www.waikatotimes.co.nz
MONDAY, JULY 4, 2011
7
British dodged Paterangi showdown
The huge Paterangi pa
was expanded and
fortified in anticipation
of a showdown there
with the advancing
British troops. But after
a skirmish nearby the
British simply bypassed
it.
The temptation of an apparently easy
target cost Rewi Maniapoto the
opportunity to inflict a serious reverse on
the advancing British Army.
After the fall of Rangiriri Pa in
November 1863, the alliance of Waikato
tribes fell back farther in the Waikato
hinterland. They had lost about 40 killed
and a similar number seriously wounded
at Rangiriri. The British had lost about the
same number of men, but General Duncan
Cameron’s army was much bigger and far
better equipped and was soon in
occupation of King Tawhiao’s
headquarters at Ngaruawahia.
By this time, also, many of the more
experienced Maori fighters had been killed
or disabled and the remainder were
becoming exhausted and dispirited. They
had been forced to retreat from the huge
British army several times and now they
faced the real possibility of having their
vast grain fields, vegetable gardens and
farms around Rangioawhia wrested from
them. Without this essential food source,
their army would not be able to remain at
the front lines and their villages would also
starve.
Rangioawhia was much more than a
simple Maori village. It was, in effect, a
small, thriving township with wooden
buildings, shops, a church and all the
essential equipment for the management of
the surrounding gardens and farms.
Ironically, it was these same gardens and
farms that, before the outbreak of
In November this year, the Waikato
District Health Board will begin a series of
events commemorating the 125th
anniversary of the original Waikato
Hospital Board and Waikato Hospital.
From 1864, the health needs of
Hamilton’s new militia community were
met by a small hospital on the site now
occupied by Hamilton’s central police
station, and staffed by Drs John Carey and
Charles Beale.
The hospital lasted only a few years
before being closed by a colonial
government striving to reduce its military
spending.
Drs Beale and Carey stayed on to provide
private health care services for people in
Hamilton and its surroundings.
But seriously ill residents had to endure
a 150km-long journey to Auckland Hospital
over poor roads.
In 1875, the region’s first non-military
hospital was established at Ngaruawahia,
with Dr Carey as its sole medical officer.
Although Hamilton was by then the
larger settlement, Ngaruawahia’s position
at the confluence of the Waikato and Waipa
rivers was thought to provide easier access
for the region’s then mainly rural
inhabitants.
This hospital also closed within months,
as the Auckland Provincial Council that
administered the facility was struggling for
funds.
In 1877, the opening of a railway link
between Auckland and Frankton secured
Hamilton’s role as the Waikato region’s
main service centre.
But Hamilton only got its own hospital a
decade late.
It came about after Waikato residents
complained about the lack of services
being provided by the newly established
Auckland Hospital Board.
The Waikato Hospital Board was
established in 1886, and Waikato Hospital
admitted its first patient, John Daley, in
May 1887.
John Armstrong is a PhD student at the
University of Waikato’s History Programme.
This extract is from Under One Roof: A
History of Waikato Hospital, available from
the Waikato Health Memorabilia Trust.
Well-aged: The distinctive Te Kauwhata Winery buildings.
hostilities, had supplied the growing
Auckland community with produce. Lying
between Rangiriri, where General Duncan
Cameron had set up his forward base, and
the Rangioawhia town was Paterangi, an
ancient pa that the Maori force had
expanded into a vast and complex
earthworks fort.
The Maori fighting force had been
divided over tactics at Rangiriri and there
were criticisms that Rewi Maniapoto
should have stayed to fight rather than
withdraw farther south. The
recriminations stung the renown fighting
leader and he vowed to lead one last
desperate attempt to stop the British at
Paterangi. About 2500 men and women
resolved to stand with him. They were
armed with double-barrelled shotguns, a
number of captured modern rifles and two
ships’ cannon, which had been laboriously
carried, slung under poles, all the way
from Kawhia. Loaded with lengths of
chain, chunks of iron and rocks, they could
inflict hideous injuries on infantry at close
range.
