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Journal of the Nelson and Marlborough Historical Societies, Volume 2, Issue 6, 1995

The Rugged Life of Early Pioneers

page 25

The Rugged Life of Early Pioneers

In 1955 Frank Smith was elected first President of the newly formed Marlborough Historical Society. Frank had kept a day to day diary since a boy and had been fossicking in local history for possibly the same period. He had an exceptional memory, and a penchant for worrying at the facts until he was convinced they were correct. His quiet humour was a great asset when encountering those types with the 'correct story direct from the horses mouth', who were really miles off the truth.

Frank's grandfather was born Fredrick Schmidt in Germany in 1830. In 1857, at the age of 27, he went to England and changed his name to Fredrick Smith. The next year found him aboard the John Masterman which landed him at Nelson Haven in 1858.

James Fowick came out on a later ship and took up land in Annesbrook, the land being named Grove Farm. However, they shifted in 1859 to Hillocks Road, Spring Creek. Fredrick Smith married a daughter of James Powick, Eliza Powick.

For about two years Fredrick drove bullocks at Blairich and Altimarlock. Wool was taken down and around the White Bluff to the Bar, and the drays would backload with supplies. The beach around the Bluff had to be negotiated at low tide and many a bullocky was in trouble when giving it a go after arriving a little late. Fredrick was one and, with an incoming tide and large breakers rushing up the beach, he tried to press through. Alas, his bullocks were not trained like Ben Hur's chariot team and he found himself engulfed in boiling sucking green water and white foam. He managed to free the team and struggled through and up the beach. Next day he salvaged the dray from the sand, but lost wire, flour, sugar, tea and other goods to boisterous briny.

Tuamarino Bridge built 1860. Taken in 1870. J. Andrews.

Tuamarino Bridge built 1860. Taken in 1870. J. Andrews.

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Henry Handyside had surveyed 18 township blocks and 28 farm blocks at Tua Marina and Fredrick purchased a 150 acre block on Marshlands Road, keeping 50 acres and selling the rest to his father-in-law, James Powick. Fredrick built a two roomed sod house which was not a mud house, but was built from sods cut with a sharp spade. Frank Smith says that before the hooved animals arrived and disturbed the texture of the soil, the native grasses rotted down and the roots formed a spongy mass that held together well. Fredrick thatched it with raupo. It is very hard to imagine what the land was like in those days. There was no timber but plenty of flax and swampy plants. Apart from the sand ridge running south from where Morrisons are now, it would all be inclined to flood. Until drained it was a series of swamps right over to the Pukaka hills. This area at one time had been a magnificent forest but, owing to the Dillons Point fill from the Wairau, and a general subsidence in the Pukaka hill area, it was now mainly a flax swamp with peat 15 feet deep in places. The Grovetown Big Bush stretched from near the Ferry to Grovetown on the other side of the river.

Fredrick and his wife had a mammoth task ahead of them. The Tua Marina area had been a happy hunting area for the Maori and the area was over-run with wild pigs. Pukeko were in big numbers on the swampy ground and there were also flocks of parakeets at times.

The former were a trial for the farmer, but there were many other birds more welcome to the newcomer such as ducks, bittern, wekas, tuis and pigeons. J.M. Butt tells of going bird hunting in Tua Marina with the Maoris in the late eighteen fifties, snaring the larger birds and knocking over small birds, such as robins and tits, with a slender rod. He states, 'Before many minutes the Maoris had killed dozens.' Upon returning to camp these were cooked by being strung on a rod and passed back and forth over a hot fire. Feathers and entrails were not removed. When the feathers burnt off, says Butt, the scorched little bodies were devoured whole. A method of cooking used for the bigger birds was to roll them in clay and bake them. When done they cracked off the clay and the feathers came off too. The stomach was a hard ball inside.

