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Auckland Ferry Building and Tees

Auckland Ferry Building and Tees (1912)

Steam transport opens up the suburbs

‘We see these lucky people waiting at the lights at the foot of Queen Street…. There is a vague aroma of salt and diesel oil about them as they stand with their feet slightly apart, their heads up and a faraway look (common to explorers and sailors) in their eyes.’ David Balderston had his beloved wooden double-ended ferries in mind when he waxed lyrical about Auckland’s luckiest commuters, but the good news is that these ferry tees and the Ferry Building are humming as people rediscover the joy of entering the city through its traditional front door.

From the 1880s enterprising operators began offering ‘a smell of the briny for 6d’. The Ferry Building emerged as the jewel in the crown of Auckland Harbour Board engineer W.H. Hamer’s massive 1904 redevelopment plan for the then ramshackle port. Harbour board engineers were more important than any architect then, and Hamer’s plan for a new Queen Street wharf included ferry tees (completed in 1907) and this brick and Pyrmont stone office block. Alexander Wiseman’s English baroque ‘handsome pile’, as it was called, took longer to build than planned, since people objected to new buildings blocking harbour views even then, but since 1912 the Ferry Building has housed a variety of mainly shipping industry tenants.

Like the ferries themselves, the building ran into lean times after the harbour bridge opened in 1959, but between 1985 and 1988 it underwent a major refurbishment that added a modern version of the fifth storey originally planned. Passengers still pass through its entrances and shipping companies still chase cargo from its upper storeys. With the new Britomart rail terminal and a major bus interchange area just across the road, the more recently redesigned ferry tees seem destined to get busier than ever.

Further information

This site is item number 81 on the History of New Zealand in 100 Places list.

Websites

Book

David Johnston, The Auckland Ferry Building, Auckland Maritime Museum, Auckland, 1988

Credit:

Text: Gavin McLean, 2013

Main image: Andy Davidson (Flickr)

Other contemporary image: Alexander Klink(Wikimedia)

Historic images:

Alexander Turnbull Library
References: 1/1-008072-G (photographed by James McAllister), WA-35371-F and WA-78933-F (both photographed by Whites Aviation)
Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any reuse of their images.

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auckland city

auckland harbour board

transport

shipping

historic places

Date established:

1912

Auckland Harbour Bridge

Auckland Harbour Bridge (1959 & 1969)

Auckland’s driving force

The Auckland Harbour Bridge picked up where the ferries left off. There was talk of a bridge across the Waitematā as early as 1860 and again between the wars, but the planners and politicians gave the green light only in 1946 when they made it central to the new motorway system they fondly believed would solve Auckland’s transport problems. The Westhaven reclamation at the southern end began in 1951.

For most of its history the Auckland Harbour Bridge has been a victim of its own success. The intended five lanes were reduced to four to save money. It opened on 30 May 1959 and in its first year averaged 13,493 cars a day, a shock for planners who had predicted 8250 a day by 1965. Between 1967 and 1969 the bridge was widened by adding two Japanese-designed dual-lane steel box extensions to its outside. The so-called ‘Nippon clip-ons’ bought some time but demand kept outpacing capacity. Traffic jams on the bridge even drove some people back to the ferries. The average daily flows of 80,000 vehicles in 1970 doubled to 165,000 by 2000.

You can now pay to walk above the bridge, but the Birkenhead ferry provides a cheaper way of admiring this Auckland icon. Impressive though its piers and gantries may be, the bridge’s real legacy is the vast suburban sprawl on the North Shore. In 1958 it took 40 minutes to travel from Birkdale to the city. In 1960 that fell to just over 15 minutes, shattering the peace of people such as Frank Sargeson. No wonder the Shore took off! And no wonder the authorities are debating plans for tunnels or a second bridge while commuters daily scan cyberspace for warnings of congestion or weather-related delays.

Further information

This site is item number 98 on the History of New Zealand in 100 Places list.

Websites

Book

Renée Lang, Auckland Harbour Bridge: 50 years of a city icon, Random House, Auckland, 2009

Credit:

Text: Gavin McLean, 2013

Contemporary images: Jock Phillips

Historic images:

Alexander Turnbull Library
References: WA-48875-G, WA-55734-G and WA-67333-G (all photographed by Whites Aviation)
Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any reuse of their images.

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1959 & 1969

Old Coach Road

Old Coach Road, Wellington (1858)

A true colonial road

Land transport was difficult and costly in early colonial days. People walked, or if they were lucky, road on bullock carts along beaches or the sort of narrow Māori tracks found in the Ōhariu Valley, north of Wellington. The New Zealand Company had sold ‘country sections’ here in 1841 but few buyers rushed to take up their isolated purchases. The first ‘road’, steep and unformed for much of its length, followed an old Māori route. It offered little incentive to farm the steep, thickly forested slopes.

