Intrepid Motoring, 1915 Style!
Jack Love of Picton (seen here at the wheel of his Overland Model 90) takes the first motor-car over the Grove Track, with a little help from his friends. Now better known as Queen Charlotte Drive, the Grove Track connected the township of Picton to Havelock via The Grove. Sited in the Marlborough Sounds at Okiwa, The Grove was named for the extensive kahikatea forest that covered the area before the Pakeha moved in. Work started on the track in 1861, when pioneer Alexander Scott Duncan settled at The Grove and established Marlborough’s first steam sawmill there. By the time the mill was moved to Tennyson Inlet in 1870, it’s thought that around 18 million feet of timber had been shipped out from the Grove wharf.
There was early pressure to have the track upgraded from a notoriously rugged bridle trail to at least a cart road, especially after The Grove became the main access point to places like Cullenville and Mahakipawa during the goldrush period. (It was down the Grove Track that Hiram Harris hurried in April 1864 on his way to Nelson to claim on behalf of his party the finder’s bonus for their discovery of Marlborough's first payable goldfield at Wakamarina). However, disagreement over which body should pay for the work meant minimal improvements were made over the years, and those mostly done by unemployed men on various work schemes in 1864 and 1898.
The road still hadn’t been upgraded much beyond the classification “stock route” when Jack Love made his ground-breaking and no doubt bone-rattling trip on Sunday, 3rd October 1915. Because it was subsidised by the Government, significant work was done on the old Grove Track by Public Works gangs during the Great Depression and the road was declared a highway in 1936, but it wasn’t until 1965 that the question of funding was finally resolved sufficiently to have the track developed into a fine scenic road, sealed for its entire length.
Photo and adapted info from Henry D. Kelly’s “As High as the Hills: the Centennial History of Picton"
See also "The Grove Okiwa" at the Prow website:
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