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Totara Estate

Totara Estate (1882)

Birthplace of the frozen meat industry

Totara Estate is one of New Zealand’s most important historic places, more important than these austere Ōamaru stone buildings may suggest. This was the testing ground for the technological revolution that enabled an agricultural colony to enjoy First World living standards. Before the 1880s wool was the only sheep product that could be exported. William Soltau Davidson, who pioneered our frozen meat trade, recalled ‘having to erect yards at the edges of cities, into which thousands of these old sheep were driven, so that they might be knocked on the head and thrown over the precipice as a waste product’. Davidson managed the New Zealand runs of the colossal Scottish-owned New Zealand and Australian Land Company.

In 1881 the Albion Line fitted a Bell-Coleman plant to its sailing ship Dunedin and at Totara Estate, just outside Ōamaru, the Land Company added a slaughterhouse to these late 1860s farm outbuildings. Davidson and local manager Thomas Brydone supervised the slaughtering of 300-400 sheep a day. Ōamaru's harbour works were incomplete, so they railed the carcasses to Port Chalmers for freezing aboard the Dunedin, which sailed for London on 15 February 1882. The ship landed the cargo in perfect condition. Over the next few decades refrigeration reshaped the New Zealand economy, making meat and dairy products new staple exports. ‘A new economy and society was created’, the New Zealand Historical Atlas noted: ‘one of sheep bred for meat as much as for wool, of owner-occupier farms rather than stations with large numbers of hands, of freezing works and their associated communities, and of ports, some of the activities of which were dominated by this industry.’ By 1902 frozen meat made up 20% of all exports.

The Historic Places Trust, helped by the meat industry, bought, restored and opened these buildings to the public on 15 February 1982, exactly 100 years after the Dunedin’s historic sailing. The Trust was too late to save the carcass shed, but you can still inspect its concrete floor and blood gutter. The other buildings include the men’s quarters and workshop, stables and granary.

Related Places: The privately-occupied Totara Estate Homestead is a Category II historic place. If you are feeling fit, the Brydone Monument that has crowned Sebastopol Hill since 1907 is worth the hike.

In Ōamaru itself there are two other pioneering meat trade sites: Sumpter Wharf and the old Humber Street freezing works (1885-86) behind the railway tracks, a few hundred metres north of the historic precinct.

Further information

This site is item number 60 on the History of New Zealand in 100 Places list.

On the ground

The site is staffed and interpreted. It is closed June-August, Christmas Day and Good Friday. Check the Trust website for opening hours and special events.

Websites

Book

Martine E. Cuff, Totara Estate, New Zealand Historic Places Trust, Wellington, 1982

Credit:

Text: Gavin McLean, 2013

Images: Gavin McLean, 2001

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Date established:

1882

Freemasons Centre

Freemasons Centre (1933)

Friendly societies and male bonding

Like friendly societies, volunteer fire brigades, military units and bands, the lodge played a vital role in the social and business life of the colonial male. Here he could escape domestic worries, talk business, socialise and build networks in a new community. Like most towns and cities, Ōamaru had several lodges. The first, the Oddfellows (Manchester Unity), put down roots in 1864 and was joined by a Masonic lodge, Lodge Waitaki IIII E.C., a year later.

Oamaru Kilwinning was founded in 1872 and more followed.

Ōamaru’s Wansbeck Street Masonic site borders on the bizarre, although it is neither registered by the Historic Places Trust nor scheduled on the district plan. In fact, few books on the town’s heritage even note it in passing. The front building, constructed in 1933 to the design of J.M. Forrester, is one of the Victorian town’s few stripped classical structures. It is a substantial and dignified masonry building with a stunning interior.

Step back and stand on your toes, however, and you will see part of the top of another large masonry, classical-style lodge building, completed in 1876 to a design by Thomas Glass. Blocked in front by the 1933 building and walled off around the sides, the rear building can be reached only by going through the front building. In his 1981 book, The South Island of New Zealand from the road, photographer Robin Morrison chided the Masons for their ‘pretentious architecture’ – but here is the opposite, the architecture of concealment.

Further information

This site is item number 90 on the History of New Zealand in 100 Places list.