Old Coach Road was better. The name, a piece of early 20th-century romanticism, misleads because the road was really too narrow (4.2 m wide) and steep for horse-drawn vehicles. Coaches almost certainly never ran along it. Despite opposition from settlers rated to pay for it, a strike, and technical difficulties, migrant labourers carved out the road between late 1856 and September 1858. They aligned it on as winding a route as possible to make it suitable for horses. Even so, most traffic would desert it eight years later when workmen completed a third road, the longer, wagon-friendly Ohariu Valley Road.

The Johnsonville Town Board maintained Old Coach Road until the 1920s. It was never abandoned, like the first ‘road’ but, used only by the few farmers whose land it straddled, it escaped drastic change. Late 20th-century suburban sprawl at the Johnsonville end swallowed up several sections but the rest (still a legal road) forms a rare example of a barely-modified early colonial road. The 3-km section between Johnsonville and Rifle Range Road in Ōhariu Valley is now protected. It was the first road to be registered by the Historic Places Trust.

Further information

This site is item number 22 on the History of New Zealand in 100 Places list.

Websites

Credit:

Text: Gavin McLean, 2013

Landscape images: Andy Palmer, 2012

Portrait image: Gavin McLean, 2002

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Date established:

1858

At the opening of Lyttelton road tunnel

A group of women at the opening of the Lyttelton road tunnel on 27 February 1964. People were invited to walk through the tunnel on opening day.

L-R: Janise Dickson, Carmel Doherty, Mary McLorinan, Catherine Kennedy, Christine Smith.

Read more about the Lyttelton road tunnel on Te Ara

http://www.flickr.com/photos/christchurchcitylibraries/2832156566/

Credit:

Image: Christchurch City Libraries Flickr page. File reference: HW08-IMG-FE062

http://www.flickr.com/photos/christchurchcitylibraries/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

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Tangiwai railway disaster

Remnants of the Tangiwai rail bridge

At 10.21 p.m. on Christmas Eve 1953 the Wellington–Auckland night express plunged into the flooded Whangaehu River at Tangiwai, 10 km west of Waiōuru in the central North Island. Of the 285 passengers and crew on board, 151 died in New Zealand’s worst railway accident.

It was, at the time, the world’s eighth-deadliest rail disaster and made headlines around the globe. The nation was stunned. With New Zealand’s population just over two million, many people had a direct relationship with someone involved in the tragedy.

The place name Tangiwai means ‘weeping waters’ in Māori. The timing of the accident added to the sense of tragedy. Most of those on the train were heading home for Christmas, armed with presents for friends and family. Those waiting to meet their loved ones at the various stations up the line had no sense of the tragedy unfolding on the Volcanic Plateau. Over the following days, searchers found many battered, mud-soaked presents, toys and teddy bears on the banks of the Whangaehu River.

Train on Chasm Creek bridge, 1968

Headed by Ww571, a freight train carrying timber and coal crosses Chasm Creek bridge in December 1968. This was one of the last journeys on this route by Ww571, which is now preserved at the Silver Stream rail heritage museum in Wellington's Hutt Valley.

Credit:

Photograph by Graeme McClare, 1968

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Full steam ahead for Kingston Flyer

A few months after the last steam locomotives had been withdrawn from this country's scheduled rail operations, New Zealand Railways (NZR) launched a new tourist-oriented steam passenger venture in the South Island.

Beginning on 21 December 1971, the Kingston Flyer ran twice daily on the 61-km line between Lumsden in northern Southland and Kingston on the shores of Lake Wakatipu. It used two of NZR’s famous A^B-class Pacific locomotives, built in the 1920s, and a number of preserved wooden carriages dating back to 1898, including an historic ‘birdcage’ (balcony) car. As a rare example of a state-owned railway entering the heritage and preservation fields, the Kingston Flyer attracted widespread media attention, both in New Zealand and overseas.

In more recent years the (now privately owned) venture ran two daily trips in summer over a 14-km section of line between Fairlight and Kingston, as well as offering charters throughout the year. By 2009 the railway’s future was clouded by financial problems, but new owners reopened the service in 2011.

The Kingston-Lumsden line was originally built as part of the ‘Great Northern Railway’ from Invercargill, which was completed in 1878. The original Kingston Flyer was a passenger train that ran between Gore, on the main Dunedin-Invercargill line, and Kingston, from where lake steamers provided a connection with Queenstown. It was withdrawn in 1937, although Christmas and Easter specials continued into the 1950s.

Image: Kingston Flyer

End of the line for steam railways

The Christchurch–Dunedin overnight express, headed by a J^A-class locomotive, ran the last scheduled steam-hauled service on New Zealand Railways (NZR), bringing to an end 108 years of regular steam rail operations in this country.

