Upper Peria News

Northland Age, Volume XVII, Issue 62, 7 May 1948, Page 4

Upper Peria News

THE' BIRTH OF A DISTRICT In the year 1885, the Government of that day decided to open up a number of blocks of land in North Auckland to encourage families to I leave the town and settle in the : country. One of these blocks was ! Fern Flat, afterwards called Te Koroa. | The settlers were allotted 50 acres each at a very small rental a year. After some years these farms were | made freehold. The twelve families who settled in j Fern Flat ali came up on the s.s. | Clansman to Mangonui, the trip in ! those days taking two days and two i nights. The late Mr. George Thomas, : who lived at Peria (10 miles away), : met these families at Mangonui and brought them out to his house at* Peria. The settlers were most kindly treated by the Thomas family. Fern Flat is five miles away from Peria, and at that time there was i only a six-foot track through the dense bush (and plenty.of mud), but in due course they arrived at the settlement. For the most part they lived in whares made of nikau until such time as they could build' a house. They had to clear a small section of bush and cut timber I either split palings and shingles for i the roof, or construct a pit and saw | the timber. The Government allowed ‘ each settler £2O for each house, so* | it will be understood they were fairly I primitive. No building by-laws were j in force in those days, so one built j his house to suit himself and his pocket. These families were also given 50 apple trees from that good Government. Some of those orchards are

still bearing well even now. There was no dairy factory in those days, and all the settlers could do for a living was to work on the roads for 5/- a day or dig gum, which when scraped was worth about £2/10/- a cwt. *

The women had a hard time of it, having no conveniences at all in the house and no tradespeople to call. They had to learn to bake their own bread in the camp-oven in a wide open fireplace, and to carry all the water needed up from the creek. In course of time the bush was cleared ; what bush fires there were then ! The Government built a school, which is still standing today as good as ever. One family tells the tale of how

they came to Peria store to get some currants etc. for their Christmas pudding, and found the store had sold out of dried fruit. So they went home and the next best thing was to pick some wild fuchsia berries to put in the pudding. Of course the fuchsia berries went to the bottom of the pudding—but the children thought it was a good one. The children who ate that Christmas pudding are still all lix/ing, aged 80, 77 and 74, and very fit. Fuchsia berries must certainly have plenty of vitamins !