History – Albertland apple industry

As the Albertland pioneers settled into their new homes, they began planting flowers and fruit trees they were familiar with in England. At first, the fruit was only for home consumption, with anything left over used to feed pigs. The annual Port Albert Agricultural Show was where the very best of home-grown fruit competed for prizes.

Once communication with Auckland improved, and a weekly steamer became possible, some of the more enterprising settlers saw the possibility of a trade in apples, which flourished on the poor gumlands. Prime movers in the beginning of the Port Albert fruit industry was the Becroft family. John Becroft Snr was the first man in Albertland to own more than an acre of orchard. His sons, Peter, Lewis Philip and David Becroft, were also involved. Their orchards were larger and more commercial. Eventually, the Becrofts became some of the principal apple growers in New Zealand. Other Albertlanders involved in the industry were Shepherds, Gubbs, Reids and Neals. Apples were even exported to South Africa. Before WWI, there were two fruit canning factories working, but they closed when so many young men joined the armed forces. When the war ended, they did not re-open.

Two sawmills in the district – Roy Becroft’s and William Dudding’s – supplied the enormous amount of timber needed to make apple boxes and Port Albert was probably one of the first districts in New Zealand to grow trees for timber. Before the roads were metalled, most of the fruit was taken by horse-drawn sledge, wagon or konaki, to the river. Most orchardists owned launches of one sort or another, used to transport their fruit to Te Hana. It then went by rail to Auckland. There was a railway running from the Te Hana station to the wharf siding where the fruit was loaded into freight wagons. In 1925, when The Albertlanders was published, there were still 12 commercial orchards in operation in Port Albert, covering some 250 acres of land, with an output of about 40,000 cases of apples a season. For a time, there was a great demand for fruit, but as more land was cleared, and brought in for orchards closer to large towns, the freight costs mounted, until orcharding was no longer a paying proposition in outlying districts. Men on the land had to look for other sources of income so they turned to dairying. For a few years, a small quantity of fruit was sold up the Wairoa, shipped there by launch. By 1962, after 100 years of settlement, there were only three commercial orchards left in the district – Sunnyside at Port Albert, Becroft Bros at Te Hana, and Lyn Smith’s orchard at Port Albert. Today, these too are only a memory.