History – A Mangawhai sawmiller

John Hunter Penman, born at Oxnam, Scotland, in 1826, arrived at Auckland on Friday, 16 March, 1860, on the sailing ship Blue Jacket with his wife Margaret and his father, Robert. They moved north after acquiring land on an area now serviced by Ryan and Pritchard Roads, and built a sawmill among the forest of kauri. Hunter invented machinery for his sawmill, which was worked by water power. Family stories tell of him having learned skills while attending an engineering school of Stephenson, the noted steam engine family of Scotland.

John and Margaret had one surviving son, James Arthur, who attended Te Arai School and went on to become a leading builder of many important buildings in the Auckland district, including schools, churches, halls and so on.

John Hunter was a Presbyterian preacher, who took his turn delivering sermons at Te Arai church, which was built in 1863, with timbers he himself provided. A community man, he was sadly missed when he was accidentally killed in 1879 by a length of timber that he was sawing, which flicked off its guide and hit him. His 13-year-old son, who was with him at the time, ran to Te Arai village for help. The return journey took 40 minutes and his father had died by the time he and the others returned.

The mill was the largest of several sited in the Mill Bush area, on Ryan and Pritchard Roads, of the Oruawharo and Mangawai (sic) Parishes. During those times, that part of the Oruawharo parish was also known as North Albertland. The reason for so many mills was the demand for the timber of the mighty kauri tree, which grew prolifically over and along those hills and valleys.

On a beautiful Wednesday morning recently, I accompanied a group of descendants of the famous sawmiller as they attempted to locate the exact place where his mill was situated. The land we were seeking was on a farm now owned by Mike Sainsbury, who offered to show us the location. After 140 years, there was little or no evidence left of the Bushside Mill, also referred to as Woodside Mill.

However, there was an old boiler still lying where it had been abandoned 140 years earlier, in the proximity of where the mill workings had been. The sight left us envisaging days when the air was filled with screams of the saw and the rumble of large timbers being cut to size.

The site is high above Hakaru and the surrounding farm lands, which made me wonder at the ability of man to haul huge logs up and down the hills to be processed. Of course, it was done by the strength of bullock teams, and local ‘bullockies’ who were able to direct the animals into pulling the huge logs to the mill.

The silent beauty of lush green paddocks with totara-framed creeks running along and down the valleys, left me with wonder, as the works of man and nature show a different form from what was here 140 years ago. Birdsong is now replaced with the occasional bleating of lambs and their mothers, as they graze around Penman’s Bush, surrounded by the breathtaking views of farmland below.