Albert Graven and his Avondale Central Service Station

Detail from JTD-24A-03278-2, December 1967, J T Diamond, Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections

Published in the June 2023 issue of The Avondale Historical Journal as "The Golden Investor: Albert Graven."

Avondale is a place where people tell stories, stories which I’ve always called the Avondale Lore. Some of them true, some of them probably fanciful (the one where dentist Cecil Herdson from the 1920s and 1930s gave his beloved hunting dog a set of gold teeth is a doozy), and some with hints of the truth mixed in with speculation. The stories hang around for a bit, told and re-told by the generation who were once youngsters going to Avondale Primary School before World War II, then as memories fade and the story tellers pass on, the tales slowly vanish. 

Back in 2001, chatting with those same folks around tables in dining rooms and over cups of coffee in cafes across Auckland, I heard the last whispers of some of the tales before they faded out into time. One topic of those stories was Albert Graven. 

Some said that he got his riches from winning the Irish Sweepstakes, and thus paid for the landmark Central Service Station that stood for five decades at the junction of Wingate Street and Great North Road. Some said that, later on, he committed suicide. And, according to the late Ernie Croft whom I visited and interviewed back in 2001, Albert Graven’s original name was Albert Grubnitz (Ernie wondered if that was perhaps changed due to WWI anti-German feeling). He’s appeared in references at least twice before now in the Avondale Historical Journal, and of course in Heart of the Whau from 2003, to the extent that I had access to information on him up to that point. 

While working on an index for the Journal (still in progress) I decided to take another look at the Albert Graven legends. So now I know a lot more about him than I did. 

According to family history sources, his birth name was Albert Heinrich Knowles Von Graevenitz, born in Paeroa in 1897 to Albert Frederick Ludwig Von Graevenitz, and Millicent née Atherton. The story has to start further back, though. Back to 27 years before Albert Graven’s birth, to 25 May 1870 when Von Graevenitz snr, then 20 years old from Dortmund in western Prussia, deserted from a ship that had sailed from Bremen to New York City. In America, Von Graevenitz slipped into the background, until resurfacing in October 1874, charged before the Auckland Police Court for assaulting the infant child of a woman he lived with, Susannah Wilkinson, née Craib. 

Married to Richard Wilkinson in the Bay of Islands in 1860, Susannah left her husband to live in Auckland with Von Graevenitz. For his part, Von Graevenitz was said to have been in employment (as a seaman aboard a whaler), but spent a lot of his wages on drink. It appears that, in return for Richard Wilkinson’s hospitality to him in Northland, he’d said that as he had a considerable sum of money coming to him in Auckland, he offered to take Susannah and her father to the city with him for a bit of a trip. It ended up being more than that. 

Von Graevenitz served two months in Mt Eden Gaol with hard labour. Soon after he returned to Susannah and her father in the Chancery slums, the young baby died. He wasn’t blamed however, as the child had been ailing for some time and had simply died from natural causes. No inquest was held. I couldn’t find the death registration for that child, but another, Amelia Wilkinson, died in 1878 at the age of 5 months. 

By then Von Graevenitz had altered his identity, now calling himself Francis Rappart (Von Rappard being his mother’s maiden name), taking up employment working on railway construction projects. In November 1879, he was charged with intention to desert his illegitimate child, the mother referred to in the news report as “Sarah Craib.” “Sarah” (Susannah) withdrew the charge and the case was dropped. By 1885, he and Susannah, along with their children, were living in Mt Albert, and by 1888 he was described as a platelayer (still with the railways). 

Then, in 1892, an abrupt change. 

Albert Von Graevenitz married Millicent “Milly” Atherton of Waikomiti (Glen Eden), at All Saints Church in Ponsonby, and the happy couple went to live in Enmore, near Sydney. Not for very long though, for they were back at Waikomiti by late 1893. Meanwhile, “Susan Rappard” was managing on her own, appearing in a court case report regarding a cow taken from her. 

By 1896 Albert and Milly were living in Paeroa, Albert working as a wood splitter. By 1900, the family had moved to Dublin Street in Auckland – but by 1905, Milly was on her own with three young children: Albert aged 8, Thelma aged 5 and Millicent aged 3. Milly would later have another daughter, Arthea, in 1912. 

Young Albert, known then as Bert, attended the Unitarian Sunday School in Ponsonby in 1910, and did well, performing in a play called “La Mascotte”. But in 1914, Milly was caught shoplifting boots, using a pram to push young Arthea but also to hide the boots she was pilfering, and accompanied by her eldest daughter Thelma. Milly called herself Milly Graevenitz, and was fined £3 and costs. 

Meanwhile, Susannah’s son Albert Rappard, railway hand, was in Drury, living with his wife Maud in 1905. Susan Rappard was by herself in Drury, a “widow” in 1911, then moved to Takapuna. Confusingly (nothing new for this family’s story) she died in Lyttelton Hospital, but was buried at O’Neil’s Point Cemetery. 

Albert von Graevenitz senior seemed to follow his own path, seeking assistance in vain after the First World War from the Government for passage back to Germany to settle some affairs there, then returning to take up a life on the North Shore where he died in 1956 as Frank Albert Rappard. 

By 1916, Albert von Graevenitz junior had changed his own name to the less German-sounding Graven, working as a salesman and living in Herne Bay. He was apparently involved with the Territorials from 1911, and during the First world War tried to enlist three times – but was eventually accepted only for Home Service in 1916. He lived with his mother Milly at Islington Avenue. 

Come 1923, Albert Graven was now a grain and produce broker. Four years later he started his Avondale story in 1927, taking up a lease of part of Charles Pooley’s property at the triangle between Great North and Old Windsor Road in Avondale. There, he built the Central Service Station. In 1928 he married Gladys May Sullings, and they were living at the service station in March 1929 when one night thieves blew off the safe door at the Hellaby’s butcher shop across the intersection. “The noise of the explosion was heard by Mr Graven, of the Central Service Station. He was awakened at 2.30 o’clock this morning by a rumbling noise and got out of bed to investigate. There was no one about, and after looking round Mr Graven went back to bed.” 

How did Albert Graven finance the service station and adjacent car sales yard, and the extensive tours of the European continent enjoyed by him and his wife in 1930? It wasn’t through the Irish Sweepstakes, although in 1933 Graven did draw a horse in the British and Foreign Concessions Danzig Sweepstake. 

No, Albert Graven was an investor, and a canny one at that. He had interests in Canada and Britain, possibly due to his brokerage experience, and after crossing paths with one Henry Theodore Castaing, took things even further in the 1930s, a period where for most life was a challenge during the Great Depression. 

Between 1930 and 1942, Graven was fundamentally involved with 10 gold mining companies, nine of which were subsidiaries or indirect subsidiaries of one company, Mining Trust Ltd. The companies were involved in the Coromandel district and in the South Island, and consistently made financial headlines describing their operations and success during the decade. 

Graven also dabbled with rental cars. In 1935 he set up Drive Yourself, Limited in Lower Albert Street in the city, advertising “Cars for hire without drivers” from 6/- per half day and 10/- per full day. He hired his sister Arthea as a secretary there. His friend Castaing also invested in the enterprise. The company, though, parted ways with Graven in 1939 after it came to light that he had had the company buy a car that was not only not brand new, but was in fact one of his own. 

The golden ride may have come to an end for Graven in 1942, but by then he had more than enough of a personal fortune to be able to retire. In 1940, he brought in Walter Frederick Arthur (who lived in St Georges Road) to run the Central Service Station, while Graven and his family shifted to Remuera. It was at the new home, during the 1950s, where their son Ian Albert Graven shot himself; news that probably percolated back to Avondale and later formed the suicide legend. 