The river at Botham's Bend, where gravel had washed down to, was a favourite fishing place for the Maoris. Frank Smith remembers spearing big numbers of flounders here with a spear his Grandfather made for him. The Maoris came up in their canoes and caught eels, mullet and whitebait. I do not know how much of this wild life Fredrick and Eliza used, but no doubt they lived as economically as possible as Fredrick had ceased freighting with his bullock dray and was putting all his energies into getting the farm established. It is so easily said, "They built a house and began farming," when we sit in our cosy, all electric dwellings of today. The sod house was more quickly made than the puddled clay and would be reasonably warm, although small with it's two rooms. It possibly had a stove, but maybe only kettles and camp oven. Wood, most likely manuka, had to be cut to keep the fire going. It was the only means of providing hot water and warmth and was relied on for cooking. If Fredrick came in muddy and wet, the kettles were emptied into a small bath for him and afterwards Eliza possibly washed the dirty clothes in the same bath. The clothes had to be dried and, if it rained for some time, that also was a problem. Water was possibly obtained from a pump or a stream and kept in buckets, full for instant use. Eliza would be busy with her sewing, unlikely to have had a machine. The little lighting they had would be a wick floating in fat, known as a sludge lamp, and later lanterns and candles.

Soon Eliza became pregnant and it would have taken days in a bullock dray to reach a doctor. We are not told how she had the children, just that she had a boy, a girl then another boy in the eight years in the little two-roomed whare. Just imagine a wet week; page 27the whole family with colds or flu, the children crying at night, no drying and all the chores having to be done.

Fredrick was busy clearing some of the higher ground and then staggering along, gripping the two handles of a single furrow plough towed behind two bullocks. After ploughing he walked the newly formed paddock sowing the seed by hand, then he had the bullocks tow a bundle of manuka over it to cover it. He had a good strike of wheat and had the satisfying feeling of achievement. When going out one morning he found rooting all through it, which no doubt began the war on the wild pigs. As the grain was ripening pukekos arrived, and after them flocks of gaudy coloured parakeets. It was miraculous how much remained when he eventually took on the tedious task of harvesting it all with a reap hook. The wheat was threshed with a flail and then winnowed in the warm northerly. Despite the wild life attacks, he found he had salvaged a reasonable quantity to take to Henry Godfrey's mill at Woodbourne to be ground.

There was no punt over the Ferry at that time so he crossed the Wairau River at Vickermans crossing, which is behind where Arthur Barnett's house is now. The crossing led into Hillocks Road and then he found his way through numerous fords, possibly one behind Ray March's house, which was on the old Maori trail, until he found his way to Woodbourne. Possibly a two day trip as the bullocks were not fed oats and chaff but had to be allowed time to graze. This meant Eliza would be in the wilderness on her own for five or six days, but possibly safer than we are in today's social climate.

The Tua Marina creek had to be forded because, although the Tua Marina bridge was one of the first to be built in Marlborough, tenders to Messrs Bashford and Wylie for one hundred and ninety five pounds were not let until October 1860.

When I was a boy, about 70 odd years ago, there was a beautiful big deep swimming hole in the Tua Marina stream where the Blind Creek used to flow off over the school ground playing area. Even then, after low banks and a railway line embankment, the seepage went underground to show a green streak over the playing field. Directly below this pond, called Drake's hole, was a gravel bottomed shallow ford. It is not there today, but would be behind the third house south of the present bridge. I am convinced this was the ford Fredrick and other early settlers used, although I have seen a report of one described as further south.

Eliza had her father not far away as he had built on the highest ground in the area, naming it Mount Cook. Also just down the track in the other direction were the James Mudfords with twenty cows. On what is now Thomas's Road was Joseph Law who soon was also running twenty cows. Mudford would be the first dairy man in the district. Because of the flax, manuka and toitoi etc the cows were all fitted with cow bells. It would no doubt be the boy's job to find and bring them in for milking, although cows with an udder full of milk often begin finding their own way in. The women did the milking by hand and most of the milk was put in large shallow pans for at least a day, when the cream was skimmed off with skimmers. The cream was then churned in a wooden churn. The success of the butter depended on butterfat content, freshness of cream and temperature, with 55–60 degrees the ideal temperature. Colder and the butter was slow in forming, hotter and the cream frothed. Fresh cream was the best but hygiene was most important. To use fresh, an ounce of salt was added per pound of butter, but for keeping it was a pound of salt to twelve or fourteen pounds of butter.

This was only the beginning for the women as a market had to be found. Before the punt, they sometimes found a canoe or boat to cross the Wairau at the ferry and then would carry the butter up to Phillips store, about where the present store is today. If they were unfortunate enough to find Phillips was already overstocked, they would page 28tramp on through what was termed the 'wet road' between Marlboroughtown (Spring Creek) and Grovetown, where 18 bridges were later erected, and then on to Blenheim. Just imagine what an ordeal this would be in the long dresses of the day.

