Vanished Auckland - Changes in a Lifetime

The early 20th century gaff-rigged Rawhiti in front of the modern Auckland skyline

Cities have to change, I guess. That's progress. As a teenager, in the mid-1960s,  I first began taking a serious interest in photography and began recording the contemporary world around me. Photographic film and development was then fairly expensive and so the number of pictures taken was limited. I did concentrate on using transparency (slide) film  and have never regretted that early decision. Now, 55 years later, I can see how important it was taking these early photos, as Auckland, the city I grew up with has changed immeasurably as the population has grown. On looking through my archives I have selected a number of photos which, to me, illustrate the changing times, the transition of city caught in a time-warp to a modern, vibrant metropolis.

Today, as the modern downtown Commercial Bay development nears completion, I can look back on what previously occupied the site. When I first began working, in January 1966, I was a clerical worker at the Department of Lands & Survey which was, in those days, in the old Customhouse, a grand old building in its own right, dating from the late 1880s. One day, I took my camera to work, leaned out of the window of the 'Leases' section on the 3rd floor and took a photo of what was then Little Queen Street. It was here that I caught a ABC (Auckland Bus Company) bus home each day to Te Atatu where I had grown up.

In those days Little Queen Street ran between Custom and Quay St. giving extra access to the Ferry Building. On the right hand corner with Customs Street was the Galaxie where we would often go in our lunch hour to see pop-groups such as the La De Das, Underdogs or Pleazers perform.

Little Queen St. in 1967, soon to disappear under the Downtown Centre

I left New Zealand in 1970 and when I returned in 1974, the Downtown Centre had eliminated this small street, and the Galaxie. One evening in 2008, I took a photograph of advertising on the Downtown Centre which I called 'Collision Course'. Little did I then know that the Downtown Centre's days were also numbered, and the Commercial Bay Development would take its place. Incidentally, close to where the original Commercial Bay beach had been when Auckland was first settled in the 1840s.

'Collision Course', advertisng on the Downtown Centre in 2008, corner of Customs & Albert St. Now replaced by the Commercial Bay Development.

One of the major engineering projects of the late 1960s was the addition of the extra 'clip-on' lanes to the Auckland Harbour Bridge. The bridge had been opened as a 4-lane structure in 1959, but within 5 years the realisation had sunk in that it was too small. Freeman, Fox & Partners, the consulting engineers, were recalled and recommended the enlargement of the existing bridge 'by providing additional separate superstructure, one on each side, supported by the existing piers. Each new superstructure would carry a 2-lane 24-ft carriageway.' The extra lanes were manufactured in Japan, shipped out and lifted into position by two large floating cranes. I took this photo as work progressed from Point Erin in 1968.

The extra 'clip-on' lanes being added to the Auckland Harbour Bridge in 1968

In 1987, my wife and I went to dinner with some friends in a quaint little restaurant called La Brie in Warspite Street in the central City. Shortly after I heard that the restaurant along with Warspite Street was going to be demolished to make way for the new Chancery Centre. 

Windows of La Brie Restaurant in Warspite St., in 1987, soon to be demolished

On Kings Wharf there was the the large brick building of the Auckland Farmers Freezing Company (AFFCO) cool store. I first noticed this building when, in 1987, my wife and I took a trip on the old auxiliary schooner Te Aroha. The boat was berthed at the Kings Low Landing, then dominated by the AFFCO building. The building had been used to store refrigerated carcasses for export in the days before containerisation.

The brick AFFCO cool store with auxiliary schooner Te Aroha at the Kings Low Landing, .

 Demolition of the building had begun in early 1988 when we took another trip on Te Aroha. When we returned to the King's Low Landing, fire trucks were hosing down the smoldering wreckage, accidentally set on fire during demolition. An ignominious end to part of Auckland's commercial heritage.

A fire truck hosing down the wreckage of the AFFCO Cool Store in 1988

At the end of the 1980s, Sea Bee Air was still operating an amphibious air service to Great Barrier Island along with charters to other islands in the Hauraki Gulf from Mechanics Bay. The forerunner of Sea Bee Air, Tourist Air Travel had been established by the flamboyant Freddie 'a shower of spray and we're away' Ladd in the mid-1950s. This part of Auckland's aviation history ended when the last Grumman Goose of Sea Bee Air took off from Mechanics Bay in Easter 1990.

