LEST WE FORGET.

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 218, 11 June 1930, Page 10

LEST WE FORGET.

MONUMENT TO PIONEERS LANDING AT PETONE Surprise was expressed yesterday to a “Dominion” reporter by Mr. Joseph J., Webb, an old Wellington settler, that no monument had been erected to the pioneer settlers, those who, early in 1840, had landed on the Petone beach from the sailing vessels chartered by the New Zealand Company. Mr. Webb had no notion of personal vainglory, as he was born in Wellington, but his father, the late Mr. Charles Frederick Webb, was one of those, who arrived from England in the company’s survey ship Cuba, which dropped anchor in the harbour in January, 1840. During his lifetime the late Mr. Webb was accustomed to pay a visit now and again to the spot where the keels of the Cuba’s boats first grated in the sand, and Mr. Joseph Webb can well remember accompanying his father out to Petone. There he was told that the boat on which his father came ashore first touched land somwhere on the beach opposite the eastern end of the Gear Company’s property—about half a mile along what is now the Esplanade, from the railway crossing on the Hutt Road. Mr. C. F. Webb was a bricklayer ana slater by trade, and one of his jobs is still to be seen in the slate roof of the ancient Bethune and Hunter building at the eastern end of Bond Street (lately Old Customhouse Street). It was surely due to the pioneer settlers of this rapidly-growing city and district, said Mr. Webb, that a memorial of some kind, however simple, should be erected at the place where they first touched ground, as it marked the beginning of one of the most remarkable achievements in colonisation in the history of the British Empire; all the more remarkable because it was planned and carried out by private enterprise without the recognition or even the blessing of the Imperial Government. Now that the Petone Borough Council was steadily improving the Esplanade and making it a fine parade for pedestrians and a bathing resort, Mr. Webb thought that the erection of a memorial to the pioneers of 1840 would attract many visitors interested in the history of the settlement of Wellington. Since the old wooden statue of Edward Gibbon Wakefield (which stood on the old Albert Hotel) had been taken down and stowed away, there was 1 actually no emblematic memorial to the man whose fertile imagination and practical knowledge created Wellington, said Mr. Webb. It was true there was a Wakefield Street and a Wakefield Park, but there was no definite memorial to the great man other than what the city itself offered. Even if it were only a pile of concreted rocks, with a marble plate inscribed “To Edward Gibbon Wakefield and.the pioneers of Wellington, who landede here in January, 1840.” it would be something added to the memorials of the place. The cost of a memorial need he little, but whatever form it took. Mr. Webb ventured to believe it would have a traditional interest for evermore.