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5. Mind and Body

1

5.1 The Arts

Since the mid-19th century the Thames-Coromandel district has been a magnet for artists and

writers seeking creative inspiration or a refuge from metropolitan life. Lower land prices, beautiful

scenery, and a benign climate have traditionally attracted many talented, thoughtful people to the

Peninsula.

Visual artists, both professional and amateur, have long taken the seascapes and landscapes of

the Peninsula as subjects for their work. Castle Rock was particularly attractive to 19th century

artists schooled in the picturesque and sublime traditions of landscape painting, in which

panoramic views conveyed the majesty of nature in contrast with man’s puny presence within it.

Fig. 1: Charles Blomfield Coromandel scene showing Castle Rock, a river and bush 1878

Alexander Turnbull Library G-468

1 J.B.C. Hoyte, [Miners' slab huts in a bush clearing, Coromandel district. Between 1864 and 1867] Alexander Turnbull Library A-234-012.

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Auckland painter Alfred Sharpe’s watercolour of Castle Rock framed by a grove of kauri came to

be regarded ‘as among the best of nineteenth century landscape productions in this part of the

world.’2 Charles Blomfield, best known for his paintings of the famous Pink and White Terraces of

Lake Rotomahana, chose the same subject for his oil painting Castle Rock, Coromandel, sunrise,

from the Mercury Bay track, painted in 1888 and acquired by the Auckland Art Gallery in the

following year. The Gallery’s curatorial note describes Blomfield as ‘a self-taught painter, [who]

first took up painting while on the Coromandel mining for gold in the late 1860s’. It also suggests

that the ‘scene is a memory from the time spent camping in the bush and exploring the area.’3

During his time in the district as Commissioner of Goldfields (1852-1853) Charles Heaphy also

painted Castle Rock. In a different vein his 1852 cartoon series ‘How we went to the diggings and

what we did there’ provides a humorous depiction of the arrival of the crew of the Pandora at

Thames. The first of these watercolours is described as ‘A line of naval officers being carried from

a rowboat to the shore, three climbing the rocks beyond, with digging equipment. A number are

falling in the water and all have humorous captions applied to them, including “ye dog Robert”.’4

Fig. 2: Charles Heaphy Ye landing of ye diggers 1852, watercolour. Alexander Turnbull Library E-299-001.

2 Roger Blackley ‘New Light on Alfred Sharpe’ Art New Zealand 7 (1977) pp. 46-51, p. 49. Sharpe’s painting ‘Castle Rock, Coromandel’ is reproduced on page 51. 3 Castle Rock, Coromandel, sunrise, from the Mercury Bay track http://collection.aucklandartgallery.govt.nz accessed 9/6/09. 4 http://tapuhi.natlib.govt.nz accessed 19/8/09.

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Another notable colonial painter, John Hoyte, took the Coromandel for his subject in several

paintings completed during his travels around New Zealand in the 1860s. The painting shown

here (Fig. 3) depicts the hills above Thames looking south across the Hauraki Plains. Dwarfed by

an apparently limitless landscape setting are three miners working outside their mine, while other

small figures cluster about a tent and cooking fire.

Fig. 3: JBC Hoyte Gold mining near Kopu c.1868 Watercolour, with Waihou and Piako Rivers in the distance.

Alexander Turnbull Library C-052-009.

From the 1860s photography was also employed to record the scenic beauty of the region. The

Rev. Dr John Kinder used the fledgling art to capture views such as that in the albumen print

Tapu, Coromandel Peninsula (c. 1868). This work was included in an exhibition of Kinder’s

painting and photographs held at the Auckland Art Gallery in 2004.5 A number of Kinder’s

photographs of Coromandel bush scenes are also held by the University of Otago Library in

Dunedin. Kinder’s Coromandel watercolours, including Mercury Island (1857) and Waiau Sawmill,

Coromandel (1861), record a more idealized, serene landscape than in his photographs, although

he was also interested in drawing scenes of topographic interest (Fig. 4).

Fig. 4: John Kinder Entrance to Tairua River between Paku and Pauanui 1857 Alexander Turnbull Library A-113-036

5 ‘John Kinder's New Zealand’ http://www.aucklandartgallery.govt.nz/exhibitions/0402kinder.asp accessed 26/7/09.

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Professional photographers James and Joseph Foy were active in Thames from 1872, having

studios in Pollen Street. They recorded many of the town’s worthies, and were present at most if

not all of the celebrations and gatherings in the town and wider district, including race meetings,

picnics and sports meetings. Numerous Europeans and Maori of the area were photographed by

the Foy Brothers for cartes de visite, small portraits printed cheaply on paper that people

exchanged and collected.

Fig. 5: Foy Brothers Portrait of a woman from the Aperahama family of Manaia, Coromandel

Alexander Turnbull Library PA2-0717.

Photographer Thomas Middleton ran the Elite Studio in Coromandel for several years from his

arrival in the town around 1895. But it was not until the decades following World War Two that

the district gained the reputation for local arts and crafts that continues to this day.

