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The stories of Matakana’s early settler days are fast disappearing as the links with the pioneering families disappear. Although there was talk a few years ago of setting up a local museum to preserve this heritage, as well as the wealth of memorabilia that is still held in family hands, nothing has so far materialised. In Austin Smith’s opinion, that’s a shame. He can trace his family’s connection to Matakana back to 1846 and although he now lives in Orewa, his heart is still firmly in Matakana, as editor Jannette Thompson discovered …
There are mementos of the Smith family all over Matakana. There’s Smith Road at the bottom of Mt Tamahunga and both my Dad and I have our initials carved on the trig station on the top of the mountain. My grandfather William Smith was born in a nikau whare beside the Matakana Falls and there’s plenty of Smiths in the cemetery on the hill, including my great grandfather who drowned at the mouth of the Matakana River in 1865. Perhaps you shouldn’t mention that though as the Coroner noted that he probably wouldn’t have drowned if he hadn’t been drunk!
My grandmother, Margaret, and her sister, were maids for Sir George Grey, on Kawau Island. My grandfather William and his brother were farming in Smith Road at the time and on Saturdays, if there was a dance at Mansion House, they’d ride to the wharf, borrow the storekeeper’s punt and row over. The two brothers married the two sisters and lived side-by-side on farms in Smith Road for the rest of their lives. At one stage, my Great Uncle Joe worked as a manager and boatman for Governor Grey and he planted some of the rare trees and palms from Mansion House on his farm opposite Tongue Farm Road. Some are still there. My grandmother only had one arm but still won many prizes for her bottled autumn fruit at the local shows. As we understand it, she was cooking over an open fire when she fainted and fell into the fire. Doctors were many hours away by horseback so my grandfather made the decision to cut the arm off. Farmers were used to doing those sorts of things for their animals, but it’s hard to imagine what it must have been like to have to do it for the Mrs.
The town once had a flour mill, between the falls and the wharf, a race track and its own municipal library. The Matakana Falls were ruined when they blasted them for stone for the roads. Early family members remember the brick making at Brick Bay and the spar-cutters bringing down trees for masts, which were in demand for export. Mr and Mrs Keckit had a store and boarding house above the river, in what became Dr Whetter’s house (behind where King George now stands).
Plume Café was our family home, but it was called Wainone then, which we were told meant ‘winding waters’. Dad built the house when he married Mum. She was the first bride in Matakana to arrive at the church in a car. I was born at Wainone, as were my sisters Moira and Enid. We used to milk the cows across the road where the market is now and sell our milk to local residents. My grandfather Woodie Campbell would carry a bucket and his pint dipper along the street – an early version of a milkman. After he died, people would leave their billies on our back porch. Can you imagine the strife you’d get in to if you tried to do that today! I never heard of anyone getting sick though so obviously the hygiene wasn’t too bad. We sold Wainone around 1982 for $65,000, which included the house and the land to the wharf.
Five generations of Smiths have attended Matakana School, which has had a couple of different locations over the years. Up until 1928, it was beside the Presbyterian Church, which is now at the Matakana Country Park. Lots of kids rode horses to school, while others walked miles over farmland, even when they were only five years old. Some even road bikes along the metal roads from Point Wells. Matakana didn’t get electricity until 1938 so before then, Mum cooked on a wood range. We had gaslights and candles, and anyone who had a radio (we didn’t) had to hook it up to their car battery to make it go. Washing was done in the copper on Mondays and the clothes got a blue rinse before being hung on the clothesline. Although we only had a 3000-gallon rainwater tank, I can’t remember us running out of water – tanks as small as 800 gallons weren’t uncommon. But then there was none of this letting the tap run while you cleaned your teeth. We didn’t have enough pressure for a shower and to have a bath, we’d have to first boil the copper to get the water warm and then bucket it to the bath. No wonder we only bothered about twice a week. Although we had one of the first flush toilets in Matakana, we still had to go along the garden path to use it.
When I was six, my mother was pregnant with my younger sister and the doctors didn’t think she’d survive childbirth. My parents made arrangements for me to board at Dillworth in Auckland. I was nine when I started and over the next seven years I made some of the best friends of my life. Living away from home at such a young age made us all fairly independent. I remember the teachers telling my best mate that he was “the dumbest guy they’d ever seen”. They told him to leave school the day he turned 15 and get a job digging drains for the council “because you’ll never do any better than that”. Just shows you how wrong people can be. That guy became an apprentice mechanic and in his spare time, started fixing small engines. He went on to found a major company and became a multi-millionaire.
When I left school, I joined Dad in the building trade. Many buildings in Matakana bear his trademark including the hall that replaced the one that burned down in 1958, the old post office, the Matakana Co-operative Store and the butcher shop. His business partner was Norman Roke and when Dad retired, Norman and I formed Roke and Smith Ltd. Our timberyard was on the site of the cinemas and there’s a real estate office where our workshop was across the road. The company concentrated on local work – we built additions to Mahurangi College and the marine lab at Goat Island. But we weren’t fussy and did everything from pigsties and cow sheds to houses. I bought seven acres and an old house in Victoria Street, in Warkworth, off Les Phillips for £6700 and we subdivided it into 31-sections. The first blocks sold for $2400, while we got $10,000 for the last sections. Warkworth Town Council was running the place then and getting things like building permits were never a problem. You just had to get along with the right people. In the early 1960s we started a hardware store in Matakana, which meant we could get some of our building supplies at the wholesale price. We also made our own joinery and kitchen fittings, and the business grew like topsy. A few of us got together and formed ITM. I let me shares in that company go when I sold the shop – I didn’t even charge for them!
I guess you could say I’ve been involved in the community over the years – I’m a past president of both Warkworth Jaycees and Warkworth Rotary, belonged to the Warkworth Golf Club for 25 years, did nine years on the Board of Governors of Mahurangi College and I’m a Rear Commodore of the Sandspit Yacht Club. I’ve got all sorts of bits and pieces relating to Matakana, which the family have held onto over the years. I’ve still got Mum’s dance card from the Matakana Bachelors Ball held in the Matakana Hall in 1920 and a copy of the Matakana Public Cemetery map dated 1898. There are newspaper cuttings about Matakana’s support for prohibition, an account of the Upper Matakana Race Day and documents recording Susan Campbell’s gift of land for the original King George monument. Sandy Campbell gave the surrounding land to the RSA for a reserve. As part of my work as a JP, I still use our family Bible dated 1866 if someone needs to swear an oath. Both my father and grandfather were also JPs. I’d happily hand over a lot of what I have if only there was a museum in Matakana!