On the night of 21 April 1942, the service station was burgled, the safe removed and the door blown off near Waikumete Cemetery. Around £200 in cheques and cash, mostly the former, was taken. 

In 1946, Charlie Pooley sold the land Graven had been leasing to Barry Bernard Cleland, a market gardener living near today’s Cleland Crescent off Blockhouse Bay Road. This caused Graven to look at ways to secure his rather valuable Avondale investment, so he put in contingencies in case his Central Service Station was shut down. On the other side of Wingate Street, he bought the Waygood’s service garage, while across the five roads intersection he made an even larger purchase. There, he bought the quarter acre corner from R & W Hellaby’s, leasing the company’s shop back to them through to the mid 1950s. If his service station were to shut down at the triangle, Graven’s intent was to open up another one at the Hellaby’s corner of St Jude St and St Georges Road. 

As it turned out, Graven needn’t have worried. Despite a legal dispute over the lease between Cleland and Graven, the service station remained right where it was, and Cleland later transferred the title to Central Service Station Ltd in 1961. This remained as a service station site until taken over by Mobil which then shifted across the road in the 1980s, although the old Central Service Station was demolished earlier and the business modernised. 

Meanwhile in 1958, Graven developed the Hellaby’s corner into a block of eight shops which still exists. 

June 2022.

“Man behind the scheme,” so the Avondale Advance tells us, “is Mr A Graven, a well-known local businessman, who told the Advance, “The new block will certainly be an asset to the area, and with the adequate off-street parking which it incorporates will allow housewives to buy many of their household needs in the one block, free from parking worries.” Hellabys were to reopen in a new butchers shop at the corner, with the rest of the block including “a grocer, greengrocer, home cookery, fish shop and dairy.” 

Albert Graven died after a heart attack in July 1967 at the age of 70. While it remains, that corner block of shops is his legacy, with or without the convolutions of his family’s story here in Auckland, or the legends around his name that still come to some minds on hearing his name.

Alfred Ramsden and his hotel

 

The New Lynn Hotel, 1890s.  JTD-11A-04959, Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections

The old New Lynn Hotel at 3178 Great North Road exists only in memory. Normally, things start at beginnings. Here, I’ll start at the end.

It was demolished in January 2009. It had been owned by the Waitakere City Council from 2005, after the last private owners, the Bartulovich family, had applied for resource consent in 1995 to have the old building knocked down. It had been targeted by arsonists in 1972. It would be again in 2002. The council refused consent, slapped a heritage order on it instead in 1999 – and after legal proceedings the family agreed to sell the building to the council. 

The council also bought two adjoining properties for a reported $650,000. There were hopes the old hotel could be restored for around $250,000, and perhaps sold to a private operator. There was talk it might even be a character restaurant. 

But … no.

Structurally, it was cracking, toppling, needed to be bolstered up to prevent collapse, and was beyond repair. In the end, what the Bartulovich family had in mind in terms of the building’s fate, happened anyway. The demolition cost around $150,000.

Today, it’s an early childcare centre’s carpark. The Bartulovich family acquired the building, and nearly seven acres of surrounding land, via a mortgage default sale in 1940. Most of the extra land was subdivided during that decade. 

Before them as owners was Reginald Frederick Collard from 1929, who ran a bakery in New Lynn shopping centre. We shift backwards to the previous title, back to the original five acres around the hotel. There was an intermediary owner in 1923, then we come to dairy farmer William John Pugh from 1913. So, during the First World War, Jersey cows would munch their grass contentedly in the vicinity of the old hotel, now a converted residence. 

Pugh had purchased the hotel from Hancock & Co, the old brewing firm. They’d had the hotel under that name from 1907; before then, it was the property of the Captain Cook Brewery Ltd (another name, same firm), and before that, Moss Davis owned it until 1904. Davis, for Hancock & Co, purchased the property for £65 in 1891 from George Westcoat Wyman, formerly of Mangere but at that time living in Portland, Oregon in the US. This was just a concluding transaction; Wyman had already involved that company with the hotel, selling part of the property to Hancock’s founder Samuel Jagger back in 1886 for £1090. 

Wyman himself had given a mortgage to Alfred Ramsden back in August 1882, but Ramsden had defaulted within a year; so Wyman obtained title via the Supreme Court, in August 1883. 

It operated as a hotel with a license to sell alcohol from 1882 through to 1906, when it was decided that the New Lynn Hotel’s right to that license had to cease. The voters in the vast Eden electorate had chosen the reduction path, so the licensing committee decided the 24-year-old hotel had seen its last pint served. It had gone through a number of proprietors over that run. 

1882 Alfred Ramsden 

1882 William Amos Clarke 

1883 Walter Caddy 

1884 Frederick Harris Clements 

1886 Robert Tyler Penk 

1887 John Stuart Milne 

1889 Richard McVeigh 

1890 Elizabeth Patterson 

1894 Mary Dickson 

1899 Louisa Hertz 

1902 Robert Cartwright 

1903 Ellen Jane Featon (the last New Lynn Hotel publican) 

It had a brief revival, in another fashion, as Charles Shaw’s Temperance Hotel/Boarding house from 1907, but that venture didn’t last long. 

So now, we’re at the beginning, really. A man named Alfred Ramsden, who decided that a spot on the main road above New Lynn, on the way to Henderson and the Waitakeres, four years before Waikumete Cemetery and before there was much in the way of townships at New Lynn and Glen Eden – would be fine to build a hotel. 

Alfred Ramsden is said to have been born in 1847 in Lancashire, England, but “Ramsden” wasn’t the name of his unmarried mother, Mary Ann Ramsdale. In 1851, Mary was a weaver, lodging in Preston with three-year-old Alfred. A year later, she married Johnathan Sommersgill, and Alfred would come to have seven half-siblings, all bar at least one surviving to adulthood. 

By 1861, Alfred Ramsdale was working as a cotton factory worker in Preston, and married Elizabeth Sparnon in 1866. He and Elizabeth would have 12 children. Then, by 1871, we see an Alfred Ramsden in Dalton, now a brickmaker. 

At the end of the next gap in his life, Ramsden had reached Victoria, Australia in 1879 (according to him) with around £500-£1000 in his pockets. Next, we see Alfred Ramsden in Hawke’s Bay, successfully tendering to Napier City Council for supplying bricks in May 1880. 1881, he was a builder in Carlyle Street, Napier, industriously burning lime and firewood and creating a nuisance as well as mortar. Ramsden in Napier had a pattern he’d repeat elsewhere during his business career – he bought property after property, likely with mortgages, and then moved on. In October 1881, he put up for sale his brickworks known as “the Blacks”, a Temperance Hotel, cottages in Carlyle Street, and two more with a view of the bay. 

By March 1882, he’d reached Auckland. In that month, he paid John Tait £70 for six acres on Great North Road in New Lynn, had apparently set up a kiln, and advertised for men to make and burn 500,000 bricks. Things moved quickly (perhaps too quickly, given the fate of the hotel). Two months later, Ramsden applied for a license for his New Lynn Hotel, which was granted in June. Ramsden leased the hotel to Clarke in July – and that was the end of his involvement. 

He’d already moved on by that stage, living in the central city and working as a building contractor, breaching some by-laws, tendering for contracts. At some point during 1884 though, he shot through to the Australian colonies, carrying (according to him) 10s 6d in his pockets this time, leaving behind him unpaid mortgages. He said that on arriving back in Australia, (he later recalled) he pawned his watch for £1 10s, and paid 7s 6d for a breakfast. 

