Early accommodation houses along the Main South Road

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33112, 30 December 1972, Page 11

Early accommodation houses along the Main South Road

' By

PHYLLIS KERR)

’“April 26, 1856. Dray and bullocks left Christchurch. Reached Parlbys at night.”

This is the first entry in J. B. A. Acland’s diary. And for April 27 I read: “Remained at Parlbys. Sunday.” (This would be a day of rest for man and beast in the train of the deeply religious Acland. who. with Tripp, was on his way to establish their Mount Peel run.) The next day the>' “left Parlbys and reached the Rakaia about noon. Crossed goods in punt and stayed at Dunfords the night, with half the load over.”

1 found many references to this Parlbys throughout the diary. One was in July, 1857, when Acland “found the Bishop staying there.” (Bishop Harper, of course, who with his son, Henry, was beginning his first pastoral journey to the southernmost part of his diocese, Bluff, and hopefully to Stewart Island.) I was curious to know what type of establishment Parlbys was. That it was an accommodation house I knew. I discovered that it, “The Woolpack,” was on the Selwyn where the old main road crossed the river, and was usually the first stopping place for travellers southbound from Christchurch. It is often mentioned in accounts of other early settlers! journeys. In “My Early Days” Ellen Tripp (Bishop Harper’s daughter) tells that she and her bridegroom Charles, in October, 1858, stayed there the first night of their horseback ride south to her new home at Mount Peel. All travellers who were at all particular about their bedding carried their own blanket rolls. Primitive building Parlbys had two attic rooms, freezing in winter and stifling in summer. Two main rooms below served as sit-tmg-room and as bar cum dining-room. A veranda along the front was the single men’s sleep-out, and a lean-to at the back was the kitchen, with a water barrel outside for immediate needs. Its a far cry from that primitive building to the high-rise hotels and motels for today’s wayfarer. Its a far cry from a ploughed furrow to a bitumen road; hut the ploughed furrow was the only guide to the traveller over the treeless tussocky plain which Henry Sewell found in 1853, “without compass or marks to steer by is like the open sea.” And. as today, the “light burning outside the house from sunset to sunrise.” a condition of the hotel keeper’s licence, would be a welcome sight.

Accommodation houses were few in those early days of settlement: none but Parlbys between Christchurch and Timaru in 1856. Other than a blanket-roll under a tussock, a few farmhouses, low thatched-roofed buildings standing in the open plain, were the only shelter available. The struggling owners, with all the hospitable will in the world, were often taxed to the limit, financially and quantatively, to find food and bed for travellers. As the country was opened up. ruts from bullock drays and from the plodding hoofs of animals made the ploughed furrow into a well-defined track. Huge flocks of sheep were moved from one province to another; a horseman riding a day ahead of the mob giving the compulsory notice of their passage through any property. It was no easy business getting sheep to cross the rivers, and men up to their armpits in the icy vnter deserved a good meal and a decent bed after a ouy’s tougn work.

Travellers complained

Many complaints were aired in the “Lyttelton Times.” In June, 1858, the Government was requested, in no uncertain terms, to provide adequate accommodation houses. So applications for licences were called for, with a steady response. From then on the quantity of accommodation improved. Although perhaps not always the quality. The houses were built mainly at the river crossings, the ferryman being the licensee. It was fine for him when the river was high and travellers and shepherds were forced to spend more than one night waiting for a safe crossing. His licence allowed him to sell “spirituous liquors, wine, ale and beer in any quantity.” (In some cases, though, licences carried the stipulation, on the advice of Maori chiefs, that liquor “must not be supplied to any aboriginal native of New Zealand.”) Edward Dobson, the provincial engineer, was well aware of the loneliness of station hands who relished any company and were too often fleeced of their cheques by wily bartenders. “It seems to be quite overlooked that accommodation houses are not primarily intended for men to get drunk in.” In his report to the Provincial Council he stated that the “practice of allowing ferries to be kept as appendages to grog shops, miscalled houses of accommodation, is not one calculated to promote the comfort of travellers.”

