HAWKE'S BAY PROVINCE AND PROVINCIAL DISTRICT

Except for some shore-based whalers, only about 20 Europeans in all were living in Hawke's Bay by 1850. In 1844 William Colenso, surely the most colourful figure in the history of the province, had founded his mission station near Port Ahuriri. He introduced fruits and grains, and soon the few early traders were buying wheat and maize as well as pigs from the Maoris, about 1,100 of whom lived near the shore of the bay.

The first two blocks of land bought by the Crown (in 1851) were the Waipukurau Block of 279,000 acres and the Ahuriri Block of 265,000 acres, and by 1856 thirty sheep stations had been established, mainly within these two blocks. A few pioneer sheep men had, however, moved in before 1851 leasing land on their own account from the Maoris. Largely through the efforts of Donald McLean, 1,200,000 acres had been bought by the end of 1856, 700,000 acres of it being occupied as runs, with 1,458 acres fenced. Livestock numbers had grown to 130,000 sheep, 3,081 cattle, and 382 horses, and 900 bales of wool were exported; the European population had risen to 980, and William Colenso had some 200 trees, mainly apples and peaches, in his orchard. Te Aute College had been founded by Samuel Williams, and the first road was built to it from Napier in 1857.

It was this handful of settlers who, feeling isolated and neglected by the Wellington Provincial Council, founded a province of their own to manage their own affairs. By the time of the public meeting in Napier in February 1858, when the decision to “secede” from Wellington was taken, the total European population was estimated to have increased to 1,185. So Wellington lost about one-third of its area and nearly 1,200 of its early settlers.

Early Problems of Land Settlement

There was little flat land in the new province of Hawke's Bay. The only extensive lowland leading inland to the Manawatu Gorge from the site of early Napier was by no means all easy country. Access to the southern part was barred by dense forest (for instance, the Seventy Mile Bush) that clothed much of the coastal hills almost to the sea. Much of the wide Heretaunga Plain was an almost impenetrable swamp frequently flooded by the rivers. Nor was access from the sea easy, except to the valley flats about the Wairoa River mouth where a mission station had been founded in the early 1840s, and to the shores of the Ahuriri Lagoon. The site of Napier itself was restricted by a big beach barrier of shingle across the front of the bay and widening about the base of the little isolated upland early known as Scinde Island. Here the infant town of Napier was established. Its recent extension inland was not possible until the modern engineering works of the 1940s brought the lower Ngaruroro and Tutaekuri Rivers under control. The sale of town sections on the future site of Hastings was delayed until 1873.

The lower hill country and basin plains in the middle catchments of the Ngaruroro, Tutaekuri, and Tukituki Rivers were most readily adaptable to sheep farming in the early days; Donald McLean himself became a landowner there in 1863. Road access was the first big problem facing the new provincial government. Settlement of the Seventy Mile Bush in the south was delayed until the 1870s, and the road over the ranges to Taupo by way of the Esk Valley was not opened for wheeled traffic till 1877.

Meanwhile the early settlers in northern Hawke's Bay faced special problems of their own. This was difficult country. In front of the high, steep and almost inaccessible hardrock ranges (the Kaweka and Ahimanawa) lay a broad belt of weak-rock hilly country cut by the deep, narrow channels of the rivers and trimmed off by the sea in long lines of steep cliffs. Though Hawke's Bay had no volcanoes of its own, over all the hills lay a thick mantle of fine pumice spread by eruptions in the Taupo district. Thus original fertility was low and the country was covered in fern, tutu, and manuka scrub, with patches of bush on the ranges and in the gullies. In his classic Tutira, H. Guthrie Smith has left us a detailed account of the trials of the pioneer in breaking in this kind of country.

It was through the 1880s that most rapid progress was made here. As in many other parts of the North Island, the first step was to burn the primitive cover and sow grass seed on the ashes. But the bracken fern came back and resort was had to “crushing” or “grinding” by flocks of unfortunate sheep. As Guthrie Smith himself puts it, “The early years of the run were, in fact, a compromise between murdering the sheep and ‘making’ the country”. But when fern would finally be destroyed, the much more difficult manuka scrub might take possession, to be attacked laboriously in turn by fire or the scrub cutter. The making of grassland out of this kind of country has been a monument to the tenacity of the pioneer sheep men.

Another evil incidental to the clearing of this Hawke's Bay weak-rock (papa) country has been widespread soil erosion. Most spectacular were the effects of the floods in 1938. Here the benefits of modern conservation methods and aerial topdressing with fertiliser have been most obvious. Roading, too, has been more than ordinarily difficult, and the recent completion of the East Coast railway to Wairoa and Gisborne has been a special boon. Most of this country cannot be closely subdivided, but there are smaller farms carrying dairy cattle on some of the flats in the valleys and near the coast, as at Wairoa and Nuhaka. But sheep farming for wool and store sheep is still almost the whole base of the local economy, with increasing use of beef cattle for better pasture control.

Settlement of the south posed totally different problems; the Hawke's Bay section of the Seventy Mile Bush had to be cleared; Waipukurau and Waipawa were already established near the edge of the forest. By 1867 there was a regular coach service from Napier to Waipukurau, but the road through the bush was not in use till 1874, making possible a through trip by coach to Wellington. Though the trip took three days, it brought Napier in closer contact with Wellington than it had yet been. The railway to Waipukurau and Woodville was not completed till 1887.