Just beyond the southern boundary of the district Waihi schoolteacher and, later, Hamilton art

gallery director, Campbell Smith set the Christian nativity story in the Coromandel in the late

1950s. In Smith’s series of wood engravings the Holy Family travels from the west coast of the

Coromandel through the Karangahake Gorge to Waihi. Smith has created other engravings with

Coromandel subjects, including a bushman’s cottage at Tairua (1959), a portrait of James

Mackay (1964), depictions of gum diggers (1966/7), and the hills of Hikuai (1970). His 1957

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engraving of the harbour at Opoutere accompanied a tribute poem written by Smith, who is also a

published playwright, at the time of Michael King’s death in 2004.6

Fig. 6: Campbell Smith Alleluja! from The Journey, A Coromandel Nativity Wood engraving, 1957-8.

Modernist artist May Smith retired to Coromandel in 1967, having been introduced to the

township by her friend, local GP Dr Deirdre Airey (see below).7 Having studied at the Elam School

of Art in Auckland and the Royal College of Art, London, Smith was a painter and textile designer

who became part of the Auckland literary and artistic group that formed around A.R.D. Fairburn

and Vernon Brown in the 1950s. Her work was regarded as remarkable for its use of colour and

perspective and is collected by museums and private individuals. A 1968 painting by Smith titled

Relic, which is in Te Papa’s collection, appears to show the crumbling remnants of a verandah on

one of Coromandel’s colonial cottages.

New Zealand painter and composer Michael Smither moved to the Coromandel in 1993. He

works in a variety of media, most notably oils, acrylics, and screenprint. His most popular themes

include domestic life, marine life and conservation, and the New Zealand landscape. Smither

currently lives and works at Otama Beach.

6 See Ann McEwan Lines of Light – the wood engravings of Campbell Smith (Wellington: Steele, Roberts, 2007) 7 Peter Shaw ‘May Smith: Representation & the Freedom of the Imagination’ Art New Zealand 28 available at http://www.art-newzealand.com/Issues21to30/smith.htm

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In the past Coromandel gold has also paid for investment in the visual arts outside the district,

most notably to the benefit of the Auckland Art Gallery. Glaswegian Scot James Tannock

Mackelvie, one of the more successful investors in gold mining on the Peninsula, was an avid

collector of furniture, books, paintings, miniatures, textiles, ceramics, mosaics, enamels,

glassware and clocks. He bequeathed his collection to the city of Auckland and it forms an

important part of the decorative arts collection of the Auckland War Memorial Museum, with

bequests of paintings and sculpture held by the Auckland Art Gallery and rare books by the

Auckland City Library.8

Fig. 7: Hotonui Parawai, Thames in 1917. Godber Collection, Alexander Turnbull Library APG-0482-1/2-G

The Ngāti Maru meeting house Hotonui is another artistic and cultural treasure in the Auckland

War Memorial Museum collection; one with a much more direct connection to the Coromandel.

The wharepuni was a gift from Ngāti Awa in 1878 to honour the relationship between that east

coast iwi and Ngāti Maru, which had been cemented by the marriage of Mereana Mokomoko to

Wirope Hotereni Taipari. Mereana’s brother, Wepiha Apanui was the distinguished Ngāti Awa

carver responsible for Hotonui, which later fell into disrepair and was ‘reopened’ in the Auckland

War Memorial Museum under the direction of Wirope’s son Eruini on 29 November 1929.9

8 The Mackelvie Collection, Auckland Museum website, http://www.aucklandmuseum.com/?t=303 accessed 7/10/09. 9 Angela Ballara ‘Taipari, Eruini Heina 1889/1890?-1956’ Dictionary of New Zealand Biography updated 22 June 2007 available at www.dnzb.govt.nz

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One of the first creative industries to establish in the district was that of domestic ware pottery.

William Plant arrived in New Zealand from England in around 1865. An apothecary by trade, he

came from a family of Staffordshire potters. He was living and trading in Mary Street, Thames by

1870, and after testing the suitability of local clays for the manufacture of domestic ware, he

exhibited samples in Australia. In 1879 he approached the New Zealand government for funds to

establish a commercial pottery to produce ceramic electrical insulators but received no response.

His equipment was advertised for sale in May 1880 and he died in 1882. Samples of his work are

held by the Thames School of Mines and the Thames Historical Museum.10

Fig. 8: Driving Creek Pottery and Railway, Coromandel © Anne Challinor 2009

In the 20th century another enterprising Coromandel resident had a lot more success with the

district’s clay than poor Mr Plant. In 1961 potter Barry Brickell left Auckland in pursuit of his dream

of earning a living from his craft. He was soon followed to Coromandel by other potters and

craftspeople and thus fostered the Peninsula’s reputation for artists’ studios and craft shops.

Brickell is regarded as New Zealand’s ‘most influential potter of the early 1970s’ and his studio-

workshop at Driving Creek, site of a gold rush in the 1860s, became a centre for the revival of the

craft of pottery.11 His need to shift large quantities of heavy clay across the difficult terrain of

10 Gail Henry New Zealand Pottery (Auckland: Reed, 1999) pp. 126-127. 11 Douglas Lloyd-Jenkins At Home – A Century of New Zealand Design (Auckland: Godwit, 2004) p. 245

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Driving Creek led him to build a small tramway. Expanded and developed, this is now a tourist

attraction in its own right.

