15 July 1874, pg 2
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NEM18740715.2.9?query=robert%20hooker
Robert Hooker now ineligible to vote for the district of Waimea East, having sold his property there.
NEM 5 April 1878, pg 5
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NEM18780504.2.16.1?query=robert%20hooker
Death of Robert Hooker at Taueru, Masterton (Wairarapa East)
Wairarapa News, 4 January 1901, pg 5
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/EP19010104.2.21?query=robert%20hooker%20masterton
Wairarapa Daily Times , 15 December 1879, pg 2
Wairarapa East Council
Transferred from John Disher to Robert Hooker, position of poundkeeper (Council Stock Pound)
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/WDT18791215.2.5?query=disher%20hooker
Richard Campbell Ellis -Obituary
NEM, 2 Jan 1931, pg 2
Note that there are a number of inaccuracies in this piece, the actual
details around the development of the Gordon Downs Run possibly having become confused over time.
t=true
Baker Gabb , Richard, incumbent of “The Chain”, Abervagenny
(1902) “History of the Baker Gabb family”
http://www.ewyaslacy.org.uk/Walterstone/Baker-Gabb-family-and-Allt-yr-ynys/1902/gc_wal_3101
“Trip to Karamea” Although the Karamea River could be reached from the Tableland and gold was worked there, this is in fact the description of an expedition from the Graham Valley up the precipitous Lodestone track to visit diggers working the Mount Arthur Tableland for gold. This undertaking was made by Reuben Waite, storekeeper and godfather of the Greymouth and Westport goldrushes, accompanied by Charles Biggs from Ngatimoti and Charles Baker Gabb.
“Nelson Examiner & NZ Chronicle”, 4 Nov 1870, pg 4
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NENZC18701104.2.21
Note: It was (and still is) possible to reach the Karamea River from the Mount Arthur Tableland by following the Leslie River to the point where it joins the Karamea River at what was known as “The Bend”. Before the more accessible Flora track was made, the only way up to the Tableland (known as “Salisbury’s Open”) in what is now the Kahurangi National Park was by the Lodestone route, so steep that diggers had to use both hands and feet to haul themselves up it.
Opening of Golden Downs telephone office at Mr Walter Kerr’s (Gordon Downs Accommodation House) Note that it was in fact Walter’s brother John Kerr who was holder of the accommodation license at the time.
“Colonist”, 12 March 1903
Inquest into the death of Mr George Moonlight
held at Fogden’s (Gordon Downs) Accommodation House
“Colonist,” 11 Oct 1884, Pg 1 (Supplement)
Civil Case
Bisley Bros v. Public Trustee and Another
Auctioneers Bisley & Co take to court a civil case against the Public Trustee and Mrs Elizabeth Kerr (widow of John Kerr Jnr) for commission fees relating to the sale of the Glen-iti Run.
“Colonist” 28 April, 1908, pg 2, column 5
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/TC19080428.2.9.2
On account Welbore Ellis Esq., sale of “Treeton” property along with household goods, chattels and livestock
“Colonist” 26 Jan 1864, pg 2, column 1
For Sale: Allington Estate, that valuable property owned by Mr Robert Hooker, comprising about 143 acres of land in conveniently fenced paddocks and with Dwelling house and farm buildings
N.E. & NZ C, 16 Dec. 1865, pg1 , Column 2
The Weather (The Big Bush Blowdown)
“Nelson Examiner”, 5 Sept. 1867, pg 6
Robert Hooker invites friends to attend the funeral of his wife Margaret Kyle Hooker on 17 June 1875.
Nelson Evening Mail, 16 June 1875, pg 2. Column 2
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NEM18750616.2.12.2?end_date=31-12-1945&items_per_page=10&query=funeral+hooker&snippet=true&start_date=01-01-1866&title=NEM
“Deaths”, Robert Hooker
Nelson Evening Mail 2 Jan 1901, pg 2
Report into the State Forest Service Afforestation schemes for the Dominion (New Zealand) ’s ‘waste spaces” from Director of Forests, Mr L. MacIntosh Ellis.
