I can remember as a kid – and I was born in 1931, so that might give you an idea of
my age – there was such excitement as a child. My first memory is that my mother said:
“Oh, we’re going to Whatipū…”. And Dad was a mad shark-catcher fisherman, and
he’d go to the stream on the farm, and he’d actually get an eel or two, and that would
be put in a kerosene tin. And my mother said: “I’ve got to teach you to fish, boy”
– you know, I was called “boy”, this is about the age of 3 or 4…So she took me
down to the little stream just runs along the edge here which they call the Gibbons’
stream, and we fished for tommy cods with a bent pin – I always remember that – and
a worm. So that was my first introduction to fishing.
And of course, as the years went on, and my Dad became more and more engrossed in fishing,
and shark fishing, then I learned all the other gambits of fishing.
And of course my mother, who was born here, it was just very emotional for her coming
back, after all those years each time. So, we’re just entering the old lodge and
in previous years, like from 1870 onwards, this room actually I think was the kitchen.
And that fireplace was quite important to the running of the kitchen of course in those
days. In the 30s and 40s when I came down, that
fireplace used to be going, because invariably we’d have – because my Dad was farming
- we’d have our holidays here in the May holidays which were quite cool. The Lodge
in those days was run by the Farleys. It was really a white tablecloth affair; you’d
get dressed up a little bit for dinner, which was lovely. And you’d be served at the table
by the Farley girls, in exactly the same way as my mother and her two sisters used to serve
at the tables in their time down here. And one of the joys was actually having a
cup of tea in bed in the morning, brought in by one of the girls, the Farley girls.
They were happy times. My mother was Laura Gibbons, her great grandfather
John Gibbons was the original Gibbons to come to New Zealand. John emigrated from Newfoundland
and bought a land purchase in 1854 for the right to mill, opening the mills in Huia.
His son, Laura’s grandfather Nicholas Gibbons went on to build the Whatipū mill and dam,
and the mill manager’s house which later became the Whatipū Lodge. The mills had been
sold by the time Laura’s father Fred took over, but he ran the Lodge and that’s where
my Mum grew up. And she was schooled here, and then she was courted by my father in the
1920s. And of course, that’s where the romance was, because Dad at the end of the Piha milling
was managing Dr Raynor’s farm. Raynor had owned the milling rights for that Piha area,
so Dad’s first job was managing his farm, and he would ride by
horseback all the way from Piha down to Whatipū to court my Mum. They went fishing, and probably
eeling and I think my mother had a 410 shotgun. She was a most gentle person, but apparently,
she was a very good shot. You know that’s what they did as a sort of courting activity.
The bridge here has come about since the 1930s, 40s. As a child we would come down to about
here, and the stream was actually almost level with the sand, it was all black sand there
was no growth. So, people would go across the stream which was not terribly deep at
all, and we’d walk across a 12 X 2 plank bridge.
Whatipū of course was much more distant to Auckland than it is now, because we’ve got
a roadway in, but in the early days there was only a cattle track, so everything had
to come in by boat. It was the days in which the Manukau harbour was really the highway
for getting round all the edges of the harbour.
This is the remnants of the tramline really, that stretched all the way across the sands,
around the west coast, past the caves to Piha for that milling in the 1910 -21 period. And
of course, on my right here is the remnants of the wharf. The wharf was an area of great
activity, it was the only way of getting in to Whatipū. And there was a regular transport
service by various entrepreneurial boats – so they were not timber boats, they were actually
carrying people and supplies to the various settlements around the harbour itself.
In my day in the 30s Dad and I would be fishing off the wharf down there, but now all the
timber is gone, and you can just see the rock shelf.
The dancing in the Whatipū cave began probably the 1880s, after the milling had begun in
the 70s. Later in the 1920s, early 20s, I understand that my Dad played the accordion
in the cave. The cave was all dressed up with ferns and there were candles around the sides
of the cave and lamps…And people, on a Saturday afternoon would come down on the Te Toa or
another similar vessel, and land at the wharf here. And they would then walk across the
sands to the Whatipū Lodge and then the dancing would start probably about 8 o’clock. And
I think they would dance until about 1 or 2 in the morning, until they were exhausted
possibly. Then those folk would get up in the morning
and the Gibbons’ would give them a meal, they’d walk down and catch the Te Toa again
and go back to Onehunga on the Sunday morning. In the 1930s and 40s, well as a child when
I used to come down with my mother and father and my eldest sister Ailsa, we used to slide
down this sandhill. This was all sand and the reclaiming of it with all the biota is
absolutely phenomenal, it’s just lovely. Friends of Whatipū…Graeme Murdoch asked
me to start this some time ago. And he said: “Bruce, would you be able to gather together
a few people and act in a sort of governing way and help with the ecology and the sort
of overview of what we’re doing at Whatipū. Well from that has developed Friends of Whatipū
which we’ve now got about 70-80 members. We’d spend a lot of our courting period
at Whatipū, and Trixie fell in love with Whatipū, she just thought it was such a beautiful
place. Of course, I just loved it, and I just wanted to write about the history of it. Friends
of Whatipū have planted 10,000 trees actually - roughly, in concert with the Auckland Regional
Council originally and now the Auckland Council, and the Arataki Nursery actually supplies
the plants that we plant here now. So, our most
recent planting must be what we call Trixie’s Knoll, or Trixie’s Hill…initially the
rangers put a seat up there in memory of Trixie my wife, and that’s just lovely, it’s
a lovely view out there. And we’re calling it Trixie’s Seat, and around the seat we’ve
done two plantings now. The first one was moderately successful, but we did another
planting just a month or two back, and they’re looking very viable, looking good apparently,
so we’re very pleased about that. Look at the planting coming through that we’ve
done here, it’s looking lovely isn’t it, the Cabbage trees and Pohutukawa…all sorts
of lovely items that have been planted, mmm.