Deirdre Airey was a General Medical Practitioner in Coromandel for 25 years (1960-85) and was

inspired by Barry Brickell to express herself through earthenware clay. Working alongside him at

Driving Creek, she produced hundreds of bas-relief tiles with religious themes reflecting her adult

conversion to Catholicism. Airey’s Stations of the Cross are in her parish church, St Colman’s, in

Coromandel. An exhibition to celebrate her work was mounted at Hauraki House in Coromandel

in 2004 and Michael King once described Airey as ‘an influential part of a Coromandel arts and

crafts subculture.’12

Fig. 9: Deirdre Airey The Annunciation undated. Waikato Museum

The Thames goldfields first appear as a fictional setting in 1952 when E.H. Audley’s Islands Float

at Eleven was published, followed by Catherine Hay’s Frenchman’s Gold (1955). In the same

decade a younger readership was catered to with Gypsy Michael by Ronald Syme (1954), in

which a runaway boy escapes from a Maori war party at Opotiki, is aided by the German

missionary Carl Volkner and then finds his way to the goldfields of Thames where further

adventures ensue.13

12 Rachel Garden et al, ‘Deirdre Airey: Artist in Clay: A Project by the Friends of Deirdre Airey’ www.waikatomuseum.co.nz/ accessed 30 May 2009. 13 Nelson Wattie “Gold” Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature (Auckland: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 209-211.

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Historian, cartoonist and novelist James Sanders published High Hills of Gold, described as ‘a

conflict-ridden tale of Thames’, in 1973. Much better known English novelist Fay Weldon visited

Coromandel as a child in 1939 to spend holidays with her father, local general practitioner Dr

Frank Birkinshaw. She recorded memories of the visit in her autobiography Auto da Fey in

2002.14

Fig. 10: Barry Mitcalfe Uncle and Others 1980

Barry Mitcalfe’s Uncle & Others was published in 1980 by Coromandel Press in conjunction with

Dunedin’s Caveman Press. Mitcalfe and his wife Jacqueline had moved to Coromandel five years

earlier. The book used a pencil drawing by May Smith, Coromandel Hills, as a cover illustration

and featured a poem of the same name. Mitcalfe published six books under the Coromandel

imprint before his death in 1986. The Press operated from the corner of Rings Road and

Frederick Street in Coromandel. Mitcalfe is best remembered for his translations of Maori

literature and for his work as a peace activist and environmentalist. He was a founding member of

the Coromandel Lobby Against Indiscriminate Mining (CLAIM), established in 1979 to stop

opencast gold mining on the Peninsula.15

Acclaimed biographer and historian Michael King and his wife, book editor Maria Jungowska,

moved permanently to the east coast settlement of Opoutere in 1993. Having first experienced

the Peninsula during a memorable childhood holiday, and again as a young journalist working in

Hamilton concerned about conservation and development, King returned to the Peninsula as a

14 Weldon stayed in the Coromandel Colonial Motel. 15 Hallie King et al ‘Claim Coromandel Lobby Against Indiscriminate Mining’ In Search of the Rainbow: The Coromandel Story, ([Auckland]: Wendy Pye, [2002]) pp. 187-188.

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refugee from the urban rush. As King described in the 1993 publication The Coromandel,

beginning in around 1983 he and Jungowska bought a section of regenerating bush, ‘built a

house and gradually ordered [our] lives so it would be possible to live and work there.’16 King and

Jungowska died in a car accident in 2004. Their house is now owned by the University of Waikato

and is used as a writers’ retreat.

Fig. 11: Barry Brickell Michael King and Maria Jungowska Memorial Opoutere 2008

5.2 Sport and Leisure

Prior to the arrival of Europeans, Maori pursued their own traditional sports and leisure activities,

many of which have been revived as part of the contemporary renaissance of Maori culture.

Accounts are to be found in the reports of Pakeha ethnographers and others of Maori enjoyment

of games using string (mahi whai), poi and sticks (tī rākau), as well as dance (haka), and the

singing and composition of many different types of waiata. Haka and waiata were and remain

integral parts of Maori culture, often conveying details of the performer’s whakapapa and usually

composed and performed for specific occasions and then retained as integral part of an iwi or

hapu’s identity.

Song, dance and games were also part of European settler culture. As with Maori, these

pastimes expressed Pakeha heritage and identity and were often performed competitively and on

special occasions, such as anniversaries. The private teaching of music and dance were often 16 Michael King The Coromandel (Auckland: Tandem Press, 1993) p. 26.

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among the first types of lessons to be instituted for children in the new European communities of

the district.

