Avondale racetrain sidings update

On going back into the vaults to hunt up the sheep on the racecourse story, I found a bit of extra info I had included back in 2001-2003 while putting together Heart of the Whau, about the provisions for racetrains in Avondale (posted previously).

Apparently, according to the minutes of the Avondale Road Board in 1899, the rail authorities had installed a "special racecourse platform" on their land between Cracroft (Crayford) Street and Blake (St Judes) Street. (November 1899 when all this was being reported by the Board's clerk, was the first time Blake Street had been called that in 31 years, but I digress.) The Road Board had a problem with this, and they intended opening up Layard Street (whether they meant opening it up to development, or doing something about the part between St Judes Street and Chalmers Street that is still, today, just an unformed if still official road -- I have no idea.)

There were also issues with the raceday trains stopping at St Judes' crossing to let the patrons off so they could make their way down to the races. This practice tended to block traffic. The platform, and sidings, ideas were abandoned.

A plea for an Archives New Zealand bus stop

If anyone reads this, please spread the word.

The Auckland office of Archives New Zealand is at Mangere. Their new building is great, the service fantastic, the staff utterly choice, and Timespanner's a big fan of their tea-room and the honesty-cow system of $1 for a cuppa and a chance to have your bring-your-own lunch when visiting all day there. And with the amount of really cool stuff on offer to peruse and research, an "all day" is kind of mandatory. Time flies, believe me.

One bug-bear though -- and that is the lack of public transport to the archives. They're down the end of Richard Pearse Drive, and the nearest bus stop is more than a kilometre away. Those of you who drive wouldn't have a big problem, but older researchers, and non-drivers like me, have either a hike on our hands, maybe a cadged lift, but if we want real independence, it means a taxi there and back to Onehunga or Mangere Town Centre.

A friend of mine is starting an awareness campaign among researchers about this. I've left a message with Maxx on their website. Anyone else reading this who thinks we should have a bus stop closer than the existing services to enable easier access to some of our part of the North Island's heritage records -- let them know.

Cheers.

Additional, 11 February 2016:

They did finally put in a bus stop after the Super City amalgamation of 2010. The Auckland office of Archives NZ is today accessible via the Airporter route between Onehunga and Manukau City.

The 1914 Night Soil Protest at Waterview

The following is from notes of a speech I gave in 2004.

Just outside where the Waterview Church stands today, across the width of the Great North Road, a protest was staged in 1914 against the use of the Cadman Estate (now part of Heron Park) as a night soil depot. It was a sure sign that settlement had picked up markedly in Waterview – settlers here were not going to put up with what might have gone unnoticed in a more rural environment.

The Tamaki night soil depot was closed in late 1913, and Health Department officials went looking for alternative sites. The local authorities on the isthmus were all keen that there should be another depot, but not at all keen that it should be in their districts. It was decided that the Cadman Estate would be ideal, and legislation put through meant that the Department didn’t have to listen to local authority concerns.

20 January 1914, Auckland Star.

“Forced to look for a new site, the Public Health Dept. decided that Avondale provided a satisfactory way out. The residents of that district received an unpleasant surprise yesterday, when it was discovered that the sanitary carts had during the night been brought into the township, & the matter had been distributed over a well-known property, on which was situated a large boarding house. The owner of this property, it is further stated, runs cows over his land, & holds a license to supply milk throughout the district.

“A member of the Avondale Road Board, in imparting this information to a Star representative this morning, said it was obvious that the site was an impossible one for the purpose. The ground was too hard in that locality to permit of proper ploughing, with the result that the matter was only partially covered, & with the prevailing wind blowing in the direction of a fairly thickly populated area, the residents were considerably alarmed. Already the member for the district has been interviewed, & asked to intercede with the Minister of Public Health.

“The Board's solicitors have also been instructed to take immediate action, & a public indignation meeting is to be held forthwith. When inquiry was made at the Public Health Office this morning it was ascertained that the site was regarded as the best available. The information was further imparted that it was only to be used as a temporary depot, though no idea could be given as to how long it would be necessary to continue sending Auckland night soil into the Avondale district.”

23 January 1914, Auckland Star

“During the small hours of Monday morning last residents in Waterview, a portion of the Avondale district, were rudely disturbed by rumbling noises & queer odours emanating from no one knew where.

“At the back of a property, the estate of the late Sir A J Cadman, & presently leased to Mr Harrison, several loads of nightsoil had been deposited, & a man was busily employed in ploughing it in. It was soon apparent that Pt Chevalier had succeeded in getting rid of their sanitary depot, & that Avondale had been chosen to replace it. At a meeting of the Road Board last evening, ratepayers attended in large numbers & expressed their indignation in an unmistakable manner.”

On the 26th of January, an open air meeting was held outside the Avondale Post Office, at the present day Avondale Roundabout. 200 men attended, angrily demanding that the Avondale Road Board do something. On 28 January, the Brownes Road and Cameron Street barricades went up.

From the NZ Herald:

“Residents of Avondale erected two barricades on the roads used by the sanitary contractors & since Friday last the deposits have had to be placed elsewhere. At each barrier was a notice to the effect that the road was closed to traffic. Counter moves were made last night, under the direction of the District Health Officer, Dr. Makgill.

“Accompanied by Senior-sergeant Rutledge & four constables, the health officer proceeded to the locality where the barricades had been erected, in order to remove them.

“Browne's Road, at the extremity of which one of the obstacles was placed, was reached by motor-car shortly before midnight. The party then went afoot to the second one, situated in Cameron Road, about a quarter of a mile nearer to the foreshore. Heavy timbers had been used in the building of both barricades, and though the police were reinforced by the mounted constables stationed in the district, they could not commence operations, being without tools. After a brief interval, however, the contractor (Mr Burke) arrived with two assistants who brought crowbars & other implements with them.

“Dr Makgill, in order to place the subsequent procedure on a legal basis, was the first to make an attack upon the formidable barrier, which was roughly nailed together here & there with 6in nails. This done, the contractor’s men and the constables soon made short work of the remainder, & a gap was made through which, 20 minutes or so later, the first of six sanitary carts passed safely to the depot. No opposition was experienced in the work of demolition of the first obstacle, though one individual from behind an adjacent hedge uttered a warning to the effect that the police had better not touch the barricade unless they produced their authority. Some female voices also were raised in protest from the outer darkness.

“At the Browne's Road barricade, half a dozen residents appeared on the scene & raised verbal objections to the proposed removal of it. The Health Officer thereupon proceeded to the residence of the chairman of the Road Board (Mr J Potter) with whom he was conferring at an early hour this a.m.”

More barricades were erected on subsequent nights. I haven’t yet found out exactly how things turned out, but I’d say the depot turned out to be very temporary indeed.

The Day the Sheep raced at the Avondale Jockey Club

The author of the Mad Bush Chronicles Blog requested this story during a comments discussion at the end of the James MacKenzie post. Well, here's the tale, from Heart of the Whau (2003):

Everyone thinks only horses race at the Avondale Jockey Club but in 1962 all that changed. You see at 1883 Great North Road behind Arthur H. Nathan Home Appliances (now Westforce Credit Union) George Pilkington, the building owner, used to graze two sheep called Snowy and Dolly.

Well that summer the two sheep decided they liked the look of the vegetable garden over the fence. With considerable determination they both pushed their way under the wire fence and after a lovely time they exited onto Elm Street.

They soon spotted the green grass of the Avondale Race Course and a fine banquet of food. So off they went slowly nibbling down the main straight and were somewhere near the start line. By now it was just after 3'o'clock and unfortunately for Dolly and Snowy some children returning home from school discovered this unusual sight. That's when the first race on the card got under way! It was led by Snowy and Dolly and followed by six excited children. The sheep fleeced the field on the first lap but on the second were caught by the children who knew to where they should be returned.

Snowy and Dolly were led up Elm Street into Great North Road and the front door of Arthur H. Nathan Home Appliances. Snowy was an obedient sheep and went through the shop and out the back door returning to her original pasture. Dolly however was very stubborn and eventually a little force had to be used to encourage her to go through the shop and out the back door. Well the fun of the big day had made Dolly a little loose and she left an unwelcome trail from the front door to the back door. The proud store manager could certainly see a line that separated the white ware from the brown ware of that home appliance shop.

And so ended the day that Snowy and Dolly the sheep raced at the Avondale Jockey Club.

["The Day the Sheep raced at the Avondale Jockey Club", Bruce Pilkington, December 2001 (email to the author)]

Death of a publican: the suicide of John Rebbick Stych (1845-1898)

An old tale that floated around Avondale for years, from whispers in the playground to legends recounted to wide-eyed visitors, was that the last publican of the Avondale Hotel committed suicide by hanging himself in the basement when the hotel lost its license in 1909. Thanks to Mrs. Vera Crawford, in an interview while I researched Heart of the Whau, the legend was disproved: to a point.

The last publican didn’t kill himself in 1909 or in 1910 when the hotel closed its doors that year. It was another man, just before Christmas in 1898, who in a dazed and desperate state headed down to the cellars to end his life with a shotgun blast.

Serious trouble came to the Avondale Hotel and its licensee on the afternoon of 20 December. John Abbott, a financier from Parnell, had asked his son that day to present a cheque for £125 at the National Bank in Onehunga, one signed by a Mr. Clark of Onehunga, and endorsed by John R Stych of Avondale, but the cheque was found to be a forgery. Abbott hastened to Avondale with his son, arriving at 4.30 pm to find that Stych was already talking with another man, an agent William J Boylan, regarding financial matters. Boylan stated later that “he had not threatened to deal harshly” with Stych. Abbott interrupted this discussion, and met with Stych in a private room. During the next two minutes, Abbott later declared at the coroner’s hearing, he told Stych that steps had to be taken to clear up the matter of the forgery. Stych, according to Abbott, gave no answer. “He appeared”, according to Abbott, “to be in a dazed and dejected state, with a wildness in his eye.”

