Thomas set out to walk all over his critics

Press, 5 January 1987, Page 17

Thomas set out to walk all over his critics

A new walkway is nearing completion on the Port Hills, following in the footsteps of Captain Joseph Thomas, the controversial figure some people say was the real founder of Canterbury. MAVIS AIREY reports.

“Christchurch enjoys a good old row,” reflects Gordon Ogilvie in his book on "The Port Hills of Christchurch” — and choosing the best route from Lyttelton to Christchurch was not only its first, but one of the noisiest.

Ogilvie recounts with relish that Fitz Gerald thought the road should go over the Port Hills, Moorhouse that it should go through them, and Gouland that a windlass operated by bullocks be placed at the top of the Bridle Path, to haul goods and people up the slope.

The route favoured by Captain Joseph Thomas, over Evans Pass to Sumner, had been dismissed by an earlier inspector, David Monro, as a project which “might be executed by a Napoleon or a King of Egypt, but hardly by the New Zealand Company.”

But Captain Thomas was undeterred. It was his job to select, survey, and prepare sites for a port and suitable townships for the Canterbury Association in the late 1840 s. It was a job he did so well that many people feel he has a better right than John

Robert Godley to be known as founder of the settlement, Gordon Ogilvie says.

He had been instructed to be “most particular about connecting the port and chief town,” and chose the Sumner Road in preference to Rapaki to avoid complications over Maori land. The low height of Evans Pass — 650 feet (190 metres) — and the 1 in 19 gradient were also in its favour: the Bridle Path route was far steeper.

He set up the port with its jetty, streets, homes, pubs, immigrants’ barracks, customshouse, and agent’s house, but construction of the road was. beset by difficulties. Outcrops of rock required considerable blasting, but he was hampered by poor gunpowder and lack of water. One major outcrop, aptly nicknamed Sticking Point No. 1, was finally blasted on January 1, 1850, warranting a celebration, with Thomas the first person to walk through the narrow path.

Drains, side walls, and culverts were also constructed, but the cost was far in excess of Thomas’s estimate: Sticking Point alone cost £6B a chain to build. He ran out of money before the road was anywhere near complete.

He waited eagerly for Godley’s arrival, hoping that more funds would be forthcoming. In the meantime he turned to Sir William Fox, the New Zealand Company’s, chief agent, for a loan, which Fox granted, satisfied that the money had been “very beneficially expended and as economically as circumstances would admit of.”

But Godley arrived without funds, and, though impressed by what Thomas had achieved, was appalled that the money was all spent. Unlike Fox, he thought the works were “unconscionably costly” and had “been managed upon far too extravagant and showy a scale.”

He reprimanded Thomas and halted all work.

The two men did not hit it off. The class-conscious Godley thought Thomas lacked “a good manner with gentlemen,” while Thomas found him cold and supercilious and believed Godley wanted to get rid of him.

That Godley had been made chief agent of the Canterbury Association in Thomas’s place no doubt rubbed salt in the wounds.

Things came to a head when Godley started communicating directly with Thomas’s subordinates, and Thomas resigned. He left Canterbury and lived for a while in Hawke’s Bay, returning to England to try to drum up support for a new colony. But new legislation put paid to that, and the last that was heard of him was his appointment as a mine manager in New South Wales.

In his thesis on Joseph Thomas, Owen Eatwell acknowledges that to generations of Canterbury historians Thomas

has been an enigma. “He was typical of that versatile individual in New Zealand: the surveyor who was an explorer, architect, town planner, road maker, engineer, and administrator.”

He had a reputation for getting the best out of his subordinates, but that did not mean he was well liked: Torlesse writes dreadful things about him in his journal; Jollie, who worked with him, felt he was “not altogether in his right mind, he had so many losses from putting trust in other people’s honesty that he had become suspicious of everyone.”

Owen Eatwell tells an illuminating story. Thomas apparently hoisted a Union Jack at his residence. When told the action was illegal, he replied he should like to see the man who would go and haul it down. Gouland (the customs officer) reported it, even though the magistrate at Akaroa thought no interference by the authorities was necessary. But the Colonial Secretary replied that Thomas “might hoist all the flags in the world if he pleased.”