For several weeks, the two sides eyed
each other like sparring boxers with only
the occasional round of artillery fire and
long-range rifle sniping from the British
and sporadic night raids by Maori fighters.
Then Colonel C B Waddy, one of General
Cameron’s senior officers, moved his camp
to a bend in the Mangapiko River near
Waiari, an ancient pa site. The site gave a
good view of the Paterangi complex with a
protective hillside for the camp.
For the Maori scouts, this forward camp,
so close to their pa, was a tempting target
and they agreed on a plan for a night attack
on two fronts. One party of about 100
concealed themselves in the tall manuka
on the inside of the bend in the river
during the day and planned to creep
Pornography is a subject never far from
today’s headlines. From complaints about
the language and content on Shortland
Street to semi-regular cases of
schoolteachers caught with thousands of
inappropriate images on their computers,
ours is a society of both outraged moralists
and unashamed pornography consumers.
Back in 1906, the demarcation lines were
much the same. At issue then were
reproductions of works of art on postcards.
The battle was fought in the courts as well
as the editorial columns of rival
newspapers the Evening Post and Truth.
The prosecution of bookseller John
Wilkinson for selling five postcards to
undercover policeman Gerald Maloney
occasioned much comment. One postcard
was a print of the painting Psyche at the
around to the unprotected rear of the camp
at nightfall. A second contingent would
launch a frontal attack on the camp as soon
as the action started.
During that hot summer day, February
11, 1864, a party of soldiers from the 40th
Regiment were off duty and decided to
spend some time in the Mangapiko River
swimming, washing clothes and generally
relaxing, not knowing that 100 armed
Maori were watching them a few yards
away.
The temptation was too much for the
Maori fighters, who opened fire on the
soldiers, killing and wounding several
men. Within minutes, about 200 armed
soldiers arrived to rescue their comrades
and drive the Maori fighters from the thick
undergrowth.
Among those who joined the fight from
the British Army were the Forest Rangers
led by Captain Gustavus Ferdinand von
Tempsky and Captain Charles Heaphy of
the Auckland Rifle Volunteers.
Maori reinforcements also rushed to the
fight from Paterangi and a deadly closequarter fight developed in the head-high
manuka. Double-barrelled shotguns and
tomahawks were pitched against revolvers
and swords in the melee. When it was over,
five soldiers had been killed, but the Maori
force had lost 40 men with many more
wounded. Among the Maori killed were
fighting leaders Te Munu Waitai of Ngati
Hikairo and Hone Ropiha of Ngati
Maniapoto. They had also squandered the
opportunity to inflict a serious defeat on
Waddy’s outpost. After the fight at Waiari,
Cameron finally decided on his plan of
action for Paterangi. His observations left
him in no doubt that he would not be able
to subdue it with artillery or storm it with
infantry without unacceptable losses. He
simply bypassed it.
William Allen
circa 1855-1919
The Allen family grave in
Hamilton East Cemetery reflects
several aspects of Hamilton’s
settler history – its militia base,
early trades, the strains of the
small community, the mores of
the time, lack of burial records,
neonatal fatalities and the
influenza epidemic.
William Ward Allen was the
son of Irishman George Ward
Allen, a member of the Fourth
Waikato Regiment who received a
one-acre land grant in Grey
Street, Hamilton East. George
Allen came to Hamilton in 1864
with wife Catherine and their
children. George senior and his
sons George and William were
shoe or bootmakers with a
business in Grey Street. George
senior died in 1874, son George in
1886 and Catherine in 1895, but
their burial places are not
recorded.
In 1880, William Allen got
engaged to Jane Crawford, but he
broke off the engagement when he
overheard hotelkeeper Charles
Johnson gossiping that Jane had
left her job as domestic servant to
‘‘go home and have a
miscarriage’’. Jane took Johnson
to court for slander, swearing she
‘‘had never been in Allen’s
bedroom with the door shut’’.
Jane won her case, the
engagement resumed and William
and Jane married in 1882. They
had at least seven children. Jane’s
father was another Fourth
Waikato, Francis Crawford.