Abbott thus came to the conclusion that it was going to take longer than he had thought to discuss the matter of the cheque with Stych. He asked for help detaching his horse from his trap waiting outside, so that his son could come in, and everything could be further discussed calmly. The last words Stych said to Abbott was that he’d send a boy out to help sort out the horse, a few minutes before 5 pm.

Coming back from taking his horse to the stable, Abbott said he saw Stych come out the back door of the hotel (possibly Wingate Street side) and then go back in again. Shortly after that, Abbott claimed he heard a “faint explosion, like the shooting of a cork.” He didn’t hear the full blast, as he was hard of hearing. Going back into the hotel, he asked Emma Stych where her husband was. She thought he was still with Abbott, and sent one of the sons, Arthur, to look for his father.

Checking the cellar, Arthur discovered his father lying dead, a wound just below the right ear from a double-barrelled shotgun that had been held close to Stych’s skull. John Stych had made his way to the cellar, fully determined to end his life. In case the shotgun hadn’t worked, he had a loaded revolver in one pocket, and an extra shotgun cartridge in another. A Dr. Girdler was summoned by telephone to the scene (the nearest telephone in those days was miles away), and pronounced that death was instantaneous, while Constable Crean took charge of the weapons found with the body, and reported the tragedy to the district coroner, John Bollard (then MP for Eden). The inquest was held on the afternoon of the next day.

John Bollard was a good friend of Stych, and objected to Abbott’s use of the term “forgery” to describe the cheque which couldn’t be honoured at the Onehunga bank. Bollard declared that there was no evidence presented at the hearing that the cheque was a forgery, and that Abbott must have meant that the cheque had been returned unpaid, and marked in the corner “signature unlike”. Bollard said he raised this “in justice to the deceased.” Abbott, later in a letter to the NZ Herald. protested this strongly declaring that the coroner’s tribunal was not the place to determine whether the cheque had been forged or not. “However much I was disposed to soften its effect, so that his representatives might not be pained, I had no alternative but to speak of things as they were.”

The verdict of the inquiry was “suicide while suffering from temporary insanity, caused by financial difficulties.”

John Stych had been very popular in the Avondale district, not only as the village’s hotel publican, but also as an enthusiastic gardener and member of the local horticultural society. He used to carry off prize after prize at the local shows. For many years prior to moving to Avondale, he worked at the Bycroft mills in Auckland. He left his wife, Emma, and three sons. Emma continued on as the licensee of the hotel until June 1903, when she transferred the license to William Baker (who may, indeed, have been the last of the Avondale Hotel publicans). At the time, the police stated that the hotel was in good order and well conducted. Her husband was buried in Rosebank (now the George Maxwell) Cemetery, his headstone giving no indication of his sad, untimely demise.

The Country Chemist: Robert Joseph Allely

The early days of Avondale were marked by a strong sense of community, our area before the 1940s being little more than a semi-rural backwater, the typical “small town”. One story which underscores that now almost outdated aspect of life is that of Robert Joseph Allely (born c.1867). He was in business in Avondale possible only a little more than 10 years, but helped to save the community in a time of great crisis.

The only monument in our town to this man, our first local pharmacist, is the Allely Building at 2000 Great North Road. The older, two-storey section on the right hand side was the original chemist shop (ground) and dental surgery (top storey). Both were used by Allely because he was, indeed, a combination from time to time seen in his days: pharmacist, dentist, and first-aid doctor. After Dr Aitken in the previous century, he was Avondale’s second source of general medical help, Avondale’s “doctor” of the time.

Robert Allely was born around 1867, the son of immigrants from County Monaghan, Ireland, who had moved to Australia, where Allely was born. Mrs Vera Crawford told me in 2001 (while I interviewed her for Heart of the Whau) that Robert Allely was a little child on the same ship on which her grandmother MacDonald came on, the Queen of the Nations. His family apparently decided to try New Zealand around 1874 (the only time the Queen of Nations came to New Zealand).

They settled in Tauranga, where Allely became apprenticed to a pharmacist. According to Reg Combes in his 1981 book Pharmacy in New Zealand, Allely “showed a willing spirit and business aptitude, and in the late nineties became shop manager with a certificate of registration bearing the early number 548.” It was while he was at Tauranga that he would cycle forty-five kilometres over clay roads to receive tuition in dentistry in Waihi, and in time was granted authority to practice.

From there, he moved to Auckland. He declined an offer of a position in a Queen Street business, instead deciding to set up his own business in Avondale. As Reg Combes said in his article on Allely, the community doubly welcomed a man who was dentist as well as a pharmacist to their village.

In 1910 there was a wooden shop on the site at 2000 Great North Road, beside the (then) new police station. This was replaced by the brick building owned by Robert Alley in 1911. On July 22 that year, the first prescription is recorded as being filled there, on the day Allely’s original pharmacy opened. At the end of the first week, Allely began to have doubts as to the wisdom of turning down the Queen Street position, and a reliable income, for striking out on his own at Avondale. Takings for that first week were only £9. But his wife was apparently a tactful, persuasive soul. She convinced Allely to hang on and have patience with the situation. She was right. The community came to regard Robert Allely as part of the fabric of the town, and called him “Joe”.

His shop would be open until 9 pm. This meant long hours dragging between customers, so Allely invited friends to join him in the back room of the shop, and there they engaged in long, involved conversations on all manner of topics, both local and national. It became known as “The School”, and soon rumours abounded that the group might be “suspect”, a bed of conspiracy and dangerous intrigue. The local constable was sent next door to investigate and stopped to listen at the outside door to the room. During a lull on the conversation, the men inside heard a suspicious sound. Allely rose, opened the door with a rush, and found an embarrassed constable there. The policeman remained to become another member of “The School”.

Robert “Joe” Allely is a forgotten hero of Avondale. During the influenza epidemic of 1918, Allely stepped into the breach that existed in Avondale, with no resident doctor, the nearest hospital distant miles and rough roads away, and people around him living in fear of death striking them down. With volunteers, including his wife, he set up a field hospital on the grounds of the Avondale Racecourse, and called out from his shop to visit the sick in their homes, leaving his shop open and packaged up medicines on his counter for his customers to pick up. Those who could pay anything towards the cost of their medicine dutifully left money in the till. If they couldn’t, they remembered, and paid up honestly after the crisis was over.

Bruce McLaughlan, in his book Blockhouse Bay – A Village within a Town, recorded one memory from that time, about Allely, and his makeshift hospital out on the paddock: “Bob and Vera Blake were both attending school at the time of the influenza epidemic of 1918. A hospital was set up at Avondale racecourse and the local chemist of Avondale, a Mr Allely, ran it. Bob said of the epidemic: “People would go in and say, ‘Haven’t seen old Bill Brown about lately.’ So one of them’d take off and go down and they’d find old Bill Brown either dead in his hut or so ill that he couldn’t get out. And they’d get a cart and get him off to the hospital.”

According to Reg Combes, Allely standardised his formulas, made up bulk preparations, and travelled the length of the district (Blockhouse Bay, Avondale and Waterview) by bicycle with instructions on how to nurse the afflicted, and making arrangements to send the desperate cases to the emergency tent hospital he’d set up. “A Medical Officer of Health was despatched to inspect his makeshift hospital, set up in spite of regulations prohibiting such temporary quarters,” Combes wrote. ”But Robert Allely knew what he was about. The Medical Officer of Health unofficially congratulated him and gratefully left him to carry on in his own way, which he was able to do with the help of his voluntary aides.”

The district was grateful to a hard-working man who had done much to ease people through the epidemic, and helped to keep the death rate down for this area. Allely and his wife were duly presented with an illuminated address, a souvenir booklet containing the names of all the subscribers; a gold watch chain and pendent; and to Mrs. Alley a beautiful case of silver knives and forks. Arthur Morrish, editor of Avondale’s paper The News, wrote in the 25 January 1919 edition:

“The public presentation in Avondale on Wednesday evening … to Mr. R. J. Allely was a fitting tribute to a gentleman who for a period of several weeks during the late epidemic worked night and day in his endeavours to help suffering humanity. Avondale, in common with other places, was without the services of a medical man, but in Mr. Allely the district had a good substitute. His knowledge of medicine and his ability to diagnose symptoms were freely placed at the disposal of anyone needing his services, and it it no exaggeration to say that the number of visits he made to all parts of this and surrounding districts ran into the hundreds. Not one of these visits were charged for …”

The Auckland Star on 23 January 1919 reported on the presentation at the district’s Town Hall (present day Hollywood Cinema), and the comments made by Avondale Road Board chairman Mr. R. B. Nesbitt, who said, “… he was proud to be presiding at such a function, proud to be a friend and fellow citizen of a man who, through his untiring and unselfish labour had done so much for the sufferers of the disastrous epidemic. Towards the latter part of the visitation, Mr. Alley finally collapsed and had to take to his bed and it was with great difficulty his wife kept him there, for he wanted to be up and doing …”

It is sadly likely that the strain of his efforts during that epidemic took their toll on him. Early in the 1920s, he sold his business and left the district, never to return. The business he started still continues, passed from owner through the years and is now the Avondale Pharmacy. The old brick building still stands, remaining as Robert Allely’s only enduring mark upon the history of our suburb. That, and the story of the lives he helped to save in those dark days of 1918.