“Nelson Evening Mail”, 19 July 1927, pg 8
“Droving”, an excerpt from “No Roll of Drums”, by C.B. Brereton Further information added by A. McFadgen
An account of the commonly used drover’s route taken through Gordon Downs during a sheep drive from Orinoco (Ngatimoti) down the Canterbury route via Tophouse during the late 19th century.
http://rustlingsinthewind.blogspot.com/2015/04/droving-from-roll-of-drums-by-cb.html
Nelson to Canterbury - the discovery of the vital routes to the Wairau and Canterbury
https://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-McCExpl-t1-body-d9.html
Fatality at Lake Roto-iti
(Death by drowning of John Kerr)
Nelson Evening Mail, 4 May 1898, pg 2
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NEM18980504.2.9.1?end_date=04-05-1898&items_per_page=10&query=death+John+Kerr&snippet=true&start_date=04-05-1898&title=NEM
W. A. Coppins
Written by Joanna Szczenpanski for
The Prow website
http://www.theprow.org.nz/yourstory/w.a.-coppins/#.Y1sKny8RpmA
History of “Treeton” at Wakefield
See “ Just Another row of Spuds” by Marion Stringer
pp 312-313
Conversion of the two-storey brick accommodation house built by McFarlane into a single storey 5 room dwelling house with a small leant-to for the telephone bureau and Post Office . Mention is made of an old wooden building onsite which is to be demolished. This is described as the original accommodation house but is more likely to have been a stables/storehouse facility as the original accommodation. house was known to have been of cob construction and destroyed by MacFarlane he when took over as licensee and replaced it at the same time by a brick building.
See:
Nelson Institute Annual Meeting
Nelson Evening Mail, 26 March 1925, pg 7
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NEM19250326.2.83?items_per_page=10&page=2&query=Nelson+Institute+Golden+Downs&snippet=true&title=TC,GBARG,MOST,NEM,NENZC
Reuben Waite: A Narrative of the Discovery of the West Coast Goldfields. Can be read online here:
http://www.enzb.auckland.ac.nz/document/?wid=5118&page=0&action=null
“Crisis Lodge” The Early Days of Racing in Canterbury” (Robert Rae/ Reay)
“Christchurch Press”,16 Oct 1976, pg 13.
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/press/1976/10/16/13
Trekking 400 miles to the Goldfields
Bob Reay and the Goldfields races of the 1870s
“Press”, 3 August 1977, pg 24
The Unemployed: What’s Wrong at Golden Downs?
“Nelson Evening Mail”, 21 July 1930, pg 2
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NEM19300721.2.8
The Mayor of Blenheim on the plight of the Blenheim relief workers
Images
Pre-1870 goldfields map showing Upper Motueka Valley accommodation houses pre-1870
Newport, ‘Footprints”, pg 140
“Crisis Lodge”
Charles Baker Gabb and his son David.
Robert Hooker’s baptismal certificate.
Ancestry.com
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In February 1925 Disher married at All Saints’ Church, Nelson, to Mary Eloise Goodwin, whose parents Herbert (Bert) Goodwin and Bertha nee Page had each served in turn as proprietor of the Riwaka Hotel from 1904 to 1924; firstly Herbert, who had to rebuild the hotel following a devastating fire in 1906, followed after his death in 1919 by his widow Bertha, until she retired in 1924 to Milton Grove in Nelson, taking her daughters Mary Eloise and Kathleen with her. Jack Disher had a Motueka connection - two of his sisters had earlier married Motueka businessmen. Disher had settled with his family at the Tillingdown farm in Richmond by 1931, his rented Accommodation Reserve of 2724 acres, along with the converted former Gordon Downs Accommodation House, having passed from the Nelson Institute to the Golden Downs State Forest Service that same year. The Dishers, who had two children, Mary and Robert, while living at Golden Downs, moved permanently to Levin in the Horowhenua in the 1940s as part of a family group which included Disher’s widowed mother-in-law, Mrs Bertha Goodwin, and unmarried sister-in-law, Kathleen. Jack Disher died at his Levin home on 3 April 1960, and was interred two days later at the Old Levin Cemetery, R.S.A. Row 7.
Time Runs out for the Gordon Downs Accommodation House
After the Dishers departed, the converted Gordon Downs accommodation house, which in time ended up sitting between two State Forest workers’ camps - Gordon Creek Camp and King’s Camp - became home over the years to various Forestry employees who lived there with their families. It was eventually demolished in 1962, perhaps ahead of the removal of the Golden Downs State Forest Headquarters and Village to Tapawera. A number of forestry workers and their families lamented this move, which split up a well-established and close-knit community at the original site. Many still recall happy days growing up at the old village and working with their mates for the Golden Downs Forest Service.
