For each generation, remarkable changes take place, making travel faster and easier. We must all have remarked at some time on the travel time between home and Auckland, compared to years ago. The following excerpt, from the diary of William Garden Cowie, Bishop of Auckland, takes us back to the 1880s to a different age and the challenging journeys taken by him and his indomitable wife Eliza, to meet with his far-flung parishioners.
28 January, 1887
“We left Devonport about 8 am by the coach with four horses, and about 12 o’clock reached the Orewa river, whither our horses had been sent on the day before. We rested an hour and had dinner at the home of Mr de Grut. Our route from Devonport was over a succession of bleak hills overlooking the beautiful Hauraki Gulf, by an unmetalled road, in some places scarcely more than a roughly marked track, very muddy and slippery in the wet season.
From Orewa we rode about 20 miles to Warkworth. The road was very hilly, and the heat great, so we did not travel fast. Most of our route was through beautiful forest, called bush in New Zealand, and every now and then we got peeps of the sea and islands. We reached Warkworth after 6 pm and put up at Mr. Such’s hotel which is a clean, quiet and well-kept house. The people of the township were away with their children, spending the day on Kawau Island, the home of Sir George Grey.
Next day about 3 pm we left Warkworth on our horses for Tauhoa escorted by Mr F. Mc Murdo, the doctor’s son. For the first ten miles our route passed through thinly populated country, hilly and abounding in forest and fern. Here and there small patches were cultivated, the people being industrious but poor.
At Kaipara Flats we rested for 20 minutes at the home of Mr Hood. Mrs Hood gave us some refreshing home-made cider and some excellent plums and apples. On continuing our journey we crossed the Hoteo River and then rode for about four miles through grand forest, the track having here and there lying across it huge trees, still burning. The newly formed track was scarcely safe for a lady on a nervous horse. It was nearly dark when we reached the house of Captain Hearne, the district’s school master.
30 January, 1887 A walk of about a mile down a rough track brought us to the little Church of the Holy Trinity where a congregation of about seventy awaited. The service was very cheering but for my part fatiguing. At three we set off for Wellsford some ten miles distant.”