Another gap, but in April 1886 he re-emerges as the proprietor of “The Great Australian Coffee Palace” in Sydney, a dining room and 60-room accommodation hotel. Which he put up for sale in June that year. It finally went for £3500 by auction in September. In October 1886, Ramsden was bankrupt. He told the assignee that he’d left behind property in both England and New Zealand, but all had been lost due to foreclosures. He was allowed to keep his household furniture and tools, as well as to keep working, and applied for release in 1887. 

He headed south, made a new start in Melbourne – and in April 1888 opened his “Oriental Coffee Palace” there. This business seemed to be much more fortunate for him. Ramsden set his family up in Elsternwick, today a Melbourne suburb south-west of the CBD, and became involved with the local Primitive Methodist Church Sunday school. 

Then in April 1891, Ramsden’s pattern emerged again. There was a sale of a number of properties he owned or had leased. He’d moved his family to rooms at the coffee palace, and tried to placate his creditors. His estate was compulsorily sequestered in October 1891, showing liabilities of £98,000. By now, Ramsden claimed he had bad eyesight “from the heat and from white roads” and said he was unable to read the legal documents put before him at his insolvency hearing, where he recounted his career to that date. 

News of Ramsden’s bankruptcy was reported on both sides of the Tasman. The Otago Daily Times remarked: “The easy way in which the insolvent progressed from half a guinea and the proceeds of his watch in pawn in 1884 to £97,000 of debts in 1891 is remarkable. Surely Mr Ramsden affords another instance of the truth of the distich, which is the only remaining consolation of so many among us:- “Tis better to have boomed and bust / Than never to have boomed at all.” 

By 1895, Ramsden was in Western Australia, writing dud cheques, and being hauled into court by at least one person annoyed that the cheque bounced. In 1897 a four-storey building Ramsden had been contracted to erect in Perth, collapsed. Ramsden adamantly defended his work, but he was on a downward spiral. In October that year, he was arrested for deserting his wife. 

1898 found him in South Australia – where in Perth he filed for insolvency again in 1899. He was jailed as an insolvent debtor in 1900. He was discharged from bankruptcy again in May 1901, and in July, he was charged with being in default of a maintenance agreement for two of his children. 

In 1906, Ramsden went back to Victoria with his family looking for him, and tried starting the “Mount Lofty Brick and Lime Manufacturing Works” in the Snowy River district. That venture lasted to 1907. In January 1908, “of no fixed abode”, he was committed to the Yarra Bend Asylum, suffering from “delusional insanity”. A note on the case file states “mother and sister both said to be insane,” which may have been information from him. “Talks of making money in large sums. Says he has built churches. Says he has £1500 of furniture in the [illegible] Coffee Palace … Talks of large interests he has as a contractor and maintains that now he is defrauded. Says he still has property which is wrongfully in the hands of others … Says he was arrested by the police for entering his own property. Makes rambling statements about owning furniture in a coffee palace … Becomes excited in talking about being defrauded out of his money and property …” He escaped in September 1908, just nine months after his committal. Apparently, he was never recaptured. 

In 1911, there were “lost relative” notices in the New South Wales Police Gazette from Elizabeth Ramsden. In July that year, Ramsden was in court at Katoomba on an indecency charge. As a result, the police declared him “found”. 

In July 1914 at Robe, South Australia, he was arrested for being idle and disorderly, and sentenced to seven days’ gaol, suspended provided he left town. He did. In September he was apprehended as a mental defective at Mount Pleasant, South Australia, but was discharged. In 1915, he was sentenced to an indefinite time in custody as a “habitual inebriate.” He was released in August 1916 on license, but was picked up again, charged not only with being drunk, but for using indecent language. At that point, it was noted he had 11 previous convictions. He was sent back to the inebriates’ home. He was released again, on license, in October 1918. 

It looks like he then took up something of the swagman’s lifestyle; his swag was stolen in 1921. In 1923, he turned up in Victoria again, tried and fined at Melbourne for offensive behaviour. 

His last appearance in the press three months later was truly strange. 

“There were yells, shrieks and screams in Gertrude Street, Fitzroy, during the week, as Constable Murfitt was working his beat from Brunswick Street. Farther down the street he saw girls scurrying across the road, and an elderly man waving his arms and giving out Indian war whoops that struck terror into the hearts of the fleeing lassies. “It was the time for the homeward journey for several hundreds of girls employed in the big factories in the locality. The man was making a dart at each group as if he would embrace them, and then would fling his arms up and utter a piercing yell which set the girls going helter skelter. He arrested the man, who gave the name of Alfred Ramsden, pensioner, of Bentleigh, and charged him with having behaved in an offensive manner. “At the Fitzroy court on Saturday last, Ramsden was fined 20/- for what Dr. Wheeler called disgraceful conduct. When Ramsden said he could not pay he was informed that the alternative of three days' gaol would give him a chance to have a good clean up and forget his Wild Indian proclivities.” 

 (Frankston and Somerville Standard, [Vic], 13 June 1923, p.6) 

Just less than two months later Alfred Ramsden, builder, brickmaker, contractor, hotel and coffee palace owner, was dead. He lies at St Kilda Cemetery, Melbourne. 

A man with, arguably, a far more colourful story than the hotel that he’d built in a West Auckland suburb. Like him, now just receding into history.

Howard Nattrass and the "typiste-flapper"

 

Image: Free Lance, 3 November 1920

This is a story that someone, seriously, should take up and make a doco about. The NZ Truth described it at the time as an "affair-de-lust" with a "typiste-flapper".

Howard Nattrass was born in Blenheim in 1888. By 1915, with a partner named Harris, he had developed a profitable motor importing business in Napier, Natttass & Harris Motor Co. The partners extended their business to Wellington by late 1917.

Sometime around June 1916. Edith Kathleen Strangeman was employed at the firm as a typist. At the time, she was 15, turning 16 in November. In 1918, just after her 18th birthday, she began to have an affair with Nattrass, who was a married man with one child. Edith left her job on 4 February 1919, and was “out all night”. Her parents find out the next morning she had gone to Napier straight from Nattrass’ office. Her father followed by train; Nattrass went up after her by motor, picked up Edith, and took her to Taranaki, then back to Wellington. The father then took possession of his daughter with the police. Nattrass was warned to stay away from the Strangeman homestead.

Edith was examined by Dr Henry Herbert Arthur Claridge a week later, and found to be pregnant. Instantly, her father sued Nattrass £3000 for "seduction". There's some confusion as to whether at that point either Edith or her parents wanted the unborn child aborted -- Edith would later say one thing, Dr Claridge another. Whatever was really the story, the courts were later told that on the night of 7 March 1919, another doctor, Dr Francis Wallace McKenzie, was asked by Edith to save her from the operation. Dr Claridge & McKenzie arranged to take her to Nurse Vicker’s private hospital in Brougham Street on the pretext of an adenoid operation.

McKenzie took the night nurse into the kitchen for tea to distract her, while Claridge told the daughter Nattrass was waiting outside for her in a motor. She and Claridge joined Nattrass, and drove to Claridge’s house to get her some clothes. Nattrass and Edith went to Waikanae, and stayed there three days. McKenzie returned to the Strangeman’s to report that Edith had gone, but also told them to leave her alone, she was over age. He was then chased down the street by another daughter, but evaded her.

The Strangemans informed the police. McKenzie & Nattrass got Edith away from Island Bay to Picton by motor launch. The father headed there by the Pateena and got Edith. Nattrass went there later, found Strangeman had Edith, chartered a faster boat, and nabbed Edith again in Wellington. Later in April Strangeman spotted Nattrass and Edith with McKenzie coming out of a cinema, knocked down Nattrass (while a friend with him punched McKenzie) and took Edith once more.