Children’s games were brought with families from the ‘old countries’. Many remain familiar, others

less so, among them kites, spinning tops, hopscotch, marbles, knucklebones, skipping, follow-

the-leader, rounders, and buttons (played with brass buttons thrown against a wall; the boy

whose button bounced furthest won). Out of school hours, life as a child was an adventure few

modern parents would countenance for their own children:

During the weekend there were hills to climb, and goats to chase with bows and arrows . . . There was swimming down by the Burke Street Wharf or in the booms near the racecourse. There were glorious mud fights on the flat near the wharf, with every prospect of a hiding when one got home with muddy clothes.17

Fig. 12: The Gold Diggers’ Song Sheet music cover, 1868. Alexander Turnbull Library PUBL-0041-1

Hotels and other outlets for the sale of beer and liquor were often among the first commercial

buildings constructed in the new settlements of colonial New Zealand. Shows by travelling

musicians, actors and other performers were always popular, and several hotels included

theatres or halls able to host such performances. Thames and Coromandel benefited from their

17 David Arbury Children on the Goldfield (Thames: Metallum Research, [1999]).

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close proximity to Auckland, which was the principal New Zealand port of entry for Australian and

other international theatrical troupes.18

At least three theatres opened in Thames during the height of the gold rush. The Shortland Hotel

on the corner of Pollen and Grey Streets, once described as the first ‘proper hotel’ in the town,

was opened by John Butt on 29 August 1867.19 His American Theatre adjoined the hotel and was

a major venue for performances by entertainers such as Johnnie Hall and his wife Emily

Wiseman.20 The Theatre Royal in the Royal Hotel in Grahamstown opened with a performance of

Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing. The Royal was described as being ‘crowded nightly and

is unquestionably the only legitimate Temple of Drama in the District [offering] Tragedy, Comedy,

Drama, Opera, Burlesque, and Farce (see Bills of the day). Stalls, 5s; Boxes, 2s; Pit, 1s. No half-

price.’21 Both the hotel and theatre were destroyed by fire in July 1903.22

The Academy of Music (or Musical Theatre, as it was also known) was attached to the Pacific

Hotel in Grahamstown and promoted itself as an ‘elegant and popular place of amusement . . .

crowded nightly by an enthusiastic audience’. 23 Performers included the Carandini Family and

Kennedy Family musical companies.24 The Theatre was also used for lectures and other

functions.

In mid-1869 the goldfields singer and entertainer Charles Thatcher began his third and final tour

of New Zealand in Auckland before moving on to the Thames goldfields. Performing at the

American Theatre, his humorous lectures on life on the Australian goldfields, illustrated with 15

large scenes painted on canvas, proved very popular, as did his support acts, his wife Madame

Annie Vitelli, a soprano singer, and the pseudo-Irish comedian Joe Small.25 As Eldred-Grigg

reports in his Diggers Hatters & Whores, Thatcher had taken the Thames-Coromandel gold fields

as a subject for his wit when he visited Otago in 1862:

That Coromandel is a hoax There can’t be any doubt And shipping agents foster it By sticking bills about.26

18 Howard McNaughton ‘Drama’ Oxford History of New Zealand Literature (Auckland: Oxford University Press, 1998) p. 323. 19 Althea Barker ‘Thames Hotels’ www.thetreasury.org.nz accessed 4/10/09. 20 LP O'Neill (ed.) Thames Borough Centenary Souvenir (Thames: Thames Star, 1973) p. 29. 21 ‘Thames Illustrated Mining Map, Published by E. Wayte’, Ref. Auckland City Library, NZ Map Number 4531, transcribed at http://freepages.history.rootsweb.ancestry.com/ accessed 3/10/09. 22 Zelma Williams and Johnny Williams Thames and the Coromandel Peninsula: 2000 years (Thames: Williams Publishers, 1994) p. 161. 23 ‘Thames Illustrated Mining Map, Published by E. Wayte’. 24 O’Neill, p. 29. 25 Herbert Roth ‘Thatcher, Charles Robert’ in A. H. McLintock (ed.) An Encyclopedia of New Zealand (1966) http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/ updated 22 April 2009. 26 Hugh Anderson The Colonial Minstrel (Melbourne: F.W. Cheshire, 1960) p. 124, quoted in Stevan Eldred-Grigg, Diggers, Hatters & Whores: The Story of the New Zealand Gold Rushes (Auckland: Random House, 2008) p. 164.

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Thatcher was reacting to a view common at the time in Otago, largely promulgated by the Otago

Daily Times and expressed by diggers from the Otago field who were disappointed after travelling

to the northern fields following inflated reports of gold in the Auckland papers. When the

Koputuaki field was opened later in 1862, it too proved a chimera, with little gold and that found of

poor quality.

In Coromandel, the Garrick Club produced amateur dramatic and musical entertainments in such

venues as the Coromandel Hall.27 Garrick Clubs were active in many New Zealand centres from

the 1860s through to World War One.

