Know your town

Early travel
A track, good enough for a packhorse to negotiate, over the Rimutakas was completed in 1848. By 1852 there were 100 Europeans settled in the Wairarapa. By 1856 the track had been upgraded to accommodate wheeled traffic, the first being Greytown farmer Thomas Kempton ’s bullock dray. By this time there were 100 people establishing farms in the southern Wairarapa.

Having negotiated the Rimutakas the traveller could stay at Burling’s hostelry at what is now Featherston (by all accounts this was very basic accommodation).

Henry Burling, who had worked on clearing the track over the Rimutakas, set about clearing a track from Featherston to Tauherenikau, there making a right turn along what is now Moroa Road to Morrison’s at Moiki. This was along what was high ground until the January 1855 earthquake.

A ford over the Ruamahanga river at Moiki led onto a track to Revan’s and Smith’s Huangarua Station (now the Martinborough area) then on to Waihenga, Otaraia and down the valley to TeKopai. TeKopai was a whaling base from where a small boat could take travellers to Wellington – or they could walk around the coast.

Burling then set up a carrying business operating between Featherston and the coast, this expanded to include two bullock drays, pack horses, and a donkey.

The first official roads authority was the Lower Valley Roads Board was set up in 1869. This Board over saw the establishment of the track along Bidwill’s Cutting to Tawaha then down into the valley to cross at the Waihenga Ferry. A bridge was eventually built at Waihenga in 1873.

In 1881 responsibility for roads in the South Wairarapa was taken over by the Featherston Highways Board which met for the first time in the Court House in Greytown. Despite its rather grand title the Board was very short of funds. It could not afford to send a representative to the Roads Board Conference and even a suggestion that the Board purchase a water jug and six tumblers for use at meetings was turned down for lack of cash.

The Highways Board minutes of 1882 recorded that as Featherston had reached a population of 600 it could form a Town Board – and presumably look after its own streets.

The final meeting of the Featherston Highways Board was held in December 1882, to be replaced by the Featherston Roads Board in January of the following year. A different title but the same people wrestling with the same problems: establishing new roads, dealing with complaints about the condition of existing ones, putting planks over creeks so that children could get to school etc. – and a continuing chronic shortage of cash.

In 1901 the Roads Board was replaced by the Featherston County Council – with a considerably wider range of responsibilities. In 1903 the Council moved to it’s purpose built county Office in Martinborough (now the Information Centre). The total cost of design and building was two thousand five hundred pounds ( 2012 = $411,889). To be continued

Mate Higginson