In many ways, Thomas was an overbearing misanthrope, Eatwell acknowledges, but adds, “only a conscientious, persevering, assiduous, and cantankerous person like Thomas could have carried out the plans of the Association so successfully.”

Public controversy over the Sumner road continued after Thomas’s departure and it was only after two independent surveys confirmed his route as the best that work recommenced — although even then the provincial engineer, Dobson, resurveyed a route down the east side of Sumner valley rather than following Thomas down the west side.

James Edward Fitz Gerald, Canterbury’s first superintendent, was an ardent supporter of the Sumner road, and was determined to inaugurate it in person, Gordon Ogilvie says.

He finally did in 1857, two years before the railway tunnel was pierced. According to Sir Charles Bowen, one of the passengers, the superintendent “insisted on risking his own life and that of his friends by driving a tandem over the half-finished zig-zag. It was negotiated with the assistance of volunteer grooms hanging on to the horses’ heads and a stalwart crowd hanging on to the dog cart behind. The Provincial Secretary (Gouland) who was an elderly gentleman, felt it his duty to accompany the Superintendent, and manfully stuck to his seat throughout; but it was reported that he had made his will the day before.”

Even after the official opening, the road was by no means finished, and the controversy continued, as Crosbie Ward’s parody of 1859 shows:

The Sumner Road! The Sumner Road!

Which burly Thomas first began; Where Dobson all his skill bestowed, Fitz Gerald drove, and Ronnage ran. Eternal talking still goes on;

But nothing save the talk is

(Ronnage was a prisoner engaged on the roadworks on the Lyttelton side; he made several unsuccessful attempts at escape, each one adding a term to his sentence.)

Over the years, Captain Thomas’s original road down the west side of Sumner valley was left to grass over, but the route he took is still clearly visible. It has always remained legally designated as a road reserve, and a year ago the Christchurch City Council’s Parks and Recreation Department decided to develop it as a walkway.

Work has • progressed largely with P.E.P. labour. Building by hand, using picks and shovels much as Captain Thomas’s team did, they faced the same problems with rocky outcrops and, like him, concentrated on “the easy bits,” as the parks manager, Kingsley Clark, describes them. He was impressed by the good, wide path they found, well graded, with many of the original surveyors’ pegs. The team has built stiles and bridges over creeks, planted natives indigenous to the Port Hills, and gravelled muddy areas — water runoff is a problem on these hills after rain. A major task was to build a new access route off Nayland Street near Van Asch College. The original route peters out near some steep cliffs, and Kingsley Clark speculates that it was the problem of finding a

way to exit on to the flat that caused Captain Thomas’s route to be shelved. “It still eludes us why he went as far as he did,” he muses.

Although the walkway is now passable for the sure-footed, the rocky parts have not been completed. One problem is to decide just how to tackle them: cutting through is even more expensive than in Thomas’s day and the narrowness and steepness of the track makes it difficult to get machinery to the sites; but building structures to skirt them means long-term maintenance. Now that P.E.P. schemes have been phased out, maintenance falls back on the council’s regular staff, and they wonder where they are going to get the time and personnel to do it. “Walkways such as Captain Thomas’s and Barnett Park (in Redcliffs) have been developed, outside our manning schedule — and while that development has been greatly appreciated,' ' Our staff is going to be stretched to maintain it,” Kingsley Clark believes.

The Lands and Survey Department has similar problems with walkways it has created on the Port Hills< and elswhere. Bruce Arnold, the senior ranger, warns that although no walkways have been closed yet, lack of access to P.E.P. workers means they are not as neat and tidy as the department would like. They are experimenting with using contract labour schemes through trusts and the Labour Department, one of which is at present adding a new section to the Crater Rim walkway near the Sign of the Bellbird. In other areas, they are having to use voluntary workers. “If we were prepared to lower our standards, the walkways could be handled by our own staff," Bruce Arnold agrees. “But if we tap

into contract schemes and volun-P.-tary labour we can maintain and ■ extend them.” It all depends on what the public wants. In the meantime, Captain Thomas’s road still waits completion, nearly 140 years on.

Maori issue

avoided

‘Extravagant and showy’

Standing by his flag

Rocky parts uncompleted