James MacKenzie statue at Fairlie

The above statue in honour of the legend of James MacKenzie was unveiled in Fairlie, South Canterbury, in 2003. The photo comes from a visit in March 2006, with other members of the executive committee of the NZ Federation of Historical Societies.

According to the sign alongside the statue, MacKenzie arrived in 1855, a Scottish immigrant seeking a better life. He took up a lease near Edendale in Southland, but one of the requirements of the lease was that he stocked the farm with sheep – which he didn’t have. He learned of a route through the mountains from Otago, leading to the basin which today bears his name.

He rustled 1000 sheep from the Rhodes Brothers of the Levels Station near Timaru in the dead of night, and this sparked off a high country pursuit with the law hot on his trail. He was caught a few days later, 4 March 1855, but made his escape. Eventually apprehended, he was sentenced in Lyttleton to 5 years hard labour. His case by now, though, had considerable national notoriety. His frequent escapes from custody added to the legend. He was pardoned in 1856, and left New Zealand forever.

450 kilograms of bronze was used by sculptor Sam Mahon to cast the statue, which is described as “James MacKenzie and his collie dog looking down upon their stolen flock. He faces into the wind, hand held above his valuable “eye dog” poised to do its instinctive duty of silently herding sheep.” The rock on which the statue stands came from the MacKenzie Pass.

"A Record Flight "... on the Kaipara rail line

From the Waitemata News, 19 June 1913.

"Regarding the fine recently imposed on a New Lynn settler, a good story is told of a contractor and the County Engineer, who were travelling on the Kaipara line, on which it is fitting that the incident should have taken place, owing to the velocity of the trains there.

"It is a regulation of the Railways Department that gelignite should not be carried at any cost, and it is a punishable offence for a passenger to take this explosive into a railway carriage. Gerald met Mac at the Auckland station, and both were carrying parcels of like size and wrapping. Gerald's contained gelignite and Mac's contained a plum cake, probably with which to regale the Helensville girls with. Both stood on the platform next the guard's van and placed their respective parcels at their feet.

"All went well, till the train was about to leave one of the way stations -- which we will call Whakapukatitree, for the sake of argument -- but here the starting jolt of the train caused one of the parcels to fall directly in front of the wheel of the guard's van. Both sports noticed this, and to the astonishment of the guard both hopped with alacrity off the train. Mac beating Gerald by an eyelash in a hundred yards sprint for safety.

"Fortunately, it was the plum cake that was cut in half and not the explosive, and a calamity was averted.

"On seeing what had really resulted, the pair speedily overhauled the train, now moving out of the station, and explained to the guard that they had simultaneously seen a coin lying in the road and had contested for its possession. They escaped a fine, but -- all men are liars."

Raceday rail tribulations: 1885

From the NZ Herald, 7 April 1885.

"The railway management in connection with the Ellerslie races was not so good yesterday as on Saturday, possibly because there was a larger crowd to handle. Still, when a train takes over an hour to run five miles, and gets into town long after the cabs and omnibuses which started when the train had left the racecourse platform for Auckland, even Job himself would growl.

"Last evening a train left Ellerslie about ten minutes to six o'clock, leaving 300 people on the racecourse, and got stuck at Remuera. After some delay a train came out from Auckland and passed it. A fresh start was then made for Newmarket, when another long delay occurred, apparently waiting for a second train to come out from Auckland, during which interval the delayed train could have gone to Auckland four times over.

"Some people got out and walked to town.

"At last the town train came out, and the Ellerslie train got in motion, but only to make a retrograde movement under the Remuera bridge, and thence shunted to the Kaipara line siding. This was the last straw which broke the camel's back. Hundreds in the train began to hoot and yell. There were loud calls for the Railway Manager, but that functionary, if about, prudently kept out of view.

"In a few minutes the train got underweigh again, and, amid a chorus of hootings and groans, moved out of the station. At the Auckland railway station, which were reached past seven o'clock, three groans were given for the Railway Manager, which were given as heartily as it was possible to do, and having thus eased their feeling, they separated to their several homes."

A curious case of mistaken identity ...

From the Auckland Star, 7 April 1920.

"A curious case of mistaken identity comes from the Henderson district. A farmer missed his cow from a paddock, and nowhere could the cow be found till some time later, on passing through Avondale he saw what he took to be his missing crumpled horn quietly grazing in a field by the roadside.

"Full of righteous anger he straightaway accused the owner of the field with being in wrongful possession of his best milker. The new possessor just as hotly denied any evil, declaring he had brought back the cow at a local sale of farm stock, and declined to be summarily dispossessed.

"The owner thereupon sought the aid of the police, and subsequent inquiry bore out the story of the new proprietor. It appears that when the sale in question was being held a drover was sent to Henderson to bring in an outlying cow to the sale. He failed to discover the animal in the paddock, but while returning saw one tallying to the description feeding in a cemetery, and without more ado gathered her in, and she was duly sold.

"When the police instituted inquiries to clear the mystery the cow for which the drover was sent was discovered grazing in the paddock in which she was originally supposed to be, and upon the two animals being compared they were found to be as like as Siamese twins. The tangle was unravelled by the purchaser consenting to an exchange."

The End of the Music: the Passing of the Gluepot Pub

Something I wrote many, many moons ago, in response to someone wanting info for a school project.

The Gluepot Pub, on the corner of Jervois and Ponsonby Road in Ponsonby, Auckland, started in 1903 under a more august name: The Ponsonby Hotel. However, over the 91 years it existed, it also went by the name Three Lamps, after the local landmark demarcation point for the city horse buses then trams in the first half of the 20th century, and especially after the local businessmen’s association had an imitation set affixed to the front of the building in the early 1950s, following the demise of the original set.

But, to Aucklanders in the main, it was the Gluepot, derived from a glue factory next door which “served many timber joiners and furniture makers in the area”, according to the Auckland City Harbour News (1994).

Dominion Breweries bought the pub in the early 1940s, and rebuilt it in concrete in 1947 apparently after the wooden verandah was demolished. It was later expanded to provide extra storage and cooling facilities, and by the 1970s had two bottle shops, a wholesaler and five bars. One of the bars, the Vista Bar, held special memories for quite a number of local residents. One, Kerry Bracewell of Herne Bay, wrote in June 1994 in the local paper: “[it was] one of the few old fashioned public bars in the area where a working class person can go after work and relax in a comfortable atmosphere. It also fulfils a similar role for a number of elderly, less well-off members of the community. It is also irreplaceable as a serious live music venue.”

It was as a music venue, after the advent of the “rock’n’roll era”, that the Gluepot achieved legendary status in the minds of many Aucklanders. It was a well-known base for local bands, such as Hello Sailor in the 1970s, and saw other artists and bands such as Graham Brazier, DD Smash and Blam Blam Blam play there. International stars such as Mick Jagger, Midnight Oil and Canned Heat were also hosted. The sound of drums beating into the night is still fondly remembered.

However, around the Gluepot, Ponsonby was changing. The former working class suburb started to drastically alter as the district was seen as upmarket, the place of residences for professionals and the well-to-do. Wally James, a staff member who had worked there for 24 years, told the local paper that “it was on the cards” that the pub would be sold. “Once 5 Polynesians came in for 5 crates of beer. Now you get 1 yuppy for a bottle of wine and a six-pack”. In its heyday, the Gluepot had 78 staff. By mid 1994, that was down to 30.

A concerted effort was tried at the last minute to try to save the pub. Dominion Breweries negotiated the sale of the Gluepot in early May 1994 to Westmark Investments, and from then until the end of October, when it closed over Labour Weekend, ‘Operation Gluepot” ran a frantic campaign of faxes and letters, appeals to Auckland City and local politicians, as well as appeals to the Historic Places Trust for heritage protection, especially on the grounds of a 140-year-old well believed to be under the site. The sale went through on 30 October, and in early November the Historic Places Trust announced it could only offer a category 2 status – not enough to prevent the Gluepot being gutted for redevelopment. Ironically, and perhaps tragically, the full protection status only came through in early January 1995, after the building effectively was no more.

The first Whau publicans: the Priestley brothers

On 28 July 1861, land agent Michael Wood sold seven sections of land partly bounded by Great North Road, Rosebank Road, a new road called Princes Street (the stub of which is now called Elm Street), and a cross-road which no longer exists called Victoria Street (around where the Peninsula Inn is today). The buyers were traders, brothers John and Charles Priestley, who arrived in Auckland on the Imaum from Hobart in 1854. They were based in Opotiki for at least the next five years, where Charles was convicted and fined £6 16/- 8d including costs for aggravated assault and knocking out five teeth of one William Wilcox in 1856.

The brothers purchased the corner site, in the heart of the future Avondale Shopping Centre, for £200. By April 1862, John Priestley had secured the first hotel license in West Auckland for the Whau Hotel, described in 1863 as “the large and handsome two story house of 10 rooms, well finished, painted, and papered,” complete with outhouses, stables, and a “well of good water” (from the spring which still runs down from Station Hill and on along part of the Rosebank Peninsula), and two acres of land. The brothers were onto a good thing: with no other licensed hotel between Edgcombe’s Great Northern at Western Springs and the Waitakere Ranges, along with the military blockhouse just a few miles distant on the Manukau Harbour and the promise of a Whau Canal, they stood to be quite successful in the enterprise of hotel-keeping in this district.

