Islands of the Gulf

by Shirley Maddock

  Another day, the only comment is “Good, very quiet and orderly.” Then, “If Te Kepa did not answer the call to wash he would have his line taken from him and prohibit his fishing this day.”

  In spite of the beef tea and the fishing privileges, the Waikatos pined in captivity.

  “Chief Te Pakata has died” says a later note, “and some like Paora very desponding. He says he has been bewitched, he has been makatu’d.”

  “The men have been suffering from great depression.”

  On 9th and 10th September, 1864, the Waikatos escaped from imprisonment on Kawau with the help of kinsmen on the mainland. It was a most curious position. The prisoners split into several parties, one encamped on a hill behind the fishing port of Leigh and entrenched, others stayed on Tokatu Point where the authorities visited them and asked them to return to the island. The prisoners declined. Apart from frightening them a little, they harmed none of the white settlers and in the end most of the Waikatos settled along the coast, married with the local people and their descendants live there still.

  When the escape took place, authority was much criticised by both the settlers and the newspapers. Letters to the Editor spluttered from angry pens. “Sir,” said one to the Southern Cross. “Is it for this we pay taxes, to be murdered in our beds by savages?” and Sir George had enough enemies by now for them to draw some damaging conclusions. He had connived in the escape, they said — he was absent from the island at the time but this only proved the case more conclusively — before today he had often declared for the Maoris against the Pakeha. Even comedians made jokes about the charges in skits at the music hall.

  The sixties dragged on in trouble and depression and Grey’s biographer, Professor J. Rutherford, summed up the official attitude of the Colonial Office to their most distant charge. “They (the Colonial Office) were at this time professing philanthropy for economy, they seemed concerned only to sound the retreat, withdraw the army, collect the war debts and leave New Zealand to extricate itself from the predicament in which Britain had helped to put it.”

  In 1867 Grey was relieved of his post as governor and retreated to the island like Merlin to his cave.

  Mansion House Bay is U-shaped, dyed deep jade from the pines on the headland. The exterior of the Mansion House has not been greatly changed, the austere design of the original house is easily seen within the wing and balconies Grey added, and the flat roofed dining room built on when it was modernised as an hotel. The red slate roof has not suffered the common fate of replacement by corrugated iron, the verandahs are embellished with wooden lace cut into snowflakes and acanthus leaves which are repeated in wreaths on top of the magnificent kauri pillars in what was the library. The timber for the pillars was felled on the island and then sent to England to be turned and polished. Grey’s gardens were his consolation for disappointment in office and for his lack of family. He and his wife had been separated many years before and their only son died as a baby when Grey was governor of South Australia. But he was no hermit here; he may temporarily have left the world, but some of the world came to him and his house parties were lavish. His guests travelled up by steamer from Auckland; there were picnics and shooting parties, crinolined ladies feeding peacocks on the lawn and the rich smell of cigars and brandy in the library after dinner.

  Grey went back to England in 1868 but nothing came of the visit. Disraeli offered him a safe seat in the House, there was talk of other governorships, even of Canada, but no more than talk, so he came back to Kawau and devoted himself to his garden and his translations of Polynesian mythology. His niece, Annie Matthews, helped make up for his lack of family and in December 1872 she was married in the library to Seymour Thorne George. They lived with her uncle and two children were born to them there. The wedding was a very gay affair, the steamer Royal Alfred brought the guests from Auckland and the Herald reported that “an elegant collation was served the guests in the kauri panelled drawing room and a good substantial meal in another room was set out for the islanders.”

  The charm of having such an aristocratic retreat in New Zealand waters has never quite worn off and Kawau still basks in the lengthening rays of those times. I found an article written only about ten years ago in a paper now out of print called Freedom. Ninety years after the event the writer was still impressed and round-eyed as he described how “Sir George entertained literary luminaries against a background of collected books and paintings and art goods” and that “even a Prince of England” had come to Kawau.