Websites

Credit:

Text: Gavin McLean, 2013

Images: Gavin McLean, 2001

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Date established:

1933

Ōamaru Showgrounds

Ōamaru Showgrounds (1907)

‘Show Day’ in colonial New Zealand

‘Show Day’ is still a highpoint of provincial calendars and few regions have been holding shows for as long as North Otago. Its ‘A&P’ story began in 1863 when a few big farmers formed the Northern Otago Agricultural and Pastoral Association. Their aims, ‘incitement to improvement in husbandry and stock breeding; the drawing together periodically of the agricultural and pastoral classes, thereby promoting a friendly feeling between them and fostering fellowship amongst the members of each class; and the affording of opportunity to buyers and sellers of stock for ascertaining the work of each other’, still hold good each February. The North Otago A& P, as it became in 1878, has missed a few shows because of war and the 1918 influenza pandemic, but most years it has staged a one- or two-day show that has brought in people, stock and machinery from far afield.

This is the A&P’s third showground. The first shows were held on ‘the Esplanade’, a euphemism for the wasteland between Tyne Street and the sea, now covered by the buildings of the Tyne/Harbour Street historic precinct. The Association moved here in 1907 from a site on South Hill. J.M. Forrester (son of Thomas, Ōamaru’s foremost architect) designed this grandstand to seat 1200; it also housed a press room, office, lunchroom, kitchen and storage facilities. The grandstand was the centrepiece of rows of cattle pens, sheep yards and pigsties that even today seem to march on forever towards the railway line. A gale blew the roof off in 1951 and shattered a lot of glass, but the old stand retains a sense of timelessness, its old wooden seats showing the traces of generations of feet and backsides. In 2012, jthe year before the association celebrated its 150th anniversary, Dulux donated paint, which volunteers applied to parts of the complex that that had not seen paint since the day it was built.

Further information

This site is item number 76 on the History of New Zealand in 100 Places list.

Websites

Article

Harry Steenson, ‘100 Years of Shows’, in John Wilson (ed.), Parallel 45, North Otago Branch Committee, New Zealand Historic Places Trust, Oamaru, 1997

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Text: Gavin McLean, 2013

Images: Gavin McLean, 2001

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1907

Ōamaru Courthouse

Ōamaru Courthouse (1883)

Colonial justice

These days Ōamaru is a retirement and heritage centre, but the youthful, male-dominated colonial town was often a noisy, violent and drunken place, where testosterone and hard liquor mixed messily. The first police arrived in 1861 and six years later the provincial government took over part of the reserve on the west of Thames Street for a new police station and gaol. To local historian K.C. McDonald the outlandish 1869 gaol’s hexagonal tower and crenellated parapets looked ‘like the castle of a minor baron.’ The gaol closed in 1913 and came down a long time ago, but its ruined stables survive behind the Thames Street buildings.

The first courthouse (1863) ended its days as the Pioneer Gallery (on the site of the present public library). Ōamaruvians kept it busy, but caseloads gradually reduced thanks to the combined effects of recession, an aging population and from the 1880s the temperance movement’s often-noisy crusade against the ‘demon drink’. But in the early days the crime rate was high, with the 6000 residents charged with 823 offences in 1880.

This second courthouse, which also housed Supreme Court sittings until 1931, is generally considered Forrester & Lemon’s masterpiece. Unlike many of its earliest ‘clients’, its centrally-placed temple-front portico with Corinthian columns presents a dignified and sober face to Thames Street.

Along with many other New Zealand heritage buildings, the courthouse’s future has been made more uncertain by the 2010-11 Canterbury earthquakes. In December 2011 the Ministry of Justice announced its ‘temporary’ closure while strengthening options are explored. In March 2013 it downgraded the Ōamaru District Court (now operating from the Opera House) to a hearing-only court, transferring its registry office functions to Timaru.

Further information

This site is item number 62 on the History of New Zealand in 100 Places list.

Websites

Book

Conal McCarthy, Forrester and Lemon of Oamaru, Architects, North Otago Branch of the New Zealand Historic Places Trust, Oamaru, 2002

Credit:

Text: Gavin McLean, 2013

Main image: Gavin McLean, 2000

Other images: Jock Phillips

Alexander Turnbull Library
Reference: PAColl-6348-38
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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Date established:

1883

Criterion Hotel

Criterion Hotel, Ōamaru (1877)

For long the pub with no beer

From 1874 businessmen began building on the ‘Harbour Board block’ on the newly reclaimed and subdivided western side of Tyne Street. First up were grain stores and the harbour board’s offices, then in 1877 hotelier William Gillespie built the Criterion on this key corner site. In the same year that it was reported that no Ōamaru hotel possessed a bath, architects Forrester and Lemon gave Gillespie an urn- and pinnacle-encrusted, balustraded limestone hotel that knocked the socks off the opposition. The ground floor of the adjoining building served as a wool store and offices for Connell and Clowes, while its upper floor was an extension of the Criterion.