The Priestleys’ hotel was associated with another more tragic first: West Auckland’s first documented case of possible death by drinking. Hugh Henry of Titirangi went off on horseback to Auckland city on the 15th of November 1862. On the way there, he stopped at the Whau Hotel, and Charles Priestley served him with ginger beer. Henry returned from the city in a spring cart pulled by his mare, and met up with Priestley and one of Priestley’s friends driving back in Priestley’s cart. All three had “a nobbler of brandy each” at the Great Northern. Arriving at the Whau Hotel, Henry stayed there two hours, drank three glasses of rum, and took 1½ pints with him when he left. He returned 10 minutes later, saying he had broken the bottle, and asked for more. He was found the next morning in a gully near his home, underneath his overturned cart, the mare still attached. He died shortly afterward at his home.

The Priestleys decided to sell the hotel in June 1863. But, by September the hotel remained unsold, and now William Swanson forced a sale. In December, the hotel was sold – and the Priestleys left the district. The hotel was to remain on that site, now that of Ray White Real Estate and adjacent buildings, until at least 1870.

Freeman's Bay in 1872

Before the Auckland Gas Company set up shop along Beaumont Street (indeed, probably a bit before there even was much of a Beaumont Street), before the main reclamation which extended beyond Drake Street to create the Auckland City Council destructor site (now Vic Park Market), Victoria Park itself, and the Wynyard Point harbour board land extending out into the Waitemata, obliterating completely the inlet once called a true bay ... someone working for the Auckland Evening Star wrote a description of a little place called Freeman's Bay, a small suburb of the young City where the streams were still visible and open to the sky, and the rich had not yet established themselves on the Ponsoby ridge looking down upon the working people's homes below. The only pollution concern in the early 1870s was a bone-and-dust mill. From a decade later, the black soot and tar from the gas company works would darken the neighbourhood, as more and more small houses were built to be the dwellings of workers for the surrounding industries. But, that was the future. The following comes from the 15 November 1872 edition of the paper.

Freeman’s Bay, or rather the line of houses and stores bearing the name in front of the actual bay, lies innocently enough in the sleepy hollow between Victoria-street and College-road, and has a character of its own. The inhabitants, all independent voters, are a peculiar people, with their little whims and dogmas, and love of scandal.

The place was famous a year ago for its noisy dogs and curly innocents, but the animals have mostly disappeared, and the children are a trifle nearer maturity. The Bay community claims with some degree of pride the credit of occupying one of the most ancient of Auckland’s peopled settlements, which had its appellation from an old squatter, who reared its first domicile, and lived a freeman there among savages.

The many-shaped houses, with the hues of time upon them, at once strike the eye, and impress the beholder with the idea that this retired locality, resting half-way up Fortune’s hill, is the retreat of a separate and distinct people. The shops, it is true, are not of the liveliest description, but they are sufficiently stored for the modest wants of the Bayites. The round-about views, intersected with patches of green sward, are agreeable, and might, without exaggeration, be termed picturesque.

On the water you may sometimes observe dingies, cargo, and other boats, which at low tide are mud-fixed, and then you see small mud-larks wading knee-deep after nothing. Farther out on the gleaming water you observe formidable yachts floating, and the little Gemini steaming to and fro between the wharf and Riverhead with its freight of merchandise, whilst far beyond, if the summer sun be in a smiling mood, you descry the shingled roofs of Stokes’ Point, and nearer still St Mary’s Convent, and the Church of All Saints.

Overlooking the bay stands the old block-house with its martial memories, and lower still the busy woodman plies his dividing saw that the wood may be fairly distributed among the neighbours. The facetious Bay people call the lorn, empty immigration barracks the “salting-down-house”, in honour of some honest bacon dealer who once used the place for salting purposes. They love a joke, are fond of niceties, and take water-cresses and cake with their tea, as you will find it if you are lucky enough to sit down at one of their luxurious tables.

The white bone-and-dust mill does not add to the rustic beauty of this locality of self-supporting people. Freeman’s Bay has its butcher, baker, crockery-man, green-grocer, dress-maker, tea-dealer, water-poet, tavernist, and happy brace of working shoe-makers, who can sing a song and talk politics with the firm belief that there is nothing like leather.

The Bayites generally are an amiable people. Now and then on a Saturday evening or on flush days there is a local buzz, and a small row is usually softened down at the bar of a by-house. These infrequent deviations from the straight line will occur, but it is encouraging to observe that the Bay people, in conjunction with the highway authorities are mending their ways, so that that which is crooked will ere long be made straight.

Binsted’s Corner

Story of the South St Judes Street Block (part 3)

At one point, in the first two decades of the 20th century, around half of James Palmer’s “Greytown” block of Blake Street land between St Georges Road, the railway line and the unnamed stream was owned by the Binsted family. This truly was “Binsted’s Corner” to many Avondale residents from a time shortly after we came to be known as Avondale, until well into the next century. The family name however survives only as the name of a road in New Lynn close to the location of an abattoir and farm they once owned.

The story of Lots 1 to 6 of Palmer’s “Greytown” subdivision begins with mortgages.

In July 1883, James Palmer, former hotelkeeper in Avondale, took out a mortgage with the Bank of New South Wales. He was soon in financial strife. The Long Depression was biting hard, land sales were slowing down, and he certainly felt the effects. In April 1884, the bank forced a £500 sale of Lots 1 to 5 to Frank Marriott Morley, an Avondale settler, where the bank received their mortgage money back (£362 10/-) and Palmer the rest (£137 10/-). The bank then cleared Palmer’s land at Lot 6 of any mortgage entitlements – but he took out two more on that remaining land, one from a Mr. Wastenays in October 1885, and another from a Mr. Stephens in October 1886. Stephens transferred his entitlement to Wastenays a few days later, and a month later Palmer had completely defaulted, with Wastenay’s assuming full title in December 1886. Wastenays himself took out yet another mortgage with Edward Wilhy in February 1888, and must have defaulted on this himself, as Wilhy had full title in September 1891 when he sold Lot 6 to Walter John Binsted, a steward, in that month.

The Binsted family

John and Mary Binsted arrived in New Zealand on 31 May 1873 on the Woodcock out of London with their six children: Henry (b.1851), James (b.1852), Walter John – who was to be the first to purchase on the Blake Street block (b.1856) -- and three daughters. Family members say that before 1879, the family had a butchery business on Drake Street in Freeman’s Bay, before the reclamations that created Victoria Park, “when Drake Street ran along and parallel with the foreshore of the Waitemata”, according to notes I received in 2001. Postal directory records of the time show that a John Binsted, coachbuilder, was in Freeman’s Bay in 1878–1881, and then by at least 1883 Henry and James had formed a partnership operating as butchers from Billington’s Buildings (which, because references vary between saying the address was Drake Street or Patteson Street – the present-day Victoria Street West – it may be that the shop was just to the east of what is now Victoria Park Market.) They apparently exported corned beef in kegs to the Pacific Islands from their Drake Street premises, advertising in the 1882 Auckland Directory. Hardly surprising that they took advantage of their location so close to what was then the foreshore and the harbour wharves. It is likely, however, that this trade was swamped by R & W Hellaby entering the field of canned meats, dominating the market by the mid 1880s.

The 1884 “Greytown” map does not show a store, or any building, existing on the corner site. Frank (or Francis) Morley is listed as a storekeeper in the Wises’ Directory for 1885/1886 in Avondale; there was then no record of H & J Binsted here. Three sections of an allotment in New Lynn, just across the Whau Creek from the racecourse, were purchased by Walter, Henry and James Binsted in March and August of 1887 from an Avondale farmer named John Simpson. The family records state that property was purchased in 1887 by the family “on the banks of the Whau River for use as a farm and abattoirs”. This was the site of the future Binsted Road Reserve, later Rewa Park, now Ken Maunder Park in New Lynn. The butchery business in Avondale may have started around this time, in conjunction with the establishment of the abattoir over the creek.

I would say that the business began in Avondale in c.1888. Morley had left the written record by c.1887, which would have meant the store was vacant. Most likely, the early 1890s was when the somewhat famous photo of the Five Roads intersection was taken, the one showing “H & J Binsted, Family Butchers” on the right hand side, and on the left, with horses and riders and buses in between, is a building graced with a Brown, Barrett & Co advertisement for their imported beverages (namely teas and coffees). The head of Brown Barrett & Co was one John McKail Geddes – who, it so happened, took ownership of Lots 1 through to 5 across the road, including Binsted’s Corner, in March 1889.

The old shop on the corner

Frank Morley, on purchasing the corner site from Palmer and the Bank of New South Wales, took out a mortgage on the property that same day with William Dallen. This may have been so Morley had the necessary finance to build his store. Dallen transferred his interest to William Cornes of Whangarei in August 1886, just as the Long Depression was starting to bite, and in the same year that Palmer defaulted on the adjoining Lot 6. Sometime after this, Morley must have also defaulted, leaving Cornes with the title, which he sold to Geddes in 1889 for £530, only £30 more than what Morley had paid in 1884, and including “all buildings thereon erected.” The earliest written record of H & J Binsted operating a butchery business in Avondale in the in Wises directory for 1892/1893. However, by October 1888, “Binsted’s corner” had become an Avondale landmark, as the Road Board authorised John Bollard to extend the culvert to that corner. This leads me to estimate that Cornes leased the building to Henry and James Binsted sometime around 1888, the year after the New Lynn farm was purchased. James and his wife Elizabeth moved from Richmond to Avondale in 1889, living in St Georges Road by 1910.

