History – Early days in Kourawhero

Although it is now an easy drive along Woodcocks Road to get to Kourawhero, for the early settlers a bullock team was required to carry their treasured, but meagre, possessions to their newly purchased land that had often only been seen on plans at the government land office.

European settlement of this area started about 1859 although there had been considerable Māori activity for many years before this. The word Kourawhero translates as “red crayfish” and as there was a tradition of catching eels from local streams, it must have been an attractive food source.

European settlers must have wondered what they had let themselves in for when they set eyes on their newly acquired properties, which were either bush or swamp without any access roads. Henry Pulham owned the bullock team that carried most of them and he recorded his concern for how unprepared most of them were for the difficulties they would have to overcome. Not least, living in tents or whares, and cooking on campfires, often for years, until houses could be built.

Among the treasures in the archives at Warkworth Museum, we have a diary that gives us a glimpse into the daily lives of these residents. Written in 1882 in a simple exercise book is the work of Margaret Bear, who was born 13 October 1869. She was the daughter of Daking Bear, who owned 1200 acres of land, and she attended Dome Valley School. Her diary entries record events at both school and home. On June 16 she wrote that her brother, Harold, “…did not go to school, went to the township with Pa to get the things he ordered from Auckland”.

How difficult and time-consuming it was to get basic items and such trips are referred to often in her diary. There is another entry on November 8, which states that another brother did not go to school that day “… he went to the township for staples on a horse alone”. No quick trips to the supermarket; their shopping trips were all-day adventures.

This would explain why shopping was often father’s responsibility and in one entry, Margaret laments that he had forgotten to buy the meat “as usual” and as a result they went many days without.

Other routine events are covered such as not going to Sunday School as chilblains meant she couldn’t get her shoes on and having a holiday from school to celebrate the birthday of the Prince of Wales. Because of this, a calf born on the same day had the dubious honour of being named Albert Edward after the Prince.

Daking died in 1903 and the farm was sold. Margaret never married and died in 1942. By the end of World War I, the land had been bought by the government and was divided into smaller lots for the Streamlands Soldier Settlement scheme. This was provided for by the Discharged Soldiers Settlement Act and the legislation granted farmland at favourable prices. It also allowed returned servicemen to apply for cheap finance to develop it. Much of this land at Streamlands was still swamp and relied on hard work for success. The new occupiers generally made good use of this opportunity, with many of their descendants still living in the area today.