An apt quote by Spencer Westmacott is taken from Colonial Fair: "Lewis's coach stopped and down from it climbed three women. They were buffeted by the weather, their hair in wet wisps about their heads; their clothes hung to their figures, shapeless and gaunt through hardship and overwork. The worst part of all was they looked old before their time. They were wives of backblock settlers."

There was no refrigeration and butter sometimes went rancid. If it had not gone too far, the cook book advised to melt it in a water bath with powdered charcoal and strain it through flannel.

One farmer and his wife had a number of little butter kegs made. The butter was packed in with plenty of salt and sent to Wellington on the boat, where a friend acted as agent, sending back the empty kegs. The Tasmanian Maid was plying from Grovetown in 1857, but it was most likely the P S Lyttelton, which for some time ran a regular service to Wellington from the Hauhunga Mill wharf, which was on the Marshlands side of the river.

The women were always busy with food. Yeast had to be made before the dough for the bread was kneaded. Meat at times had to be rubbed with vinegar and milk and then boiled, in an endeavour to preserve it a little longer.

Another nasty task was emptying the slops. The outside lavatory was either a long drop, or one the men emptied, but under each bed was a chamber which the women emptied into a bucket, washing the chamber in hot soapy water each morning. The wood heap was placed between the lav and the house, there being an unwritten law that each person going down there brought in an armful of wood when returning. Soap and candle making was another chore of the ladies. Some manufactured cheese for their own use and for sale.

The butter factory at Spring Creek did not open until about 35 years after these events, so it was over a long period that the women milked, and processed the milk by hard labour into butter and cheese.

Having made a good start on his holding, Fredrick now managed to work in a little more freighting to supplement the still small income from the farm. We know he carted on his old familiar route to the Awatere again and he was also carting timber from the Koromiko mills to Blenheim. It was a full day's trip through all the gullies around the edge of the swamp from Strachans Half Way Hotel to the Ferry. Perhaps he carted to Hathaway's at the Ferry, as Hathaway had shares in a Picton Road mill and was selling timber from his hotel at the Ferry. Hathaway had also developed his flax mill into quite an asset, as he considered the damage at one thousand pounds when it burned. It was on this site that the Spring Creek butter factory was built. Frank guessed that as his grandfather cleared he most likely sold flax to the many mills operating around him. In the early sixties he was taking two hundred pounds to Nelson as part monies owing on the farm when he found the Pelorus River high in flood. The bridge, if it could be called that, was two wires, one to stand on and the other to hold on to. Two miners on the other side endeavoured to signal him not to attempt the crossing, but apparently misunderstanding them or just with Germanic doggedness he swung out on the wires. Before he reached the other side the roaring brown water was up to his chin, tearing at his body, and it was sheer luck a log did not slam into him and sweep him away down stream. As it was he was so completely exhausted that he collapsed on reaching the bank, where the two miners secured a firm grip on him and carried him up to their hut, where they page 29stripped him and wrapped him up in bed. He said that he did not come around for a couple of hours. The first thing he thought of was the two hundred pounds. And there it was where the miner had spread it out, together with his clothes, in front of the fire to dry. They gave him a hot drink and then as he recovered fed him a substantial meal, insisting he stayed in bed and not continue until the next day. He was so grateful that he bought stores in Nelson for them, delivering them on his way home.

At this time these 80 mile trips to Nelson were on foot over the Maungatapu, called by the settlers the Mokitap. A trip in 1866 was a nervous one as the murders on the track had been discovered and the gang had not been apprehended.

Grandson Frank likened the period from 1860 to 1880 as a type of peasant farming with everyone just struggling along, making ends meet, and glad to go out and pick up a job if one was available. Even at this period forms had to be filled in and Tua Marina Agricultural Statistics were:

44 holdings
48.5 acres in wheat 65.25 acres in oats 104.5 acres in barley
41.5 acres in hay 20.25 acres in potatoes 13 acres in other crops
314 males and 204 females

Mowers came in with tilting attachments and the men followed behind, tying up the sheaves. Horses were taking over from the bullocks now. After this, and faster again, were the side delivery reapers and later the wire and string binders. Apparently the wire binders were queer for if they missed tying one sheaf, they missed tying three, and they sent the sheaves out with such a force that on the first round of the paddock they would go over the fence. Note there were now fences.