Henry Binsted died at his home in Cameron Street, Ponsonby, on 3 September 1895, of typhoid fever. The original Freeman’s Bay business continued until c.1909, when around that time a new branch was opened on New North Road at Mt Albert. In the meantime, however, James Binsted had purchased the Avondale corner site, all five lots, from Geddes for £750 in April 1902, and took out a mortgage from Geddes for £650 (repaid to Geddes’ widow in full by 1911, after the move from Ponsonby to Mt Albert.) In May 1901 James purchased Lot 6 from his brother Walter, and so the family owned the entire north-western corner of Palmer’s “Greytown” subdivision.

James Binsted is said to have been a small-built man, who wore a bowler hat most of the time (some have said he was balding). His Avondale shop had a cashier, where you would pay for the meat, and a counter where the meat was served. Binsted’s delivered to a wide area, and were known to “dress-up” cuts of meat for those who couldn’t afford the more expensive cuts. In old photos available, meat can be clearly seen hanging outside under the shop’s Blake St verandah. In the days before refrigeration, this was the best way to keep meat cool, in the hope of a passing breeze.

Fires, flyers and golden-toothed dogs

James Binsted and his shop were prominent in the beginnings of the Avondale shopping centre. His clientele would have come from miles around, serving West Auckland as well as Avondale itself. In September 1904, he donated 5/- towards the cost of forming a footpath in Blake Street, outside his shop. This was the corner which (two former residents recalled being told) people from the Auckland Asylum near Pt Chevalier would head for on walks from the asylum to the corner of Blake Street and Great North Road, sitting on the grass outside Binsted’s shop for a while, then walking back to the asylum again. Binsted was also one of the first four to share the first telephone line into Avondale (the others were the Avondale Road Board, Archibald Brothers, and Philp up on Browne Street) in 1913.

A photo apparently taken in 1905 (part of the Henderson Library collection) shows what appears to be stables behind the butchers shop along St Georges Road (Lot 3) and a large gable-roofed building immediate adjacent (possibly Lot 4). This latter building may have been the scene of the first of two fires on the corner site. In January 1907 in was reported that the boiling-down works building beside the butchery burned down, probably due to fat boiling over and spilling along the floor, igniting the fires under the boilers and setting everything alight. Three boilers plus stock of tallow and skins were destroyed.

The worst fire however caused the complete destruction of the 1885 store. One evening in December 1917 flames were noticed coming from the rear of Binsted’s shop. The entire building burned down; despite the arrival of the Mt Albert fire brigade nothing could be done because of lack of water supply. The only thing left standing was the brick chimney. “A few small items were saved but the flames spread too quickly to allow of much being done …During the day other premises across the road were made available and on Monday morning business was conducted as usual. It was only a few days since that Mr. Binsted had had the premises repainted and generally smartened up for Xmas,” the News reported.

However, James Binsted rebuilt the store and carried on. A 1958 Whites aviation photo (republished in Challenge of the Whau) shows a sole hipped-roofed building standing on what was otherwise a vacant section.

In September 1908 Thomas Elwood and Henry Wickman began the process of purchasing Lot 6 from James Binsted, but things fell through. The deal was completed in March 1911, with Elwood withdrawing from the purchase for a shilling, and Wickman (a builder and insurance agent) going on to take out a mortgage. In the tradition of this part of Avondale’s land ownership history, he seems to have defaulted sometime after 1915, and a Mr. Buchanan sold to property to a Mr. McGlone in 1920. McGlone may have subdivided the section into the present day numbers 9 and 7 St Judes Street. The larger section was owned by Alfred Cook by 1931. Today, it’s the site of General Equipment (from 1965).

McGlone sold the smaller section to a Mr. Farley in 1923, then came a Mr. Sharp in 1924. In December 1926, Sharp sold the property to Cecil Herdson.

Herdson was Avondale’s first true dentist, taking up business in the upper level offices in Allely’s Building in the early 1920s (there by 1925). He has left behind his share of local legends and lore, including the often reported one where his gundog, on losing all his teeth in a hunting accident, was duly fitted with a complete set by Herdson made entirely of gold. Quite a few believed the tall tale, because it is said that when the dog died, there was a “gold rush” of sorts by those determined to work out where the small treasure had been interred with the deceased canine.

The Binsted’s New Lynn farm and slaughterhouse achieved a measure of fame in August 1913 when the intrepid flyers Sandford and Miller had to make a forced landing on a glide after their engines failed, coming to a halt in the paddock and “against Binsted’s slaughterhouse” beside the Rewa Rewa creek in New Lynn. However accidental the connection, the land was to remain known as the site of the landing of the country’s first cross-country flight (all of 3 miles, at 70 mph.) In 1916, the road leading to the farm was dedicated and named by the New Lynn Town Board “Binsted’s Road” (the only remaining memorial to this enterprising family).

James Binsted’s death and the years after

The next portion of land sold off went in August 1919 to the “Inhabitants of the Avondale Road Board.” This was the majority of Lot 3 to the Board, adjoining the Public Hall, for the purpose of “providing exits from the purchasers property … and also for the purposes of a yard and storage in connection with the said Board’s local public work.” Until 1924, this would have been a works depot, therefore, until the shifting of the old wooden Public Hall to its present position, beside the completed Town Hall (now Hollywood Cinema). The sliver of land left may have been the site of a tailor’s premises. According to Challenge of the Whau: “Before the old Avondale hall was moved there was a shop between it and Binsted’s butchery. For a time it was used by a tailor. In the early 1920s a Mr George used the premises. He advertised his services as a family photographer, a picture framer and a maker of guitars.”

James Binsted died 28 October 1920. In his will, dated 1913, his wife Elizabeth Mowbray Binsted and son-in-law Harold Bollard (son of John Bollard, noted Avondale early land owner and politician) were the executors and trustees, tasked to carry on the business in Elizabeth’s lifetime, with the business to come under the management of James’ son John Claude Binsted. On his mother’s death, John was to inherit the business, “also the plant, horses and carts, stock in trade, and book debts in and about the slaughterhouse, shop and premises.” (Elizabeth Binsted, by the way, was one of the daughters of noted 19th century Auckland architect Matthew Henderson, who designed the tower and portico for St Andrews Church in Symonds Street in 1882, and the verandahs and turrets for Alberton in 1870.)

In September 1920, the Avondale shop and land at Lots 1, 2 and the remainder of Lot 3 was sold to R&W Hellaby’s for £3090. James’ son John Claude Binsted continued to serve as manager of the Avondale R & W Hellaby’s shop. The business continued until into the late 1950s. However, from May 1946, the corner site was owned by Albert Graven. He was to have the old shop demolished and the present-day block of shops built on the site by around 1960.

The next land to be sold from James Binsted’s holdings was Lot 4. This was finally sold to the Avondale Borough Council in May 1923, but not without a great deal of negotiating. Harold Bollard as executor offered the section beside the butcher’s shop complete with stables, to the Council for £450 in 1922. In February, the Board felt the price was too high, and asked for a reconsideration. A lower price wasn’t forthcoming, and so the matter was left.

In November, the new Borough Council obtained option to buy the land, and by the next May the land had been bought, for the same price. It became the Borough Council Depot for storing their road-making machinery, and the City Council depot after 1927. By the 1970s, it was in light-industrial use. Mr Bob Browne recalled that in the 1930s-1940s there was a big shed near the depot housing the council’s wood-fired steamroller, which always had to have coal put in before it could go out onto the roads.

Next, the slaughterhouse in New Lynn was closed down in 1922-24. It is still uncertain as to what exactly happened to cause the closure. The Binsted family certainly held onto much of their New Lynn land until 1955 (before then, they’d placed objections in 1927 as to the site apparently gifted in the 1920s being used as a night soil dump, and in the 1940s it was the Council rubbish tip). In 1956 the remaining reserve land (part had been sold already for industrial use) was named Rewa Park, and renamed Ken Maunder Park in 1970.

Finally, Elizabeth Binsted died in 1937, and the remaining section, Lot 5 (number 5 St Judes Street) was transferred to Harold Bollard as survivor in 1958. In 1924 it had been leased to Catherine Kayes as what would appear to be, going by the memorandum of agreement of the time, effectively a market garden. It was finally sold in 1966; any connection the Binsted family had with the corner was thus at an end from that point.

Today, the corner is noted mainly for the motor mower and chainsaws shop on the corner (once a curtains store). It doesn’t really have a landmark name like “Binsted’s Corner” anymore, nor the sight of meat hanging in the sun under the verandah just feet away from the dust of the Five Roads intersection. Few would know that there is history there, stretching back more than 120 years. Few also remember the family who were so much a part of Avondale’s early story, who were also related by marriage to the Bollards, the Waygoods (Henry Waygood built the car garage which still stands, as T J Automotive today) and the Myers from the blacksmith’s and wheelwright’s yard just up the Blake Street hill.

Their story is just one of many yet to be discovered in this area so full of stories of what once was.

Additional information:

Audrey Binsted, who spent years researching the family history and compiled the timeline used in my article on “Binsted’s Corner”, has written to me that James Binsted owned Lot 5 of 8 to 10 section 41 Drake St Freemans Bay. Pulmans Register map of City of Auckland 1863 shows all the lots. The house where James and Elizabeth lived was just above the butchers shop in Blake St not St Georges Rd. There were other Binsted survivors still alive at time of Elizabeth Mowbray Binsted's death. Her son Henry Binsted headmaster died 1976 and his younger brother James engineer who died in 1974. Harold Bollard was a son in law husband of the late Rosa Binsted who died in 1955.

Also in St Judes St (Blake St) on opposite side of the road just above Geddes Tce was the home of John Claude Binsted and his wife Louise (Myers) at 12 St Judes St. They lived there from 1916. John Claude Binsted died 22 July 1950 and his wife stayed on there until she died in 1972 when the house was sold.