Grumman Goose of Sea Bee Air comes ashore at Mechanics Bay, December 1987

An iconic building in the suburb of Ponsonby was the Hydra Bacon Factory whose large neon sign dominated College Hill at night for many years. I had been fascinated by the Company logo of the multi-headed Hydra of Greek mythology and when I heard the factory was to be demolished, I took the following photographs.

The Hydra Bacon Factory in Ponsonby in 1989

The multi-headed Hydra above the office door of the Bacon Factory, 1989

Across the Harbour, in the suburb of Devonport, in the late 1980s, it was time to replace the old ferry wharf which hundreds of commuters used each day. This construction was in dire need of replacing, but the old wharf did have character, even if it was cold and draughty in winter.

The old Ferry Wharf in Devonport in 1988, not long before demolition.

The rather bare interior of the old Ferry Wharf at Devonport, 1988

One of the most surprising demolitions of the late 1980s was that of the  Salvation Army citadel which stood in Greys Avenue, just off Mayoral Drive behind the Town Hall. This fine looking building with its central turreted tower had been built in 1928, and was one of the most distinctive buildings in Greys Avenue. Protestors did try to stop the demolition, to no avail – an interesting part of Auckland’s heritage disappeared under the wrecker’s ball.

The Salvation Army Citadel in Greys Ave in 1987. The site is still a carpark!

After Team New Zealand won the America’s Cup in 1995, the decision was made to re-develop the Viaduct Harbour area, part of which was used by fishing boats, but the rest was in a sorry state. The Auckland City Council Municipal Market Building, had been Auckland’s main commercial fruit and vegetable market until a larger facility had been developed at Mt Wellington by the early 1990s. The old City Council Market building was one that disappeared during the America's Cup boom  in the late 1990s & early 2000s. A sign of the changing times, the newly-constructed Sky Tower now dominated the City skyline when I took this photo in 1999.

The Auckland City Council Municipal Market building in 1999

But perhaps for me, the biggest symbol of a changing Auckland, was the removal of the iconic Pinus radiata which had been planted by John Logan Campbell on the top of Maungakiekie, or One Tree Hill. Campbell planted this tree to replace a sacred totara which has been cut down by early European settlers. This tree, along with the obelisk to the Maori people, part of Campbell’s bequest, had been a symbol of Auckland since the 1940s. When the decision was made in 2000, by Auckland City Councillors, to remove the tree, which had been damaged a number of years earlier by a Maori activist,  I just had to come up the hill one final time. Like many Aucklanders, I could say I was born, literally, in its shadow. Being a post-war baby, I was born in the former US military hospital which was situated in Cornwall Park and used, temporarily, until the National Womens Hospital was built in nearby Greenlane. So, for me,  to  be able to walk around the tree on the afternoon before its removal, at the beginning of the 21^st century, was an emotional experience and personally epitomises the changes I have seen to the city I grew up in.

The lone Monterey pine on One Tree Hill, before vandalisation by a Maori activist.

© Neil Rawlins  text & photography

My paperback books on my Overland travels in Asia, Europe & Africa in the early 1970s and the experiences of a tour guide on the Asian Overland routes & leading Camel Safaris in Rajasthan in the 1980s are available from Amazon.

The Haast, a small but Turbulent River

By world standards it is not a big river. It is only around 100 kilometres from its source in the rainforested Southern Alps to the Tasman Sea, but its impact on the environment can be huge. In a benign mood, the river is a beautiful placid blue, but during the frequent heavy rains it soon turns into a malevolent,  turbulent dirty grey-green monster which each year  can bring down some 10 million tonnes of silt. The average annual rate of flow is almost three times that of the River Thames in Britain. This is the Haast River of New Zealand’s South Westland.

