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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 7, Issue 5 (September 1, 1932)

Nelson and its Story — A Land of Beauty and Comfort

page 19

Nelson and its Story
A Land of Beauty and Comfort
.

Blue foamy sea, high circling hills With dreaming garden squares between,
An old-world fragrance breathing soft Amid the waving green.

* * *

Here there is room to breathe and think,
Here there is space for souls to grow,
And life may run as pleasantly
As Maitai's waters flow.”

There is another verse in David McKee Wright's poem on Nelson which avers that “here trade's loud wheels but slowly turn.” Super-sensitive citizens, however, may not regard this as a compliment to their town. There once was a jibe about “sleepy Nelson,” but it is long out of date. The truth is that Nelson city, with its highly productive wealthy province, endowed with rich soil and pleasant climate, is anything but slow in trade or behind the times in business methods. Commerce here is many-sided and the general impression the traveller gets of Nelson is a place of vigorous development and an export trade that is steadily on the increase.

At the same time there is an atmosphere of a very special charm that distinguishes the clean white town and the country around it—an air of content and comfort, of green and leafy spaces, of serene, fruitful valleys, of shelter from the roystering winds of which Wellington, across the water, gets the full and over-bracing benefit.

There was a peculiar charm, too, in one's first introduction to Nelson. It was in the old mail-coach days, overlanding from Have-lock, at the head of Pelorus Sound, where the coaches came through from Blenheim to Nelson. On the box-seat behind one of Newman's good four-horse teams, it was very pleasant that bright summer day, speeding through the woody Rai Valley and climbing the Whangamoa Saddle, where the settler's hand had not yet quite destroyed the beauty of the forested range. A sound of music, strange to hear in such a place, came down the valley, and round a bend in the bush-girt road came a coach with all the people on top playing away at instruments. There were cornets and oboes and flageolets and I don't know what else, and a couple of girl fiddlers, and they swept past us playing away like “Billy-be-damned,” as our driver so accurately described it, and scarcely giving us a glance. We looked back to see them roll round another bend, and after they were out of sight we could still hear the strains coming faintly from the bush. They were a touring family of musicians and entertainers, very popular at that day, and they rehearsed as they travelled along in their own vehicle from town to town, thereby killing two birds with the one stone. And then, with that poetic prelude, we went along over the hills and down into Happy Valley, the calm waters of Tasman Bay glimmering on our right far away to the hazy blue shore of sunset-land, and so into Nelson in the cool of the evening.

How Nelson was Discovered.

It is a curious fact that Nelson Settlement was named long before a site was chosen for it. It was the second of the little colonies planted by the Wakefields for the New Zealand Company, and it was named in England before the pioneer ships sailed in 1841. When the expedition reached Wellington, the problem was to find a location page 20 for the Colony. The Wakefields were inclined to send the pioneers to Lyttelton Harbour, then called Port Cooper. Governor Hobson wanted the settlers to make the just-founded settlement of Auckland their home. The expedition was commanded by Captain Arthur Wakefield and consisted of the ship “Whitby,” the barque “Will Watch” and the brig “Arrow,” with a staff of surveyors and others and a party of working men numbering about seventy, who were described at the time as “a most likely-looking crew to form the nucleus of a new colony.”

The existence of Nelson Haven was then quite unknown to Europeans, but there was an enterprising young master mariner in Wellington, Captain F. G. Moore, who commanded a smart brigantine called the “Jewess” and who had traded with the Maoris at West Wanganui and other places on the Northern end of the South Island. He was a friend of Charles Heaphy, the surveyor, afterwards famed for his explorations. Moore thought it might be profitable to the New Zealand Company to search Blind Bay or Tasman Bay for a suitable site, and the Wakefields asked him to accompany the “Whitby” as pilot in the exploration. The ships sailed across Cook Strait and anchored at Astrolabe Island, in Blind Bay. From Captain Wakefield's, Moore and Heaphy cruised about the great bay in boats—two large Deal luggers brought out in the “Whitby.” It was Captain Moore who, with a young surveyor named Brown, and a crew consisting of Coxswain Cross and four sailors, was the first to discover the celebrated Boulder Bank, and the safe haven behind it. Moore was the first white man to set foot on the 9-miles long stony bank. Rejoining the boat he sailed into the sheltered harbour, took soundings, and reconnoitred the landing in the strange uninhabited country, and the crew pitched camp on November 5, 1841.

That was a dramatic Guy Fawkes night. When dark came on, Moore and his comrades saw a fire blazing in the distance on Astrolabe Island, where Captain Wakefield had promised to light one. The arrangement was that the boat's crew should light a fire and signal with rockets if a suitable site were discovered. So presently up blazed the first pakeha bonfire on the shore of Whakatu (“stand up and fight”), where Nelson now stands, and after a little a rocket sailed up from the ship at distant Astrolabe. Moore fired three rockets as an answering signal, another one flashed from the “Whitby,” and the dull boom of a ship's gun came over the water. The night was calm and clear, and all hands rejoiced at the fortunate conclusion of the day's work and a tot of brandy was served out to each in celebration of the history-making occasion. Four days later the three pioneer vessels arrived in the new haven, piloted by Captain Moore and under the secure lee of the great natural breakwater—the Tahuna-a-Tamaiea of the Maoris—lay the founders of the now wealthy province of Nelson.

The facts about the actual discovery of Nelson Haven are not generally known. Some have credited Captain Wakefield with the finding of the harbour, other writers have named the coxswain Cross, a Deal boatman, as the finder. Captain Moore however, was the real discoverer, he had a shrewd idea, from his partial knowledge of the coast, that a usable harbour should be found somewhere at the bottom of Blind Bay.