  The “Prince of England” was Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, the second son and fourth child of Queen Victoria. In 1869 he came to New Zealand with his naval squadron, in which he was a serving officer. His visit prompted an official snub for Grey. Like all the colony, Auckland outdid itself with balls, race meetings and receptions for the Prince and invited Grey to none of them. However, if Grey was not invited to see the Prince, the Prince was invited to visit him. He accepted and came down to Kawau for a bit of shooting and to renew the acquaintance made when Sir George was governor of South Africa and they had done a bit of shooting there. The Prince was very keen on sport and the Illustrated London News had a sketch in their report of the colony’s first Royal Visit showing him in jaunty Norfolk jacket, knickerbockers and a funny little round tweed hat with a feather on the side.

  One of the most distinguished “literary luminaries” to visit Kawau was the historian James Anthony Froude. He may also have been the most priggish but he was an exact observer and was not compelled to politeness like other more amateur travel writers of the day. After he visited New Zealand and Australia in 1883, he wrote a book about it called Oceana. He found the colonists a little bumptious and complains about it on the voyage from Sydney to Auckland:

  “The self importance of these colonists! They will address one with no formal introduction but by simply saying ‘Sir, I was for three years Manager of Her Majesty’s Kangaroo Department’ or some such.”

  He found the ship’s library poor and had to fall back on the pocket editions of Homer and Horace, Pindar and Sophocles, with which he invariably travelled, as he was at some pains to point out.

  As the City of Sydney berthed at Auckland, the forty-year-old St Paul’s Church was being demolished. Froude observed that “sentiment belongs to leisure and the colonists just now have time for none of either” and he deals laughingly with the press, “who came crowding on board when we were not five minutes at the quay” and asked what did he think of New Zealand? Evidently some things have not altered greatly.

  Auckland at the time of Froude’s visit had 30,000 inhabitants, the average wage was 8/- a day and the best beef was sixpence a pound. He found the fruit shops admirable but not the conversation at dull dinners given by rich merchants in Princes Street. But in spite of this he took an optimistic view of the future. “The great English poets and philosophers will be born and nourished here. I hope large cities will not be the fate of New Zealand. Fine men and women are not to be nurtured among taverns and theatres and the idle clatter of politics.”

  When he had had enough of the town (in which, if he had liked to count, were more than ninety taverns) Froude boarded a steamer to visit his friend Sir George “who was leading a Robinson Crusoe kind of existence in the Hauraki Gulf.”

  He enjoyed the journey up and described the stops on the way and the farmers and their wives rowing out to get their mail and supplies; he observed how young all the faces were, that the fishing boats had red sails and how like a good deed did the white front of the Mansion House appear from the water.

  Sir George showed his visitor the ripening beauties of his garden, the banks planted with rhododendron and oleander, camphorwoods, tall cedars, magnolias and ginkos, a black mulberry with a christening font beneath it, a grove of coconut palms which had already borne a crop of sweet but tiny nuts (and which still do) and the custard apples and pomegranates which thrived in the balmy island air.

  Froude, happy to be once more in a gentleman’s h
ouse, reports the homely routine of family prayer, grace before every meal, not only dinner, the drawing room with “plain homemade kauri furniture made on the island, the Maori axes, Kaffir shields and assegais all prettily arranged and the floating literature of London periodicals on the small tables.”

  Grey was anxious to hear the latest political talk from London and the Continent and from Africa. Froude said Sir George spoke with sympathy of what he considered injustices to the Boer farmers and then digressed to a theory that the Maori had a common ancestor with the Japanese. Froude excused what he considered radical views and admired Grey’s forthright expression of them. “He was not,” he declared, “distracted by the perpetual clatter of other people’s opinions.”

  By this time Grey’s fortune was suffering from all he had spent on his estate — close to £100,000. Only seven gardeners worked on the estate where once there had been seventeen. But these were private troubles. Froude went fishing for the spotted shark, joined in picnics in the bush and feasted on the native oyster. It was February and Sir George was constantly welcoming boating parties to the island. Froude remarked that he even let them wander through the house. “They do no harm, and goodness gracious, they might just learn something.”