So much for the architecture. Booze was a hot political issue from the 1880s. In 1878, when Ōamaru's population was less than 5000, there were 210 arrests for drunkenness. Teenage larrikins, often drunk, jostled people into the gutters, interrupted concerts and disturbed church services by banging on windows, shouting and throwing stones. Many thought the supposed ‘cure’ worse than the disease, as Salvation Army zealots preached, sang and played musical instruments in the streets and even took to invading the bars.

But the righteous had their revenge. The no-licence poll of 1905 killed the pubs by banning the sale of alcohol from 1906. After limping along as a private boarding house until about 1940, the Criterion passed into the hands of the local foundry, with the southern extension forming part of the premises of Jock Doherty, a local wool and skin buyer.

By the time the Historic Places Trust registered it in 1987, however, things were looking up. The Criterion and its neighbours became film stars by masquerading as colonial Dunedin in Pictures, a film about the Burton Brothers. Then the Oamaru Whitestone Civic Trust bought and renovated it. The urns, pinnacles and tympana (recesses) reappeared on the balustrade in 1998. These days, ‘The Cri’ and the other buildings in the restored precinct often appear in TV advertisements and movies. Once again the old Criterion’s walls echo to the sound of convivial drinkers supping hand-pumped ales. Emerson’s quaffable ‘Bookbinder’ doffs its foamy cap in the direction of the heritage bookbinder just a few doors down from the pub.

Further information

This site is item number 52 on the History of New Zealand in 100 Places list.

On the ground

There are information displays at the former Oamaru Harbour Board Building, 2 Harbour Street.

Websites

Book

K.C. McDonald, White stone country, North Otago Centennial Committee, Oamaru, 1962

Credit:

Text: Gavin McLean, 2013

Main image: Te Ara

Other images: Karora (Wikimedia) and Gavin McLean

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Date established:

1877

Ōamaru bank buildings

Ōamaru bank buildings (1871 & 1883)

Southern capitals for southern capitalists

For many people these buildings symbolise Whitestone Ōamaru. They have stood side by side since 1883, when Robert Lawson’s Bank of New South Wales appeared alongside its older neighbour. They show how much the gold rushes stimulated banking. Until 1861 the low volume of business had severely restricted banking activity and profitability. Now, though, overseas banks rushed in, staking claims of their own in southern mushroom towns like Dunedin and Ōamaru. The British-owned Bank of Otago arrived in Ōamaru in 1866. In 1871 it made a statement with this building, which ‘with its pillared portico, would have been an ornament to any town in the country, even if it did look like a temple strayed from Athens’. Strayed or not, the temple had better staying power than the Bank of Otago. In 1873 another British bank, the National, moved in. It has been here ever since, though in 2012 its owner, the ANZ Bank, replaced the National brand with its own.

In 1883 the Bank of New South Wales succumbed to a severe case of portico envy and commissioned Lawson to design an even more imposing neighbour. The Edinburgh-trained classicist added two more Corinthian columns and replaced the triangular pediment with an elaborate balustrade (now slightly reduced). Since the 1980s the building has housed the Forrester Gallery, named after architect J.M. Forrester. There are ambitious plans to redevelop the gallery, but these are subject to funding priorities and establishing the degree of earthquake strengthening required. In the meantime, the old stalwart must settle for the 2013 gift of a flagpole from its friends group.

Further information

This site is item number 38 on the History of New Zealand in 100 Places list.

Websites

Books

K.C. McDonald, White stone country, North Otago Centennial Committee, Oamaru, 1962
Gavin McLean, Oamaru history & heritage, Otago University Press, Dunedin, 2002

Credit:

Text: Gavin McLean, 2013

Main image: Donovan Govan (Wikimedia)

Other contemporary images: Gavin McLean, 2000

Historic images:

Alexander Turnbull Library
Reference: PA1-q-262-43-2 and WA-39070-F
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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1871 & 1883

Oamaru Harbour Board offices

Oamaru Harbour Board offices (1876)

Monument to a colonial polymath

The Harbour Boards Act 1870 created a new type of local authority. Until then provincial governments’ harbour departments had struggled to provide basic facilities for a range of disputatious settlements. In time New Zealand would have 60 harbour boards (though many were short-lived and some were merely the local road board or county council doubling as a harbour authority). Ōamaru was one of the more substantial. Nevertheless, it overstretched itself and by defaulting on interest payments in 1891 it ‘made the name of Ōamaru an unpleasant one in the ears of London money-lenders’ and caused the Financial Times to mutter about ‘the recklessness or worse of colonial borrowers’.

