A KATIKATI CELEBRATION.

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume XLIV, Issue 6491, 18 September 1915, Page 3

A KATIKATI CELEBRATION.

STEWART SETTLEMENT

ANNIVERSARY.

Forty Years of Pioneering.

The "Red Letter" days in one's life time occur but seldom, and stand out with such clearness that they mark the stopping and startiug points of the intervening'spaces of life's journey. Such a day yesterday to many Katikati settlers, men and women who forty years ago—more than half life's allotted span —left their native land, and challenged life in a country then unmade—-a country for which it may be said" the cowards never started and where the weaklings never arrived." Forty years ago this year the settlers brought out by Mr George Vesey Stewart for his First Katikati Settlement left Belfast for their new homes, and reached their destination on September 17th of that year. The movement which led to the Katikati Settlement is best briefly described in Mr Stewart's own words in a pamphlet issued by him in 1883. In this he says:—

"In the 1873 1 left my home in the North of Ireland, County Tyrone, and proceeded alone to New Zealand for the purpose of judging for myself whether the cc!>ntry would be suitable for my own large family and about forty others who had decided to cast in their lot with me. Previous to my leaving Ireland on this trip, a prolonged correspondence (extending over about 18 months) had taken place between the colonial government and myself as to the terms upon which my settlers were to be located. Upon my arrival in N,ew Zealand, I received every possible attention and assistance from the Government, and after having visited and minutely inspected both the North and South Islands, I finally selected 10,030 acres at Katikati, near Tauranga, in the Bay of Plenty, as being; the most suitable. I returned home in 1874, and in June, 1875, our party left Belfast in two ships, the 'Dover Castle' and the 'Carisbrook Castle.' We were located on our respective estates by the end of the following September, but at the commencement we had to suffer many hardships, such as those arising from the want of roads, bridges, schools, churches, postal and other communications with Tauranga and Auckland. The pioneers were,however, confident in the future. "V

Many of the early pioneers who faced this new life have passed to the Great