Rusty remains are reminders of a once thriving timber industry

Press, 15 January 1986, Page 18

Rusty remains are reminders of a once thriving timber industry

By

JESSIE MOULD

of Akaroa. This article

was an entry in the recent feature writing competition run by “The Press” and the South Island Writers’ Association.

An axle and a giant cog rusting in the grass at Robinson’s Bay are all that remain of the Old Wheel, but descendants of the Pavitts, the Jackson Hughes, the Saxtons, and the Williamses still return there, where their parents and grandparents were once photographed. The Bay people speak of it reverently. To them it is a memorial to their parents, the mill workers, and to the days when Robinson’s Bay was humming with activity. From the valley hillsides, as the bush receded further up the slopes, came the rhythmic sound of the crosscut saw, the ring of the axe, and the ominous crashing and final thud as a mighty totara fell, breaking branches from surrounding trees in its downward path. Bird song disappeared as the swish of logs sliding down furrows to the tramway below, the clang of trolleys carrying the logs to the mill, and the colourful language of the bullock drivers as they urged along the beasts pulling the load, echoed round the hills. The mill itself was a hive of

industry, the voices of the sawyers blending with the splash of water as it fell into the buckets, turning the Old Wheel, a Young Wheel then, but a mighty one, rotating the huge cogwheel which set the giant, saws screaming. Tree trunks were’ cut into planks of timber which the tramway carried to the beach. They were loaded on boats or towed on rafts round the Peninsula, to build houses for the new Christchurch.

The beach itself was a busy scene as the mill owners, assisted by shipwrights, built more boats to transport the timber. The flat, cleared of bush, was sown in grass as feed and hay for the working bullocks. The mill owners built

their huts along the banks of the creeks — outside slabs of timber from the mill, lined with newspapers to keep out the draughts. The children played in the creek and little Joe de Malmanche, twin of Victor and son of Ben, drowned there. He was buried in the Akaroa cemetery next to his maternal grandfather, Israel Rhodes, of Flea Bay. This was not the only cruel fatality in the Bay. Henry Kingston and Edward Tozer were felling trees on contract, both experienced bushmen, but a black pine rolled on Tozer, crushing him. Another log broke Tolly’s leg, and Spencer Pavitt was crippled for life when a log fell on him.

Thomas Jackson Hughes, one of the mill owners, had picked a fine totara to be milled for his coffin, but while freeing a jammed log at the mill, it rolled on him, killing him. His mill hands, his bullock drivers, and his sawyers carried him the five miles to Akaroa for burial.

The voices in the bush, at the mill, and in the huts were not only the varied dialects of the English, Scottish and Irish. Scandinavians, Poles, Germans, Italians, Americans, and French worked there. Some were runaways from whaling ships; others had crossed to England in order to emigrate to New Zealand; some were the sons of the early French settlers who arrived at Akaroa in 1840. The Pavitts were farmers in Essex until the late 1840 s when the Repeal of the Com Laws and poor prices for farm produce decided the whole family to try their fortunes in a new land. John and Elizabeth Pavitt with their sons, Frederick, Henry, Alfred, Francis, Thomas, Edward, Augustus Reid, and Spencer, their daughters, Mary

Ann, Elizabeth Ellen, and Sarah Hannah, with Sarah’s husband, John Parker, and two sons, and Frederick’s wife, sailed from Gravesend on the Monarch in November, 1849. The Monarch was owned by C. B. Robinson, who had been the first British Magistrate at Akaroa, and Henry Smith. The Pavitts had been allotted land in Auckland, whence 1 the Monarch was bound, but the voyage was an unfortunate one, fraught with difficulties. When, on April 2, 1850, she sought refuge in Akaroa Harbour for urgent repairs, many of the passengers, finding a well established French settlement, decided to stay there. Four Pavitt brothers — Frederick, Henry, Alfred, and Francis — were able to buy, for £4OO, 100 acres of bushland at Robinson’s Bay from C. B. Robinson. The whole Pavitt family, under the supervision of their new brother-in-law, Samuel Charles Farr, who had travelled on the Monarch with them and, after arrival, had married Mary Ann, built a sawmill. Farr, who later became Canter-

bury*s first architect, had constructed a flour mill in Akaroa for the Haylocks. He was a clever colonist and his design for the timber mill was a success. The overshot waterwheel was 24ft (7.3 m in diameter, the rim and buckets of totara, and the 12ft stays of kowhai. The wheel turned two 6ft saws. A dam was formed above the mill and the tramway was constructed for four kilometres up the valley. Fourteen bridges were built over the creek and the grade at the top of the line was one in three. Robinson’s Bay was one of the best timbered bays of the Peninsula, the bush comprising mainly black pine and totara. Some of the stumps measured 7ft in diameter

and 30,000 ft of timber could be cut in a week. It was estimated that for 24 years the mill owners took one million feet of timber a year. On April 22, 1862, Frederick Pavitt bought out his brothers, Alfred and Francis, and the widow of Henry. At that time Thomas Jackson Hughes joined Frederick and his father, John Pavitt, in partnership in the mill. In 1865, within a month of one another, John Pavitt and Thomas Jackson Hughes died. George Henry Saxton and Frederick Walter Williams formed a partnership, bought the mill and 2004 acres of land, and ran the mill as Matlock Mill (after Matlock Bath, Derbyshire, home of George Saxton) until 1877, by which time most of the millable timber

had been cut. Saxton and Williams built a butcher’s shop and store on to the back of the original Pavitt millhouse, to provide meat and provisions for their workers. They also built a school on The Corner beside the homestead. It was used until 1877 when the new Government school was opened down the valley. n As the bush was felled, water became scarce, so the Old Wheel" was replaced by a boiler and the : vertical saws were driven by ■< steam. The Old Waterwheel revolved no more, but it stood for < almost another 100 years, as the land around it was subdivided and J sold, stumped and turned into fine * pasture for mill workers turned farmers. <