The blue waters of the Haast River in its lower reaches, its benevolent mood

The grey-green waters of the Haast River during rain: its malevolent mood

Until 1960, the small settlement of Haast, near the mouth of the river, had no road access with the rest of New Zealand. The early families, known as the Far Downers, had come in by sea from the 1870s and a cattle track was established along the coast and inland to Lake Paringa. There was also a rough horse track that more or less followed Tiori Patea, the old less-favoured Maori route to the West Coast.  This route followed the river, with summer-flowering rata trees and dense rainforest, before winding up to, and over, Haast Pass to the more open country along the Makarora River.

The rata trees - Metrosideros umbellata - can put on a spectacular show along the banks of the Haast River

The Pass, the river and, in later years, the small town, were all named after the German geologist Sir Julius von Haast who, in 1863, travelled from Central Otago over the Pass and down to the Tasman Sea.  
 The modern road, now State Highway 6,  follows the river for almost its entire length and was constructed in the late 1950s, giving road access to the town of Haast for the first time. New Zealand’s most isolated community was now connected to the modern world. Ironically though, it was one of the first communities in New Zealand to have a regular air service, with West Coast Airways establishing a regular service from Hokitika in the 1930s. The road north to Lake Paringa, Fox and Franz Josef Glaciers, Hokitika and Greymouth was not completed until 1965.

A homestead in the settlement of Haast

Haast Pass, at 563 metres is the lowest of the three major road passes over the Southern Alps. After crossing the Pass one follows SH 6 into the rainforests of Westland. On the right a small stream, known as Cross Creek, appears and after a few hundred metres joins embryonic Haast River which plunges out of impenetrable mountain rainforest. The river soon widens as the traveller heads north. By the roadside is a small hut, still used by road workers. This once housed the explosives used for the large amount of rock blasting that was needed on this section of the road.  There are a number of waterfalls on both sides of the road with evocative names such as Fantail, Diana & the Trickle; the latter two often cause problems on the road in heavy rain. After passing an ‘escape’ road - in case brake failure! - the road passes over the spectacular one-lane Gates of Haast Bridge which crosses the now turbulent Haast river. After passing Thunder Creek Falls, the road again crosses the river at Pleasant Flat and a little further on the Landsborough River, the only major tributary of the Haast flows in from the right.  

The Gates of Haast Bridge over the Haast River

The rapids of the  river beneath the Gates of Haast Bridge

The river has now widened considerably and each bluff or little creek along the road has been given a name. There is Douglas Bluff, named after the indomitable Charlie Douglas, a surveyor and prospector known to local history as Mr Explorer Douglas. He was a man of grit and determination with a wry sense of humour. Once when asked if the rising barometer meant bad weather, Charlie Douglas replied, in his dour Scottish way ‘The barometer doesn’t affect the weather much on the Coast.’

Further along the road there is Dismal and Dizzy Creeks, Imp Grotto, where a prospector was said to have found uranium during the road construction. There is Chink Creek, the Roaring Swine, Dancing Creek, Depot Creek, Gunboat Creek and Snapshot Creek, where, I have been told, the road crosses the Alpine Fault which is the meeting of the Pacific and Indo-Australian tectonic plates.

Snapshot Creek, where the road to Haast Pass crosses the Alpine Fault

After passing by the small modern town of Haast, SH 6 crosses the spectacular 750 metre single-lane Haast River Bridge, the longest in the country. 

The 750 metres single lane Haast River Bridge 

Having viewed the river from the road, let us now experience the river from the waterway itself.  Haast River Safaris operate jetboat tours along a 30 kilometres section of the lower river. 

After a short bush walk, hopefully evading attacks by the persistent Westland sandflies, the traveller scrambles into the large, fully-enclosed jetboat of locally operated Haast River Safaris.

A tour group boards a Haast River Safari jetboat while their tour coach continues over the bridge

With a thunderous roar of twin V8 engines the jetboat is off, heading up the wider reaches of this interesting river.There are single banks to wend around, rapids to zip through and trees, brought down by successive floods, to dodge.

With a roar of twin V8 engines the Haast River Safari jet boat is off.

