WELLINGTON'S MAIN BUSINESS IS DONE BEYOND THE OLD BEACH

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 33, 8 February 1935, Page 23 (Supplement)

WELLINGTON'S MAIN BUSINESS IS DONE BEYOND THE OLD BEACH

.*■ 11 "•HE city and port are today taken for granted, JL so many streets and buildings, so many services, so many people to use them, fully-equipped wharves, dock facilities as good as docks are made, overseas vessels handling the Dominion's produce outwards, landing goods from every country under the sun; but Wellington in the early days took very little for granted; the settlers started from behind scratch. When the first ships arrived with the New Zealand Company settlers the hillsides and bluffs, falling to the water round the greater length of the shores of the western side of the harbour offered few attractions, and the landing was made at Petone (Pito-One), where, had riot plans been changed, the town of Britannia would have grown up. The plan for Britannia was of a very formal and rectangular town, hardly big enough to be a city, with four charming and altogether utili- / tarian features: at each corner of the town was to stand1 a fort, complete with guns, loopholes, powder magazines, surrounding earthworks, and other engines of war of the forties, and over the fort walls, immediately adjoining, were to he four cemeteries. Symmetry was everything on that plan, four forts, four cemeteries. In the • event of trouble the cemeteries would be handy, even if the association would be disheartening to the forces, but Britannia and the forts and cemeteries never came to anything. Only a few of the settlers remained in the Hutt Valley, for the river in those days wandered over a great part of the valley, and the land was generally in heavy swamp in the best of weather and under water after bad spells, and beyond im- . mediate hope of cultivation on a wide scale. - BAD ANCHORAGE. . The southerly winds, sweeping across the harbour, made the anchorage bad, and reduced the attractiveness of the beach lands to people who had had far too much of wind and water on the long and dreary voyage from England, but probably the main reason for the decision to establish Wellington on the Lambton Harbour front was the shallowness of the water for a long distance out from the Petone shore line. The river could conceivably be controlled, as it was controlled in later years, the winds which worried the settlers became just every-day .breezes on long acquaintance, but the shallow shore water off Petone beach was a permanent handicap. . • l, Actually Colonel Wakefield, who had visited Wellington for the New Zealand Company in September, 1839, in the Tory, with Captain Chaffers, had appreciated the difficulties which would nave to be overcome in planting a settlement at ; : Pito-Qnei> and had selected Thorndon as the ' site for a town, but the surveyor who arrived with the first ships had other views and commenced to lay off town sections on the level land of the Hutt Valley. Wakefield's judgment was vindicated, and the transfer was made to the western side of the harbour. There the available level land consisted of two areas, at Thorndon and Te Afo, connected by a narrow strip of beach. The position on the Lambtcn side of the harbour was not very much better from the shipping point of view, and for long after the seaport town began to grow from Pipitea Point southwards to Te Aro, the lack of deep water inshore was a heavy handicap on Port Nicholson, but the shipping was much better sheltered on this side of the harbour than on any anchorage towards Petone. Today overseas vessels poke their bows to within feet of the city roadways and to within yards of the warehouses for which their cargoes are intended, but until Wellington had driven back the shore line, to a_ deeper and deeper waterfront, by slow and costly, reclamation, the old sailing ships, none of them drawing much water, could no more approach conveniently inshore than a coastal boat today Could easily handle cargo to and from Oriental Bay. THE FIRST LANDING JETTIES. For the first twenty or so years of the settlement the bulk of the goods imported were lowered over the ship's sides into lighters which unloaded on to the beach and, later on, to small wharves and jetties which thrust out along the line of the then existing foreshore from Pipitea toTe Aro. The stories of the early wharves and jetties and of the reclamations go together, for as reclamations were made, wharves and jetties followed, or, if they had preceded reclamation, had to be unmade and made again. Boat-handling of the very light tonnage of goods required in the first years (there were practically no exports for a considerable time) became too expensive as population and trade grew. It paid the shippers and it,paid the merchants to replace boatand beach-handling, inconvenient and leading to frequent damage to goods, with something better. Practically all the early jetties were privately owned, either by individuals or by companies, and none were deep-water wharves, accessible at all tides. Hickson's, Waitt and Tyser's, Pilcher's, Brown's, Rhodes's, the Commercial, Tod's, and Bowler's wharves were some of them, but the most picturesque was Plimmer's Ark, a jetty and warehouse and a town feature all in one. THE OLD INCONSTANT. In the latter part of 1849 the ship Inconstant, from London, missed stays and ran ashore on the rocks near Pencarrow, but was apparently riot badly damaged. , She was towed off by one of his Majesty's survey ships, a steamer, which happened to be in port, but the damage was more serious than had appeared, and the Inconstant could not make Lambton Harbour. She was turned and put ashore on the sloping beach in front of the Maori pa of Te Aro, and there she lay until Mr. John Plimmer bought her for £80 and obtained permission to tow her off and beach her again in front of Barrett's Hotel, Lambton Quay being then the^waterfront road. The Inconstant was run up hard and fast, the hull was shored up and alterations were made to her upper works, transforming the ship into a warehouse, connected with the shore by a wooden bridge. Below decks the ship became a storehouse, and to, obtain additional warehouse space the bridge was given sides and a Toof over part of its length. On the forepart of the ark, pointing seaward, a platform was constructed over ten feet of water, at any rate, enough watex* to permit the landing to be used for cargo handling.