  At length the historian said goodbye to his friend and to Kawau “which was as pretty as Adam’s garden before the Fall.”

  Sir George retained his Eden for another six years, until age and ill health forced him to come to Auckland and Kawau was sold.

  He never went back there, but if his political career had gone to ashes he had become another sort of figure, a Prospero on his island, who was the kindest of employers and the most generous host. He was, even in happy times, afflicted with bouts of depression, but children, on whom he doted, could nearly always coax him into good humour again. One old lady told Professor Rutherford of staying at the Mansion House when she was a child.

  “I used to drink chocolate in bed with him. He told us stories about hunting game in South Africa with Prince Alfred, and then such bloodthirsty tales about Te Kooti, and how he swallowed his victims’ eyes with awful grimaces and plocking noises.”

  In 1892 Grey went back to England and there is a sentimental tale that Queen Victoria tried to bring Lady Grey and her husband together again. It was in fact well-meaning relations who did it, but the Greys got so dreadfully on one another’s nerves that the reconciliation was abandoned.

  In 1898, Richard Seddon was in London for the Diamond Jubilee. Although he was already very ill and weak, Grey called on the Premier at the Cecil Hotel. He asked Seddon if he would take a message home.

  “Give my best wishes to the people of New Zealand, and may God take you in his keeping.”

  The great, bluff Seddon promised to deliver the message, then he picked up Sir George in his arms and carried his frail old friend downstairs to the carriage. Not long after, Grey died. His funeral service was held at St Paul’s Cathedral and the Colonial Office, when a decent interval had elapsed, sent a bill for it to Grey’s estate which had shrunk to not much more than £800.

  His Maori friends did not forget him and they sent a last message.

  “Horei Kerei, Aue! Ka rui matou aroha kia kohe.”

  “George Grey, Alas! Great was our love for thee.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Cowes at Kawau

  The earliest boat races at Kawau were fought by north and south-bound canoes intent on keeping ahead of the local Ngatitai and boat races of a less desperate character are very much part of the island. The permanent residents may be inclined to regard the great January and February invasion of yachties as one of the plagues of summer, but the Annual Weekend of the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron has been held at Kawau for more than forty years. The keelers race up from Auckland on Friday night and then race again on Saturday in the wide bowl of water between Kawau and the mainland. The short tradition of Squadron Weekend is a jolly one, like Pinafore crossed with The Pirates, with just a dash of naval pomp to match their Royal Charter King Edward granted in 1902. You can fly to Kawau in fifteen minutes but to keep in character you should go under sail.

  Even if you are too much of an unsalted sailor to avoid traps like saying “inside” for “below” and not calling the loo “the head”, your nautical friends will have the fun of correcting you and there are advantages in being a supernumary passenger. You need do nothing but sit and stare while someone else dangles a plastic bucket into the wash and swabs the decks.

  At Rangitoto enough breeze springs up to switch from engine to sail. You pass the end of the Whangaparaoa Peninsula, the strata of the cliff clenched and deformed in some ancient upheaval, then Tiri Tiri with its bone white lighthouse. Motuora is the next island of consequence. It is a sheep farm and as well as wool, raises pumpkin seeds for market. It takes paying guests in the summer, too, and lists among its attractions “Peace, Quiet and no T.V.” On the seaward coast a great amphitheatre of a bay has been scooped from the cliffs. On top, a lonely sheep gazed to the horizon, his fleece turned to fire in the last bright burst of sun.

  Another stretch of water, lulled with the lazy swell, held more islands, a long pine-tasseled chain of them, called the Motus for short. There is Motutara and then Moturekareka, worn almost in two by the shingle dredges. The two wrecks lying in the bay are an iron-hulled coaster and the picked ribs of a square-rigged barque called the Rewa. A man called Charlie Hansen who lived here once had them towed up as a breakwater and a landing place. Not that many people landed here when he was alive, except the scow with his grog and his supplies of food, since he was more inclined to welcome uninvited guests with a shot gun than ask them in to tea. His little house still sits on the beach with broken windows and a rusted roof.