And so vanished a significant part of Upper Motueka’s history dating back at least 104 years, leaving only as a reminder of past dangers a historic site marker and some crumbled stones, the remains of the memorial which had been erected near Gordon’s Creek, marking two 19th century drownings in the nearby Motueka River. The location of the Gordon Downs Accommodation House and memorial sites are recorded as Archaeological site N28/12.
Jack Disher’s sisters Caroline and Eva - the Motueka Connection
Adding to the Motueka connection begun by their Kerr cousins, two of Robert and Margaret Hooker’s granddaughters (and Jack Disher’s sisters) married into Motueka business families.
Alice Katherine Disher (known as Caroline) married on 31 May 1896 to Harold Ledger Goodman, a member of the Goodman family bakery business established on Motueka’s High Street in 1867 by Harold’s grandfather, Thomas Goodman. This business would flourish and expand over the years to become in more recent times the Australasian conglomerate Goodman Fielder Enterprises, associated with Sir Pat Goodman and his brother Peter. Caroline Goodman nee Disher named her first daughter Fruzann, in memory of her own mother.
Caroline’s younger sister Eva Agnes Disher, (the unfortunate orphan), in 1906 to William Arthur Coppins, founder of the enterprising Coppins’ family business, originally set up as a saddlery but these days operating on Motueka’s High Street as Coppins Great Outdoor Centre, specialising in cycles and outdoor gear, along with products for the maritime, aviation, industrial and horticulture industries.
Sources
“Nelson Evening Mail”, 11 December 1926
Pg 36 (Supplement)
See also
Original edition with photographs of significant early Nelsonians
Passenger list for the "Mariner"'s 1849 voyage to New Zealand
Per Roots Web
See Assisted Passengers
Hooker, Robert, Farm Labourer - disembarked at Nelson.
The New Zealand Company
https://nzhistory.govt.nz/keyword/new-zealand-company
Newport, J.N.W. (Jeff), “Footprints” (1962)
Chapter XIII Gordon Downs and Golden Downs pp 153-4
Includes information about the Gordon Downs Accommodation House and its proprietors.
See also
Newport, J.N.W. (Jeff), “Footprints Too” (1978).
Chapter 26, Farming at Golden Downs and Graham Valley, pg 173
Recollections of life for a soldier settler at Golden Downs before the State Forest took over. Also references a map dated 1861 held by the State Forest Service, showing large areas south from Motupiko in the Motueka Valley, and indicating those sections purchased by Robert Hooker from Arthur R. Oliver.
Brereton, Cyprian Bridge, “History of the Nelson Institute”
Acquisition of the Gordon Downs Accommodation House and its attached Reserve
See Ch X: Very Difficult Times, pp 52-3. Pub. 1948 by A.H. & A.W. Reed, Wellington, NZ.
See also
Brereton, “History of the Nelson Institute”
Ch XV: The Great Earthquake, pg 70.
Agreement reached with the Golden Downs State Forest in 1931 when the Nelson Institute accepted, after some deft haggling, the amount of £2,150 as compensation for the loss of the Gordon Downs Reserve and its converted accommodation house.
“Ward, John & Cooper, Don, “Golden Downs Forest Nelson, 1927-2004”. Ch 1 1844-1926: Pioneers, Settlers and Farming, pp 1-7
The Berneyboosal poem
On one occasion Sir David Monro and David Lindsay were returning to the Wairau from Nelson and they whiled away the time by making up nonsense rhymes as they made the steep climb up to the Blue Glen homestead, situated at the top of Kerrs Hill. Monro made up the following:
When I get over the hill I stop
To dine on Berneyboosal chops
To which Lindsay replied
’Tis but a fool would give refusal
To dine on chops at Berneyboosal
Funeral notice for Margaret (Maggie) Hooker - burial to take place Thursday 17 June 1875 (Died at home 14 June 1875, aged 39 years). NEM 16 June 1875
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NEM18750616.2.12.2
Margaret (aged 7) came to Nelson on the ship “Prince of Wales” on 31 December 1842.with her parents Thomas & Agnes and siblings William (12) Elizabeth (10) & Robert (4). Agnes Rae, the children’s mother, died at sea not long before the ship arrived in Nelson.
See: Neale, June E.
“Pioneer Passengers: To Nelson by Sailing Ship March 1842- June 1843”. First pub. 1982, reprinted 1989. Printed in Nelson, NZ, by
General Printing Services, Anchor House, 258 Wakefield Quay.