The ark was opened for business as a warehouse and auction room in 1851, and became an important port and business facility. The 1855 earthquake threw the vessel on her side and did a good deal of damage, but she. was figaiiLsh^rejj

up and a retaining wall and reclamation on the north side held her firmly. A few years later the ark was1 surrounded by reclamation, and by that time, too, the type of business and wharf construction had advanced considerably on the standards of 1849', and Plimrner's Ark was losing its business prominence and was becoming a feature rather than a necessity. John Plimmer, shortly after the completion of this particular reclamation, built another jetty out from the new waterfront, into deeper water. P It was not until well on in,thelßso's that the deep-water problem was taken in hand, as a

public work. The possibility hadjbeen discussed earlier, but the difficulties appeared too great, and considering that in 1850 Wellington was still only ten years old, the town had done marvellously well to have progressed even so far as it had. In 1852 several sites were inspected, but at each the shallow water inshore, and consequently the necessity of a long approach over decking laid on piles, discouraged the gathering of the essential finance. The Queen's Wharf site was looked at more than, once, but even to meet the lesser requirements of shipping of the fifties an approach several hundred feet long would have been required to rqach a workable depth of water. In 1857 the Provincial Government undertook a more thorough inquiry and considered sites as far away as Kaiwarra and Point Howard (so that oil tanker wharf at Point Howard was not a new idea after all), but though the water depths were inviting the distances were too great, and in 1851 the Queen's Wharf was decided upon and tenders were called for a timber wharf 500 feet long; that is, from a point which could not have been far from the Pier Hotel .site. ,The plans provided for a 50-foot tee at' the head and for cross-tees on either side of the main construction 300 feet from the shore. The -contractors had until December, 1862, to complete" the work, but they ran into trouble with the weather, for floods and wash-outs interrupted the cartage of the totara .piles from the Wairarapa, and they exceeded the contract time. Business was business, and the delays cost them £800, though the penalty was in part remitted later. / '

3HE very land on which the greater part of the commercial section of QQ Wellington stands to-day did not exist when Wellington was founded. Other cities have in part been reclaimed from the sea, but in few has reclamation played so great a part. There was little flatland near the waterfront when settlement began, and the commercial World of the day established itself upon a fringe of "beach" fronting the sleep cliffs and hill-sides. Bit by bit local spaces were built up, and the worji still goes on. The area of land so added to the city site totals about 300 acres, andther^are possibilities of future large additions.

With a deep-water wharf, - the Government Wharf as it was then called, for the name of "Queen's Wharf" was not adopted till a good deal later, and the old shore line disappearing -behind successive reclamations,- the port lost much of its picturesqueness, and. also much of its-hard toil and inconvenience. The handling of goods became considerably cheaper, and shippers and merchants, and by and by-the public, benefited. The old methods of lightering cargo had not quite gone, but they were going fast. It was many years, however, before shore-to-ship boat transport was -to end, and the watermen, some of whom were hard-bitten characters who would make a fortune in Hollywood today, with or without language, plied to ships lying in the anchorage until not so very long ago. THE BASIN RESERVE. Earlier in this article the delightful fortcemetery combination planned for Britannia is mentioned. A proposal made in the very first years, and shown on the London-drawn plans for Wellington, was that Wellington should overcome the docking (berthing) difficulties, both of wind and water, once arid for all, by constructing a fully-sheltered dock inland, to be approached by a deep canal—the Basin Reserve and the Canal Reserve. The Basin Reserve has stuck through all the years, but the Canal Reserve, the widest thoroughfare in the city, has lost its old intention in the change of name to Kent and Cambridge Terraces.