Pistons and Hoofbeats …

Story of the South St Judes Street Block (Part 2)

Former hotelkeeper James Palmer sold Lots 8 and 7 to James Forsyth of Whangarei on 16 January 1886. It’s doubtful that Forsyth did anything with the land, except tenant it out to others for income. One of these may well have been William Myers, who came to New Zealand c.1895, starting up a family blacksmithing business on Blake Street (now St Jude’s) that was to continue until the early 1960s. In two separate transactions in 1903, the Myers family bought Lots 7 and 8 from James Forsyth: on the 8th of August Thomas and Burton Myers purchased Lot 8 for £47 10/-, while two days later their father William bought Lot 7 for the same amount. They may already have been tenants of Forsyth’s, but with the price of the land so cheap there may not have been much in the way of buildings on the site at time of purchase.

The Myers family

The Myers smithy was not the first on this block. The 1884 subdivision map clearly shows a forge marked on Lot 6, present-day site of General Equipment. It is uncertain exactly who that early blacksmith would have been.

In 1908 William Myers was joined in the business by his son Thomas (1881-1967). Thomas Myers’ was more than simply a farrier (Thomas wouldn’t do a lot of work for the Jockey Club, his son Roger told me in 2001, as he considered thoroughbreds as “too flighty, a young man’s job”) – he also did a lot of work for market gardeners, both in Avondale and as far afield as Oratia and Henderson. He’d do repairs to plows, disks, and harrows. Farmers would bring up to the shed 3 or 4 spades at a time, to have handles repaired. In land transaction records, he’s referred to as a carriage builder, but he also made up wheelbarrows. As a wheelwright, he would repair wagons, virtually anything that could be drawn by animals, so his son says, including drays and milk vendors carts.

William Burton Myers (born c.1882), his brother, was a carpenter and builder by trade. He lived for a time in Blockhouse Bay, on the corner of Terry Street and Blockhouse Bay Roads, then shifted to live in St Heliers by the late 1930s. His nephew Roger Myers recalls that at one time Burton jointly owned the Allely Building in the Avondale shopping centre possibly with his brother Thomas and sister Louise, and that Roger did some painting for his uncle around the back of the building. He would often be given painting jobs to do by his uncle.

Possibly in the early 1920s, the original smithy building burned down. There had already been some close calls before this. Around Christmas Eve 1915 there was an apparent arson attempt made to destroy the property in a period of suspicious or mysterious fires on the block. From the mid-1920s until around the time of William Myers’ death, Lot 7 was shared by the Myers’ with Joe Willoughby, recalled by Roger Myers to have been associated with the Avondale Jockey Club, possibly even as a Clerk of the Course.

William Myers died in 1927, leaving his properties on Blake Street, Roberton Road and in Blockhouse Bay to his sons Thomas and Burton, and daughter Louisa Binsted. Thomas Myers already had full title to Lot 8 (13 St Judes St) from 1925 (after the two brothers sold the lot to their father in 1920 for £150, who then sold it back to Thomas for £170 in February 1925), and was a co-title holder of Lot 7 (11 St Judes St) with his brother and sister from 1939 until 1947, from which date he had sole title over both lots. Before William Myers’ death, however, he apparently rented or leased Lot 8 out to a number of occupiers right from 1911 at least, so a building or dwelling of some type must have existed there from that time. And then, around 1925, there appears on the local postal directories for that address - the Avondale Service Station.

Avondale Service Station (c.1925-c.1939)

In 1994, Challenge of the Whau referred to the owner of the Avondale Service Station, a garage “situated below the railway crossing on the hill above Avondale on the road to Mt Albert”, as a “Mr. Bamford.” His name, however, was Harlan F. Bashford, and as at 1925 date he was one of the earliest service station proprietors in the Avondale area. His only competition would have been Triggs’ and Stuart’s establishments on the Great North Road. For those travellers heading straight through to Mt Albert one way, and New Lynn and Henderson the other, he was the most convenient of the three. He didn’t time the emergence of his business well, for in March 1925 that the Great North Road was concreted. This would have severely diminished the trade to his premises, drivers being more likely to travel along the new road.

The buildings on the site may both date from this mid-1920s period. To the rear, tucked in out of sight behind the present-day Darby & Helm workshop, is an old bungalow, not painted for years, and only really visible from the section presently used by the used car parts dealers next door. This building seems to have been number 15 St Jude’s St. According to the postal directories, number 15 appeared to be occupied from c.1924, although there is no separate subdivision on Council’s cadastral maps. First occupier appears to have been Ernest H. L. Von Sturmer, a paper merchant, then Lawrence W. Bougher, a fireman (1926/1927), and finally Bashford.

The larger building on the site may be a slightly enlarged version of the original service station from 1925. Certainly, the layout is similar to that of another former service station of the period that still exists (Trigg’s Garage, now part of the Avondale Spiders showroom on Great North Road) and Stuart’s Garage which burnt down in the late 1920s (but which can be seen from contemporary photos). Bashford may have had a simple footpath bowser type of operation, given the narrowness of the section, with possibly vehicle servicing in the main workshop.

Bashford wasn’t in Avondale very long. By c.1931, he was no longer living in the rear bungalow at no.15, and by c.1932, the Avondale Service Station had been renamed Avondale Motors, managed by Bert Ivil. Around 1937, the manager was an L. J. Preston, who seems to have only operated for less than two years before the workshop was empty. Roger Myers recalled that for a couple of years the building was unused, except as a storage area, “chock full” of vehicles belonging to a repossession company in the city.

Then, around 1941, Ossie Darby and Dick Helm came to Avondale, and started the business of Darby & Helm.

Darby & Helm (c.1941-2007)

According to John McIntyre, they met during the building of the Arapuni Dam (completed 1929). Ossie Darby was a master mechanic, clever with steelwork; Dick Helm was a storekeeper-cum-photographer employed by the government. He was also a very clever and competent welder, according to Roger Myers.

During the Second World War, they specialised in fitting “gas producers” to cars, in the time of petrol restrictions and rationing. These were “retorts”, cylinders mounted on the front fender of the car, used to burn char or charcoal to produce gases which were conducted to another cylinder on the other fender, cooled, mixed with air, then burned to power the engine. Darby & Helm tried convincing their landlord Thomas Myers to convert his Essex to the gas producer system, but he declined. It’s no wonder he did – with Ossie Darby’s descriptions of his trips down to Arapuni from time to time. He would stop along the way to stoke up the gas producer with coke, pulling out the embers as he did so; thus accidentally setting fire to the grass beside the road.

Darby & Helm are also said to have designed and built a muffler, built from a heavier gauge of steel than normal ones. When this was shown to wholesalers in the City it was agreed that the muffler’s design was so good it would probably outlast the rest of the car. But there was the rub: what good was that? Such an innovation, without the same obsolescence, would mean they’d sell less replacement mufflers. The deal fell through.

Roger Myers worked for Darby & Helm from the late 1940s. He described them as being great to work for – they weren’t just the bosses, they were part of the workforce, too. During his time they also specialised in building trailers and caravan chassis, as well as car towbars.

Lots 7 and 8 was finally purchased from Thomas Myers by Darby & Helm in 1962, when Thomas Myers retired. They must have leased Lot 7, number 11 St Judes Street, out to Mervyn C Hardy between 1962 and 1965. He was a car wrecker, part of the continuing 20th century heritage of light industrial land use on the block (with Darby & Helm to the east of him, and General Equipment to the west). John McIntyre recalls that Hardy had an Austin 7 up on a pole outside his business for some years.

Ossie Darby had a stroke and died, sometime around 1980. Dick Helm maintained the business for a while, but then sold everything to Pierre Halvic Piper in March 1982. Piper is the landowner of both Lots 7 and 8 today (2004).

Land of the "Paragon"

Story of the South St Judes Street Block (Part 1)

(Photo: "Dingle Dell".)

The lines on the old 1884 deposited plan are a bit of a hotchpotch. In an area of land bounded by the road known then as the New North Road (which we now know as St Judes Street), the Kaipara Railway line, the road to the brickyard (now St Georges Road) and one of at least two Government Roads in old Avondale (now called Chalmers Street) – the surveyor hired by former hotelier James Palmer drew his lines. For one thing, a curvy unnamed creek snaked its way across his plan, distorting the rear boundaries of all the properties. Also, a new street was dedicated, and marked out (but unnamed). This was in later years to become Ahiriri Street. Then there was the buildings already on the land, in one case going back to 1867 (the Public Hall, where now stands the Hollywood Cinema) and a blacksmith’s forge. These meant the lines that were normally straight across that pesky creek became oddly angled close to St Georges Road, and at the site of the old forge, Lot 6 made extra wide compared with the other parcels of land. The railway line, surveyed in the 1870s, land taken for the purpose by 1878, left the southern end of Layard Street cut off from the rest of the road (an unformed road now a green swathe leading to Chalmers Street today), and made the lots just below it jagged and irregular in shape.

This was part of the second “Greytown” sale, the auction advertised for December 9 1883 at noon at D F Evans’ mart in Queen Street in the city, on terms of “One third cash, the balance can remain for 5 or 10 years at 8 percent, or can be paid off at any time.” You can see a copy of that auction map at the Avondale Community Library today.

The surveyor and the speculator

This land was originally part of a great area of land, Allotment 64. This was originally around 54 acres, bounded (although these roads did not exist then) by Blockhouse Bay Road, Rosebank Road, Great North Road and Chalmers Street.