Nattrass organised an unsuccessful rescue of Edith from her parents' house on 9 May, involving a man pretending to be an inspector from the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Women and Children. Eventually though, when Edith was allowed out to go to church a month later, she made her escape -- and later had her baby in hospital. She never returned to her parents.

Nattrass' wife eventually divorced him in 1925, and Howard and Edith married in 1926. He had by then made his name with motor racing (winner of the First NZ Motor Cup in 1921) and with his Nattrass Tank-Carburettor. He died, somewhere, in 1960.

Bill Tinson image, 1921. "Showing Howard Nattrass winner of the first New Zealand Motor Cup at the wheel of his Cadillac on Muriwai beach. A stripped touring Cadillac in the background entered by Mr Carlyon of Guavas, Tikokino , Hawke's Bay, driven by Mr W Boyle came fourth. This was the first race in New Zealand to be timed electrically, by a rig imported from London by a club official." 7-A7604, Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries

The Riversdale Road gas emergency, 1975

 

Detail from 1957 Whites Aviation image, showing the large glasshouses complex at 5-7 Riversdale Road. Today, this site is now housing.
National Library of New Zealand, WA-43771

Just before 11 pm on 19 January 1975, residents living near to a set of three large glasshouses on 5-7 Riversdale Road in Avondale began to smell the acrid stench of a gas that had wafted up unto the night air, but failed to dissipate. The gas started an emergency that only lasted a matter of hours, but which emergency services took with absolute seriousness and caution. The gas, chloropicrin, was deadly if breathed into the lungs at quantity – and since World War I had a nasty reputation.

Chloropicrin was discovered in 1848 by Scottish chemist John Stenhouse. Considering Stenhouse became known for his work in developing respirators, that he came up with the lung-damaging chloropicrin in the course of his work as well is something of an irony.

The gas unfortunately came into something of its own when its disabling properties when applied to human beings was recognised and used on the battlefields of the Western Front during the First World War. It was said in 1918 that “the inhalation of ten cubic centimetres of chloropicrin gas makes a man sicker than Neptune at his worst, or than any other known emetic.” (Manawatu Standard, 5 November 1918)

This “tear gas”, however, revealed a benefit to the agricultural sector in the mid 1940s, when experiments showed that it destroyed fungi, insects, and halted the wilting of tomatoes grown under glass. The DSIR carried out experiments at their Mt Albert research facilities in Auckland in the 1947, and these produced good results.

In 1950, the substance hit the New Zealand market as “larvacide,” but the local press did advise caution.

“A product called “larvacide,” now being marketed in New Zealand for use in both soil fumigation and rabbit destruction, consists wholly of the poisonous chemical liquid chloropicrin. Damage to the lungs is the most important and most serious effect of chloropicrin vapour, and it is this property which makes it poisonous and ultimately causes death if enough of the vapour is inhaled. The lung-injuring properties of chloropicrin vapour led to its use as a war gas during the First World War.

“Fumes from “larvacide” are considerably less poisonous than the gas given off when “cyanogas” comes into contact with water or moist air, but it should be handled with the same care as “cyanogas” and all other poisonous materials.”

Putaruru Press, 2 February 1950

Accidents, though, with any dangerous substance, will happen.

“Poisonous chloropicrin or larvicide gas filtering through the Owaka Football club pavilion on Saturday night quickly put an end to a social function when guests had to evacuate the building. Complaints of sore eyes began about 11.30 and some were forced to go outside. Then everyone was cleared from the hall. The gas, which is nearly odourless, caused sore eyes and later severe headaches among many of those present. “Larvicide gas was widely used in the district for rabbit control before rabbit boards took over, and many farmers still have supplies of the gas capsules on their properties. Constable I Blue was called. He recovered part of a capsule which had apparently been broken into a drain that led through a shower room, from where the gas spread into the main social hall. The function was a farewell one for five members of the Owaka Football Club who will leave on Wednesday for a tour of Australia with a South Otago colts team.”

The Press (Christchurch) 15 March 1966

Another incident took place in an area similar to Riversdale Road, where residences and horticultural land by the 1970s were increasingly becoming close neighbours.

“Occupants of some houses on the outskirts of Havelock North left their homes; last night when a pungent, gas drifted over their properties. Some residents awoke with streaming eyes and sore throats. The gas was chloropicrin, or tear gas, used by fruit growers to fumigate soil. Mr M Mitchell, a poultry farmer, said his production was down and his fowls were spluttering and coughing. He had awakened coughing, at 3 am. Mr Mitchell said some of his neighbours had left their homes. Mr P Hawley said the gas was used by fruitgrowers to kill root fungi. It was applied by a contractor. “Because of the calm night, the gas just hung in the air,” he said. “Usually the wind blows it away and there are no effects.”

The Press (Christchurch) 31 March 1973

The incident at Avondale in January 1975 led to the temporary relocation of 30 people from the area immediately affected, some still in pyjamas and dressing gowns, many taking shelter in the school hall at Avondale College for the rest of the night.

Riversdale Road was cordoned off, and emergency services soon identified that the source of the gas was the three large glasshouses at 5-7 Riversdale Road, leased by Peter H Hilford. He had spread chloropicrin on the soil inside the glasshouses on Sunday 19 January, just hours before the emergency began. The Deputy Medical Officer of Health, getting to the scene just after midnight on 20 January, ordered that firemen hose down the soil, stopping the leakage.

Near dawn, at 5 am, the emergency was declared over, and the residents began to make their way back to their homes. An early morning wind helped disperse the last of the fumes, but people were asked to stay well clear of the glasshouses.

Hilford had done nothing wrong. Under the regulations of the time, all he had to do was follow the instructions on the chemical packet. But the incident helped impress upon the Government that there needed to be stricter restrictions on the use of the chemical, and that included watching the weather for any conditions which could cause the gas to collect in a cloud closer to the ground. Warm, still conditions on the night of 19 January helped keep the gas low enough to affect the surrounding area.

Accidents involving the chemical, though, were relatively rare, even though in 1975 authorities counted around 240 glasshouses in the Auckland area, and the chemical was used on an annual basis inside them. Chloropicrin is still in use today, usually on soil that is then covered in plastic sheets to prevent leakage. Its use is heavily regulated, with a number of steps that need to be taken by registered users.

No one wants another nasty surprise from that particular First World War reminder.

Green Light Mystery: the 1952 Kaukapakapa Rail Accident

 

A 1966 view of Kaukapkapa Railway Station and surrounds, showing 1. the West Coast Road (SH 16) level crossing; 2. the site of the impact of No. 76 and No. 77 trains; 3. the main Kaukapakapa station building. This site all now cleared. Via Retrolens.

Train No. 76 from Maungaturoto reached Kaipara Flats around 10 pm on the evening of 5 December 1952. It was a goods train, hauling cattle trucks bound for Auckland. At Kaipara Flats, a crew change meant that acting fireman Charles Harold Riley (from 1652 Great North Road in Avondale), guard Robert Arthur, and driver Charles Henry Coggins (also from Avondale) climbed aboard. At around 10.15 pm, the train proceeded cityward from Kaipara Flats, shunting onto a siding when it reached Tahekaroa. While there, and picking up the tablet for the next section of the line, the crew were told that there was a crossing at Kaukapakapa. This meant that, while the train had the main line between Tahekaroa and Kaukapakapa, at the latter place there had to be another shunt to one of the three sidings and off the main line, in order to allow a passenger train bound for Northland to pass. Riley put the tablet in a cane sling, for the hand-to-hand exchange at the sidings at Kaukapakapa, and No. 76 left Tahekaroa around 11.06 pm.