On the east coast, Whitianga’s ‘Pig & Whistle’ grog shop served timber workers and gum diggers

from at least the mid-1800s, producing whiskey from its own still.28 Thomas Carini opened the

first licensed premises in Whitianga in 1867 on the site of the present-day Whitianga Hotel. The

Empire Hotel was built in 1883 and the Mercury Bay Hotel, also known as the Upper House,

opened in 1872. Neither has survived to the present day.29

Fig. 13: Whitianga Town Hall

Thomas Carini also built the Carini Hall, across the road from his hotel. As a venue for more

temperate entertainment, it was used by the Whitianga Band as a practice and performance

venue and became known as the Army Drill Hall during the Boer and First World Wars. The hall

was also a site of commercial activity where salesmen visiting the township from Auckland would

show off their wares. A second hall, the Athenaeum or Mill Hall, was built in 1885 in Monk Street.

It boasted a supper room and lending library, and was also used as a Sunday School. After 27 Review dated Monday 23 September 1872, published in the Coromandel Mail and reproduced in In Search of the Rainbow, p. 213. 28 Jenny Bithell Guide to the History of Whitianga (Whitianga: A.J. Bithell, 1980), p. 22. 29 Ibid, pp. 13-14.

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burning down in 1945 it was replaced by the Mercury Bay Hall, which remains an important

community facility to the present day.30

Gold attracted miners to Thames and Coromandel and they brought with them a natural desire to

slake their thirst, to soothe disappointment and, less frequently, to celebrate success. Numerous

hotels sprang up to help miners relax and to relieve them of their wages. Indeed, during the

1870's, some 112 hotels opened for business in Shortland and its sister township of

Grahamstown across the Karaka Stream.

The festive season of 1867 was the first to be celebrated after the initial rush on the Kuranui

strike. Pollen Street, the main street connecting Shortland and Grahamstown, was the site of

great festivity. On New Year’s Eve 1868 free drinks were offered by the local hoteliers concerned

that miners might decamp to the bright lights of Auckland to celebrate their successes.

Prostitution was also part of the goldfields scene. Like the local publicans, sex workers, among

them young Maori women, were kept busy entertaining the young male revellers.

The young Maori women were much in demand and were soon the focus of attention among miners eager to spend their hard-earned wages. Many of the newly rich, intricately tattooed young [Maori] men, now dressed in European fashion, joined in the festivities with gay abandon. The kauri floors of the hotels had to be sturdy to withstand the constant stomping of the burly dancers’ boots and the more than occasional fracas was enjoyed by all.31

In the late 1860s or early 1870s Margaret Glenn, aged 13 years, was described by the Thames

Criminal Court as ‘the associate of common prostitutes’ but was likely one herself.32 The sale of

sexual services by a woman was not in itself illegal at this time, although the purchase of such

services was. Vagrancy laws were used to keep sex workers off the streets, and many were

arrested for being drunk and disorderly.33

After the frenzy of New Year’s Eve in Thames the first few days of 1868 were devoted to

Caledonian sports and horse racing on the flat land in front of James Mackay’s residence. A

stand was constructed and competitions ranged from foot races and quoits to sword dancing,

tossing the caber and whale boat races. Ngāti Maru chief Wirope Taipari led a haka that ‘brought

an uproarious response from the crowd’ and waka races were conducted on the Firth.34

30 Ibid, p. 11. 31 Thames and the Coromandel Peninsula, p. 74. 32 David Arbury Prostitution on the goldfield (Thames: Metallum Research, [2001]). The Thames Criminal Court records for the period 1868 to April 1881 have not survived, hence the uncertainty of date. 33 Eldred-Grigg, p. 390. 34 Williams and Williams, p. 74.

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Fig. 14: Daily Southern Cross, 27 December 1867, p. 1, http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/ accessed 17/09/09.

From the 1870s Auckland Anniversary Day, 29 January, was celebrated in Thames with a

Protestant Sunday Schools gala, beginning with a parade of children with banners and flags from

Shortland to Parawai Gardens. Games, lolly scrambles, races and a sumptuous picnic followed.

Anniversary Day 1875 saw ‘350 Anglican children, 250 Wesleyans, 230 Presbyterians, 155

Baptists, 90 Primitive Methodists and 50 Congregational – a total of 1125 children, plus adults

assembled at Parawai Gardens.’35

Fig. 15: Band Rotunda, Victoria Park, Thames © Anne Challinor 2009

35 Arbury, Children on the Goldfield.

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Parawai Gardens were public gardens where visitors could buy cream teas, strawberries, and

enjoy the walks and entertainments. Similar gardens were at Victoria Park in Grahamstown, and

at Tararu. A Band Rotunda was opened in Victoria Park in Thames on 10 November 1902.36 The

Rotunda became a popular venue for open-air performances by brass bands such as that of the

Hauraki Regiment.