I thank Mr. Cullen Szeto of Szeto Visique Optometrists (2022 Great North Road) for donating to the Avondale-Waterview Historical Society a copy of a valuable historical background report by Infinite Enterprise International Ltd. completed c.1987 for one of the then-owners of the Page’s Building. It is a good summary of research into the early land titles for the area.

In 1845, Thomas Florence purchased Allotment 64 from the Crown on crown grant. According to The Infinite Enterprise report, he was a surveyor who came to New Zealand in 1834, one of the earliest surveyors in Auckland, working from North Cape to Castle Hill in the Coromandel area. He may have been the same Thomas Florence, a surveyor and settler in Tasmania in 1818, who had been asked by the Lt. Governor there to survey Macquarie Harbour. Whereas others bought land in the then-Whau District purely on the basis of land speculation, Florence owned his allotment until 1862. It was likely farmed, and possibly the land was leased out for use as grazing. It would have been sloping country (present day Avondale residents can testify to the steepness of the climb up Crayford, St Judes and Chalmers Streets), possibly best suited to cattle, foraging in the scrub.

The farm was sold to Daniel Lockwood on 2 September 1862. He was a hotelkeeper, licensee of the Prince of Wales Hotel in Hobson Street, and a landowner in the central city area. Not much is known about him at this stage, but he on-sold the farm to Thomas Russell seven months later.

There is a considerable amount of information known about Thomas Russell however (1830-1904). Four years before he purchased Allotment 64 he had founded NZ Insurance Co., and in 1861 he formed the Bank of New Zealand. He and his friends, among the number included shipowner Thomas Henderon (founder of Henderson’s Mill, which later became Henderson), (Sir) John Logan Campbell, (Sir) Frederick Whittaker, and flour miller Josiah Firth, all of whom were fellow capitalists and speculators.

According to the 1987 report, Russell appears to have immediately subdivided the farm into 48 lots, named it Greytown (likely after then-Governor Sir George Grey), and dedicated three new roads for the subdivision: Cracroft Street, Blake Street (these likely named after heroes of the Taranaki War), and Layard Street (the reasoning for this name is even more speculative – it could be after Sir Austen Henry Layard, a noted archeologist of the time).

I had believed that land speculator Michael Wood (earlier subdivider of land further north he dubbed “Waterview” in 1861) had been the organiser of the Greytown subdivision. Instead, according to the 1987 report, he had been the one to buy all except for 6 lots at the original 3 April 1863 auction. Ownership of these lots, which included those which make up the property today bounded by St Judes Street, Great North Road, Chalmers Street and the railway line, passed to Michael Wood on 4 May 1864, who the next day on-sold 32 lots, including the above area, to a friend of his, David Nathan. David Nathan is best known for being an extremely successful Auckland merchant in the mid-19th century, a scion of the Jewish community, and founder of a business that evolved into L. D. Nathan & Co. He had considerable involvement in land dealings in the Avondale and Waterview areas, either buying lots in speculation, bailing out his friend Woods, or providing mortgages (to John Thomas of the Thomas Star Mill in Waterview, for example). Here, we leave the 1987 report (which from this point focussed on the area of Allotment 64 around the present-day Page’s Store).

James Palmer (1819-1893) enters the picture in 1867. On 22 July that year, he purchased all the lots of the original farm south of the present-day line St Jude Street, bounded also by Great North Road, Chalmers Street, and Blockhouse Bay Road. Before coming to the Whau he was hotelkeeper at the Royal Hotel, Eden Terrace. He may have actually arranged to buy the land earlier that year, for it is noted, when the Whau Minstrels held their first fundraising concert for a public hall to be built, that “a piece of ground kindly lent by Jas. Palmer, esq., of the Whau, in a position well suited for the erection of a permanent public hall,” served as the site of the stage in early March 1867. However, the entertainment could also have been on the site of the Whau Hotel (second in the area) that he had erected by 1870, which was situated on the other side of today’s roundabout.

By April that year, Palmer had donated land for the public hall (site of today’s Hollywood Cinema). He went on to build the third Hotel in 1873 (after the second burned down the year before), donated land on St Judes Street for the Anglican Church in July 1874 (it was built 10 years later), and in creating the lot numbers recognised today in the St Judes to Chalmers Street block in 1883 later dedicated and laid out the path of the present day Donegal Street (once Palmer Street) and Ahiriri Street (April 1884).

On the same day, 9th of April 1884, he sold Lots 9, 10 and 11 to William Potter, a bus driver.

William Potter To Elizabeth Kelly and beyond – Lots 9 to 11 (1884 – 1970s)

This William Potter could have been the same “Mr Potter” which the 1994 book Challenge of the Whau stated ran a horse bus service from the Whau around 1882. Considering that the Northern Bus Company started in 1884, Potter could have been one of their drivers.

Potter’s purchase would have been a pasture falling steeply to the south and the winding creek. Sparks from passing steam trains would land from time to time in the part nearest the rail line. But it was ideally placed, if Potter was running his own, competing bus service, to be a paddock and shelter for horses, being situated on the main route used to get to the city via Mt Albert. At this stage, little more is known about William Potter.

In August 1900 Potter sold the three lots to Elizabeth Ellen Kelly. There isn’t much known about her, except that by 1916 the News referred to her as “an old resident of Avondale, but who for the last three or four years has resided in Te Aroha.” In 1905 she on-sold Lot 9 to William Kelly, a builder (it isn’t certain whether he was a relation, but he occupied all three lots in 1905 according to the Avondale Roads Board rates listing for that year.)

At some point between 1900 and 1913, the Paragon Boarding House was built on Lots 10 and 11. This was a nine-roomed house which was completely destroyed by fire on 13 January 1916. At the time of the fire, the building was occupied by the Schmidt family of four adults and five children. The Schmidt’s eldest child woke at around 2am on hearing a sound in an adjoining room on the eastern side. He woke his father, but by then a portion of the house was already enveloped by fire. The westerly wind fanned the flames, and with Avondale at the time having no reticulated water supply (and also, no fire brigade), the gathered neighbours could do little to try to save the house. Apart from some hastily-gathered personal items, nothing was saved, the Schmidt’s furniture and effects going up in flames with the building. A detached outhouse which had some items stored within was untouched.

As happens in Avondale after incidents such as this, the locals immediately looked for reasons why the fire happened. Sparks from a train engine were discounted, as no train had passed for at least three hours, and also there had been several sharp showers of rain that night between the departure of the last train and the fire. Thoughts turned to the possibility of an arsonist (the premises of William Myers the coachbuilder were nearly set alight in what the News at the time called “a deliberate attempt” the previous late December, and in 1917 Binsted’s butcher shop down at the St Georges Road corner was completely destroyed, that fire unexplained.)

It is doubtful that Elizabeth Kelly arranged to have another building erected on the site. In 1919, she sold the property to Charles Frederick Mackadam (a commission agent, from Te Aroha). The property remained with the Mackadam family until recently. “Dingle Dell”, the building demolished in late June 2005, could have dated, therefore, from the early 1920s. It became 21 St Judes Street.

Whoever William Kelly was, he sold his lot 9 (17 St Judes Street) to Selima M Murray by 1913 (she owned the property at least until 1920). The house there could be as old as 1905, perhaps built by William Kelly. In 1928 John Bentley (wharf foreman) was living there, and in 1929 a contractor named George Larkin, according to the directories of the time. No one else is listed until 1940, when it seems Fred W Percy (a labourer) shifted over from No. 15. By 1952, the house was occupied by a local butcher, Arthur Furse. He was there down to the 1970s.

Night of the Exploding Tote

Avondale residents and those in surrounding districts for several miles around were enjoying a peaceful evening on September 22 1924, when at around 8.45 pm a thunderous roaring boom filled the air, coming from the Avondale Jockey Club. It was immediately feared that the grandstand was on fire.

Houses shook, neighbours and volunteer fire brigade members came running, as sheets of flame tore through the centre of the roof of the totalisator building on the course. Pieces of galvanised roofing iron were parted from their fittings, strewn about the paddocks around, one even found a hundred metres away on the racetrack itself. An old roller-type of totalisator machine owned by a Mr. S Yates and used by the Jockey Club was completely wrecked. All but one of the windows were blown out, purlins measuring 3 X 2 lifted from the cross beams throughout the structure, inside toilets wrecked with “lumps of porcelain … scattered about the room”. Part of the front wall of the building was “shattered to fragments, leaving an aperture several square yards in extent,” according to an Auckland Star reporter.

Almost immediately, rumours that the explosion was deliberate, rather than an accident, began to circulate around the village. “There is not the slightest evidence which would suggest that the explosion was an accidental occurrence,“ the Auckland Star declared, giving as a reason for this deduction that only the gas and water mains could have caused an explosion, and both were found intact (part of the gas main, however, was badly twisted on the edges of the damaged area.) The reporter pointed to the fact that the door to the commission room was found open, saying that it suggested that a forced entry had been made as the door opened inwards. “The bracket of the lock was forced away and the tongue was still as it had been turned in locking.” However, the Star did add that the explosion could have accounted for the door being open.

Reports were made of “adverse comments” having been made of the totalisator system at Avondale up to the night of the explosion. Unlike the automatic systems to be found at the time at Ellerslie, Avondale still used old hand-controlled roller types, such as had been introduced by the first secretary of the club, Harry Hayr, back in the early days of the racecourse. According to Graham Reddaway, a former president of the club, Avondale had been at the forefront of totalisator technology in the early years, thanks to Hayr and his company (continued on by Yates). Up until 1903, there were only bookmakers on the course, but these were replaced by the totalisator. There were advances in the totalisators from Hayr’s time until 1924, but it still took up to seven minutes after the tote had closed to adjust and ring up the bets for each horse, in order to determine each bet’s share of the total pool. The Star noted that the delay was found “tedious” by the betting public attending the meetings at Avondale. The Star also reported an opinion about the town that there was a “difference of opinion” over the verdict on “two very close and exciting finishes” on the day of the explosion.