When the idea was put forward, originating in the. rough surveys made by earlier callers, the

Basin Reserve was a deep swamp, from which. a stream meandered down between thick growths of raupo to Te Aro foreshore, and the deepening of the stream and the excavation of the swamp to the depth necessary for the accommodation of the shipping of that day were thought to be not only feasible, but good business. A severe earthquake, one of several that shook early Wel-lington,-ended that idea, for it gave the town such a wrench that it lifted the whole locality about the Basin ten feet, and the canal and Basin became impossible, even to men with the big hearts that the settlers had. That was one good turn that the earthquake did for Wellington, for a canal and basin could only have been a costly mistake. The trade of the growing town and port would have rapidly run away from any facilities that could have been so provided. Earthquake or none, however, it is doubtful whether the idea would have been seriously taken in hand; it arose from hurried surveys and inspections, and was developed on paper in London. Wellington today could draw out magnificent ideas for the improvement of London docks (or aerodromes, for they are fashionable now), but London might not be enthusiastic. The canal and basin did secure for Wellington a splendid playground. THE FIRST RECLAMATIONS. The earliest reclamations were not undertaken as land-reclamations, but to safeguard the Beach Road, a rough track, over native rock where there was rock bottom and over fillings where the going was soft, above high-water mark

along Lambton Quay and Willis Street. Passersby were likely to be drenched with spray, so were shops fronting the track, and in the best of weather it was not possible for two carts to pass in some lengths. A Lambton Quay, far back from the waterfront, paved, footpathed, carrying trams and motors, lined on both sides by shop and office buildings, could never have been pictured by the Wellingtonians of 1850. _ These first sea-walls, holding back minor fillings, were of wood or rubble, and, in odd lengths, of brick. When the new roadway at the back of the War Memorial, Bowen Street, was being.formed, an old brick walling was discovered, marking, it seemed likely, the old seafront, but how old cannot be said. Bricks could not have been in such cheap supply i n the first few years that they would be used for holding back a road filling, though a few years later, when kilns were in operation, brick retaining walls were standard practice. AN EARLY. START. \ The reclamations proper were not long in coming, and it is a remarkable fact that several of the major works which transformed Wellington and made the development of a real city possible were undertaken before the town was twenty years old. The town moved slowly southwards, where there was ample room for expansion for the then small population, for the business, houses, the port and: Government buildings, and the wharves and jetties drew business closely to them and made more land in their immediate vicinity more desirable, even though

it had to be made, than land a mile or so away, available: with little preparation. v That, of course, holds today in Wellington and every other city, but now, when there is no open land, up go the buildings higher. The settlers were not sure of building upwards; they made more land. Even had they possessed materials for buildings of three or four storeys it is unlikely that they would have risked them, for the succession of earthquakes had made them cautious. ■ _ There is a general belief that th,ese shakes did little damage to property, but that is not so, for the 1848. shake brought down 75 buildings and killed three people, and the 1855 shake did considerable damage. Later, Wellington forgot the lessons taught in 1848 and 1855, and became careless in building. Today Wellington is exercising full care again. The beginning of reclamation upon a planned scale meant the end of casual waterfront development and of the private wharves and jetties over which Wellington's inward goods had been trundled in casks and addressed in the age-old politeness of seamen and longshoremen for twenty or thirty years. They were very fond of heading up 'all sorts of things in casks in those days, from rum and gunpowder to butter and beef and clocks, probably because casks stood up well-to hard handling over makeshift wharves. LARGE-SCALE RECLAMATION STARTS. The first considerable official reclamation was from in front of. the old Custom House, now