List of passengers on board the ship Prince of Wales, pp 167-168.
See p. 168 for the Rae family
George Reay, owner of Allington Farm ca 1881-
https://www.theprow.org.nz/yourstory/the-reays-in-brightwater/
Notes
* Nelson Suburban Sections and The Waimeas
Soon after Nelson’s settlement it became clear that expansion into the surrounding countryside would be needed to accommodate anticipated growth and allow for farms to feed to the projected population. Outlying areas were surveyed, divided up and labelled. Three Suburban sections located in the best lands in the vicinity of the Nelson township were marked as follows - Suburban North was the area around swampy Wakapuaka, Suburban South was the land south of the town out to Stoke and just beyond it, and Suburban East was a small district including the Maitai and Brook valleys.
The more distant flat and fertile Waimea Plains, known jointly as the Waimeas, were also divided into three blocks as follows: Waimea East extended from Suburban South (around the Stoke area) to the Waimea and Wairoa Rivers, taking in the settlements of Wai-iti, Belgrove and Foxhill. Waimea West took in the areas now known as Richmond and Appleby. It was on the other side of the Waimea and Wairoa Rivers, and extended to the Moutere foothills. This was the best land of all the outlying areas, the fertile soil having been cultivated over centuries by Maori using traditional regenerative practices for their kumara gardens. Waimea South’s northern boundary was the Wairoa River, the southern boundary Spooner’s Range and it included Spring Grove/Brightwater, and the small settlement of Wakefield, founded about 25km from Nelson in 1943. Originally the site of a large farm called Pitfure owned by Captain Richard England, it was then named after the cathedral city of Wakefield in West Yorkshire, but after the death that same year of the popular NZ Company’s Nelson agent , Captain Arthur Wakefield, during the Wairau Affray, the name became seen as a memorial to him. Wakefield’s friend, Captain England, was killed at Tua Marina alongside him.
* * There may have been some confusion with the story of Mary Coster, who eloped to NZ in 1842 with her husband John Coster after marrying against her parents’ wishes, and the couple moved to Nelson. After John was killed on 4 June 1843 during the Wairau Affray, Mary was left a widow with a baby and no income. She and her baby were then taken in and cared for by the Redwood family until she got back on her feet. Mary remarried to Richard Wallis, and she and her husband later ran a well-regarded orphanage known as the Wallis Family Home at their home, Hulmers, on Hursthouse Street, Lower Moutere.
https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/2w6/wallis-mary-ann-lake/
Possibly adding to the confusion, Maggie Hooker nee Rae’s brother Robert (known as Bob Reay) became closely involved with horse racing , and from early on worked for Henry Redwood at the Redwood Stables (it’s possible that his older brother William also worked at the Redwood Stables). Bob Reay later moved down to Christchurch where as a trainer and breeder of horses he became a well-known figure in the racing industry centred around the Riccarton racecourse.
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/CHP19050425.2.41
* * * Only 3 members of Richard & Susanna Maria (nee Barltrop) Ellis’s family came out to New Zealand - Richard Campbell Ellis, known as Campbell, Louis Frederick Ellis, known as Fred, and Robert Ellis, known as Bobby. In her history of Waimea South, “More Wakefield Spuds” (pg 305), Marion J. Stringer incorrectly named 3 other Motupiko residents, Jane Kinzett nee Ellis and Stead Ellis and his son Harold Lewis Ellis, as being members of the Ellis family associated with the Gordon Downs run.
Links
Early Waimea West Settlers (includes Kerrs and Redwoods)
http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-NHSJ03_03-t1-body1-d7-d3.html
Obituary George Duppa
Old Nelson Settlers NEM 12 Jan 1888, pg 2
“Cob homes, a reminder of our early history”,
Article by Steve Bagley, Dept. of Conservation published in the
“Marlborough Express”, October 26, 2017.
Newport, J.N.W. (1981) Journal of the Nelson & Marlborough Historical Societies, Vol 1, Issue 1,
Dissolution of partnership between Robert Hooker and John Kerr, butchers at Bridge Street, Nelson and business name change to “Robert Hooker & Co.”
“Nelson Examiner” 11 June 1856, pg 4
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NENZC18560611.2.15.1?query=hooker%20%20Kerr
Robert Hooker advises he has passed the Bridge Street butchery on to Isaac Freeth as he is leaving immediately for the Wairau.