As the train approached Kaukapakapa however, the lights to a semaphore-style signal seemed to contradict the earlier instructions. The lower signal light was seen by the crew as red, while the upper showed green. This indicated that No.76 had the main line and didn’t need to use a siding, which seemed odd; the crew expected a “stop” signal, in order for the tracks to be switched so that they’d proceed to one of the waiting loops. Still, Riley took the tablet out of the cane sling, and inserted it into the iron one for the automatic exchange at the station platform on the main line.

Unfortunately, train No. 77, an Auckland to Opua combined passenger and goods train was at Kaukapakapa Station, and on the main line, waiting for No. 76 to divert to the sidings so that it could proceed. At around 11.30 pm, No. 76 collided with No. 77, just north of the Kaukapakapa station building.

Just before the imminent collision, Riley leapt out the driver’s side of the cab, and Coggins leapt out to the left. Unfortunately, one of the cattle wagons telescoped and tipped over toward the left, crushing Coggins where he lay on the ground. His spine fractured in multiple places, he was killed instantly. He was the only human fatality, although the fireman for No. 77, Terry George Stanaway, was injured with a severe cut to the neck. He was taken to Auckland Hospital. Twenty head of cattle died immediately, while another ten were humanely shot by a local farmer.

The accident would kick off investigations, questions and legal action that only came to a conclusion two and a half years later.

Charles Coggins was a third-generation railway man. His grandfather George Coggins immigrated here in 1874 as a farm worker, but took up work as a ganger on the railways, spending around 24 years in the Rukuhia Swamp between Frankton and Ohaupo. When he retired on railway superannuation in July 1903, George Coggins was fêted by his fellow gangers. In all, he worked 40 years as a railway ganger. He died in 1920.

George’s son William left home in 1881 at the age of 19, and became a railway platelayer. William’s first wife died in 1899, leaving him a widower with five children. He remarried in 1900, to Emma Edith Wilcox, and in 1905 Charles Henry Coggins was born, probably in Parnell. By 1908, William’s family were in Te Kuiti where he still worked as a railways platelayer. He retired in August 1928 and was presented with a “well-filled wallet” at his own presentation at Te Awamutu.

The house at 21 Glendon Ave, Avondale, former home of the Coggins family. From Google Streetview, 2022

William’s son Charles started out as a cleaner with the Railways department at Te Kuiti in the 1920s, and married Gladys Millicent Foster in 1932. Around that time, Charles and his bride came to live at 21 Glendon Avenue in Avondale, renting the property from hairdresser Peter Luke Currie and his wife Annie. By the late 1940s, Charles had progressed in his career in the department to becoming an engine driver, earning £880 per annum by 1952. His father and mother, William and Emma, purchased a property at what is known today as 30 Mead Street in 1928, so those in that branch of the Coggins clan lived close to one another. William died in 1948, but Emma had the Mead Street title in her name through to her own death in 1961.

The effect of 47-year-old Charles Coggins’ death on his immediate family that December night in 1952 was profound for his widow and his son. Charles’ funeral costs came to £50 and five shillings. Gladys Coggins was 40 years old, and had gone from receiving £12 per week from Charles for maintaining the household, to a railway superannuation of £20 10 shillings per month. Their son Charles Barrie Coggins was 16 and still at school when his father died. He left school and became apprenticed in March 1953 to an engineering firm. By 1955 he was earning £4 10 shillings a week and studying for a Marine Engineer’s Examination, but after paying weekly transport and other necessities, he couldn’t afford to pay his mother any board. Along with this, Peter Currie had sold the Glendon Ave property to the State Advances Corporation in 1950, so Gladys was paying £1 seven shillings rent per week. Their daughter Edith Marion Coggins was 19 at the time of the accident, just shy of her 20th birthday the following January, but was already employed, earning £7 per week, in December 1952. She paid her mother £2 per week board. She was not financially affected by the accident.

The Railways Department, however, refused to accept any liability, and therefore any idea of paying compensation to Gladys Coggins and her son Charles. The department instead claimed that Charles Coggins senior had been in breach of his duty; first, by driving the train past red danger signals, colliding with the stationary train at the Kaukapakapa station, and by jumping from the engine and thus being struck by the overturning wagons.

In terms of the claimed breach regarding the signals, the department maintained that the signals at Kaukapakapa that night were with both boards up, showing two red lights indicating danger, and that Coggins should not have proceeded along the main line. The official conclusion reached was that Coggins had mistaken a mercury vapour streetlight at the road which crossed the rail line just north of the station (then known as the West Coast Road, today part of State Highway 16) for the green light of the railway signal. Mercury vapour lights in the 1950s were often used, and shone with a blue-green light. This particular one was situated just to the right of the railway signal, the latter sighted by No. 76’s crew as their train started the long straight approach into Kaukapakapa Station, the signal near the road crossing just before their destination.

Coggins, according to Riley, saw the distance signal, the first one passed, at read, and the home signal, the one nearest the station at green. This meant they had permission to proceed along the main line into the station after all without a stop, then diversion to a siding. Coggins, though, did think it was odd. They’d been told earlier that the other train, No. 77, would be there at the station. He had wondered if he’d perhaps mistaken the street light for the signal, but as he talked about it with Riley he came to the conclusion that, no. It was definitely the signal, not the streetlight. Riley as well was sure that the green light was the railway signal.

However, nearer the road crossing, Coggins spotted the local station agent waving a red signal light in his hand where he stood beside the No. 77 train. He gave “three sharp blasts of the whistle” and put on emergency brakes. Just past the crossing Coggins dived out of the cab past Riley’s position, yelling for Riley to jump as well.

The guard in the rear van, Robert Arthur, testified that while he didn’t see the signal indication at the start of that straight run into Kaukapakapa that night, “On looking out of the van window I observed a green light on the Main Home signal, the indication on the signal post was green over red. It was a complete green. I was pretty close to the Home signal post when I observed these indications and was looking up when I observed the light. This struck me as odd.” Arthur was aware of the instructions and advice given at Tahekaroa, and a “caution” signal made no sense at all in that situation. The train “drifted” towards the station, at a slow speed, before braking, and then the collision.

Arthur later checked the signal an hour and a half after the accident. It was then showing red-red.

Matthew Pettigrew Scott, the station agent at Kaukapakapa, testified at the inquest that “both outer signals on the northern approach” had been set to “danger” – two red lights, semaphore boards up. “Until I had changed the points to allow No. 76 into the loop [the siding] the signals could not be operated otherwise.” Scott maintained that from where he had stood, the signals showed white from his vantage point beside No. 77, which meant they would have been both red for Coggins. He maintained that “It has been my experience that these signals are foolproof. I have had 15 years’ experience on the Railways.”

Scott was working as a porter at Kaukapakapa Station in 1949, so had been at the station for around three years at least, probably still in that capacity at the time of the accident. But, he’d also travelled around and worked at a number of various stations in his career. He hadn’t had all his 15 years’ railways experience with the Kaukapakapa signals.

Nevertheless, Rees Elllis, an “automatic signal maintainer” with the department, also stated at the inquest that he had examined the Kaukapakapa signals the day before the accident, and found them to be in perfect working order.

Constable Robert Alexander Archibald who arrived at the scene at twenty past midnight, said that he made a survey of the scene (and drew a map that was included with the coroner’s report) and saw that the top semaphore board of the railway signal was pointing down – but concluded that this could have been the result of the signal system wires which had become fouled by the derailed wagons. Coggin’s body was entangled in these wires.