A sure sign of the slowing of the gold rush and consequent fall in population was the reduction in

the number of hotels, down to only 41 in Thames by the mid-1880s. By the turn of the century,

with gold mining further in decline, Thames could boast a population of only around 4,000, down

from its peak during the rush of an estimated 20,000. However, with the opening of the

Coromandel field in the 1890s, that township underwent its own rapid growth. In the census of

March 1901, Coromandel was recorded as having a population of 4168 Europeans and ‘between

six and seven hundred Maoris’.37

The Coromandel Brass Band was formed by 1876, and was associated with the Coromandel

Rifle Volunteers. The Hauraki Brass Band was likewise associated with the Hauraki Rifle

Volunteers, formed in 1897 and based in Thames. The Coromandel band became the

Coromandel Silver Band and continued to perform until the mid-1990s. Its history is celebrated in

the Coromandel Silver Band Museum, located in Woollams Avenue, Coromandel. Another band,

the Thames-Hauraki Brass Band was formed in 1899 and may have been formed from the

Hauraki band.38

In accordance with the general growth in leisure and health activities taking place in New Zealand

from the 1880s, the European inhabitants of the Coromandel Peninsula pursued a wide range of

sports. Clubs were established to promote rugby, basketball (now known as netball), tennis,

rowing, gymnastics and cricket. The first rugby game between Thames and Auckland took place

in September 1873, a 10-a-side match played over 2½ hours with Thames the victor. The

Thames-Auckland rivalry continued for many years.

Arthur Kenrick, manager of the Coromandel Branch of the Bank of New Zealand and President of

the town’s School of Mines, was active in most of the above-named sports and played

representative rugby in Thames, as is recorded in his entry in the Cyclopedia of New Zealand,

published in 1902.39

36 ‘The Thames En Fete’ Grey River Argus 12 November 1902, p. 4. 37 ‘Coromandel’ The Cyclopedia of New Zealand [Auckland Provincial District] (Christchurch, 1902) p. 871, www.nzetc.org/ accessed 7 June 2009. 38 ‘Thames’ The Cyclopedia of New Zealand [Auckland Provincial District] (Christchurch, 1902) p. 875, www.nzetc.org/ accessed 9/09/09. 39 It should be noted that personal entries in the Cyclopedia were paid for by the subjects and based on information supplied by them. ‘Thames’, The Cyclopedia of New Zealand p. 900, www.nzetc.org/ accessed 7/6/09.

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Fig. 16: Arthur Robert Lomas of Thames played 15 matches for the All Blacks, from 1925.

Alexander Turnbull Library Eph-A-PICTURE-CARDS-Wills-Footballers-selection

By 1900 the Thames Cricket Association comprised the Tararu, St. Alban's (founded 1878) and

Foundry clubs. Also active in the town were the Thames Football Club, the Hauraki Rowing Club,

and the Thames Athletic and Gymnastic Club. The Thames Jockey Club was established in about

1875 and built a racecourse at Parawai with grandstand seating for 500. The Thames Poultry,

Pigeon and Canary Club was established in 1895 and hosted an annual show. The Hauraki

Rowing Club was already well established when its entry appeared in the Cyclopedia in 1902.40

Annual regattas for ‘four-oared gigs’, whaleboats, skiffs, and sailing vessels had been held at

Thames from at least the early 1870s.41

A tennis club was founded in Coromandel in 1885, with courts leased and then eventually

purchased by the club in 1932. A Turf Club was organised around 1881, in association with the

Auckland Jockey Club. The town’s bowling club was formed in 1909 and from at least 1922 its

lawns were also used by the Croquet Club. Golf was played at a course known as Green Hill from

1921, with the present course in Hauraki Road occupied from 1960. The mid-20th century saw

many new sports clubs open in the town, including a pony club (est. 1962), and clubs for

badminton (est. 1980), basketball (from 1970s) and netball (from 1950), soccer (1980s), axe men

40 Ibid, p. 874. 41 ‘The Thames Regatta’ Daily Southern Cross 4 January 1871, p. 3. Regattas were held at Thames and Coromandel on 17 March 1886. Observer 20 February 1886 p. 22.

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(circa 1966), pig hunting (1990), recreational fishing (2000) and swimming (2000). After

Coromandel Air Services Co. Ltd was formed in 1976, and the Coromandel airfield opened, an

Aero Club was set up in 1977 to take advantage of the facilities and to take a shareholding in the

new company.42

In Whitianga tennis courts were in use by the 1890s, with a new court opened in Albert Street in

1905. Competitions were held with the Coromandel club.43 A tennis club was formed in Colville in

1935, using a court formed on land behind the Memorial Hall. The club moved to its present

location in 1948.

Fig. 17: Colville Tennis Club Pavilion, Colville

Horse racing was also enjoyed at Colville around the beginning of the 20th century. Races were

organised by the Cabbage Bay Native Racing Club using an area near the township known as

Goudie’s Paddock. Organised horse racing began in Mercury Bay in 1881 with the formation of

the Mercury Bay Jockey Club, with the course laid out by Thomas Carini on land in what became

Racecourse Road. Training took place on Buffalo Beach. 44

As a tourism and holiday destination, Coromandel has always benefited from its proximity to

Auckland. As that city grew in the late 19th century and witnessed the growth of a leisured middle

class, the Coromandel became a popular recreational destination. Men in particular were keen to

engage in outdoor pursuits such as fishing and the hunting of species introduced to the Peninsula 42 Derek Barnsley ‘Aero Club’ In Search of the Rainbow pp. 227-228. 43 Bithell, p. 23. 44 Ibid, p. 43.

