ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 60, Issue 4233, 19 January 1940, Page 5

ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO

THE COMPANY’S EMIGRANTS ARRIVE HISTORIC LANDING ON PETONE BEACH LcJNG VOYAGE ENDS HAPPILY ”~- i One hundred years ago on 22nd January. 1840, the “Aurora” arrived at Port Nicholson, and the first of “ the settlers brought out by the New Zealand Company landed on Petone beach. The Company’s advance ship, the “Tory,” had called in September to buy land; the “Cuba” with the Company’s surveyors had arrived only on 3rd January, having endured an exceptionally long voyage; but the “Aurora” contained the first authentic emigrants coming out' to farm in the first of the organised settleinents. . . . The voyage of the “Aurora” was eventful only at the end. The “Aurora” was a barque of 550 tons, and she carried about 150 passeng* ers. She crossed the Line on stfi November, 1939 with appropriate ceremony. The South Island was sighted thankfully on 16th January. The next day the 'barque anchored at Port Hardy, D’Urville Island, the pre-arranged rendezvous for all the emigrant ships with Colonel' William Wakefield, the Company’s agent, who had sailed for New Zealand some . monfhp before on board the “T9 r y.” ~ , CONTRARY WINDS ” '

It was with mixed feelings that ' " the emigrants saw that the steepsided cirque of the Port was empty of any other ship. Maori canoes ap-. ■ proathed, another source of apprehension but soon dispersed. For even if Colonel Wakefield was not at Port Hardy, he had arranged with Mtic- ’ Jaren a whaler who spent the sum- ‘ - mer with his Maori wife’s tribe in that neighbourhood, to tell each emigrant ship as it arrived to make for Port Nicholson. The “Aurora” had missed Colonel Wakefield by only a few days. He had been at Port Hardy on 11th, and on 17th January was rowed aci-pss “ CoOk Strait from Tory Channel in ah • open’ whale-boat. The ibig sailing ship .could not make so light ul wincey Cook Strait as that. She was reported outside the Wellington Heads on 20th. Colonel Wakefield rowed out and went on board, only to find himself'and the whole ship’s company tantalisingly frustrated ■ from entering the harbour by -a. .... strong north-west wind. This was too much for Colonel Wakefield’s energetic habits. He left a pilot on “ board the anchored ship, and re- ' ' turned, himself to Petone. It was —” not Rll the 22nd January, 1840 that the first ship of the “first colony,” as it was called, reached the Petone roadstead. FIRST HOMES ASHORE If the emigrants had felt troubled „ , by the emptiness of Port Hardy, they had plenty of company off Petone Reach. The “Cuba” was already ar anchor, and the trading barque "" “Helena” from Sydney came into the harbour on the same day. The . “Cuba’s” surveyors Were ashgjfei ' They and their helpers An eut a’ • small jetty to facilitate the disem- 1barkation. The first task of the emigrants was to get shelter of some sort. A few had tents; other swapped shirts or blankets for the ser- ' vices of Te Puni’s Ngatiawa tribesmen in putting up raupo wharea. Some wooden houses in frame sent out by the Company for the. reception of the labouring emigrants, were also set up. Things were hardly oomfortable. But the people- were now in the land of their choice, and -they could admire the vegetable garden planted by Smith, whom Colonel Wakefield had left behind in October, 1839 to act as caretaker to - - - the immense purchase he had made on behalf of the Company. They felt they had only to work to succeed. Among them were such men as William Deans, afterwards a pioneer 'in Canterbury, and the surgeon, Stokes, who became a Wellington settler, Everyone enjoyed th# picnip conditions, proud to be the ~, first of the ships to land its settlers. LOST PROPERTY AT PORT ' HARDY It was not long before the other Company ships were beating into Wellington harbour. On the 22nd ’ January, the day of the arrival of- “* the “Aurora” at Petone, the “Orientai” -slipped into Port Hardy. Ther®.*:.< was nobody there to welcome them, not pven Maclaren and his Maori relations. But everybody swarmed ” ashore eagerly. Francis Moleswortlr and Dudley Sinclair reached the topeof a high, hill overlooking Pprt> - Hardy, and there found a pocket.- ,;,, book lost by a member of the party . t ,. of surveyors on board the “Ctfba.”' 1 This was indubitable evidence that' some of the Company’s servants had-' reached New Zealand, but it wa? some days, before a message came to - move on to Port Nicholson. The “Oriental” reached her anchorage there on Ist February, 1840, when the ‘‘Aurora” and the “Cuba,” said the Honourable Henry Petre, who was bn board, “gave -us a salute of more; I believe, than the usual'number of guns, which We returned with -interest.” . : .-it. There were many difficulties ahead of the? settlers—first- and foremost tlje,dispute as to whether- TTmrridon or Petone was the best site for the still unnamed capital. There wasan interim sharing out of about an „ acre each of Hutt and Petone land for immediate cropping while this decision was being debated. But in the first bustle and joy of arrival after the weary months at sea, nobody Rad much heart for arguments about anything.