A BIT OF OLD WELLINGTON

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 138, 14 June 1933, Page 10

A BIT OF OLD WELLINGTON

How they walked in those days! In 1839, before the founding, John Coults Crawford made his first entry to Wellington by the back door; "he walked from Titahi Bay through dense bush, and first viewed the harbour and the site of the town from the Korokoro hills to the westward of Petone." Dr. D. Macdonald Wilson stated this at the Rotary Club lunch yesterday, and one wonders how many of the Rotarians walked to, or from, that luncheon.- In another part of yesterday's . paper is told the story of one'of the earliest milk farms, Fitchett's, which is probably, the only one of the near-city farme which is still a milk farm. City expansion has abolished the Kelburn milk run, and those on the Evans Bay side, but the higher slopes of. Fitchett's have . defied the subdividerto such an extent that there are still 90 cows running v pn 260 acres and supplying 500 customers. Between the cross-fire of city water supply acquisitions (Karori dam and catchment area) on one side, and city expansion in the Brooklyn and Aro j Street quarters, this considerable milk farm still runs, looking down on the capital as from an eagle's nest. The original John Fitchett was so little afraid of walking and working that he carried his milk to town twice daily on a yoke (there being no road), and "often, when short of milk, he would go to Karori to get what was wanted, walk to town to deliver it, and then walk back to his farm again." And he must Have passed plenty of good water on the way. The Maori woodcutters in Fitchett's bush also worked 'and walked, but did not combine the two: I Sometimes, at full moon, they would | use the axe by day and the saw by night; but.sometimes they took a holiday—a walker's holiday-1-by rejoining their ' tribe, at Otaki, and, after a few weeks' change, "walking back along the beach." Tears must be shed here.over all the vanished bush of Wellington hills, including that which formerly adorned the Tinakori portion of the Town Belt, and which one of the Wakefields hoped (according to Dr. Wilson): would be "preserved from depredation." Vain thought! "Two years after the second big earthquake Xthe;, earthquake of 1855) Mr. Fitchett acquired a milk cart, which means that by then he had a road. Fitchett's farm had a windmill, in 1864, and made ensilage in 1882^milestones of progress. There came a year when "the farm round 'the original house was sold' because the rates were too high"—and thus was glimpsed a problem which has re-; cently put on the Statute Book special rating measures for'urban farm lands. I It is a coincidence that' yesterday's paper also contains Monday night's I deliberations of ! the, Lower Hutt Borough; Council, which rejects the applications of 94 out of 118 people who claim to be owners of urban farm lands entitled to rate-relief under the Act. While the ratas of, 6ft to Bft diameter; 70ft to 90ft high, have gone without leaving a trace, the!economic.problems of the farms replacing them remain. Gold at the moment is far more in demand than, grass, and Fitchett's farm produced both of them (as Mr. E. A. Fitchett's gold ring attests), but round about Wellington it has generally cost more gold to mine gold than the gold mined was worth. The real gold mine has been the cow,,and the family of the man Who eighty years ago carried milk to Wellington on a yoke is surely entitled to whatever dividends they may have won.