The first threshing machine on the east side of the river was one with the gears driven by horses. This was about 1863 and was owned by Thomas Powick. By 1868 Powick and his brothers had brought in a new machine by Turner, described as one of their combined double blast machines for threshing, shaking, riddling and barley horning, with polisher and final dressing, capable of threshing three to five hundred bushels per day. The last machine was driven by a portable steam engine and pulled from farm to farm by horses. Researching history we often find several families claiming firsts which is only natural, due to lack of communication in the early period and word handed down orally.

As a matter of interest, John Gibson of Kaituna claimed the first plough, the beam being made of elm and the mould board made of oak, both from the wreck of the Fifeshire. Cornelius Murphy claimed the first mechanical reaper, and Dodsons of Spring Creek the first traction engine. We do know Henry Redwood brought the first threshing machine and traction engine to the South Island in 1855. He was then at Waimea and he brought out John Healy to operate it. Redwood purchased the Vickerman property over Vickerman's ford, Tua Marina West and John Healy later acquired it and brought up his family there.

1868 had seen a big flood in the Wairau. Fredrick had now built a two storied wooden house, and shifted out of the old sod one when he had eighteen inches of flood water through it. Joseph Law, who was now living in a mud house on Massacre Hill Farm, lost all his crops and was so disheartened he left the district.

On the day of the flood Fredrick's two children, riding to school at Tua Marina on horseback, picked up the two Herd children from the Hauhunga mill at Morrin's Hollow and the four rode to school through the water. Morrin's Hollow as we know it today was created as a river flood relief, farm land being purchased for this purpose. I think that the Powicks on their Mount Cook section were just out of the flood waters.

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In 1863 a post office had been established at Hathaway's Hotel (mail only) and now that there was a ferry, Tua Marina people in this area did not have far to go to collect their mail. Speaking of communications, Fredrick had a perk in 1867 when he received the contract to collect and position telegraph poles from White's Bay to Blenheim. The poles of squared totara were dropped overboard from a ship at about gumtree corner, where the road turns and runs parallel to the sea. As they floated in on the incoming tide one of the boys snigged them and Fredrick hauled them up the beach with his horse. The contract was 2/6 per pole which was good money at the time.

By 1874 a lot of produce sold by Tua Marina and Spring Creek settlers went out by the river boats. The Marlborough paper reported five coastal ships loading at the Ferry at once in 1874. The rail going through altered things greatly. In 1872 the P S Lyttelton was running a bi-weekly service to Wellington, taking an hour down to the bar and sometimes the best part of a day or night over the strait. The Ferry did attract some traffic even in the 1930's, when the freights were about equal quantities over the Picton and Blenheim wharves. The times of arrival and departure were subject to the tides, mainly for crossing the bar, though both rivers were tidal. Some author penned this poem about 1928:

Two River Trip
There's nine good feet on the eastern bar,
The river pilot swore,
As they swung her bows where the breakers are
White-capped on a shingle shore
She heaved her forefoot out of the tide,
She cocked her stern to the blue-
For that, you know as a sign of pride
The river steamers do

With the arrival of the rail the post office moved to Phillips Store, nearer the station, in 1876 and about eight months later Tua Marina acquired its own office in the township. Marlboroughtown, where the station was, was now called Spring Creek.

Through hard work and frugal living Fredrick was progressing and 1874 saw him with more land. He gave one section to build the first Tua Marina Methodist Church on, whilst some other sections around it were cut up. He also kept his eye open for good runs of timber when at the mill and would have a load dropped off where he proposed a new house. This was built in 1875 and called Greenhills. Bruce Thomas lives in the magnificent old home today. In the seven years that Fredrick and Eliza lived in the wooden house at Marshlands Road five more children were born, but unfortunately the youngest was drowned at six years of age.

Frank Smith gives 1880 as the approximate date that the change to good productive farming was giving a reasonably monetary return for the work involved. This was the period of the big draining projects. Possibly up until this time the best source of income for the area came from large amounts of flax. Mills had sprung up everywhere and Frank says that when he was going to school at Tua Marina, at the turn of the century, he could hear five mills groaning away on a clear frosty morning. He knew of twelve around the area and possibly the first near his grandfathers was Bowlers and the last Chaytors, on almost the same site. One of the first was Powick and Burrows, which was burned down twice but kept going. At one period the price dropped and many mills could not survive, but others took their place as the market recovered. The Peninsular mill in 1884 began producing twine, selling over one thousand pounds worth out of the district per annum.

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Tuamarina. J. Andrews.

Tuamarina. J. Andrews.