  Motuketekete is next, with the lovely triple promontory of the Gulf.

  I was aboard Nereides, a fine two-masted yacht and the marker boat for the races. A few launches were anchored in Mansion House Bay when we cleared the point, some friends among them. Dinner smells wafted in the dusk, greetings echoed across the water as more boats arrived and the Mansion House, festive but a little bedizened, was dressed for the occasion in strings of red and white fairy lights. We went visiting on the Lady Julie to watch the keelers come in. They can be late if the wind deserts them but they were lucky this year and it was not long past eleven when a rifle shot signalled the first boat home, looming from the warm dusk like a huge moth as it was caught and identified in the marker boat’s searchlight. There was a long gap and then another came and three more. A dull rose sail bloomed in the flarepath, then slipped into the dark again; another wait, then others came, until at last the bay was filled with a silent company of blanched sails and ghostly shrouds and misty little catseye lanterns on the tops of masts.

  Someone laughed and merrily cursed his crew, someone else must have brought a school-bell in his kit and rang and rang it until his mates shut him up. Then there was the clanking rattle and hiss as the huge sails slithered down the masts, the colony of boats slurruped at anchor and there was not much talk. The noble stillness of the night, the hushed procession of yachts, belonged to quiet.

  The moon had risen, too buttery and bland to be real. It etched the leggy little pines growing from the rock and spun frail webs from the skeletal warp of rigging. We sat on deck, drank cocoa, hot syrupy mugs of it, then went below to sleep.

  * * *

  The bay was a floating village in the morning, a forest of masts, and it was hard to find a clear passage to the shore. There is a legend that it gets harder and harder for an anchor to hold in Mansion House Bay as so many beer bottles are down on the bottom. Only a few people were awake. A young man crawled from his cabin, jack-knifed over the side and shot like an otter through his ring of ripples. Someone else stretched and yawned then attacked the bristles on his chin with a transistorised blade.

  “Anyone awake down there?” cried an early caller and a chorus of groans replied from within.

  Five little boys in crimson shirts pull
ed for the beach in a dinghy, then dinghies were coming from all sides propelled with a rich variety of styles: the short chop, the Oxonian punt from the stern, the long sweep, the one-armed, one-oar technique and numerous catchers of crabs. A head on collision and apologies offered — “So sorry, I was reading the paper” — and he paddled on, his nose stuck back in the page. Snail trails of sunlight flickered on the smooth hulls; a smell of bacon from one boat, coffee from another and seagulls floated over the mast-tops waiting for scraps. The Navy launch at the jetty was awake; a chorus of matelots in summer whites bustled about with brooms and buckets and a keeler came alongside for water, her crew in scarlet lava-lavas. Shorts, bare feet and sunburned noses were in order on the lawns of the Mansion House, where a few guests strolled sleepily about and gazed at the crowded bay that had been empty the evening before.

  The races begin about ten and not without a certain amount of ceremony. Nereides, the marker boat, handsome with flags and bunting, the Blue Ensign lolling from the stern, is off to the start, and the first event is the Squadron’s annual concession to the distaff side, the Ladies’ Race, the one day of the year when the hand that rocks the cradle is allowed to take the tiller. The prize for the first lady home is a picturesque but impractical islet called Martello’s or Happy Jack, just barely visible at high tide. The important races are in the early afternoon.

  An official voice rebukes some loiterers. “No fishing on the starting line!” it bawls.

  On the marker boat the racing pennants are got ready. Up goes the blue ten minute flag; the yachts back and fill as they get into their classes. The blue pennant is hauled down, a scarlet pennant follows, a single shot is fired and a double rank of sailboats spring from the mark. White sails and coloured plucked in the breeze, ropes creaking, waves slapping the long hulls and the loud sibilant hiss of the wake. The vanguard flicks away to the further coast on the first circuit round the course, the crews strain and work, the skippers urging them to action.