HIS HOME SITE

Gisborne Times, Volume LXV, Issue 10392, 9 May 1927, Page 11 (Supplement)

HIS HOME SITE

MU. EZRA SMITH’S PROBLEM IN 72. SEARCH FOR GLADSTONE ROAD SECTION. FOSSICKING FOR. THE PEGS AMONGST THE TI-TREE'.-When buying a section of lancLin Gisborne these clays of pampering civilisation, it is merely a question of getting the address from the land agent, starting up a car, and you are deposited at the spot within a few minutes. Fifty-five years ago, however, when Mr. Ezra Smith first landed in Gisborne, land buying was a very different proposition. Mr. Smith applied to the right and proper official whoso duty it was to allot sections to would-be residents and was informed: “You’ll see the pegs with numbers so and so on them in the manuka away up there,” and he .r.is directed up Gladstone Road. Mr. Smith waded through several inches of mud for nearly a mile and then hunted through manuka as tall as liimSelf for signs of the surveyors. After nearly an hour’s search he located one peg with one of the required numbers on it and a further tweni ty' minutes were required before he 1 had learned the definite boundaries of liis new home. And to-day Mr. Smith still occupies that same piece of land •wlhich he settled on when Gisborne , town consisted' of a small group of houses and shops at the ‘'Point,” with manuka and ti-tree stretching in all directions, broken very occas--1 ionally by the roof of a small home I alongside* the then rough, munetalled [ stretch of cut-up mud now occupied', by the bitumenized thoroughfare of Gladstone Road. SIMPLE METHOD OF FILLING A SECTION. Oil the section adjoining Mr. Smith’s, there settled, a little later, a painter named Mr Freyer. At the back of Mr. Freyer’s' home was a patch of raupo, growing in a pool of swampy water. Heavy rain fell one night and, in the morning, Mr. Fryer got up, picked up his kettle, intending to fill it at a. well in his hack yard, and opened his hack door. A stretch of water, a foot deep, and extending to the standing manuka behind his section, met his gaze. Had the water risen half an inch higher it would have flowed into the house. That morning, Mr. Fryer filled his kettle at his Imck door without stepping a pace outside. In order to fill in the swampy ground about this raupo clump, this Mr. Fryer helped himself to parts of Gisborne’s thoroughfares, going round the streets and roads with a wheei-ITarrow and scraping up all the loose surfacd. Possibly, in these days, such a course of action might not be tolerated! Fortunately for Air. Smith, his section was on slightly higher ground than that of Mr. Fryer and he was never flooded out. FORMATION OF GLADSTONE ED, “Gladstone Road was largely a tangle of ti-tree and fern,” related Mr. Smith to a “Times” representative, “and the first real move for its improvement was made when the Road Board let a contract, to form it properly, to a Air. Owen Kelly. Mr. Kelly’s tools consisted of nothing so elaborate as a bitumen plant—nor even a simple roller —let alone a steam one. He went to work with axes, slashers and shovels solely, and really made a very good job indeed. His men were set first to cut down all the standing scrub and this thrown into the centr.e of the road.* Then the shovels came into the operation and the earth was thrown from the skiers of the road on to the pile of scrub in the centre. That was all the work required to he done as far as Air. Kelly was concerned and the traffic and rains did all the rolling-m of the surface required. "Yet, I can toll you,” he said, “that road was then perfect c lupared with what it had been before.’ THE. PERILS OF OPEN DRAINS.

Mr. Smith recalls some of the early Borough Council work with a great deal of amusement. ‘‘Soon after being formed,.’. 1 he remarked, ‘‘the Council set to work to improve Gladstone Road. The first requirement appeared to he efficient drainage and so the Council had a deep dram dug along the roadside from Roebuck Road to Carnarvon Street. This certainly helped to draw off a great part of the surface water, but, in those days, we had nothing in the nature of street lights. In consequence people using the road were continually stumbling into the drain and even the cushion of water at the bottom for them to fall on did not alleviate their indignation at till. Finally, so many protests came into tlie Council that'these authorities were compelled to take the only possible course and have the drain filled up. Later still another big drain was dug in Stanley Road and with a like result. It had to he filled in again owing to protests from pedestrians and others who had tested its depth. “Even in the good old days, Mr. Smith concluded with a smile, “we used to have our little jokes over local public works. 1 ’ _____