The main draining programme commenced with the Pukaka Board when Irishman Patrick Meehan and his brother were employed to handle the main 5 1/2 mile Pukaka drain. They organized a gang and erected a building to live in near Thomas' Road which they called Bog Inn. The drain was to be nine feet wide and three feet deep and was a task men would refuse today, but it was said Patrick always had a cheerful grin. Most of the work went on in the winter months. The land was really a quaking peat bog, with the peat at places up to fifteen feet deep, and time and again the sides fell in and had to be dug out again. It was the days before gumboots and the poor chaps were wet from daylight to dark. I imagine that every morning they would climb into socks and boots still wet from the day before. How different it was in those times. No popping into a hot shower and change of clothes. A rub down with a towel, into dry clothes for the night and back in the damp ones in the morning. A bath came only once a week, if lucky.

Now more land came under the plough and the submerged forest began to surface. There were huge stumps and logs of white pine, totara and matai up to four feet through and one log Frank remembers was over 60 feet long. Many plough shears were broken but, on the credit side, many of the logs were cut up for fence posts. Frank says that some of these had been in 70 years and were still as good as ever. As to the original age of the wood, some was carbon dated at 4, 500 years old.

I said that Fredrick Schmidt changed his name to Fredrick Smith in England but I'm of the opinion he never changed it officially. I do have his Naturalization Paper, taken out in Christchurch on the 6th day of March 1882, being actioned in the office of the Colonial Secretary, in register No. 13, given under the hand of His Excellency the Honorable Arthur Hamilton Gordon, Knight Grand Cross the Most Distinguished Order of Saint Michael and Saint George, Her Majesty's High Commissioner for the Western Pacific, Governor page 32and Commander-in-Chief in and over Her Majesty's Colony of New Zealand and it's Dependencies, and Vice-Admiral of the same and issued under the seal of the Colony. It was signed Thomas Dick.

It was also in 1882 that Fredrick imported from England a Ruston Proctor traction engine and threshing mill. His difficulty was to find someone to drive it. He did work at Spring Creek with it and, until the bridge went over two years later, had trouble getting it across the river on the punt, Frank remembers carting water for this engine in 1913.

Fredrick's family were now growing up and marrying. Their father and their partners' folks helped them on to farms of their own.

In the 1890's the cream separator and the refrigerator did wonders for the dairy and freezing industries. The dairy factory at the back of the Ferry Hotel opened November 29 1893 and Nelson Brothers had built the big slaughter house on the Peninsular at Spring Creek. Each days killing was sent to Picton by train to be frozen in the Edwin Fox. This ended when the works at Picton were opened on July 9 1902.

Even with the new drains there was still trouble with water over the land in a wet year. One of the boys on his new farm had to plant one crop five times. This was pretty well overcome in 1899, when twenty horse drawn scoops erected banks on the Pukaka Drain. In 1904 a five foot culvert was put in, followed in 1908 by another one of similar size. The family members on their own farms were also busy improving drainage. One of the boys brought one full kiln of five thousand field pipes from the Tua Marina Brick Company for a ten acre paddock.

Quite a few Polynesian articles were found on the farms. The boys were apparently interested and looked out for them and there was also a big number of moa gizzard stones.

These were still the days of horses, and chaff was one of the important crops with Smiths being a big supplier. It was not only used by transport in the Marlborough district but was also shipped in large quantities to the North Island. One Marlborough firm had a contract with the Wellington Tramways who had 200 horses and needed fifty to fifty-five thousand sacks per annum. Frank Smith says that in 1915 Pike & Sons chaff cutter cut twenty thousand sacks for his father and a week later another thousand. A steamer has been known to leave Picton for Onehunga and Auckland loaded with chaff alone. I would think the roads would have been so full of manure that if two old men stopped talking too long their walking sticks would begin sprouting.

At the end of World War II Frank took notice of his sources of income. He was growing wheat, oats, peas, linen flax, white and red clover, lucerne hay, fat cattle, wool and fat lambs. Close by were Fresian dairy studs. Frank pointed out that the fat lambs, dairy cattle and pigs of this area won many competitions, which was a real achievement considering the wilderness it once was. People coming to Tua Marina when I was a boy would comment that they were afraid to criticize a person, as there always seemed to be a relationship or at least a connection. These were people who could look back with pride and respect on achievements, despite adversity, of people to whom they proudly claimed a relationship. People who made Tua Marina a place where the grass grows greener.