Near Haast settlement the river is wide, but as the boat proceeds upstream, narrow channels between single banks become more frequent.  The Haast River is never constant, always changing. The boat operator knows the river; what to look for after a flood when the course of the river can change dramatically. The main channel of the river has been know to switch from one bank to the other in a matter of minutes. A flood will bring great trees crashing down, and as the waters drop, new unexpected hazards have been created; single banks will have moved. I have travelled the river many times over the years and have never ceased to be amazed at how things do change. A section of river bank, undermined by a recent flood, with large trees growing precariously on the edge, will have disappeared completely by my next trip, with these trees now forming new hazards in the river. It is very much a landscape in flux. The rainforest along the banks is dense, but it still cannot halt these extreme forces of erosion. 

Rainforest growing precariously on the edge of the eroded river bank.

This large kahikatea tree has succumbed to the erosive forces of the Haast

  Features seen from the River are quite different from those of the road. Joe and Harris Waterfalls, two permanent waterfalls, plunge through the rainforest and were, incidentally, both named by Joe Harris, a foreman during the road construction. The Roaring Swine takes the shape of a spectacular glacier-formed hanging valley, disappearing into the clouds of Mt Aspiring National Park. The fresh, clear waters of the small Thomas River mingle markedly with silt-laden main river. 

Threatenng weather up the Roaring Swine, a classic glacier-created hanging valley

Shingle banks of smooth coloured river stones, mostly greywacke, but also granite, schist, quartz and orange ultramafric, tells a geologist much about the makeup of the Southern Alps.  

Investigating a shingle bank on the Haast River

No jetboat journey would be complete without several fun 360 degree spins. These large, powerful machines spin more sedately than their smaller, open counterparts, but nevertheless it is still exciting - and dry!!

Inside a Haast River Safari jet boat during a fun 360 degree spin

. Journey's end is at Roaring Billy, a waterfall which plunges through the dense rainforest of the left bank and was named for its likeness to a billy of boiling water when in full spate. At times of little rain, it could be likened to ‘Whispering Willy’! 

Roaring Billy plunges through the rainforest on the banks of the Haast River.

© Neil Rawlins  text & photography

Books published by Neil Rawlins on Amazon

Through the Tassili N'Ajjer to Djanet Oasis

Recently I reread Philippe Diolé’s  1955 book, The Most Beautiful Desert of All, translated from the French Le Plus Beau Désert du monde and rather unimaginatively published in America as Saharan Adventure.

I had found this book in a second-hand bookshop not too long after I had returned to New Zealand from travelling through Africa.  Diolé had been one of Jacques Cousteau’s offsiders during many of his diving expeditions around the world, but he also spent time in the Sahara which he loved, and in the introduction to this book he draws certain parallels between the tranquillity and fascination of the deep, with similar sentiments in the vast open reaches of the Sahara Desert: The sea and the desert gnaw equally at the wrecks lost upon their surfaces: the stranded truck eaten away by rust, the ship aground on the sands, prone on its side. In the solitude of the sea, in the silence of the desert sand-hill, there is some anonymity, the same melancholy of things dying rather than dead, given over defenceless to the sands of the sea bottom, to the sands blown by the wind.

I had travelled across much of the area that Philippe Diolé had traversed twenty years earlier, albeit by lorry rather than by camel. But on rereading his book, it brought back vivid memories of my own fascinating journey in 1973.

Coming out of the desert at Ouargla

Three days after we had passed through the interesting little desert town of Ouargla, also the starting point for Diolé  - although he had flown from here, we reached a little settlement now called Ilizi. In Diolé’s day it was still known by the French name of Fort Polignac. Diolé describes it thus: 'Fort Polignac, now Ilizi can only be described  as the most drearily uninviting of all the Saharan posts.  Polignac is stark emptiness.' I had scribbled in the margin ‘couldn’t agree more!’ He goes on: 'It is nothing but a dot on the map. Before the French took over and built the blockhouse , it was not even a native village.  There is not tree, no bush, not so much as a tuft of drinn, that woody plant growing in clumps that can withstand the aridity of the Sahara.