In one such house the travellers “sat on boxes round a rough table; the food was the usual mutton boiled with lumps of dough called

‘damper.’ the cutlery was our own clasp-knife.” "Our weary bodies.” wrote one such, "were strewn over the floor where individually we could select a fairly even spot: and the landlady retired to her bed in the bar room.” That was in 1859. Loss of appetite Parlbys was only a little better than that. The Rev. J. W. Stack in his little book “Through Canterbury and Otago with Bishop Harper” gives a picture of a rather dirty and crafty licensee. “The Bishop advised me to stay by the horses’ feeding boxes as long as I could. It was currently reported that, in spite of the oats being of the best quality, animals fed there never consumed what was bought for them, a fact attributed to the application of tallow to the back of their teeth by the ostler.

“The heat was blamed for their lack of appetite. In the dining room the blue bottles and blowflies careering round and round the dish of fried chops effectively • deprived us of any appetite.” Parlbys was surely “an illconducted house.” on the Rakaia had his assistant, Flowers, as and apparently kept his house in some sort of order. And towards the hills accommodation could be had at a “shanty” at Spreadeagles, where Burns and his wife brought ail their supplies from Christchurch on the backs of two harness bullocks.

Always a good house was that of William Turton, on the Ashburton. He built it near where the bridge now is, and his licence was over the signature of William Sefton Moorhouse, Superintendent of Canterbury.

Further south, on the Hinds, Grigg and Gill had a house; 1 suspect it was a grog shop, as the river would seldom pose a crossing problem. The dangerous Rangitata had two recognised crossings by 1860; at Cracroft a ferry ran, with an accommodation house “Marshalls” on the south bank.

The lower crossing was known a> Macdonalds. Ward having the house on the north side The meals were similar in all hostelries. and when Parlbys became Grigg-, as it did in 1859. there appeared to be no alteration in the menu. 1 read in Pilgrim s “Canterbury Sketches” of November of that year that she and her mother "halted at Griggs—there we had dinner, mutton chops, tea and bread.” They stayed the night at Dunfords where their meal was "tea. chops and bread.” They slept not a wink, for the chamber maid, thinking their bed "too hard entire!' put an opossum rug from the veranda under the sheet. When they complained of the FLEAS, she wrote, the maid did admit, “shure, an the colley dogs have been slaeping on it.” They went on to the Turtons where they "partook of bread, tea and chops.” 1 was amused by the''double inversion. By 1863 new regulations were in force; beds must be supplied for not fewer than 10 travellers in not fewer than three bedrooms. Weather-tight sheds must be supplied for at least six horses, and at al! times a proper supply of water. Government inspectors reported on the conduct of the houses, so many of which were “comfortless God-for saaen places." The state of beds and bedding very often brought a reprimand for th" innkeeper. Ferry charges The regulations required the provision of good accomt dation and a proper supply of oats and oaten straw for at least 50 cattle and at least 2000 sheep, the cattle to be charged by the head, the sheep by the score. To cross sheep on ferries cost 3d a head. A foot passenger paid Is and a horseman ss. The ferryman would Jose though on officers of the Supreme Court, magistrates and constables on duty and with prisoners. They, I

to act as constable: and I thought this a difficult one: “He must supply information to magistrates and to the their dutv"—rather like a coppers nark He must provide a visitor’s book to l>e "open tor inspection bv the police at all times, and it licensing meeting at the breakers had not a chance to B< The accommodation houses were used for many purposeAnthonv Thompson's "Spring field." on The Track, was the first meeting place of the Ashburton Road Board. Mem bers came from afar, and talking made throats drv Mrs Thompson's meeting-dav lunches were eagerly ap proached. Coaches and parties The houses became Post Offices when “Little Baines" had the first mail contract. He always rode a big horse, looking like a gnome perched above his mail-laden -addle bags Coaches later picked up and let down their passengers there, and fresh hoi-e- wm* kept in the paddocks. Weddings and funerals had their gay and -ad attei maths in the tap rooms, and one licensee sovertised ttml a “select harmonica meeting i- held here each Wednesday.” But Parlbys, that “ill conducted house." in spite of the aura of a Bishop's patron age. did not change it habits and in 1859 Mr Parlby lost his licence. Mr Grigg took over, and 1 read in Acland’s “Early Canterbury Runs" that it acquired a reputation as a "decent” house. The visitors’ book of its early days carried many famous names of good repute and ill. And a multitude of inadequacices in his accommodation house was forgotten in the remembered warm though fumy welcomes and farewells of George Henry Parlby.