This drawing is made by Mr E. Mervyn Taylor from an old photograph in the possession of Mr Fred Anderson of Kennedys Bay. It is the only relic of the old milling town and sheep graze today where houses and workshops stood. Gradually the bush area receded. A tramway was laid to bring the trees to the jetty. On the mountains, a town with 700–800 people developed digging for gold but they disappeared as they had come, and left no trace except some treacherous holes hidden by the manuka. When Ben Ngapo grew up, the Kennedys Bay timber mill was already deserted; only a few kauris were left standing in inaccessible places. The Maoris cut these down and shipped them to Auckland. Around the time of the Boer war, these trees too gave out. Mr Ngapo went to Northland to work as a logger, leaving his wife and children behind. Many did this. Others started cutting the flax and selling that on the Auckland market. But the flax too was quickly exhausted and today not much of it is seen around Kennedys Bay. The carved meeting house collapsed and was never rebuilt. A few years later a butter factory opened up in Coromandel. This was a great event for the whole population of the northern tip of the peninsula. Mr Ngapo returned home and bought some cows. Where did you get the money from?—I booked it, Ben Ngapo replied. The first year Ben Ngapo carried the cream over the mountain on a packhorse, for years after it was a buggy. The herd and the yield of the pasture remained small until the Maori Land Development scheme started. Then he saw his kinsman Sir Apirana Ngata, who made finance available.

The Modern Age There are 10,000 acres in the Harataunga Maori block of which 3000 are now in grass. Development of the rest is complicated by the many owners who now live on the East Coast. Sheep and cattle farming is now almost as important as dairying. Two men live by selling crayfish on the Auckland market. The sea still provides a large proportion of the people's protein: fishing is traditional, kept up even in these farming days. Many farms still can only be reached by dinghy and one child has to row to school every day. The education board pays him 9d for providing his own school transport. Daily life on the Bay is still tough, but there is always joy in nocturnal eeling expeditions, in making a day-long trek through the bush to bring your horses to the show, in expeditions to the pa site where Maori adzes and fish-hooks are found, in the growing of ‘tropical gardens,’ and perhaps, as this modern age penetrates the settlement, in a library and adult education.