 Yet it is with tenderness , with nostalgia, that I think of that extravagantly spacious esplanade …  For Polignac is the gateway to the Tassili of the Ajjer. It is even more a port than a gateway. It is where one embarks for the silences of solitude.’  I had also noted the ‘extravagantly spacious esplanade’, during the hour or so we spent in this godforsaken place. It was laid out straight for possibly a kilometre. There were pavements and street-lighting standards but as I also noted in the margin of my copy of Diolé’s book: ‘street lights with no globes or tubes.'  

There was just one small shop, and while our drivers reported our intentions and our planned route to the Mairie, I bought, from memory a loaf of bread – surprisingly good – and a small tin of sweetened condensed milk. I used to love this as an after school treat as a youngster.  Just out of town there was a small settlement of basic scrub and thorn huts, with a few lethargic inhabitants, probably Tuaregs, sitting or standing around.

Basic desert huts at Ilizi (Fort Polignac)

From Fort Polignac/Ilizi, after first having to push our two vehicles through a sand drift, we headed into the rocky, steep vastness of the Tassili N’Ajjer, a barren mountain range that cuts across this part of the Algerian Sahara. Diolé crossed this area by camel looking for Neolithic paintings in the remote valleys of the Tassili. I noted in my diary at the time that the Tassili N’Ajjer was: 'one of the most barren, desolate regions on earth; a region of broken, shattered rock, chiefly sandstone, strewn as far as the eye can see. The area is very hilly and the road a mass of corrugations, bumps & rocky outcrops. We are climbing all the time at the average speed of 12 mph. The odd tree & clumps of vegetation can be seen & we saw several gazelle during the day. We are camped tonight fairly high up in the Tassili, presumably miles from anywhere.'

The road through the rocky terrain of the Tassili N'Ajjer in Mid-Sahara

The following morning we drove through what I described as even  'more spectacular with rocky mesas, canyons, cones etc. a true lunar landscape.' Before we eventually descended to the desert and skirted around the base of the mountains on the road to Djanet. At the time the spectacular scenery gave rise in my imagination that this must be what J.R.R. Tolkein had envisaged the Land of Mordor to look like in his Lord of the Rings Trilogy which I had read for the first time just before I left Britain.

As we drove through the Tassili N'Ajjer, virtually devoid of vegetation, I felt that this could be what J.R.R. Tolkein envisaged the dark land of Mordor, in his epic Lord of the Rings trilogy, would have looked like. 

On our last day’s drive into Djanet we passed a camel caravan of around 30 camels making their way in our direction. This age-old mode of transport was even then fast disappearing from the desert. Perhaps they were bringing salt from the salt pans of Bilma Oasis in Niger!

The camel caravan, maybe bringing saly from Bilma Oasis, heading to Djanet

I liked Djanet right from the minute I arrived, as did Diolé: "Djanet is a smiling place, and I really think it is the most beautiful oasis in the world; but it remains inscrutable, reserved rather than hostile, very small and very deeply rooted in its own long-enduring life. In the houses with their walls of very white clay, and in the gardens, silent men work with a seriousness which belongs to another age, and which is scarcely Arab. We have little knowledge of what an inhabitant of Djanet really is. … Perhaps he is the descendant of a Neolithic shepherd or farmer, issue of a stock as old as the grain he grows – that grain of the oasis which is not related to any grain ever known, unless it is to the grain of a prehistoric era.'

I had scribbled in the margin: ‘couldn’t agree more’. I awoke on my first morning in this beautiful oasis to see, in the early morning sun, the spectral figures of Tuaregs leading yesterday’s camel caravan through the oasis date palms.

Tuaregs leading their camels through the date palms of Djanet Oasis

© Neil Rawlins  text & photography

Read the full story of my travels in my books published on Amazon

One Foot in Front of the Other - First Steps & One Foot in Front of the Other - Full Stride

Mykerinus Steps Forth

Assertive and confident, from deep within the hazy mists of time, escorted by the mother goddess Hathor and Anput, his local district goddess, the pharaoh Mykerinus (Menkaure) steps towards us, out from the hard greywacke stele which has withstood the ravages of time. An imposing figure, handsome, determined and very much a leader of men, he now stands just a few kilometres from his most imposing monument, the smallest of the three Pyramids of Giza. The world he knew was a one of opulence and innovation, a remarkable civilisation encapsulated within the narrow confines of the Nile Valley. 

