Know your town

Improving Transport

Mr Martin Baird established a once a week Lower Valley goods delivery and passenger service based at Greytown using a brake – a four wheel flat wagon pulled by five horses. There was a total lack of any passenger comfort and the ride didn’t come cheaply. The fare to Lake Ferry was fifteen shillings (today’s equivalent $96) and to Waihenga ten shillings ($64). Fares were also listed to Pirinoa, Dry River, Tuitarata and George Pain’s Store (six shillings).
Goods were charged by weight, one shilling ($6.40) per ten pounds weight (aprox 5kg) = slightly over a dollar a kilo. At one stage Mr Baird changed his time table to make the return journey on a Saturday and into Sunday. This, however upset the Lower Valley residents resulting in a deputation led by a Mr Russell. The trip was returned to its former time table.

Mr Baird also provided transport to the Boxing Day races at Tauherenikau leaving from the Waihenga Hotel at 8 am. The vehicle for the trip was his brake, no passenger comforts and the only road was via Greytown, it was a long trip. There was a refreshment call at Hodges Inn along the way and another at the Rising Sun Hotel in Greytown, then on to Tauherenikau race course. With the return trip after the last race. There was no indication of the fare on the advertisement of the service.

Other newspaper advertisement were for the Maori Race meetings at the Tuitarata and Taunui flats – with a full card of races.

Better access to the area also opened up produce market opportunities which in turn bought a call from more labour. As an instance it was planned to plant over two thousand acres in wheat and oats in the Lower Valley and Wharekaka and there was a desperate need for ploughmen. The good news was that assisted immigrant ships were arriving from England. One, The Waikato, listed thirty eight married men with children, twenty three married with no children, sixty three single men and forty single women and ‘young girls over twelve’.

The men were listed as painters, carpenters, bricklayers, black smiths, shoe makers, carters, coachmen farm hands, labourers and a tanner. The women were listed as dressmakers, nurses, housemaids, and general servants. The wage for a servant girl was eight shillings ($52) a week plus keep. Not a lot, but then again there was nothing much to spend it on either.
The sudden influx of people created an accommodation problem, the government moved in to build immigrant cottages at Featherston, Greytown and Masterton. Presumably built by tender, the cost to construction varied form town to town. Greytown’s were he cheapest at one hundred and four pound each (2016 = $13,270) Featherston’s one hundred and twenty one pound ($15,292) and Masterton’s one hundred and thirty two pounds ($16,682).
At that time Wairarapa’s population was 4,62 of whom 878 lived in Greytown and 6 47 in Masterton.