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by the acclimatisation movement. In the 1890s a Whangamata hotel advertised itself in the

Auckland Weekly News as a base for ‘fishing of all kinds, pheasant and duck shooting in season’,

with a return voyage to Whangamata from Auckland costing £2.45

The Mercury Bay Game Fishing Club was established in 1923 to take advantage of the

Peninsula’s excellent offshore fishing grounds. American Zane Grey, the well-known author of

western novels, set up a fishing camp at Whaler’s Cove on Great Mercury Island from 22

December 1928 until 13 March 1929. He had previously fished out of the Bay of Islands, but was

to return to Mercury Bay twice more, in 1931 and 1932. His presence in the Bay drew many other

sport fishermen to the area. After going into recess during World War Two, the club restarted in

1947 and continues set fishing records to the present day.

Fig. 18: Zane Grey in his launch at Mercury Bay, undated.

Alexander Turnbull Library ½-044545-F

Mercury Bay is of course also famous as the home of the Mercury Bay Boating Club under whose

banner financier Michael Fay mounted a challenge, both on the water and in court, for the

America’s Cup in 1988. The Club’s 1992 challenge, managed by yachting legend Peter Blake

was also unsuccessful but was marked by a set of commemorative stamps issued by NZ Post in

January of that year.

45 Beverley Williamson, Whangamata: 100 Years of Change (Paeroa: Goldfields Print, 1988) p. 21.

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Fig. 19: 1992 America’s Cup Challenge Stamps, issued 22 January 1992

5.3 Invention and Discovery

Pre-European Maori culture and technology was based around the sophisticated use of wood,

stone and bone tools and weapons. Prior to the late 18th century, the extensive earthworks of pa

were constructed entirely with traditional tools. With the arrival of European technology, however,

Maori society and culture in the district began a rapid period of change and adaptation, just as it

did in other parts of New Zealand. The arrival of the gun and European methods of construction,

to cite just two examples, were to change the social and physical landscape of iwi on the

Peninsula dramatically.

European technology arrived on the peninsula with James Cook in November 1769, in the form of

his vessel and the tools and equipment he and his crew brought ashore to observe the transit of

Mercury. Such observations required sophisticated scientific equipment, including sextants,

compasses and other measuring devices. At a more mundane level, Cook’s crew used steel and

iron tools to gather food and botanical samples from the land and shore, and muskets and other

weapons were used for hunting and to defend the crew from possible attack by Maori.

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Fig. 20: Comet ‘a’ photographed by John Grigg in Thames in May 1901.

By permission of the Carter Observatory, Wellington

A century after Cook, Thames resident astronomer Henry Severn attempted to record the transit

of Venus. Severn was an experienced astronomer who owned and used observatory quality

instruments. Unfortunately, cloudy skies on the night of 7 December 1874 prevented him

observing the transit, as they did for all but one of the international astronomical teams in the

country at the time.46 Severn’s efforts were not in entirely in vain, however, as he is credited with

reviving John Grigg’s interest in astronomy. Grigg had arrived in Thames in 1868 and by the 1882

had constructed a private observatory equipped with a 3.5-inch refracting telescope. A skilled

inventor, Grigg became one of New Zealand’s pioneer astrophotographers, discoverer of a

number of new comets in the southern skies, and popularised astronomy through his newspaper

columns and by opening his observatory to the Thames public. In 1906 he was elected a Fellow

of the Royal Astronomical Society in recognition of his work. 47

Lucy Cranwell and Lucy Moore, botanists with the Auckland War Memorial Museum, became a

familiar sight in the Colville area during the 1930s as they undertook surveys of the alpine plants

of Te Moehau, the highest peak in the Coromandel Range (841 metres). Another frequent

46 Wayne Orchiston ‘Henry Severn: Thames' Other Nineteenth Century Astronomer’ Southern Stars (2001) pp. 8-10. 47 Wayne Orchiston 'Grigg, John 1838 - 1920' Dictionary of New Zealand Biography http://www.dnzb.govt.nz/ updated 22 June 2007.

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scientific visitor to the Coromandel was Gilbert Archey, who was appointed Director of the

Auckland Institute and Museum in 1924. The rare Archey’s frog (Leiopelma archeyi), endemic

only to the Coromandel Peninsula and the Whareorino Forest west of Te Kuiti, was named for Sir

Gilbert in 1942, twenty years after he had published a paper on native frogs while still at

Canterbury Museum.48

Fig. 21: Archey’s Frog

5.4 The Great Escape

The shadowy tents beneath the pines The surfboards and the fishing-lines Tell that our life might be One of simplicity . . . So children burn the seastained wood And tell the present as a good Knowing that bonfires are Important as a star.

M.K. Joseph49

In the second half of the 19th century, Thames and the Coromandel Peninsula were destinations

evocative of promised prosperity from gold mining, the timber industry, farming, fishing and other

rural occupations. With the establishment of regular ferry services from Auckland in the 1870s the

district also became a place for a holiday escape. Since the opening of the district to travel by

48 John Morton ‘Archey, Gilbert Edward 1890-1974’ Dictionary of New Zealand Biography http://www.dnzb.govt.nz/ updated 22 June 2007; ‘Native frogs’, http://www.nzfrogs.org/ accessed 18/11/09. 49 M.K. Joseph ‘Mercury Bay Ecologue’ quoted in King, p. 3.