Nelson Examiner, 1 Nov. 1856, pg 4, col 1
Provincial Council 1858 –see “Public Reserves Bill”
Permission granted to extend Robert Hooker’s occupation of the Gordon Downs Accommodation House and its Reserve.
“Nelson Examiner,” 30 Jan. 1858, pg 3
Report of the proceedings of the Nelson Provincial Council meeting held on Jan. 21, 1858.
Notification by W. G. Bell of the transfer of his Gordon Downs run, including land and stock, to Mr Robert Hooker.
“Nelson Examiner” 8 February 1860, pg 2
How Robert Hooker acquired William Gordon Bell’s Wai-iti run
Williams nee Bell, Jean (author)
The Bell Family Affair: A history see “A Very Sad Story’, pg ix
Application by Robert Hooker for a depasturage licence for 2000 acres of leasehold land adjoining the former Bell run at Gordon Downs.
“Nelson Examiner” 14 July 1860, pg 2, Column 3
The Original Diggers’ Route to Murchison
“In the 1860s, before the Hope Saddle was opened, the diggers trudging from Nelson came up the Wai-iti or Motueka Rivers to Gordon (now Golden) Downs, crossed “Berneyboosal” (Kerrs Hill) to the Motupiko, then tramped up Rainy Creek and over to the Buller River at Station Creek. Then they continued up the Howard, over the Porika Track to Lake Rotoroa, and down the Mangles Creek to Hampden (Murchison)”.
See: Nolan, T. (1976) “Historic Gold Trails of Nelson and Marlborough”, Wellington [N.Z.]; London : A.H. and A.W. Reed.
Newport, J.W.N. (Jeff) Wairau Valley Field Trip
Following and giving a description of the route taken by early explorers and settlers from the Waimeas by way of Reay’s (originally Rae’s) Saddle to Gordon (now Golden) Downs.
Nelson Historical Society Journal, Volume 3, Issue 1, October 1974. Publication details: Nelson Historical Society (Inc.), October 1974, Nelson.
Cob Houses, a reminder of our early history.
Article about the back country accommodation houses built along the Wairau and Canterbury trails by the ubiquitous Edward (Ned) James, written for the Stuff website by Steve Bagley, Department of Conservation
Inquest into the drowning of Henry Augarde Jnr.
“Nelson Examiner,” 10 July 1861, pg 2
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NENZC18610710.2.9?query=inquest%20augarde
Murder and Suicide at Molesworth: the tragic and true story of Ivanhoe Stanley Augarde. Author, Bruce Reid
Prow website: Stories from the Top of the South
http://www.theprow.org.nz/yourstory/murder-and-suicide-at-molesworth/
Topo map of the Upper Motueka Valley pinpointing Golden Downs, originally known as Gordon Downs. and showing the line of the old Stock Road up to Kerr’s Hill.
https://www.topomap.co.nz/NZTopoMap/nz39235/Golden-Downs/Tasman
“For Sale: “Spring Bank Farm” Wairau Valley, Dec. 1862
“Nelson Examiner & NZ Chronicle”, 31 Dec. 1862
Advertisements, pg 1: Landed Property.
See “Farm for Sale”
Robert Hooker no longer living in the Motueka Valley
See Waimea South residents no longer eligible to vote. (1864)
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NENZC18640507.2.15.3?query=hooker%20motueka%20valley
Robert Hooker offering for sale “Sunnybank”, his Wakefield home and 20 acre home block in 1866.
Nelson Examiner & NZ C , 21 July, 1866, pg 1
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NENZC18660731.2.2.3?query=hooker%20motueka%20valley
New route to Marlborough via the Rae Valley
“Colonist”, 26 May 1868
https://digitalnz.org/records/4656691?search%5Bpage%5D=2&search%5Btext%5D=rae+nelson+nz
“Nelson Examiner” 23 Jan 1847, pg 187
Mentions that “from Nelson —- a party on horseback or on foot, with pack-horse or mule to carry the baggage, may reach the mud hut, the late residence of Mr. William Gordon, stock-keeper to George Duppa, Esq., in two days”.
Description of a journey from Nelson to Marlborough, passing through Foxhill and stopping at Hooker’s Gordon Downs accommodation house before continuing through the Big Bush near Kikiwa and on to Tophouse and the Wairau Pass. Hooker’s extensive range of alcoholic beverages clearly won the travellers’ approval!
