History – The Puhoi story continues

On arrival in Puhoi, there was no choice for the early settlers but to make the best of their desperate situation. Scouts for the Albertlanders had inspected the Puhoi Block in 1862 and decided it was quite unworkable. They described the bush: “The more timber trees, the more undergrowth. The timber trees run up to a height of 40 to 80 feet, almost without branches. They do not spread too much of a head, but keep their branches close and compact together. The whole space is filled up with the tree ferns six to 20 feet high, nikau palms about the same size and an immense variety of trees and shrubs.

“The whole of this is again festooned and intertwined with creepers of all sizes, which grow horizontally across the other shrubs, lashing the whole together into an impervious thicket. If, in addition to this, you imagine the whole forest strewn with innumerable trees which have fallen from the effect of winter storms, you will begin to have some idea of the difficulty.”

The Bohemian settlers were allotted their land to the “satisfaction of all concerned”: Forty acres for each adult, and 20 acres for those between five and 18 years, under the Auckland Waste Lands Act.

Working together with their few spades and axes, the Bohemians made tracks through the bush from one holding to the next, built a nikau whare on each and established the families in their own home on their own land. This was achieved within the first three months.

They gathered firewood into bundles and, until Paul Straka built a punt, floated it down to the river mouth. Ships travelling from the north would pick it up and deliver it to the Wood Wharf in Auckland. When it was found that the firewood had left Puhoi, someone had to travel the track that was the Great North Road to Auckland to oversee the sale of the firewood, pay the shipping company half the profits, buy the necessities and walk back again carrying their purchases. The journey was completed in approximately 26 hours.

Shingle knives were one of the first implements bought. Soon hundreds of thousands of shingles were being sent with the firewood to the Auckland market. Small patches of land had now been cleared. Wheat and potatoes were planted with other vegetables grown in the pockets of leaf mould, round the stumps of trees. But, arriving as they did in the dead of winter, it would be at least six months before any food was produced. The Bohemians were saved from starvation by Te Hemara Tauhia from the pa at the mouth of the river, loading their punt with peaches, kumara and vegetables time after time. The Maoris also showed them what was edible in the bush and river, and how to procure and process it for food.

A relationship of mutual respect grew between the Bohemians and Te Hemara Tauhia. He was a man of honour and intelligence and with a great capacity for friendship. Without his gifts and the knowledge that he was their friend, the predicament of the struggling settlement would have been even worse. In spite of this, there was little contact between the Maoris at the pa and the Bohemians up the river and no inter-marrying. In the early 1870s, Te Hemara sold their land to the Government and moved to the west coast. A further group of Bohemian emigrants settled on this land.