buried among higher buildings, and'forgotten, in Old Customhouse Street, northwards along today's Willis Street and Lambton Quay. .One of these areas was "Sir George Grey's reclamation," and a substantial part of it was set aside as a college endowment, from which arose the old name of College Passage, or College Lane, for the track that is now Mercer Street. , - In three main stages the work was carried under Government direction to about the site of the Dominion Farmers' Institute building, and already a vast difference had been made in the harbour front, though the total so added to Wellington was not very great, about 70 acres. Later reclamations carried the new seafront forward by stages until the existing line was reached. The extensive reclamations north 'and south of the mid-city area were still some years ahead, and were in the main undertaken under the direction of the Harbour Board, the City.Council, the Wellington-Manawatu Railway .Company, and the Government, through the Public Works Department, to secure the site for the .Government Buildings. The City Council's reclamations, on the seaward side of the old Provincial Government's work and at Te Aro, totalled 82 acres, the Harbour Board added 58 acres, and the Railway Company about 30 acres to the city area, but only about half of this was retained for Tailway purposes. Part of this- reclamation became the one-time fashionable evening walk, the Thorndon Esplanade, but the esplanade fell ' very much from fashion and lay neglected until the second Thorndon reclamation was commenced, when its value, as reflected by compensation claims made by the City Council, surprised those who had thought so little of it, • , Another railway reclamation secured the site for Te Aro railway station,'in Wakefield Street, now used as a produce mart, and the City Council and Harbour, Board between them continued this reclamation seaward and towards Oriental Bay, for the making of the land now roaded by Cable and Chaffers Streets and Tory Street extension. Associated with Te Aro reclamation work was Wellington's first dock venture, but many things went wrong with the dock; and after i beingileft half-completed for a time it was filled in, itself a job big enough to call for a special contract. GREAT BUSINESS. A minor, but interesting, reclamation was of about a quarter of an acre at the corner of Lambton Quay and Grey Street, by working beea of the members of the three Oddfellows' Lodges. Similar rights to obtain sites by their own efforts were apparently open to other lodges, but the chances were not taken. A quarter of , an acre of harbour bottom was not a particularly striking endowment at the time, perhaps, but as the years ran by the reclamation was to prove a wonderfully profitable investment of lodge effort for the Oddfellows. The T. and G, Building stands on this land, today. ~ All Wellington reclamation has been great business for tike reclaimers, and in most of the earlier works auction sales brought in a prompt cash return, leaving a big margin over cost The City Council hat not parted with its reclaimed land, and reaps the benefit today in a substantial land rent return. The council may be persuaded to part with other of its scattered land holdings, but more than persuasion will be needed to separate the council from its reclamation holdings. . . ■ The last of the city area reclamation, wag, the big Thorndon railway reclamation of the last few years, of 68J acres. This work is such recent history—in fact, history still, in the making—that it needs only mention here. RECLAMATIONS OF THE FUTURE, Probably the Thorndon reclamation 'Will be the final city area reclamation, for the harbour front is now so well established, with permanent structures and equipment (as permanent as such things are) that a great wastage of capital would be involved in aoy considerable, alteration of the waterfront. The total area added to the city is well over 300 acres, almost one-third of the originally-planned 1100 acres for the. city of Wellington, and, more important.than Just measurement, every foot of the land so gained is level and useful* for commercial purposes. In addition to new-made level ground a considerable total of formerly steep ground was c,ut down to obtain spoil, as when the cliff faces which rose from thei old Beach Road to; The Terrace and part of the Oriental Bay cliffs- were cut back, so depeening existing sections. No land in the city is so valuable or so fully used as that which was once harbour, now made dry land by immense labour, with pick and shovel and wheelbarrow, pick and shovel and dray, pick and shovel and steam haulage, suction dredge and concrete mixer. The first settlers realised that there were great possibilities in extending the city seaward, but they could not have pictured the great changes that would come from the start they made. The work has not always run along ideal lines, for the lack of a complete plan of reclama- ■ tion led to several mistakes, now costly of remedy, for instance, the inconvenient and inadequate roading of Te Aro reclamation, and the unsatisfactory road lay-out in the Farish, Wakefield, and Hunter Street localities. If city reclamations are ended, there still are great possibilities—more than that, likelihoods, further out. Sooner or later, whether for industrial or recreational purposes, -the head and western side of Evans Bay will be reclaimed, and though the many hundreds of people who each week drive or take a bus round to Day's Bay and Eastbourne may not notice the very gradual change, a great reclamation work is in hand at the head of the harbour, to the east of the mouth of the Hurt River and about the mouth of the Waiwhetu Stream. Here silt traps have been driven across the shallow waters, and month after month silt and sand are steadily accumulating, a slow but inexpensive process. There is a great area of shallow sea bed here, slowly building higher, until this corner of the harbour will have become so shallow that it will pay to complete the job by dredging to provide what Wellington lacks, a wide stretch of level ground served by road, rail, and sea, and yet well removed from residential districts, for the heavy industries which Wellington will ipme-dax car Ji»