The coroner, Carl Gustave Sandin, found simply that “Charles Henry Coggins was killed when he was crushed under a loaded railway wagon as a result of a train accident at Kaukapakapa.”

The Railways' own enquiry board considered that there was a possibility that the street light at the road had been mistaken by Coggins for the green signal light. The department successfully asked the Waitemata Electric Power Board to deal with the matter by putting a shield around the light, and the conflict between the street light and the signals seemed to have been resolved by March 1953.

However … despite Matthew Scott’s assertion at the inquest that the railway signals in service, installed at Kaukapakapa in 1921, were “foolproof” – they were not.

December 1947 – Down distant repeater signal showing “out of order.” A number of faults noted over some weeks. The controlling wires shown to be affected by varying temperatures. Fault put down to operator’s lack of knowledge of ways to compensate for this and use a wire adjusting apparatus.

December 1952 – Six days after the accident that claimed Coggins’ life. The home signal showing a faulty indication. Even after a number of goes with the controlling lever, the signal failed to return to “Danger” (red) but remained at “Clear” or halfway between. The Signal Adjuster from Helensville put it down to “too much tension on the wires.”

April 1953 – Up Main Line Points failure at Kaukapakapa Station. The Station agent failed to adjust the signal wire tension.

July 1953 – Signal wires were suspected of having frozen in place due to water leaking into a conduit under the roadway north of the station. After a severe frost, the signal jammed at “Clear.” The abnormality was fortunately spotted by train crew at the station. This, though, wouldn’t explain the December 1952 accident at the beginning of a North Auckland summer.

April 1954 – Fault in the siding points. Before the reason could be found, the fault corrected itself.

June 1954 – Another fault, northern siding points.

September 1954 – Eerily reminiscent of the December 1952 incident, the Home signal once again jammed in the “Clear” position, just after another No. 76 train, Maungaturoto to Auckland, had left Kaukapakapa. In this case, ballast and scoria were found to have accumulated in the conduit piping under the track where the wires crossed from one side of the track to the other. The District Engineer’s office found that “it can be assumed that under certain conditions the scoria ballast that had accumulated in the pipe would retard the free return of the wire to normal when the lever was restored to normal.” Constant, regular vibration from the rail transport operations directly overhead can’t have helped.

January 1955 – The signals were reported to be functioning only “intermittently.”

March 1955 – Another signals failure. This time attributed to a faulty plunger.

Before most of these mechanical faults had taken place, Gladys Coggins and her lawyers filed a claim for compensation in the Supreme Court in September 1953, seeking a total of £8000 for herself and her son. In January 1954, the department responded by saying that they believed Charles H Coggins’ death was his own fault. In May 1954 Robert Angus Hamilton Russell, Assistant District Engineer with the department, submitted his views on the case. He felt that the complexity of the issue meant that “only men qualified by training or occupation or otherwise to determine difficult questions in relation to technical matters will be capable of sufficiently understanding and appreciating the same.” In other words, best of luck finding a set of jurors with the capability of understanding all the technical details.

Gladys Coggins called a halt to proceedings at that point, but with the option of continuing later. Then, there came the September 1954 incident, and the discovery of the ballast in the conduit.

In May 1955, the Railways Department essentially reached an out-of-court compromise with Gladys Coggins, who agreed to a £5000 compensation settlement, £500 for her son Charles, £4500 for herself. Doubtless, this sum helped her purchase her home from the State Advances Corporation. She retained ownership of the Glendon Ave property through to 1998, and died in 2003, at the age of 90.

Charles Coggins isn’t completely forgotten, even today, 70 years after the accident and his death. His membership and associations with the Royal Antediluvian Order of the Buffaloes, serving as a Grand President in 1947 and 1948 on the New Zealand Sub-Council. He was one of the founders of the Point Lodge No 28 Lodge City in Point Chevalier in 1946. That Lodge had their own hall from the 1950s, but declining numbers meant a move to Mt Eden in 1984, and it has now been closed. But a Sir Charles Coggins Lodge was opened in Glen Eden on 13 June 1955, and still operates from the Avondale lodge building on Great North Road, Suburbs 40 Lodge Hall, not too far from the Coggins’ home in Glendon Ave.

Sources:
Auckland Star, NZ Herald, The Press (Christchurch)
Ancestry.com
Archives NZ files: Coroner's inquest, Gladys' compensation claim file, files on the Kaukapakapa signals
Land records

Toroa, the last steam ferry

 The steam ferry Toroa on the Waitematā harbour, 1950s. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections T0470

(Guest post from the Toroa Preservation Society)

A brief outline of the history of Auckland’s last surviving steam ferry, and a resume of the restoration work to date. For more detailed information visit www.steamferrytoroa.com

Built and launched in Auckland in 1925, the Toroa was the last of the wooden-planked double-ended ferries. She remained in service until 1980 when her survey certificate expired. There were eight ferries of this type, specifically designed for quick travel between relatively close destinations. The double-ended arrangement with a propeller and wheelhouse at bow and stern saved manoeuvring at each wharf or jetty. The fate of each of these vessels was as follows:

Albatross (1904)     Diesel conversion 1952     Laid up 1959     Broken up 1968
Kestrel (1905)         Diesel conversion 1951     Refit 1982         

                                To Tauranga as floating restaurant 2002               
                                Return to Auckland 2010
                                Sank at mooring 2016 |
                                Broken up 2022
Pupuke (1909)        Laid up 1959     Beached Ponui island 1962 and broken up
The Peregrine (1912)      
                                Laid up 1959     Buried at Westhaven 1981
Ngoiro (1913)         Laid up 1959     Restaurant in Viaduct 1982
                                To Tairua 1999 where she sits in a backfilled sand berth
Makora (1921)        Laid up 1974     Buried at Westhaven 1981
Takapuna (1924)     Laid up 1967     Buried at Westhaven 1981
Toroa (1925)           Laid up 1980      Under restoration

Proposals to save at least one of these iconic ferries eventually resulted in the Toroa Preservation Society being established in 1985 at the instigation of Jim Mason of the New Zealand Maritime Trust. This group, with the intention of returning an operational historic steam excursion ferry to the Waitemata Harbour, continues today with one or two early members still involved. A floating restaurant has never been part of the plan.

Built at St Mary’s Bay at the yard of George Niccol, the Toroa was, unlike the first of this design, of composite construction. This means the ferry has steel frames and bulkheads giving shape and strength to the timber planked hull. This method of construction was used for a time in ship building when all the nearby timber had been used and large baulks became expensive due to transport costs. It was also found that a composite hull gave more internal space for cargo and machinery due to steel or iron frames being smaller than the timber equivalent.

Toroa’s triple-expansion steam engine and coal-fired boiler remained in use all her working life. Other ferries were converted to diesel because their compound steam engines were of less power and efficiency. A stoker was also not needed on a diesel ferry so labour costs were reduced. It is most unlikely that coal will fuel the Toroa in the future and alternatives are being explored.

If the Toroa had been slipped and repaired to meet survey requirements in the 1980s then the subsequent history would have been different. As it is today, time on a large commercial slipway was then costly, and unknown costs and timeframe meant this did not happen. The machinery, although operating, was tired, at least four ribs in confined spaces needed replacing and all the sheathing would have had to be removed to inspect hull planking. Under pressure from the Auckland Harbour Board, the Preservation Society members maintained Toroa while afloat as best they could, all the time trying to devise a way to carry out major repairs. Berths were made available at the cement wharf and later Birkenhead wharf.

