WELLINGTON AS IT WAS

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 13, 15 July 1936, Page 12

WELLINGTON AS IT WAS

UNPOPULAR TOLLGATE

ISLAND BAY HERMIT

"BONA FIDE TRAVELLERS"

(Written for "The Post" by F.W.W.). The "bona fide traveller" was a muchdiscussed personage throughout New Zealand in the eighties and nineties, and rather more so in Wellington than in other centres, because of the conditions of the liquor trade here. He was a creation of the licensing legislation of an earlier period, which had enacted that intoxicating liquor could be sold on Sundays to bona fide travellers, who were defined as persons who applied for refreshments at a hotel three miles from the place where they had lodged on the preceding night. Consequently anybody who lived at Thorndon. and chose to take a Sunday stroll to Kflbirnie. or to Island Bay, or any Ncwtownian who took his exercise in the direction of Kaiwarra (which then rejoiced in two licensed houses), j could slake his thirst within the law. Need it be said that journeys from such starting-places on these two routes were exceedingly popular? As a matter of simple fact, the outlying hotels indicated did a, roaring trade on the Sabbath. There was a procession of thirsty pilgrims to the suburbs such as could be seen on no other day of the week, while the hotelkee'pers in the city proper were supposed to keep their bars closed except to their own lodgers and real travellers. This state of things continued until the Seddon Government, in 1904, introduced its Licensing Acts Amendment Act. which, by a section of exactly two lines, wiped the "bona fide traveller" out of existence,' and restricted refreshments in hotels to genuine lodgers and actual comers from a distance. But the "b.f.t." had a great run as long as he lasted, and Sunday walking exercise was never so popular hereabouts during his career. . KAIWARRA'S TOLLGATE. An excrescence upon the suburban roads that passed out of sight about the same time was the tollgate at Kaiwarra, which spanned the Hutt Road ljust at the southern entrance to that suburb. It was erected by the Hutt County Council as a means of assisting towards the maintenance of the road to Petone and the Hutt. Valley. Popular feeling, especially on the part of the outlying settlers, was very strong against it, for it meant that no horsemen or owner of a vehicle could pass on the way to the Hutt districts, or to Johnsonville without contributing his pence to the revenue, and as a kind of class tax it was keenly resented. Several times the gate was pulled oft' its hinges after nightfall. Eventually the county authorities bowed to the storm of hostile feeling, and abolished the gate, and. the northern road has been free to all for something like forty years. . PROCESSIONS OF CONVICTS. Fifty years ago, and for many years later, there were t.wo prisons- within the city—one, known as The Terrace Gaol, above Woolcombe Street, opposite the top of Ingestre Street, and the other at Mount Cook, where the National Art Gallery and Technical College now stand. Mount Cook Gaol was an enormously strong structure, its outer walls consisting of several feet of brick, made from the clay in the vicinity. This building took many years to erect, and the work was done by convicts housed at The Terrace. Every day was ~to be . seen a morning and evening procession of anything from 50 to 100 convicts, guarded by armed warders, through the streets of the city from one gaol to the other. . The degrading spectacle was the subject of much indignation and public criticism as long as it lasted, until eventually a humanitarian Government resolved that it must stop, and provided for all the inmates of both gaols at Mount Crawford, on the Miramar peninsula, where those of today are now accommodated.. No great use was ever made of the Mount Cook establishment as a place- of detention, but it remained an ugly scar on the landscape until four or five years ago. Its strength as a structure was proved by the difficulties that were encountered in blasting down its massive walls, and it has given way to much more handsome and useful institutions, ISLAND BAY'S HERMIT. One of the "sights" of the town in the "eighties" was the Hfermit of Island Bay, who inhabited a srnoky cave just by the roadside, on the point at the western end of Houghton Bay, long since cut away -in the widening of the Marine Parade. Few visitors to Wellington in his day went away without making a pilgrimage to see this extraordinary personage. Nobody seemed to know where he had come from, oi how he had • got there, and he was hardly ever seen outside his dismal cavern. Once in a while he would walk in to. town, but then only under cover of the night. Simply he would spend his days, resting on, his elbow ir Hje cave, and answering in a bored manner any questions or remarks o) his callers. The writer rememberj once dropping in with a. couple oi lady strollers, and putting to the Hermit the suggestion that he must find good fishing from1 the adjacent rocks. "Oh, no," he replied, in his characteristically lackadaisical manner "fishing's altogether too slow." As il anything could have been slower thar his miserable and lazy existence in that dreary abode. Generally- he would deprecate any offerings of good; or money, but it was noted that if anybody left either of these on a ledge at the mouth of the.cave it invariably disappeared. There was something more than a suspicion that he was a pensioner of the ■ keeper of the nearest hotel, who provided him with food a; an "attraction" to the district, and ar excuse for the Sunday journeyings ol "the bona fide traveller." In the lonj run, he became ill,, and he died in Wellington Hospital. The Hermit was stated by those who had ever beer able to d,raw him out to have been t man of some education, hailing frorr the .North of'lreland, but the mysterj of his identity was never penetrated. WHY "BASIN" RESERVE? It is often asked how the Basir Reserve acquired its name. Earlj settlers used to tell us that' it arose from the fact that the New Zealand Company, which pioneered settlement in Wellington, had a plan foi the formation of a docking basin foi small vessels on its site, which was originally swamp, and a canal running up to it along the line of Kent Terrace. The existence of a Docl-i Street, which fifty years ago was the name for the short thoroughfare thai connects the foot of Adelaide Roac with Tory Street at the westerr corner of the reserve, seems to lenc colour to the idea. There is also corroborative evidence in an old coloured wall map, published in Londor in ths forties, which was among the possessions of the late Mr. J. E. Evans of . Lambton Quay. This exhibii showed our present cricket ground ir a blue tint as a lakelet, and the course of Kent Terrace as a wide oper drain, discharging into the easterr corner of the harbour where the destructor is. Nearly thirty years age Mr. Evans sent the map to the Coloriia Museum authorities, and it has since lain among the undisplayed properties of the museum, awaiting the lime when there would be room,to place r

on the vans. It may be hoped that when tin.- new gallery at Mount Cook is openqd, in the course of next month, the public will have an opportunity of seeing this interesting suggestion of an unfulfilled scheme. In support that the "Basin" was meant to be a part of Wellington's harbour facilities it has to be remembered that the whoile level of the district was raised siveral feet by the great earthquake of 1848, so that the idea of a causal and a docking-area so far inland was up to that time reasonably feasible.'