Pattern of Settlement

In the settlement of this country, road and railway meant much more than means of access to and through the bush. The construction work gave the pioneer settlers something to live on while they cleared their sections, and it was along the route that the first village settlement grew. The first of the Hawke's Bay bush settlers came into Norsewood in 1872. Most of them were immigrants recruited from Norway; about the same time a party of Danes was located on a more open patch of country at Dannevirke. In all, some 500 Scandinavians came in 1872 and another 280 in 1873. G. C. Petersen gives a moving account of the life and times of these pioneers who, in a short space of 20 years or so, transformed this country from forest to grassland.

Except for the progressive subdivision of the big runs in the more open country of southern Hawke's Bay, the pattern of settlement has remained much as it was in the later 1870s. Villages located on the railway seem to have made most progress. Today Woodville and Dannevirke are the largest of the provincial towns on land won from the bush; the older Waipukurau and Waipawa arose as centres of sheep-farming country.

The most spectacular episode in the economic history of Hawke's Bay has been the making of the Heretaunga Plain into its agricultural, commercial, and industrial heart, with the twin urban areas of Napier and Hastings carrying more than half the present population of the province: Napier started early as a first point of European settlement; it was not till 1873 that Francis Hicks sold the first town sections on the present site of Hastings. And it was not till 1888 that the new town took the status of a borough, with a total population of 1,504.

The bayhead plain of Hawke's Bay reaches from the mouth of the Esk River to Clifton beyond the mouth of the Tukituki. The Heretaunga Block was that part of it in the vicinity of the Ngaruroro River, originally bought from the Maori owners by a syndicate known as the Twelve Apostles, their title to it being confirmed only after long and acrimonious investigation by a commission in 1873. On higher and drier ground about the bay village settlements, such as Clive and Havelock North, had been established already, but much of the Heretaunga Block was low and swampy and subject to destructive floods. It was part of this swampy ground that Francis Hicks secured from one of the syndicate. Dividing it into town sections he gave one to the Government as a site for a railway station, and thus enticed the projected railway to come his way. This was the beginning of Hastings, first called Hicksville, and later named after Warren Hastings in keeping with other local Hawke's Bay names which were expressive of local interest in India at the time of the Mutiny. The railway duly came through from Napier to Hastings in 1874 and on to Waipawa in 1876.

Agricultural Progress

Drainage and river control works were essential to development of the plain, and subdivision of local land into small holdings followed in their wake. Hop gardens were established at Riverslea as early as 1884, but it was not till 20 years or so later that the phenomenal development of orchard fruitgrowing got under way. A cannery at Frimley was set up in 1904. Subdivision of larger inland holdings was under way then, too, and more intensive livestock farming with the intensive agriculture on the plain was reflected especially in the growth of Hastings, with plenty of flat land about it to expand. Its saleyards at Stortford Lodge, the biggest in the province, and its meatworks and new showgrounds at Tomoana reflect its present status as a centre of the farming economy.

But it has been the remarkable growth of the canneries set up in 1934 by J. Wattie and Co. that has given Hastings something of a special place in the economy of Hawke's Bay and the country at large. Growing, canning, and merchandising of fruit and vegetables gives employment, directly and indirectly, to many people, and the annual blossom festival is a symbol of the special role of Hastings and the Heretaunga Plain in all this. The attraction of site and location has brought other assorted industrial ventures to it.

The expansion of Napier was more or less restricted by its site, but the built-up area now spreads inland to new suburbs on the plain. It has always had a special function as the only reasonably good port on the east coast. A Harbour Board set up in 1875 faced immediate controversy over building a breakwater; the entrance to the inner harbour of the early days was becoming bar bound and the harbour itself silting up. Construction started in 1887 and, since then, a serviceable harbour has been maintained. With better overland communications, however, the southern section of the province has tended rather to look to the port of Wellington for its outlet.

The twin cities of the productive heart of Hawke's Bay were most grievously stricken by the earthquake of 3 February 1931, when the area about the old Ahuriri Lagoon was raised considerably. Here the main airport of the province has been built.

Population Growth

The following statistical summary shows the steady population growth since 1860:

Thus, of the present total population of the province, more than half are resident in the twin urban areas of Napier and Hastings. Populations of outlying provincial boroughs in 1961 were: Dannevirke, 5,508; Wairoa, 4,403; and Waipukurau, 1,714. A heavy inward migration from other parts of the Dominion was evident from 1880 until 1921, followed by a net loss of people in the two decades 1920–40, with a steady inward movement again since 1945.

Growth of Pastoral Industry

Similarly, the growth of the pastoral industry, on which the economy of the province mainly rests, is shown by a statistical summary:

The rapid increase between 1871 and 1901 would be related to clearing of bush, fern and scrub; a slow growth through 1901–1911 reflects decline in fertility of hill country; and an increase since 1911 would reflect improvement of lowland pastures. The sheep population has since been stable around the 1941 figures, but numbers of cattle on hill country have been increased as a means of improving control of grazing. The first sheep were Merinos, to be gradually crossed with strong-woolled Lincolns which in turn have been replaced by Romneys.

The years of biggest expansion of new farmlands were 1871–1895. Since that time progress has mainly been by way of improving pasture quality on the lower and more accessible country.

by George Jobberns, C.B.E., M.A., D.SC., Emeritus Professor of Geography, University of Canterbury.

• Tutira, Guthrie-Smith, H. (third ed. 1953)
• History of Hawke's Bay, Wilson, J. G., et. al. (1939)
• The Story of Hawke's Bay, Reed, A. H. (1958)
• New Zealand Geographer, Oct 1954, “The Pastoral Fringe in Hawke's Bay”, Pirie, P. N. D.