Although Birkenhead wharf was not ideal for shelter from wind and tide, it was good for public exposure. This was a good time for fundraising to cover engineering and superstructure restoration. For a while the TV soap Shortland Street used the ferry as a set, with many activities on board.

To be able to carry out hull repairs a floating dry dock of eight ferro-cement pontoons was professionally designed and built, with the support of New Zealand Lotteries Grants Board and North Shore City Council. In 1998 just as the dry dock was nearing completion, Toroa sank alongside the wharf at night, during a severe storm. The high-water-level alarms and pumps operated but were overcome.

The first attempt at salvage failed and it was a month before success with air bags and floating crane. Damage was extensive, with much of the upper superstructure destroyed by wave action, and corrosion of all steelwork accelerated. The Toroa was slipped and temporary repairs made, while a site was found for the floating dry dock. Approval had been given to site the pontoon system at the western side of Stanley Bay wharf, but after local protest the Devonport Community Board and the Auckland Regional Council reversed their decisions on occupancy and non-notified resource consents. A berth on the eastern side was made available with tight time and fundraising conditions.

During the launching of the last pontoon, contact had been made with Radio New Zealand over submarine cables, and an offer of land at the Selwood Road transmitter site was made. By this time it had become obvious that the dry dock pontoon system was untenable in the inner harbour, so plans began for a land based restoration. The planning, design work and supervision of the hauling out operation was done by society volunteers. It is not known if a larger vessel has been taken from the water anywhere other than on a commercial slipway elsewhere. A search of You Tube under "Toroa Hauling Out" shows a video of the operation.

In December 2001, the Toroa arrived in a very fragile state on a bare gravel site with no buildings or services, let alone working drawings of the ferry. The first few years were spent in the establishment of storage and workshops, along with the major task of accurately measuring the hull. From these measurements, accurate plans were drawn and submitted to a naval architect for modern statutory design approval. Original machinery plans were found in Glasgow archives. Now that the society knew more accurately “what they had” a restoration plan was made and an update to an earlier conservation plan. No planking could be removed at this time due to the very fragile state of the steel framing.

With a grant from the Waitakere Licensing Trust, an order was placed with Dent Steel in England for enough bulb angle to replace all the ribs. Expressions of interest were sought locally for the bending of this bulb angle, but an accurate assessment of costs was not forthcoming. As a result a volunteer resigned from his employment and became a steelwork contractor for several years. Only one or two alternate ribs could be removed at a time and with great ingenuity new ribs were created using local heat and a bending slab from the Navy Dockyard. Some ten thousand rivets were used in the restoration of longitudinal and transverse bulkheads. This work was funded by stage-by-stage grants from NZ Lotteries and the ASB Community Trust. Since the preservation society was founded, the number of individuals who have undertaken the huge and onerous task of these grant applications can be counted on one hand.

New bulb-angle ribs and rivetted bulkheads in the after void of the hull. Photo supplied by Toroa Preservation Society

The ribs had almost all been replaced when an opportunity to purchase large long kauri timber arose. Funds remaining from a steelwork grant were diverted to the purchase of this kauri, enough to replace all major timbers: keel, garboard- and sheer-strakes, and covering boards. More steelwork has been carried out, as always with volunteers acting as labourers to assist skilled contractors. All the new steel main-deck beams are in place and stringer plates at each quarter almost complete. Some planking has been removed and butts in ribs made accessible and now fully welded.

Other than steelwork, both wheelhouses have been restored, cabin walls have been sanded back and painted, and a replacement condenser and boiler located, paid for and transported to site. One forklift has been worn out and a replacement purchased and a band-saw mill for processing large timbers purchased by way of a donation.

The refurbished Ladies Cabin on the main deck. Photo supplied by the Toroa Preservation Society.

Fundraising is ongoing and successful, but the hurdles for heritage funding on a large scale are much higher than in the past. One contributing reason for this is that ‘movable heritage’ is given a low priority in local and national funding guidelines. Some polite lobbying is planned on this front when the time is right. Another requirement is evidence of wide public support, and social media seems to be the best way to gain this. The ‘Likes’ will be counted.

Unfortunately there are sometimes ill-informed and negative comments about a perceived lack of progress, general deterioration or any work being done at all on the restoration. Because all the work to date has been inside Toroa’s hull and not visible from the street, it has been suggested that ‘THEY’ have not been doing anything and nothing is happening. Sure the old planking does not look good, but from early on it became obvious that there was deterioration of the timber around all the fastenings and against the steel ribs, to the point where none can be used as planks again. For most of her time at Selwood Road, there has been a large purpose-made cover over Toroa’s promenade deck, keeping almost all of the weather out. A large roof over the whole ferry was explored but site conditions and cost made this unfeasible.

 The vision is to have the Toroa back on the harbour, working as an excursion steamer and providing a link to the vessels that carried millions of passengers and were a large part of Auckland life for over 100 years. There is a limit to what ‘THEY’ can do on their own, so, more than ideas, people are needed to take on the vision and translate the ideas in to actions. And actively help to bring in the essential funding so that the Toroa can steam again.

Toroa passing under the Auckland Harbour Bridge, Waitematā Harbour, 1960s.
Hooker Bowden, Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections D-TWF-0006

An ordinary family: the Crees in Avondale and Waterview

 

One of the overdue projects I’m working on during this continuing pandemic is an index of all the issues of the Avondale Historical Journal, with the aim to put it online at the Society’s website. Going through Issue 60 from 2011, I came across a photo sent in by the late Rich Afford of children that performed in a pantomime at St Judes of “Princess Chrysanthemum” in December 1932. Above is a detail from his photo, with this bit of Rich’s letter catching my eye 11 years later:

“Centre of the three pixies: Peter Crees (killed in the war).”

This had me wondering, first, what happened to Peter Crees?

According to aviation historian Errol W Martyn in For Your Tomorrow, Peter William Crees was born in Swindon, Wiltshire in England 14 June 1923. He was still a baby when first his father William Hugh Crees arrived in New Zealand in October 1923, then Winifred Caroline with Peter and his older (three years old) sister Leila Doris in mid 1924. William Crees who had been a farmer back in England secured a position as a medical attendant at the Auckland Mental Hospital in Pt Chevalier. The family lived initially in Fir Street, Waterview, then at 153 Blockhouse Bay Road by the early 1930s.

Peter went on to study at Seddon Memorial Tech in the city as a motor mechanic, and became an apprentice at T S Sampson’s on Richardson Road in Mt Albert. He joined the Army in 1940, then switched to the RNZAF at Levin in January 1943 as an Aircrafthand, becoming a Flight Mechanic on 5 July 1943. He was sent to the Pacific theatre of the war in February 1944. Based at Pallikulo on the island of Espirito Santo, Vanuatu, Crees was on board a PV-1 Ventura aircraft returning from Vila in the afternoon of 8 August 1944. He and three others in the crew had just delivered spare parts for a grounded Corsair. They failed to arrive back at base, and a search over the next two days proved fruitless. Six weeks later, some information came through from locals on Malekula Island that they had seen the plane. The wreckage was found on the island, having crashed on a hill in poor visibility, exploding on impact. All four were buried on the island, and were commemorated on the Bourail Memorial in New Caledonia.

According to Errol Martyn:

“Investigators considered that unserviceable radar equipment was a contributory factor, and that an erratically behaving artificial horizon may have been a further contributory cause.”

At this point in the research, I thought I would simply be writing a brief piece just about Peter Crees, the young pixie in Rich Afford’s photo, and the story behind Rich’s comment about Peter’s death in the war. I looked into what happened to Peter’s parents, and something unusual cropped up.