All of which makes this building, after the harbour itself, the best memorial to Ōamaru’s famous architect, Thomas Forrester (1838-1907). Forrester never trained as an architect – between 1872 and 1890 he designed part-time while merchant John Lemon managed their business – but this colonial polymath was much more than that. A draughtsman, engineer and self-taught architect, Forrester was also a first-rate administrator and a gifted amateur scholar. From the mid-1870s until his death, Forrester worked for the Oamaru Harbour Board as its secretary, inspector of works and later engineer. His discovery that the sea floor could be dredged kept Ōamaru in the vital ‘Home’ (UK) trade. He supervised the assembly of the board’s dredge, and later designed Holmes Wharf, which kept another generation of the largest ships calling. For decades he sweated blood as the senior officer of a port authority whose finances were every bit as rocky as its seabed.

The building, which now houses the Oamaru Whitestone Civic Trust’s office, was restored a few years ago. The 2006 date on the parapet was a little optimistic; work actually finished the following year. The ground floor houses information panels about the port’s history.

Further information

This site is item number 49 on the History of New Zealand in 100 Places list.

On the ground

Information displays, former Oamaru Harbour Board Building, 2 Harbour Street. Harbour heritage trail along the waterfront.

Websites

Books

Conal McCarthy, Forrester and Lemon of Oamaru, North Otago Branch Committee of the NZHPT, Oamaru, 2002
Gavin McLean, Kiwitown’s port: the story of Oamaru Harbour, Otago University Press, Dunedin, 2008

Credit:

Text: Gavin McLean, 2013

Main image: Karora (Wikimedia Commons).

Other images: Gavin McLean, 2000, Wikimedia and Geof Wilson (Flickr).

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Date established:

1876

Port of Ōamaru

Port of Ōamaru (1872-1907)

First piers of the protein bridge

Ōamaru’s coast was just as exposed as Timaru’s. Indeed, for 15 years from the early 1860s it was one of the colony’s most notorious shipwreck sites. But still the ships kept coming, so in time the Oamaru Harbour Board, formed in 1874, constructed a safe harbour that is now New Zealand’s most authentic Victorian/Edwardian deep-sea port. On it rested the prosperity that gave Ōamaru its magnificent limestone buildings.

There is much to see, even though its only visitors are now fishing vessels and pleasure craft. The basic port layout dates from 1872-84. The main wharf, Holmes Wharf, began life in 1880 as the North Mole, a long, slender finger of rock that protected the wharves from northerly surges. At the beginning of last century, as ships outgrew Sumpter Wharf, Thomas Forrester designed a bigger wharf to run along the mole. It was his last and biggest job in Ōamaru. Named after the harbour board chairman of the day, Holmes Wharf opened in 1907 for ships of up to 10,000 tons. The wharf was last modified in the 1960s and last used by cargo vessels in 1974.

The south side of the port is the more historic. Walk seawards along the old stone seawall from the Esplanade to Sumpter Wharf, which is now visibly decaying. It was a different story in 1884. Then the elegantly curving timber wharf, graced by white-painted handrails, welcomed the biggest oceangoing freighters running between New Zealand and Britain. From here the sailing ship Dunedin, carrier of New Zealand’s first shipment of frozen meat, sailed into oblivion in 1890. Big British tramps loaded grain during the South African (Boer) War. Sumpter Wharf fell into disuse between the wars.

As the heritage trail board on one of the wooden sheds near Sumpter Wharf explains, Ōamaru has an Antarctic connection. In early 2013 the town marked the 100th anniversary of a boat from the Terra Nova breaking the news from Ōamaru of the death of British explorer Robert Falcon Scott and his companions.

The little jetties are recent but above them you will see a relic of Ōamaru’s notorious shipwreck days, a mast from the Robert and Betsy, wrecked in 1862. In 2011 this was reunited with an old companion, the restored signalman’s hut. Our next wharf, Normanby Wharf, a wide concrete wharf with water frontage on three sides, was completed in 1878. Running off the eastern side of it are the crumbling remains of the Cross Wharf, for many years the base for Scott’s Own Sea Scouts and also home to a restaurant. Across the road you can see the historic former harbour board quarry, blasted from Cape Wanbrow over a period of 100 years. The jaunty cluster of red corrugated iron workshops (now known as ‘The Red Sheds’) were built for the board and have now found new uses with artists and steam railway enthusiasts.

Finally, we reach the breakwater, now bordered by the popular blue penguin colony. It has two parts. The short concrete wharf near the beach is Macandrew Wharf (1875), named after wily Otago Superintendent James Macandrew, who once charmed the locals by predicting that Oamaru’s docks would one day rival those of London. It has silted up and has been breaking up for decades, but in the 1870s the Dunedin-Ōamaru passenger steamer fought sailing vessels for space alongside it.

