EARLY WELLINGTON

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 59, Issue 4171, 11 August 1939, Page 4

EARLY WELLINGTON

PORT NICHOLSON IN 1839. In 1839 Port Nicholson had a European population of one—a Scots sailor, Joe Robinson, who lived near the mouth of the Hutt River. His lot was not a happy one. When the Wesleyan missionaries, Hobbs and Mumby, met him he was so disconsolate that he was building himself a boat to get away to the whaling settlements at Akaroa, where he would at least have the pleasure of seeing some white, or near-white, faces. Joe had only a hand-saw and some iron barrel hoops for putting his craft together. He was laboriously melting down the hoops in an attempt to make nails for the boat. He W’as still engaged on this task when the white settlers reached Petone beach. When it was finished he had a better use for the craft. He engaged himself ferrying passengers to Wellington or up the Hutt River for half-a-crown a trip.. This must be what Jerningham Wakefield meant when he related his meeting with Joe Robinson, who, he says, had a Maori wife, and recounted that “ the boat earned many a pound in later times by trading round the coast.”