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railway and motor vehicle in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, visitor numbers have increased

steadily, until the present day when the populations of many of the peninsula’s towns increase

fourfold over the summer months.

Since the 1930s and 1940s increasing numbers of visitors to the Peninsula’s many beaches have

changed the social and physical complexion of the Coromandel. One-time campers have become

bach owners and, sometimes, permanent residents. Many former baches now serve as

permanent homes, modernised and made more comfortable while retaining their essential bach

feeling, a refuge from the mainstream. Elsewhere brand new holiday homes have brought the

comforts of the city to the beach and the bush. With the growing popularity of the beach holiday in

the mid-20th century, new coastal communities grew up. At first these appeared haphazardly,

perhaps where a road descended from the hinterland to a sandy beach. Later in the century,

planned communities were developed with wide streets and specific building guidelines.

For some who have chosen to move permanently to the Coromandel Peninsula from elsewhere

in New Zealand and the world at large, the area has become a place where they can pursue a

wholly different way of life. Since the 1970s, artists and those seeking an alternative way of life,

one that is rural, remote, perhaps more attuned to the natural environment, have also settled on

the Peninsula.

Fig. 22: Tram baches at Waikawau © Anne Challinor 2009

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Auckland based paddle-steamers plied the Hauraki Gulf from 1868, delivering miners and freight

to the gold fields, a journey of as little as four hours in the fastest vessels of the 1870s. From

1890 the Union Steam Ships paddle steamer Wakatere was the most prestigious vessel on the

run, and was often used for special excursions. The Wakatere was replaced by the steamer

Rangitoto in 1920. Regular freight service between Thames and Auckland ended in 1963,

replaced by motor transport on improved roads.

Riverboats connected Thames and Paeroa from around 1880, linking with a coach service to

Hamilton and the rail line to Auckland. Thames was also part of the summer excursion route

popular with holidaymakers during the latter part of the 19th century. In the summer of 1889-1890,

for example, New Zealand Railways offered round-trip excursions by rail to Te Aroha from

Auckland, returning via coach to Thames and from Thames to Auckland by steamer for a cost of

34 shillings (1st Class) or 28 shillings (2nd Class). The tickets were valid for one month, allowing

time to enjoy the hot springs at Te Aroha or explore the Thames hinterland.50

Fig. 23: Whangapoua Beach, Coromandel, 25 August 1972 (detail) White’s Aviation Collection, Alexander Turnbull Library WA-70514-F

50 ‘New Zealand Railway Tours’, Auckland City Library, NZ Map Number 6573.

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The opening of the Kopu Bridge in May 1928 provided easier access to the Peninsula for

holidaymakers from Auckland. A passenger service car had already begun operation in the mid-

1920s, using a vehicular ferry across the Waihou River at Kopu. Even after the bridge was

opened the journey was initially challenging, with vehicles having to back up the Razor Back at

Pokeno on the return run to Auckland.

The opening of the Kopu-Hikuai Road in 1967 had an equally profound impact upon local and

holiday traffic accessing the Peninsula. Coastal towns such as Tairua, established as a port for

the timber industry, quickly became popular bach communities. Better roads also allowed the

development of resort towns such as Pauanui.

Fig. 24: Matarangi street scene © Anne Challinor 2009

For those Kiwis for whom a bach at Pauanui or Whangamata was not the answer to their

Coromandel dream, the Peninsula has also been a refuge from the modern world for over 40

years. A number of intentional communities or communes have been developed on the Peninsula

since the 1960s, among them Wilderland, established in 1964 by Dan and Edith Hansen. Dan’s

father Ray was one of the founders of the Beeville community, which had earlier been established

on the plains north of Morrinsville in the mid-1930s.

Other alternative communities to be established on the Peninsula include Opuhi (est. 1970),

Moehau (est. 1974), Karuna Falls (est. 1975), Te Whanau Hou (circa 1975-1990), Whareroa (est.

1978), Mahana (est. c.1978), Motu Moana (est. 1979), and Te Kauae O Maui (est. 1980).51 Some

51 Simons, p. 123.

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were communes in the sense of sharing finances, food, and labour, while others were alternative

communities, owned by resident shareholders. Some were founded on shared spiritual beliefs,

such as the Mahamudra Centre, established in 1981 as a Tibetan Buddhist meditation centre,

and the Havalona Trust (est. c.1982) ‘originally formed by a group of naturopaths and esoteric

teachers in the late seventies’.52 Some have operated for many years, others existed for shorter

periods and have since vanished. All have a common desire to forge a new life for their residents

in the idyllic surroundings of the Coromandel Peninsula.

Fig. 25: Wilderland Shop, south of Whitianga © Anne Challinor 2009

52 ‘Havalona Trust’, http://prometheus.co.nz/ accessed 7/6/09.