MUD AND POT-HOLES OF EARLY CHRISTCHURCH

Press, Volume C, Issue 29626, 23 September 1961, Page 8

MUD AND POT-HOLES OF EARLY CHRISTCHURCH

Pioneers Faced Some Sticky Problems

[Specially Written for "The Press" by ROBYN JENKIN] CANTERBURY folk are justifiably proud of their early settlers, but every time I see a letter to the paper complaining about the state of the roads and about the potholes, I can’t help feeling that somewhere along the line we’ve lost a good deal of that old pioneering spirit—not to mention our sense of humour.

Yet sometimes there as a ray of hope, and the recent photograph from Motueka, advertising for a red grader, presumably lost in a pot-hole, restored my faith in the “Laughter in the face of adversity” maxim. It was no doubt a sense of humour that saved many an early settler from a nasty fit of depression when the name Papanui was mentioned.

As Papanui and Riccarton provided the only worthwhile patches of bush in the vicinity of Christchurch, it was essential to construct some sort of road so that building materials could be brought out quickly to build houses for the early Canterbury settlers. The pines and totaras of the fast-diminish-ing 200-acre Papanui bush provided the wood and shingles for many of the early homes, and as a result Papanui flourished before many other suburbs were even thought of. By 1856, Waitt was able to write home to Captain Thomas: “Papanui is a highly favoured district and along the road it is nearly all enclosed and under cultivation. Cheerful looking cottages abound.”

Highly favoured Papanui may have been, but the main road was certainly not one of its finer points. Papanui road became the subject for many “Letters to the Editor," and the stories of its bogs and quagmires are endless. Crosby Ward, who parodied many early Christchurch events, found ample scope for his “Struggle for Papanui,” written in 1856. Tha following four verses speak for themselves:— At Christchurch at the break of day. AU tnudiess stood the unloaded dray, And in the stockyard near tt lay E.ght bullocks waiting oatiently

The driver thought It not so nice. That afternoon when clock struck twice. Plunging in swamp and mudstained ice. The deepness of the axle tree. In slush and quagmire, fast as nails. The oxen wag their muddy tails But furious still, the driver Sails And double thongs unceasingly. Few. few will eart, such boles to meet. Each swamp will lower the price of wheat. And every road be called a feat Of Government perversity. As a result, cartage from the ferry at Ferrymead to Papanui was £2 10s a ton and wood 20s a cord, twothirds of the cost representing cartage. The story was

related for many years of the waggoner who disappeared, waggon, bullocks and all, into a pot-hole, and an early settler gave her eye-witness account: “One day I was. riding up to Papanui Bush, and came, as I thought, to a pile of wood, lying in the middle of the road. My mare naturally shied, but after a little gentle persuasion was induced to let me inspect it, and I found the dray was there as well, buried in a deep hole, with the tops of the wheels just visible. The bullocks had probably found a watery grave.” Sometimes the greater part of the road was impassable, and, as on Riccarton road, carriers found it easier to float logs down the ditches at the side of the road than haul them through the mud. Even Archdeacon Dudley, on the way to his new parish in Rangiora in 1860, found it easier to walk along the bank formed by the mud thrown up from the ditch, than to tackle the road itself; and waggoners were known to cu. through the swamp rather than Use the highway. However, when one considers the type of traffic on the Papanui road at that time, it is not hard to visualise a scene of mud, and still more mud. A census taken in the sixties of the traffic passing over the Victoria street (then the Papanui) bridge, in one day was as follows: 10 bullock drays drawn by 58 bullocks; 50 one-horse drays drawn by 60 bullocks; 36 carts drawn by 61 horses; 199 saddle horses; 20 head of cattle; 204 sheep, one donkey and cart, and 1000 foot passengers.

A Widespread Problem

Nor did Papanui have it all on its own. For some time, in 1864, the residents of Cashel street contributed sixpence a week for the services of a watercart and driver, but when the sixpences failed to appear, Cashel street reverted to the mud and dust of all the other city streets. By 1874 there was talk of asphalt paths for the Market Place in Victoria Square; byt in AvoAside residents were still complaining of roads

ankle-deep in mud and drains choked with weeds and rubbish. Then on the Sumner road things were not all they might be. Two rival cab-drivers ran a service between Sumner and Christchurch, and it was their habit to wliip up the horses m an effort to make the fastest time to town. Many were the collisions; and Monck’s Bay residents saw several carriages upturned in the mud.

So next time the bicycle finds a crack in the road and catapults you into the nearest hedge where you sit musing on rate demands and potholes, spare a thought for the past and be thankful it was a hedge and not the sea of mud Christchurch knew a hundred years ago.