Russell School Pupils c1890s
Original photo © Russell Museum

It’s the start of a new school year. This photo shows 58 Russell School pupils gathered outside their new one roomed school built in 1892. Names include Stephenson, Baker, Williams, Woods, Flowerday, Deery, Saunders, Poole and Webb. Some of their descendants are still in town today. The headmaster Mr Higginson (1892-6) is on the right. On the left is his assistant teacher Miss Honor Matthews.

Honor met an American whaling captain, James Earle of the Charles W Morgan, at Russell. After some correspondence she took a steamer to Honolulu to marry him. She sailed with him learning to be his navigator. She sailed with him again in 1902 taking her young son. Whaling voyages lasted 2-3 years.

The Charles W Morgan had 37 recorded whaling voyages from 1841 to 1920, calling at New Zealand three times. It is now part of Mystic Seaport Maritime Museum .

Even in 1896 Russell was a cosmopolitan place…. and anything could happen.

Re-enactment of Hobson landing at Kororareka
Original photo © Russell Museum

Captain William Hobson anchored off Kororareka (Russell) midday on 29 January 1840. He issued an invitation to citizens of the Bay to meet him at Kororareka church in the afternoon of the following day. Going ashore on 30 January he was met by the British resident James Busby and the local missionaries, plus about 300 Pakeha and 100 Maori.

Hobson read his proclamations which extended the boundaries of New South Wales to include New Zealand and his commission as Lieutenant Governor. It also sought to regulate land sales.
A declaration stating the proclamations had been read was signed by Busby, some of the missionaries, the chief Moka and several settlers.

This foundational event in our history was remembered and re-enacted on 29 January 1940. Our photo shows Hobson and fellow naval officers outside the church as he reads his proclamations. It was followed by a service led by Archbishop Averill, and an afternoon hoisting of the first national flag on Maiki. In the evening a ball included coronation of a Carnival Queen and sixteen hundred pounds raised for the Russell Centennial Memorial Fund which was to eventuate in the building that houses our museum and library.

Visit of William Massey
Original photo © Russell Museum

This photo shows a politician’s visit in 1922. The Russell wharf is decorated with flags and a welcoming fern arch. The local men dressed in their best suits and hats and a few small boys form a guard of honour. There is no sign of any women or girls. Perhaps they were preparing the banquet for their illustrious guest Premier William Ferguson Massey, Prime Minister of New Zealand from 1912 to 1925.

Mr Massey had been North before in 1914 when he opened the Kaikohe railhead. With unsealed roads and no road access to Russell, travel would have been difficult. Mr Massey’s party the Reform League had a Russell Branch formed in 1912 which had a dinner at Allan Bisset’s in May 1912. It included Massey pudding (whatever that was).

Today television and the internet give us easy access to our political leaders but we still enjoy the chance to see them in the flesh. And pose our questions.

Norfolk pine at Te Wahapu
Original photo © Russell Museum

A  Norfolk pine stands sentinel on a knoll at the end of the Te Wahapu peninsula, in a prominent position within one of our recreational reserves. A sign below the tree was erected to mark the reserve in July 1988 by the Historic Places Trust. The wording on the sign is:

In this bay, Te Wahapu, a trading post and ship repair yard were established by Gilbert Mair in 1831, and run by him with William Powditch as a partner in the early years. Mair’s house stood on the point, beside the Norfolk Islands pine planted by Mrs Mair about 1836. From 1840 the station was operated by American leasees, two of whom, William Mayhew and Henry Green Smith, also served as vice-consuls. It was occupied by British forces on July 20, 1846, and garrisoned by the 58th and 65th regiments until December 1857.

The old tree has an unusual appearance. George Cook, writing in the New Zealand Herald in the 1930s under the nom de plume “Lonehander” reported:

…before attaining its full growth some sailors from a warship cut the top part off for a spar, and naturally there was trouble. However that bit of mischief cost the Queen’s sailors £20, and the tree grew on, but instead of only one shoot it put forth several, and strange to say they all flourished. Hence the present unique appearance…

In 1999 concerns were held for the tree’s survival as erosion cut away at the bank below, exposing many of its roots. However the tree still flourishes, as does the one in the Waitangi Treaty grounds, which is the same age and from the same source. Mrs Mair planted one seedling and gave the other to Mr and Mrs Busby, a hundred and seventy two years ago. The Waitangi tree is a classic specimen though, with only one trunk. The photo shows the Te Wahapu tree and reserve area in the 1940s.

Christ Church Centennial 1936
Original photo © Russell Museum

The traditional Tall Ships hangi at the Russell Boat Club attracts hundreds each January.

This photo shows steam rising from a hangi being opened on 29 March 1936.

It was Christ Church’s one-hundredth birthday and all the pews were taken out of the church and the main service (there were three others, one in Maori) held outside at the back of the church to accommodate all the visitors and dignitaries.

Afterwards across the road on the empty section where the museum now stands local Maori had put down a hangi. Through the steam to the right it is possible to see the chimney and end wall of Tamati Waka Nene’s cottage and to the left the roof and white chimney of the Russell Courthouse / Post Office. The waterfront trees are pines – the present pohutukawa were soon to be planted between them.