The Three Pyramids of Giza, That of Mykerinus (Menkaure) is on the right

The great sepulchral monuments of the vast necropolis of the Western Desert has inspired mankind's imagination throughout the millennia -

                              "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

                              Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

                                                                                [Shelly 1818]

Mykerinus' immediate predecessors, Cheops (Khufu), his grandfather, and Kephren (Khafre), his father, built the much larger Pyramids, but this fine sculpture, in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, brings a human face and character to these rulers from the beginnings of recorded history; rulers whose mystical reigns inspired funerary monuments of such awe-inspiring, gargantuan proportions. 

The greywacke stele of Mykerinus & the goddesses
Hathor & Anput, in the Egyptian Museum

Elsewhere within the Museum are the seated figures of the high priest Rahotep and his wife, Nofret. Rahotep, High Priest of Ra, the sun-god, was half-brother of the Pharoah Cheops (Khufu) and consequently would have been the great-uncle of Mykerinus. The most striking feature of these ancient figures are their realistic eyes, finely wrought from rock crystal. Rahotep and his wife look quizzically at us as we walk towards them, seemingly gazing into our very souls with the wisdom of four and a half millennia. It is hard to believe the incredible age of these beautiful painted sculptures.

Rahotep, High Priest of Ra & Nofret, his wife. Egyptian Museum, Cairo

It is from admiring such images as those of Mykerinus, of Rahotep and Nofret, by seeing the massive Pyramids of Giza and the earlier Stepped Pyramid of the Pharaoh Zoser at Saqqara that we can begin to appreciate the amazing splendour and technology of this far distant age. It was an age that persevered, through the vicissitudes of invaders and weak rulers for almost 3000 years, assimilating the ways of the various invaders who entered the Nile Valley. It was an age that reached its apogee in the New Kingdom some 3500 years ago, best illustrated by the amazing treasure from the tomb of the boy-king Tutankhamen.

          In a special chamber in the Egyptian Museum we can only gaze admiringly on the exquisitely worked solid gold funerary mask of Tutankhamen. The delicate gold, silver and inlaid scene of the boy-pharaoh and his queen on the back of a royal chair describes a scene of domestic harmony, while the beautiful protecting goddesses who guard the gilded-wood shrine containing the king's viscera show that he was well accompanied in his journey through the after-life, while an alert wooden jackal, Anubis, eternally guards Tutankhamen's sacred mummy.

The solid gold funerary mask of Tutankhamun & the pharoah with his wife on the royal chair,
Egyptian Museum, Cairo

It is only after viewing these exquisite treasures by ancient craftsmen that we begin to realise just how skilled and advanced the ancients were. It is frightening to think that what we see today in the Museums of the world is just a very small fraction of the riches of this ancient world. All the great tombs were well-plundered by grave-robbers thousands of years before modern Egyptologists even began their investigations, less than two hundred years ago. But in spite of these depredations, a wealth of knowledge has emerged from the ancient hieroglyphic texts, painstakingly deciphered by the 19th century work of the Frenchman Champollion, and the ornate, detailed and colourful frescoes of scenes of everyday life, of military campaigns and trading expedition that decorate the later tombs of the pharaohs and their courtiers. A wall-painting and relief in the Mastaba tomb of Princess Idut, daughter of the 5th dynasty Pharaoh Unis, at Saqqara shows an ox being slaughtered, another wall-painting shows a fishing expedition on the Nile. 

Butchering an ox, from the Mastaba tomb of Princess Idut, daughter of 5th dynasty pharoah Unas at Saqqara      

Each year further exciting discoveries are made from this fascinating era, and who knows, perhaps Egyptologists will one day find an unknown tomb rivaling that of Tutankhamun. To house these new discoveries a brand-new state-of-the-art Egyptian Museum is due to open, within view of the Pyramids in 2020.

© Neil Rawlins  text & photography

My travel books are available from Amazon: One Foot in Front of the Other

One Foot in Front of the Other - First Steps

One Foot in Front of the Other - Full Stride