Six of the eight tote machines in the building were severely damaged, and belonged to Yates, while two others belonging to the club remained undamaged.

Despite all the rumours and speculation rife in Avondale, the official insurance investigation found that the cause was due to the escape of “coal gas”. Mr. Reddaway, who has done some study into the incident, said that the building was lit by gaslight, and it was highly likely that someone had forgotten to turn the gas supply off to at least one of the lights before closing the building at the end of the day’s racing, and a spark ignited the gas.

Those Daring Young Men in their Flying Machine: Sandford-Miller biplane flights at Avondale, 1913

An image taken by A N Breckon in 1913 and published in the Auckland Weekly News in December that year of the Sandford-Miller biplane on Avondale Racecourse. 1370-8-3, Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries 

(Updated and added to 27 November 2016.)

December 4th 2003 marked the 90th anniversary of the flight of the Sandford-Miller biplane from Avondale Racecourse to New Lynn. As can happen in Avondale, the late spring weather had turned to heavy rain, soaking the plane and making movements in the air heavy and hard to control. Nevertheless, they landed in a paddock, and planned to return to Avondale later that day …

In 1913, Auckland was in a state of “aeroplane fever”. The novelty of heavier-than-air flight had caught the public’s imagination, fuelled by the 25 July 1909 first cross-English Channel flight by Louis Bleriot, after which planes where the engine was in front of the pilot were dubbed “Bleriots”. (At the 16 April 1913 meeting of the Avondale Jockey Club the principal race, the Avondale Handicap, was won by “Mr. T Hall’s filly Bleriot”.) In April of that year exhibition flights of a Bleriot-style plane were conducted at the Auckland Domain by “Wizard” Stone at which “nearly 30,000” crammed the area to watch a brief, unsuccessful, and in fact comedic flight.

All the while, Frederick Esk Sandford and William Stanley Miller worked at perfecting their flying machine on the Avondale Racecourse. Over much of 1913, they staged practice flights and tinkered with the 60 horsepower ENV engine of their “Farman” biplane (a “pusher” craft, named after Henri Farman’s design from 1907). According to Athol J McD Miller, in his book The Gardners of “Mataia” Glorit and New Lynn, John Owen Gardner (1973-1931) “… was renowned for his knowledge of engineering … [William] Miller … and his partner [Frederick] Sandford assembled a plane at the Avondale Racecourse, but could not get the engine to function satisfactorily. Someone referred him to Uncle Jack who spent some time disassembling parts and adjusting the timing of the engine and on the day that he thought he had mastered the engine I went to Avondale with him on the back of his motor cycle. He was standing astride across the plane and still tinkering with the engine which was running sweetly … Sandford who was at the controls took off, and they flew around the racecourse at a height of about 50ft and landed again. Uncle Jack had not altered his position during the whole flight and was still there sometime after it landed.”

Their biplane started out as a kitset “Howard Wright” biplane imported into New Zealand by a syndicate which comprised brothers Leo and Vivian Walsh, brothers Alfred and Charles Lester, and Alfred Powley. Such machines were meant for the then money-generating exhibition flights business of the day. Dubbed the Manurewa, the Howard Wright was used for a number of experimental flights from Glenora Park, Papakura, including a "first flight" on 9 February 1911, but later met with several accidents and was wrecked.

The Lesters and Powley took over the Manurewa from the Walshes and disassembled it, storing it for a time at a property on Dominion Road. Then, in late 1912 or early 1913, William Miller took it over.

Born in Otago in 1888, according to air historian Errol W Martyn, Miller was a tinkerer from an early age. He experimented and built things like a gas meter and toy balloons, and got swept up in the popular enthusiasm of the day for powered flight. In 1912, he tried his luck over in Australia, but wasn't able to secure a plane. Returning to New Zealand, he found out that the Manurewa was for sale, and agreed to purchase a half interest and lease the other half from the Lesters.

Frederick Sandford wasn't his first partner in the project out at the Avondale Racecourse, as many think -- that was engineer Noah Jonassen, sharing a room at an Avondale boardinghouse with Miller. The two didn't get on too well with each other, though. When Jonassen damaged the biplane during a ground run on 28 February 1913, colliding with the racecourse railing and damaging the propeller and one of the wings while Miller was away in the city, he was given his marching orders. And so, enter Sandford.

Sandford apparently had been in correspondence with the Lesters himself. He came over to Auckland, met up with Miller, and struck up the famous partnership. Martyn believes that Sandford invested in the proprietorship of the Manurewa himself. Between the two of them, they reconfigured the Manurewa, transforming it into the Sandford-Miller plane. The two men had a trial flight together on Saturday 8 March.

On Sunday 13 April 1913, Sandford flew solo for the first time in his career (in Australia, he’d flown a well-known Australian exhibition aviator named Hart), taking off from Avondale Racecourse before several hundred people, rising to an altitude of about 50 feet, flying the length of the course, before making a “few more modest flights as far as the space available would allow.”

Leonard Pauling (whose sons George and Percy sold goods and fish in Avondale) kept a diary and made several references to the biplane and experiments out on the racecourse. One unfortunate incident that same April was reported as “Last Thursday the flying machine at Avondale cut a dog to pieces …” According to Peter Buffett, this happened during an attempt at takeoff, smashing the propeller and, of course, killing the dog. Short flights were reported in May. Buffett surmised that it was during this period that a Miss Lester was a passenger, and became the first woman in New Zealand to fly.

From Auckland Weekly News, 18 September 1913, AWNS-19130918-54-3, 

Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries

The Sandford-Miller plane also achieved the first cross-country flight in New Zealand on 31 August, taking off with Sandford at the controls from Avondale, leveling out at 250 feet and heading west. Possibly approaching West Coast Road, along Great North Road, Sandford turned back to make for the racecourse again, but the engine failed, and he made a forced landing on a glide in a paddock “against Binsted’s slaughterhouse” beside the Rewa Rewa creek in New Lynn. The flight was one of 3 miles, at more than 70 km per hour. Two weeks later, after repairs by Miller, the plane returned across the Whau creek to Avondale. In October, they made a five-mile flight to and from the racecourse.

Come December and the promise of summer months to come, Sandford and Miller, Sandford decided to test the flying capacity of the plane under the conditions of the recent heavy rains. At about 8.30 on 4 December 1913, Sandford took off, circled the racecourse, and then tried to head for Epsom. The plane’s movements were too heavy to control, however, and he decided to force a landing in what was then known as “Clark’s paddocks” in New Lynn. The Auckland Star was advised of Sandford’s great confidence that the plane would later be able to exhibit itself at Alexandra Park.

Unfortunately, his optimism was for nought. The paddock was only half-an-acre, not allowing the plane enough of a runway for lift. Sandford had the plane wheeled back, however, trying to gain maximum distance and then started the engine, racing for a gap in the paddock’s fence. The plane, however, failed to rise, and crashed into a corner post. “The pilot,” the Star reported the next day, “was thrown many feet into the air, falling on his head, and the forepart of the machine was reduced to splinters and tangled wires.”

Taken back by motor car to his boardinghouse room at Avondale, Sandford remained unconscious for some time, with a badly damaged shoulder and wrist. Miller remained optimistic, saying “we will not give in”, but had to face the facts that the plane would have required to be completely rebuilt again, along with a new engine (in those days, this would have cost at least £800).

Arthur Morrish, then the editor/publisher of The News from Avondale, made an impassioned plea for the two men and their project in a letter to the Herald. “These two men are the first local men to build a machine and make successful flights with it,” he wrote. “Aviation is recognised the world over now as the foremost science, destined to materially alter the standing of any country possessing the best-equipped and most modern machines. Would it not once more redound to the credit of New Zealand, which has led the world in so many ways, to show that in the field of science also she has men with the brains to keep not only abreast of other countries, but possibly outstrip them?” The Avondale Road Board raised a petition to Parliament asking that a grant be made to Sandford and Miller to rebuild the plane, but this, and Morrish’s plea, was unsuccessful.

Frederick Sandford recovered and later went on to fly in action in World War 1 with the RNAS and RFC, rising to the rank of Major. According to Martyn: "On his return to Australia he represented the Blackburn Aeroplane Company, but was tragically killed on 15 December 1928 when his car skidded and crashed into a fence at Glenrowan near Wangaratta while driving to Sydney to visit his mother.

William Miller is said to have later owned the Royal Garage at Khyber Pass (update, 3 May 2011: while the site, between the ASB building and Burleigh Ave is confirmed, the name of the garage isn't), farmed at Kelston-Glendene (Span Farm, named after a brand of petrol), and died in 1977. And because of both of these young men, Avondale has yet another legend to be part of.

1370-8-1, Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries

Sources:
A Passion for Flight: New Zealand Aviation before the Great War, Vol 2, Errol W Martyn, 2013, pp. 231-243
"The Sandford-Miller Biplane, 1913", by Peter Buffett, published in West Auckland Remembers, edited by James Northcote-Bade, West Auckland Historical Society 1990, pp. 103-109.
The Gardners of “Mataia” Glorit and New Lynn, by Athol J. McD Miller, 1983, pp. 25-26.
New Zealand Herald, 1913: 15 April, 17 April, 21 April, 8 December.
Auckland Star, 1913: 4 and 5 December.