New Zealand’s rail system was predominantly steam-powered from 1863, when the first public railway opened in Christchurch, until the 1950s, when the transition to diesel power gathered momentum. Although NZR operated some electric locomotives from 1923, petrol- or diesel-motored railcars from 1936, and electric multiple units from 1938, it was the introduction of main-line diesel-electric locomotives from 1950 that spelled the end of the line for the steam engine.

The dieselisation of North Island railways was complete by the late 1960s. Steam power only lasted as long as it did in the South Island because carriages on the Friday and Sunday night expresses between Christchurch and Dunedin required steam-heating during winter. This need was ended by the introduction of train heating vans, which were attached to diesel-hauled expresses.

Steam trains hadn’t quite disappeared, though. Earlier in 1971 NZR had announced that it was launching a tourist-oriented steam passenger venture, the Kingston Flyer, which ran daily between Lumsden in northern Southland and Kingston on Lake Wakatipu. Two A^B-class locomotives and a number of preserved carriages were used for this service, which began on 21 December 1971. In the early 21st century a number of rail heritage organisations and museums run steam-hauled excursions around the country, while TranzScenic operates ‘Steam Engine Saturdays’ on the North Island Main Trunk Line. On these days the regular Overlander service is hauled by the preserved tank engine W^AB794 between Feilding and Taihape.

Image: South Island Limited Express poster

Lyttelton–Wellington ferry service ends

On 15 September 1976 the Rangatira arrived in Wellington from Lyttelton for the last time, bringing to an end more than 80 years of regular passenger ferry services between the two ports. The TEV Rangatira, a 9387-ton roll-on roll-off (RO-RO) vessel, had only entered service in 1972, as a replacement for the ill-fated Wahine, which had sunk with heavy loss of life in Wellington Harbour on 10 April 1968.

But the Rangatira came too late. By the mid-1970s most New Zealanders preferred to travel by aeroplane or, if they had cars, aboard the more convenient Picton–Wellington road/rail ferries. The Union Steam Ship Company withdrew from the Lyttelton–Wellington route in 1974, and although the Ministry of Transport kept the Rangatira running for another two years, the end of the service was only a matter of time.

The Rangatira later served as a British troopship during the Falklands War. After several renamings, and much time laid up, the ship was scrapped in Turkey in 2005.

Image: The Rangatira

Politicians and ferries - Lyttelton-Wellington ferries

The Premier ... used some very bad language about the Moura ... He told me that the vessel dragged down in 15 ½ hours and arrived too late for the funeral and that we ought not to inflict such a brute of a vessel upon the suffering public. I may remark that he, himself, detained the vessel a quarter of an hour, ringing up at the last moment as usual requesting us to keep her for a few minutes for him.

Union Steam Ship Company manager, 1901

In the early years of the Lyttelton–Wellington service the Union Steam Ship Company (USSCo), nicknamed the ‘Southern Octopus' because of its market dominance, often came under fire from the Liberal government. The newspaper Truth complained that old tubs like the Penguin or the Moura meant that the company should be renamed the ‘U Shan't Sleep Co' (a play on USSCo).

Three sheets in the wind

In 1904 the Lyttelton Times criticised the practice of collecting tickets at the gangway after a drunken passenger, refusing to pay his fare for the Rotomahana, disrupted boarding and had to be handcuffed and incarcerated by the captain. The Lyttelton branch manager explained that neither wharf staff nor crew detected anything untoward until the man was asked to produce his ticket. ‘A detective advised me that he saw an M.H.R. [Member of Parliament] going on board the worse for liquor. I doubt if it would have been policy to have "weeded" him out. It is not an uncommon thing for men of all classes and conditions to go on board our vessels in a more or less intoxicated state.'

The SS Maori

Because politicians used the ferries to travel between their electorates and Wellington, they scrutinised the company's ships. Premier Richard Seddon sometimes threatened to build or buy state-run ferries, so the company's Wellington and Lyttelton branch managers always gave politicians special attention. They would delay the ship to suit the convenience of political heavyweights such as Seddon, Sir Joseph Ward and Sir Robert Stout, give them free or discounted fares and ensure that they had cabins to themselves. Even so, things sometimes went wrong: ‘Last night we left three MPs [Members of Parliament] behind', the company's chairman grumbled in 1901.

The ships' masters were always given the names of VIPs – politicians, business leaders, celebrities and so on. They were expected to fuss over them, offering dinner with the master, a trip to the bridge or a cabin upgrade.

The politicians became happier once the purpose-built Maori and Wahine entered service. By the inter-war period Parliament provided MPs with annual free passes for the ships. Although air travel became increasingly popular after the Second World War, some older MPs still preferred to take the ferry and the train.