My Account
Visitors to Mataia Homestead, on the Kaipara Coast Highway at Glorit, could be forgiven for thinking that the graceful two-storey villa with the unusual ‘m’ shaped roof, was recently moved to the property. The home has the fresh appeal of a building that looks like it has just been finished. It also lacks the stately trees or established gardens normally associated with homes of any great age. In fact, any suggestion that the home is a recent arrival couldn’t be further from the truth. Mataia Homestead, a Category 2 Historic Building, stands on land that has been in the Gardner family for more than 150 years and the homestead has borne witness to life on the Kaipara for nearly 120 years. Jannette Thompson takes up the story ….
The 1300-hectare Mataia property, believed to be the largest privately-owned single holding in Rodney, is rich in Maori and European history. There are still signs of the Mission Station which operated on the harbour around 1840 to 1850, three pa sites, and numerous kumara pits and middens. Artefacts are often uncovered including the recent discovery of a rifle bayonet, probably used around the 1850s. Gill Adshead, a descendant of the original owner John Gardner, says the homestead gradually fell into disrepair and by the late 1980s, the family knew they had to make a decision. Gill, her sister Jane Hammond and brothers Richard and Steve Gardner chose restoration over demolition and set to work on the most urgent tasks – re-piling the house, replacing the scrim walls and keeping the rain out. Although the house was habitable for its centenary in 1991, the restoration was far from complete, but funds were running low. That’s when Gill’s daughter Jenny, and her husband Shane Hood, put their hands up. Jenny grew up on the farm and had always loved the house. The couple offered themselves as caretakers and the family agreed. In the last four to five years, further renovations were undertaken and landscaping of the gardens was started in earnest. The couple also found time to produce the 7th generation Gardner to live on the farm – their daughter Ella Rose.
The family’s association with the property began with John Gardner and his wife Margaret, who emigrated from Scotland in 1862 in search of farming land. A successful butcher in his native Glasgow, John first worked in Auckland, supplying meat to the troops fighting in the Maori Wars. When he purchased the Mataia Block, an area that had been picked over by kauri gum diggers and burned by various warring Maori tribes, the couple’s surviving sons, John and Charles, moved north to help develop the property. John Snr gave the area the name Glorat after a Scottish estate that he had admired, but thanks to the Postmaster’s spelling error it was to always be known as Glorit. Situated as the farm was on the Kaipara Harbour, the family was well-placed to move their produce to Auckland and markets further afield. They raised beef cattle initially and built a canning factory to process the beef, as well as mullet and fruit. Mataia beef was exported to Fiji where it was sold under the label Bull-em-a-cow.
In 1891, John Jnr married Louisa Clark, the daughter of the well-known Hobsonville pottery family. This alliance resulted in the eventual establishment by their sons of the earthenware brick and pipe making business of Gardner Bros and Parker, in New Lynn. Meanwhile, brick’s produced at the brick works on the Mataia farm were used to build the Tahekaroa and Makarau tunnels. The farm was obviously a busy place at this time, and family records show that Gordon Coates, the country’s first NZ-born Prime Minister, was a frequent visitor during the early 1900s when he drove cattle from Matakohe to Auckland. John and Louisa, who had nine children, built the original Mataia Homestead with an eye to the practicalities of farm life. Their youngest son Peter Robertson Gardner took over when his brother John was tragically killed on a horse on the property in 1932. Gill says Peter had enormous respect for Maori and served as an officer with the Maori Battalion in World War I. He was a fluent Maori speaker and a great advocate of the Maori language. Peter’s sister Briar Gardner, who grew up at Mataia, is acknowledged as one of the pioneers of the NZ studio pottery movement.
The farm eventually passed to Peter’s only son Peter Alexander, Gill’s father, whose devotion to the property has sometimes baffled his daughter. She describes him as “anything but a farmer”. His real passion was engineering and he spent his evenings in the shed “inventing” farm implements and machinery. Many of his projects were patented, including the ‘spot on’ hose, and are still in use today. Gill was raised at the homestead and remembers a “freezing cold” bedroom, crinkly linen sheets, sharing the bath water and chamber pots.
One of the unique aspects of Mataia is the fact that it combines a working sheep and beef farm with a 400-hectare private conservation project, started in 2005. Made up largely of coastal native forest margin and salt marsh wetland, the area boasts rare populations of fernbird and banded rail and is host to a large number of other native bird species. The saltmarsh area at Mataia is a significant roosting ground for Arctic waders including godwits and lesser knots, as well as local migrants such as pied oystercatchers, pied stilts, banded dotterel and Caspian terns. With funding from the Department of Conservation Biodiversity Fund, the Auckland Regional Council Environmental Initiatives Fund and the Rodney District Council Heritage Fund, the restoration of this area is a long-term project aimed to restore and enhance the considerable ecological values of the area. A large scale pest control program saw more than 600 possums eradicated from the entire farm in late 2007. The ongoing restoration project also targets stoats, rats and feral cats to help to protect and increase the local native wildlife.
Jenny and Shane, who live in a nearby cottage, say they have no intention of occupying the house. They want it to be available for family and the public to use and enjoy, and are encouraging its use for community dinners, weddings and holiday accommodation. They also hope these events will generate the funds necessary for the home’s considerable upkeep – painting of the exterior alone cost $10,000. A landscape plan has been developed for the four hectares surrounding the homestead, including vegetable and herb gardens, an orchard with many heritage trees and flower beds. Hundreds of roses have been planted, many from the Hood rose nursery at Whenuapai. Louisa Gardner’s gnarled pear tree is one of the few that remain from that early era. Gill says passers-by regularly drop into the homestead, many recounting stories of their own from the past. She remembers the day Margaret Glavish, sister of a former Mayor of Helensville, visited and told of how she was walking past the house many years earlier when it started to rain. Apparently she had run to the house for shelter, only to find it was wetter inside than out. Thankfully, the outlook for Mataia Homestead is now looking considerably brighter.