“Nelson Examiner” , 26 November 1859, pg 3
Spring Bank Farm in the Wairau Valley for sale
Apply Robert Hooker, Allington
“Nelson Examiner”, 17 Sept. 1863, Pg 1, Col.3
Advertisement: Waimea South Steeplechase, Thursday, February 23, 1871, giving the schedule of planned events. Robert Hooker appointed a race steward along with Henry Redwood, John Kerr and Charles Baker Gabb. Commission agent John Sharp appointed the judge.
(“Sov” was an abbreviation for sovereign, a British gold coin which was valid currency in NZ at the time)
“Nelson Examiner”, 30 January 1871, pg 2.
For Sale by Public Auction
Gordon Downs Run, Motueka Valley
“Nelson Examiner & NZ Chronicle”, 20 April, 1872, pg 2
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NENZC18720420.2.3.1?end_date=31-12-1874&items_per_page=10&query=GORDON+dOWNS+sTATION&snippet=true&start_date=01-01-1842&title=NENZC
Thomas Rae, born in Scotland in 1808 as per death record or 1812 if we go by his given age (35) on passenger manifest of “Prince of Wales”, died at Waimea West on 20 March 1849 and was buried at Hallowell Cemetery (aka “The Old Burying Ground”) at Shelbourne on Nile Streets, Nelson. In use from 1844-1885, this was Nelson’s oldest cemetery and had earlier been the site of a Maori urupa or burial ground.
Find a Grave record:
https://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=65390726&ref=acom
Note: It was not uncommon for would-be immigrants to knock. a few years off their ages when applying to the NZ Company for passage to New Zealand, as younger men were given preference
Death of the Hookers’ third daughter Janet Ramage aged 13 at “Allington Farm”
NEM 15 July 1874, pg 2
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NEM18740715.2.9?query=robert%20hooker
Robert Hooker now ineligible to vote for the district of Waimea East, having sold his property there.
NEM 5 April 1878, pg 5
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NEM18780504.2.16.1?query=robert%20hooker
Death of Robert Hooker at Taueru, Masterton (Wairarapa East)
Wairarapa News, 4 January 1901, pg 5
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/EP19010104.2.21?query=robert%20hooker%20masterton
Wairarapa Daily Times , 15 December 1879, pg 2
Wairarapa East Council
Transferred from John Disher to Robert Hooker, position of poundkeeper (Council Stock Pound)
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/WDT18791215.2.5?query=disher%20hooker
Richard Campbell Ellis -Obituary
NEM, 2 Jan 1931, pg 2
Note that there are a number of inaccuracies in this piece, the actual
details around the development of the Gordon Downs Run possibly having become confused over time.
t=true
Baker Gabb , Richard, incumbent of “The Chain”, Abervagenny
(1902) “History of the Baker Gabb family”
http://www.ewyaslacy.org.uk/Walterstone/Baker-Gabb-family-and-Allt-yr-ynys/1902/gc_wal_3101
“Trip to Karamea” Although the Karamea River could be reached from the Tableland and gold was worked there, this is in fact the description of an expedition from the Graham Valley up the precipitous Lodestone track to visit diggers working the Mount Arthur Tableland for gold. This undertaking was made by Reuben Waite, storekeeper and godfather of the Greymouth and Westport goldrushes, accompanied by Charles Biggs from Ngatimoti and Charles Baker Gabb.
“Nelson Examiner & NZ Chronicle”, 4 Nov 1870, pg 4
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NENZC18701104.2.21
Note: It was (and still is) possible to reach the Karamea River from the Tableland by following the Leslie River to the point where it joins the Karamea River at what was known as “The Bend”. Before the more accessible Flora track was made, the only way up to the Tableland (known as “Salisbury’s Open”) in what is now the Kahurangi National Park was by the Lodestone route, so steep that diggers had to use both hands and feet to haul themselves up it.
Opening of Golden Downs telephone office at Mr Walter Kerr’s (Gordon Downs Accommodation House) Note that it was in fact Walter’s brother John Kerr who was holder of the accommodation license at the time.
“Colonist”, 12 March 1903
Inquest into the death of Mr George Moonlight
held at Fogden’s (Gordon Downs) Accommodation House
“Colonist,” 11 Oct 1884, Pg 1 (Supplement)
Civil Case
Bisley Bros v. Public Trustee and Another
Auctioneers Bisley & Co take to court a civil case against the Public Trustee and Mrs Elizabeth Kerr (widow of John Kerr Jnr) for commission fees relating to the sale of the Glen-iti Run.
