Tide of enterprise

By Judy Waters, Warkworth & District Museum

John Anderson Brown’s timber mill was established in the mid-1840s giving employment to about 30 men and it was still operating 20 years later. The bone mill (below), near the upper falls, and the flour mill (right), below the present bridge, were newer ventures on the Mahurangi River, using the hydro power naturally provided by a series of waterfalls.

Mindful that all produce brought into the area came on small ships at considerable cost, the enterprising settlers provided as much as possible for themselves. In 1864, John Trethowen, proprietor of the bone mill, cultivated a small paddock of two acres and four chains, and produced 30 tons of fine potatoes. The manure used was Peruvian guano and bone dust, proving to his neighbours the value of conditioning the soil with the product from his mill.

Produce on view at the annual agricultural shows gave evidence of experimentation with a wide variety of fruit, vegetables and grasses. Hop vines gave a good return from a small acreage and oats, linseed and opium poppies were grown. The flour mill was adapted in 1868 so that the drying and grinding of oats could be added to the business already carried on. A celebration was held at Southgate’s hotel when oatmeal was ready to be marketed.

Both mills experienced financial difficulties and neither had a long history. After the bone mill burned down, the grinding stones were used by Wilson’s Cement Works and, in a later adaptation, the flour mill was used to process lime deposits from Kowhai Park. The bone mill bridge, built in 1868, stood for nearly half-a-century before being washed away by a flood on 3rd February 1917. As the river flows through the town today, there is little indication of the former activities which engaged our pioneers.