William Hugh Crees died aged 62 in 1953. He was cremated at Waikumete Cemetery, but his cremains were laid to rest at Purewa Cemetery in Meadowbank. Nothing really unusual there.

His widow Winifred Caroline Crees died in May 1968, aged 78. I found her listed both by the NZ Society of Genealogists in their transcription from burial records, as well as the more modern online Auckland Council database for burials, at Waikumete Cemetery. Not just cremated at Waikumete and then her cremains laid to rest, perhaps, beside her husband at Purewa. Oh, no. Both the NZSG and Auckland Council have her sharing a plot with a stranger, a Mr Lionel Francis Henderson, who died a day later than Winifred, on 8 May.

Not what you may be thinking, either — for it turns out that Winifred’s remains are listed in her own plot … at Avondale’s George Maxwell Memorial Cemetery on Rosebank Road, Avondale.

John Russell from St Judes Church who maintains an excellent website devoted to the cemetery at Avondale, with detailed lists of burials including photos etc has confirmed that Winifred Crees’ final resting place is indeed here in Avondale. The Waikumete Cemetery entry could have come about, perhaps, because of the funeral director at the time booking in a plot at Waikumete, only to have someone change their mind and take up a plot at Avondale instead.

Whatever the reason, Mrs Crees is now recorded in two cemeteries, several miles apart, and that will probably remain the case to confound future family historians who are related to her. 

John Watson’s trees: the Boy Who Ran

At 63 Riversdale Road in Avondale, there stands a protected, heritage scheduled Norfolk Pine. About 80 metres away in Riversdale Reserve stands another Norfolk Pine that isn’t heritage scheduled. Both, though, appear to be linked to a single story. One man owned the land on which both trees now stand, from 1907 through to 1919, when the part now included in Riversdale Reserve was sold to another owner. It is possible that both trees are over 100 years old. The one at 63 Riversdale Road, at least, is definitely connected with the man I’m about to talk about, seeing as he died in 1929, and his family finally relinquished the rest of his property in the late 1940s.

That man was John Watson, born 4 August 1845 at Llanbryd (now Llanbryde) near Elgin in Morayshire, Scotland. He was the eldest son of John Watson and Margaret née Proctor. In 1859, John Watson senior left his family in Scotland to take up a job as farm manager for an Auckland merchant named James Burtt, on Burtt’s farm near Paerātā (now 77 Burtt Road), north-east of Pukekohe. Margaret and the rest of the family arrived aboard the Black Eagle in November 1861, and settled with him on Burtt’s farm.

The early 1860s was a traumatic time for the area around Pukekohe, with the simmering forces boiling over to all-out war in the Waikato, following on from the Taranaki conflict in 1860. The Watson family, and the name Burtt’s Farm, are now part of New Zealand Land Wars history. One of the iwi with mana whenua at Paerātā are the Ngāti Tamaoho, whose pā tauā, Te Māunu a Tūmatauenga, stood atop a high ridge of ground. It had been a place of many battles over centuries. The site would see another battle in September 1863, due to the fact that when the Crown had taken over the land in the 1850s, selling it to local farmers and city speculators, the ridge and the pā site became part of Burtt’s farm, and there he had a house built, up on that same ridge, for his manager, John Watson and Watson’s family. The ridge became known to settlers as Burtt’s Bluff.

What exactly triggered the attack on the farmhouse on 14 September 1863 is still not absolutely clear. Most of the information about that day, during which a church at Pukekohe East was also attacked and besieged, with a number of deaths on both sides, comes of course from the narrative of surviving settlers and later commemorations in the media. According to a report prepared by Ngāti Tamaoho themselves from February 2021, their papakāinga and maara kai had been looted and destroyed back in July 1863 by “colonial militia from Pukekohe, Patumāhoe, Mauku, Paerātā and the surrounding lands” so the attack on Burtt’s Farm was in response to that action. Another report, by Te Tupu Ngātahi claims that “the battle began after the farm manager Mr Watson was spotted erecting fences on Ngāti Tamaoho land.”

On the morning of the attack, around 10 am (according to the account by Land Wars historian James Cowan, published early 1920s), Mrs Watson was lying ill in her bed in the house, while her husband John was out fencing with another son Robert, and another farm worker named Hugh McLean was ploughing a field toward the west with eldest Watson lad John, aged 18. The attack began with shots fired at John Watson senior and 14 year old Robert at the fence line, mortally wounding the latter. The Maori attacking that day surrounded the farmhouse with a dozen men, cutting it off from both John Watson senior’s party, and Hugh McLean with the younger John Watson. McLean and Watson apparently faced 10 attackers, McLean firing on them.

Young John Watson had left his own rifle at home that day, so taking off his work boots, he left McLean and ran barefoot to get help, finding his brother William working elsewhere on the farm. Together, they reached Drury and sounded the alarm, an armed force quickly setting out from that settlement.

Meanwhile, those Maori who were besieging the farmhouse fired into the doors and windows, Mrs Watson diving under her bed. One of her two daughters there with her, Mary Ann, got away, and freed the family’s dog to rush at the attackers (the dog was killed). Mary then ran to one of the neighbours, but they’d already heard the shots, and were coming with their employees to the rescue, all armed. The attackers were driven off.

The Watson family and their workers were escorted into Drury, where Robert died later in a military hospital. McLean’s body was found later in a swamp. He’d been shot through the heart and his rifle taken. Later, once the war had ended, the Watson family returned to the farm, but in 1874 Burtt sold the property. This is probably when John Watson senior and his wife Margaret moved to Buckland further south, where Margaret died in 1878, and where he died in 1895. James Burtt, the man who probably originally brought the Watsons to the country, died in 1908.

Meanwhile John Watson the younger married Irish-born Bridget Tobin in 1868. While John had been baptised in a Scottish Presbyterian church, from that point on his own family were Catholic. He appears to have settled in Puni, to the south-east of Pukekohe, and lived there through to 1907. One son, William, died in 1891 aged only seven. Another, his eldest son Alexander aged 25, met with a tragic accident in 1894 while driving a wagon along the Piako Road at Hamilton. Something frightened his horse – some reports say it was the sight of a Maori sitting beside the road – and it bolted. Alexander fell, and one of the wheels went over him. He died a few hours later in hospital. Another son, named John, died aged 35 at Puni in 1905.

John Watson bought the Riversdale Road property from the estate of George Willey by April 1907, but the deal would have been finalised months earlier, as he’d sold up his farm goods at Puni in February that year. He would be known to his last days, off and on in the press when someone brought up the siege at Burtt’s Farm, as the boy who ran to get the troops.

In July 1919, he transferred half, seven and a half acres, to Harry McLeod, and that part went to Auckland City Council in 1990 as part of Riversdale Reserve, after being designated in 1977. When Watson died, the remaining seven and a half acres at 63 Riversdale Road was left to his two unmarried daughters, Margaret and Annie Watson. When Margaret, who lived there in the 1930s and 1940s died in October 1946, Annie inherited her sister’s share and in 1949 transferred the land to the Auckland Catholic Diocese. Half of that was taken for state housing in 1950, and the remainder was subdivided by the church authorities in the 1960s.

So, two trees on an Avondale street, one scheduled, and the other not. There’s probably no way of knowing how old they really are, but I do think that if one is scheduled, then the other on the Auckland Council reserve, even more of a streetscape landmark in the neighbourhood, should be protected as well. They are two remaining links we have with both the market gardening and orchardist heritage of Rosebank Peninsula – and with those events in that tragic war that took place on our island nearly 160 years ago.