The hatted spectators, in their Sunday best, wait eagerly for the feast. You can almost smell the hangi…

Pacific Hotel / Hananui
Original photo © Russell Museum

This photo shows the Pacific Hotel, later known as Hananui Boarding House, in its prime. It was built in the 1870s and demolished in 1961 to make way for the Hananui Motel, the first motel for Russell.

The land it stood on was part of a larger area granted to Tamati Waka Nene in 1866. He gave a section of it to the widowed Matilda Cook whose husband, George, was a relative. Matilda had kept a motherly eye on Nene in his cottage nearby. She built a hotel to provide a living for herself and her family. In the back garden was a well, lined with stones brought from Waitangi. On the York Street boundary was a long low hall, older than the hotel, used as a skittle alley by visiting sailors.

Matilda’s sons were involved in shore whaling at Whangamumu and their steam whaler was named Hananui, a name later transferred to the Hotel.

It’s a name from Stewart Island – a long way from the Bay of Islands but there is a link. Matilda’s son Herbert Francis Cook married Ellen Marie Anglem from Stewart Island. Mount Anglem is the Island’s highest peak and its Maori name is Hananui. Both the steam whaler and the house honour that connection. Four generations of the Cook family were associated with the old building.

Flooding in Russell
Original photo © Russell Museum

The winter season is upon us, a time of wind, rain and sometimes flooding.

This photo is taken at 8.45am on 6 June 1925, from the hillside above Pitt Street and looking north to Maiki Hill. To the left is York Street with the Town Hall and Hananui’s fence. Far right is a house in Chapel Street now with a wisteria vine on its picket fence.

The land between York and Church Streets is obviously low lying and swampy – prone to flooding. There are stories of being able to use a dinghy to get from one place to another. The stream that drains the town obviously couldn’t cope. Since then many sections have been raised by fill and improved drainage has helped the area to shed excess water more easily.

But still in 1977 flash flooding caused problems in Florance Avenue, at Willowbridge Motel in Chapel Street and in Matauwhi Bay Road.

Eight large pipes were installed under Hope Avenue in 1985 to alleviate flooding on the flat caused by water from surrounding hills.

Today only ponding in Church Street near the cemetery is a problem and hopefully will soon be solved.

Gables & Duke of Marlborough Fire
Original photo © Russell Museum

When the fire siren sounds, other than Monday night, we all worry. Did we really turn off the stove… Our reliance on rainwater tanks and bores makes us feel vulnerable, especially in summer.

This photo shows the third Duke of Marlborough hotel burning fiercely and people carrying buckets of water up from the water’s edge in a vain attempt to dampen the fire, and protect neighbouring buildings.

At high tide mark furniture and goods are dropped higgledy-piggledy. There are heaps of firewood by the right hand buildings (Baker’s house, the bakehouse and Baker’s store.) The Moreton Bay fig tree on the left looks scorched and there is no sign of the original Gables boarding house beside it which caught fire first on an early morning in November 1931.

Since the Gables and the Duke were separated only by a narrow alleyway fire spread easily from the first building to the second. This Duke had been built in the 1870s and so lasted the longest of the four bearing the name.

Beer, wine and spirits were carted to the old billiard saloon in York St so the publican Jack English could reopen a temporary bar and keep his licence until a new hotel could be built. Some beer was saved for the hardworking bucket brigade and some beer, Russell rumour has it, was buried in the shingle for another occasion…..

Original photo © Russell Museum

Nahlin anchored off the wharf in 1932

During the summer season its common to have a cruise ship anchored in the Bay and occasionally a large private launch or yacht. This photo from 1932 shows Lady Yule’s steam yacht Nahlin anchored just off Russell wharf.

This elegant vessel was commissioned by Lady Yule from GL Watson &Co, Glasgow and used by her for extended cruises including a circumnavigation. She was later made available for charters including summer 1936 when King Edward VIII took his lady friend Wallis Simpson on a cruise and precipitated his Abdication.
She was bought by King Carol of Romania but later languished on the Danube where she was discovered fifty years later in a sorry state being used as a floating restaurant. Privately purchased she retuned to the Clyde where she is being gradually restored. Maybe one day we will see her anchored off Russell again.

And Lady Annie Henrietta Yule? She was the widow of Sir David Yule who had amassed a fortune in India. Lady Yule and her daughter established an Anglo Arab horse stud at Hanstead, Hertfordshire, UK whose progeny spread all over the world.

The Colonial Gallery
Original photo © Russell Museum

The charming Colonial Gallery is no more. It stood on the corner of Chapel and York Streets from 1967–76. Jim and Pauline Yearbury, both artists, ran the gallery and sold paintings, pottery, sculpture, handcrafts and antiques according to their card. The gallery’s phone number was 168.

In earlier life the building was owned by Frank Clow, who sold to Mrs Edrie Boucher. In turn her daughter, Hope, and Frank Miller, her husband, took it over in 1945. They ran a popular tearooms, home cookery and grocery for sixteen years.

Eventually the little building was demolished and a tavern built in 1976. The site became a parking area with fill added from the slopes of Te Maiki.

The lamppost is still with us. Mr and Mrs J Garland brought it from Auckland in the 1940s. They built a house in York St (now South Sea Art) and had the lamppost outside. Jim Yearbury later gave it to the Russell Museum where it still stands on its York Street frontage.