Around the City.

“The city of sunshine, fruit and flowers” is a description that has been written of Nelson. It can be enlarged in its scope of reference to embrace most of the province; it certainly fits well the beautiful country from which the city draws its business and fills the holds of the ships that come in to the haven by the deep channel cut through the ancient bank Tahuna-a-Tamaiea. Much of the city itself certainly seems embowered in trees and gardens. The half-circle of hills that guards the place from the blustering winds of south and west gives it a serene quiet of air, and the hot sunshine it collects is agreeably tempered by the sea-breath from the great bay in front. Gardens and orchards and leafy parks are all about, and the intermingling of urban and sylvan landscape is a feature that particularly appeals to visitors from larger cities. No town, except perhaps Akaroa, has such pretty walks inviting the saunterer to go on and on. There is green everywhere. One page 21 favourite walk is up the valley of the Maitai (a contraction of Mataitahi, “the solitary black-pine tree”), a clear rippling trout stream flowing down through the town under its willows and poplars and oak trees and its flowering trees where the tui's deep echoing music is often heard in the months of blossom.

This is a place of some history. There was an old-time Maori pa on the hill, and when the Wairau massacre of 1843 occurred the pioneers of Nelson were so apprehensive of attack by Te Rauparaha and his Ngati-Toa and their allies that they set to work and built a fort on the hill, which they named Fort Arthur, after Captain Arthur Wakefield, their greatly-liked chief who fell at Wairau. This was an earthwork and stockade, with six guns. Fortunately Nelson's early stronghold was never required, and when the fort was demolished the English Church took its place.

“Here men may pause and joy to live.” Picturesque Nelson, South Island, New Zealand

Here men may pause and joy to live.”
Picturesque Nelson, South Island, New Zealand

Nelson's Place Names.

The names Nelson and Trafalgar and many another name of town and surroundings give a strong patriotic colour to the place. It is distinctly a Royal Navy town in its nomenclature, a perpetual reminder of England's glorious history on the sea. So we find streets named Nile, St. Vincent, Victory, Vanguard, Collingwood and Hardy. In an account of the selection of local names by a committee of settlers in 1842 we find Fort Bastia, Fort Calvi, Aboukir Battery and The Heights of Agamemnon. The last was perhaps rather too much of a mouthful, for it does not seem to have been retained. England's great writers are remembered; there are Shakespeare Walk and Milton Grove.

A few miles up the valley, where the native bush is entered there are lovely nooks for the artist. A walk rewarding one with a fine panorama of blue sea, white town, green fields and encircling ranges is a climb to Britannia Heights, a public reserve between the town and the port. There is a very pretty little park, with shady walks and a serpentine lakelet.

A church should always if possible be set on a hill, and Nelson has a splendid site of that kind for its new cathedral, which replaces an old wooden building, on a noble page 22 mound which fills in the view as one looks up the principal thoroughfare, Trafalgar Street.

Nelson has a marked atmosphere of culture and scientific learning. Its fine colleges, its School of Music and its Art Gallery are old institutions; more recent the Cawthron Institute of Scientific Research, a richly endowed home of skilled technical investigations into problems which particularly affect New Zealand's varied productions from the soil.

There is gold in some of the mountains of Nelson; there is wealth in silver, copper iron ore, and coal; there is wealth in its great forests of the back country. But most of all is the province rich in soil. Pre-eminently this is the land of orchards. There is a driving circuit of some thirty miles over the Waimea Plain which takes one through the most attractive and fruitful country.

Along the Rail Route.

Better still, take the train to the rail-head through the heart of the great agricultural and orchard land, a region of fruit and grain crops, of hop-fields—for this is the great Kent-like hops-area of New Zealand—through dairy farms with herds of high-grade stock, through sheep and cattle country and on to the rugged bush hills of the upper Buller Country. Richmond, Appleby, Hope, Brightwater, Spring-grove, Wakefield are traversed, all the sweetest of scenes of rural life and industry. Then by that way you can go on to the bold defile of the Buller Gorge and the West Coast, for this railway is the first section of the grand overland route to the glories of Westland, its forests and gorges and lakes, its alps and its glaciers.

“Abundance now crowns the year.” (Govt. Publicity photo.) In the hop fields of Sunny Nelson.

Abundance now crowns the year.”
(Govt. Publicity photo.)
In the hop fields of Sunny Nelson.

Other Scenes of Beauty.

In another direction, up along the western side of the great gulf, there are comfortable looking townships and farming districts—Motueka, Riwaka, Collingwood, Takaka, all adding their quota to Nelson's big export trade. South away there are two beautiful lakes, Rotoiti and Rotoroa, water-sheets of alpine character, very deep and clear, surrounded by forested mountains, the haunt of the red deer.

One wonderful corner of North Nelson calls for a paragraph to itself. This is a great crystal-clear cold spring, called by the Maoris the Waingaro-pupu, or “Bubbling Fountain of Hidden Water.” It is an underground river suddenly released to the light of day, and discharging an enormous volume of water. The stream is a tributary of the Takaka River. This ever-welling fountain, an Arethusa of the southern world, rises from the underworld like the Hamurana at Rotorua, but is far larger than that famous and much-visited spring.

page 23
(From the W. W. Stewart collection.) The Rotorua “Limited” near the end of its 171 mile run to Auckland

(From the W. W. Stewart collection.)
The Rotorua “Limited” near the end of its 171 mile run to Auckland