“Colonist” 28 April, 1908, pg 2, column 5
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/TC19080428.2.9.2
On account Welbore Ellis Esq., sale of “Treeton” property along with household goods, chattels and livestock
“Colonist” 26 Jan 1864, pg 2, column 1
For Sale: Allington Estate, that valuable property owned by Mr Robert Hooker, comprising about 143 acres of land in conveniently fenced paddocks and with Dwelling house and farm buildings
N.E. & NZ C, 16 Dec. 1865, pg1 , Column 2
The Weather (The Big Bush Blowdown)
“Nelson Examiner”, 5 Sept. 1867, pg 6
Robert Hooker invites friends to attend the funeral of his wife Margaret Kyle Hooker on 17 June 1875.
Nelson Evening Mail, 16 June 1875, pg 2. Column 2
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NEM18750616.2.12.2?end_date=31-12-1945&items_per_page=10&query=funeral+hooker&snippet=true&start_date=01-01-1866&title=NEM
“Deaths”, Robert Hooker
Nelson Evening Mail 2 Jan 1901, pg 2
Report into the State Forest Service Afforestation schemes for the Dominion (New Zealand) ’s ‘waste spaces” from Director of Forests, Mr L. MacIntosh Ellis.
“Nelson Evening Mail”, 19 July 1927, pg 8
“Droving”, an excerpt from “No Roll of Drums”, by C.B. Brereton Further information added by A. McFadgen
An account of the commonly used drover’s route taken through Gordon Downs during a sheep drive from Orinoco (Ngatimoti) down the Canterbury route via Tophouse during the late 19th century.
http://rustlingsinthewind.blogspot.com/2015/04/droving-from-roll-of-drums-by-cb.html
Nelson to Canterbury - the discovery of the vital routes to the Wairau and Canterbury
https://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-McCExpl-t1-body-d9.html
Fatality at Lake Roto-iti
(Death by drowning of John Kerr)
Nelson Evening Mail, 4 May 1898, pg 2
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NEM18980504.2.9.1?end_date=04-05-1898&items_per_page=10&query=death+John+Kerr&snippet=true&start_date=04-05-1898&title=NEM
W. A. Coppins
Written by Joanna Szczenpanski for
The Prow website
http://www.theprow.org.nz/yourstory/w.a.-coppins/#.Y1sKny8RpmA
History of “Treeton” at Wakefield
See “ Just Another row of Spuds” by Marion Stringer
pp 312-313
Conversion of the two-storey brick accommodation house built by McFarlane into a single storey 5 room dwelling house with a small leant-to for the telephone bureau and Post Office . Mention is made of an old wooden building onsite which is to be demolished. This is described as the original accommodation house but is more likely to have been a stables/storehouse facility as the original accommodation. house was known to have been of cob construction and destroyed by MacFarlane he when took over as licensee and was replaced at the same time by a brick building.
See:
Nelson Institute Annual Meeting
Nelson Evening Mail, 26 March 1925, pg 7
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NEM19250326.2.83?items_per_page=10&page=2&query=Nelson+Institute+Golden+Downs&snippet=true&title=TC,GBARG,MOST,NEM,NENZC
Reuben Waite: A Narrative of the Discovery of the West Coast Goldfields. Can be read online here:
http://www.enzb.auckland.ac.nz/document/?wid=5118&page=0&action=null
“Crisis Lodge” The Early Days of Racing in Canterbury” (Robert Rae/ Reay)
“Christchurch Press”,16 Oct 1976, pg 13.
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/press/1976/10/16/13
Trekking 400 miles to the Goldfields
Bob Reay and the Goldfields races of the 1870s
“Press”, 3 August 1977, pg 24
The Unemployed: What’s Wrong at Golden Downs?
“Nelson Evening Mail”, 21 July 1930, pg 2
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NEM19300721.2.8
The Mayor of Blenheim on the plight of the Blenheim relief workers
Images
Pre-1870 goldfields map showing Upper Motueka Valley accommodation houses pre-1870
Newport, ‘Footprints”, pg 140
“Crisis Lodge”
Charles Baker Gabb and his son David.
Robert Hooker’s baptismal certificate.
Ancestry.com
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