Shoemaking was an essential
trade in the 19th century and
William did well, taking on an
apprentice. By 1910, he had an
additional shop in Auckland.
William’s sister Ada married
Fourth Waikato Felix Nickisson,
and may have built the cottage at
156 Nixon Street, Hamilton East,
in 1869-70. William’s brother
George and his wife Alice then
acquired the cottage but, after
George’s death, Alice could not
support their children and placed
them in an orphanage.
The headstones on the large
grave commemorate William,
who died in January 1919 aged 64
and Jane, who died in 1952 aged
90; their daughter Jinnie who died
shortly after her birth in 1890;
Jinnie’s twin brother George, who
died of the Spanish Flu in
November 1918; and daughters
Eva (wife of Albert Hind) in 1920;
and Ada (wife of John Riddall)
who died in 1947. Their son
Frank, who died in 1964, is buried
elsewhere in the cemetery.
Bath, another a photograph of an actress
posing as the Venus de Milo, a souvenir
from a theatrical show that had earlier
toured the colony (to full houses).
The conviction of Wilkinson sent Truth
into apoplectic fury. The puritan
grandstanding of the Post was seen as the
height of hypocrisy when it was discovered
to have itself printed the offending cards.
Principal vitriol, though, was reserved for
religious philistines who could have any
issue with imagery derived from high art.
Baptist Reverend J J North, a stalwart
supporter of the Evening Post’s morals
campaign, came in for close ribbing: ‘‘If Mr
North and men of his stamp are to become
judges of art, art will consist of ‘Come to
Jesus’ Christmas cards; if they are to be
masters of our revels, our wildest pleasure
will consist of a feed of stale buns and cold
tea sandwiched between two very long
graces; and if they are to be the censors of
our morals, we will become a nation of
hypocrites with secret vices to damn us
body and soul.’’
Life and death: The Allen family grave in Hamilton East Cemetery.
Claudelands
Photo: PETER DRURY
While some heritage buildings are valued
for being a good example of a common
type, others are unique structures that tell
a story few, if any, other buildings can.
Such is the case with the Te Kauwhata
Winery, a collection of concrete buildings
that are a significant part of New Zealand’s
winemaking history.
First known as the Waerenga
Experimental Farm (est. 1886), the winery
was established by Signor Romeo Bragato
(1858-1913). Bragato trained in Italy and
was working in Australia. He visited New
Zealand at the invitation of the Ministry of
Agriculture in 1895 and 1901. In 1902, he
was appointed Government Viticulturalist,
overseeing research stations at Te
Kauwhata and Arataki in the Hawke’s Bay.
Bragato experimented with grafting
different wine varieties to produce both
wine and table grapes. The economic
potential of grape growing was well
appreciated a century ago and the
government of the day invested in research
to determine what crops would flourish in
different soils around the country. A news
item from August 1906 reported that ‘‘at the
present time, there is £2000 worth of wine
in the cellar at Waerenga’’.
Bragato left Te Kauwhata in 1909,when
the Temperance Movement was achieving
considerable success and prohibition
appeared to be close.
The winery has been privately owned
sinced 1932. Until 2007, it was the home of
Rongopai Wines, now owned by Babich
Wines. The site is now a bottling plant and
ferments wine for third parties.
Today the Romeo Bragato Conference,
Wine Awards and Charitable Trust
commemorate Bragato’s pioneering
contribution to the New Zealand wine
industry. The winery buildings at Te
Kauwhata also serve as a reminder of the
role the Waikato played in the industry.
Claudelands, the Hamilton subdivision, was named after Francis Richard
Claude, who purchase 160 hectares on the east side of the Waikato River
that had been granted to Lieutenant Colonel William Moule of the 4th
Waikato Militia regiment during the Waikato Land Wars of the 1860s.
Claudelands was the first area outside the town boundaries of early
Hamilton to be subdivided for residential settlement. The railway station
was first known as Hamilton East, then by the original Maori name
Kirikiriroa, and finally Claudelands in 1913.
Sources include Places Names of New Zealand (Reed) and New Zealand
Encyclopedia (Bateman).