The breakwater (1872-84) was built in stages by Walkem and Peyman and Miller & Smillie. Even before it was completed, the 564-m-long concrete structure had transformed the port’s once-atrocious safety record, although it almost sank the contractor building it. Nevertheless, the storm-tossed breakwater has always given the authorities headaches. The landward end was raised between the wars and has been patched many times since. The rocky spur halfway along is the shrinking remnant of the Ramsay Extension, built during the Depression to provide a sheltered shipping channel out to deeper water. Work stopped at 220 m when the board ran out of funds in 1944. The weak quarry rock soon crumbled away.

The harbour was largely neglected after closing in 1978, but recently the council has landscaped and interpreted large parts of the area.

Further information

This site is item number 40 on the History of New Zealand in 100 Places list.

On the ground

Information displays, former Oamaru Harbour Board Building, 2 Harbour Street. Harbour heritage trail along the waterfront.

Websites

Book

Gavin McLean, Kiwitown’s port: the story of Oamaru Harbour, Otago University Press, Dunedin, 2008

Credit:

Text: Gavin McLean, 2013

Main image: jopetsy (Flickr).

Other images: North Otago Museum (216), ATL 1/2-C-22767-F (Burton Brothers) and 1/1-024012-G (Adam MacLay)
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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Date established:

1872-1907

St Kevin's school memorial grotto

The war memorial grotto at St Kevin's school, Ōamaru. The memorial plaque lists the names of students killed during the Second World War.

Credit:

Francis Vallance, 2012

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Ōamaru, whitestone city - roadside stories

The elegant buildings of Ōamaru were constructed from the local limestone, which is creamy in colour and easily carved. The town flourished from the 1880s, when an export trade in frozen meat developed at nearby Tōtara Estate farm.

Transcript

Narrator: Ōamaru is known as Whitestone City, and anyone who drives up its main street and looks at the magnificent set of gleaming white buildings will understand why.

Stone buildings such as those found in Ōamaru are not as common in New Zealand as in other countries, but Ōamaru is fortunate to be close to a source of very pure limestone. The limestone was made from tiny shells which formed as a shell bank 25 to 40 million years ago when most of New Zealand was beneath the waves. When the limestone is really deeply buried it becomes hard and is transformed into marble; but when it is only shallow the limestone remains soft. This was the case with the limestone near Ōamaru, so it can easily be carved and cut with a saw. Because of its purity it is also exceptionally white.

Quarrying in the Ōamaru area began in the 1860s, and it became popular throughout New Zealand for decorative work. If you see white corner blocks or window frames or even carved gargoyles, you are most likely seeing Ōamaru stone.

But it took some time before Ōamaru could afford to enjoy its local stone. Although laid out in 1858 with its streets named after British rivers, the town did not immediately flourish. This was partly because its port was a notorious ship cemetery. Vessels that anchored off-shore to load their goods into surfboats were exposed to strong easterlies.

In 1867 at least eight ships were swept ashore. The next year a storm swept two ships onto the beach and five people died. But in 1875 a large breakwater was built, and Ōamaru could safely send its wool and grain to the world.

Seven years later in 1882 came an even more important advance. Until then the farms in the area had grown sheep purely for their wool. Their meat was considered of little value, with carcasses usually boiled down to make tallow which was used for candles or soap. But Australians had begun to export frozen meat. Now Ōamaru led the way in New Zealand.

From their Tōtara Estate farm, just south of Ōamaru, the New Zealand and Australian Land Company built an export slaughterhouse. From there, carcasses were sent by train to Port Chalmers where they were frozen for sailing on the first shipment of frozen meat to Great Britain.

The ship was not custom-built, which might explain why there were a few problems during the three-month voyage. At one stage the captain nearly froze to death when he had to crawl inside the refrigerator to drill extra holes so the air could circulate properly. However, the crew managed to resuscitate the captain. He, and all but one of the sheep carcasses, eventually made it to Britain unscathed.

Tōtara Estate was the beginning of New Zealand’s billion-dollar export frozen meat industry which established this country as the ‘farmyard of Britain’ for most of the 20th century. The frozen meat trade helped New Zealand out of the economic depression of the 1880s, and brought prosperity to Ōamaru. The result was the construction of the elegant white stone buildings along the main street and in the port area. The classical designs of the banks and the ostentatious town hall speak of a community that believed it was going places, and could proclaim a splendid future through the gleaming white stone.

Manatū Taonga - Ministry for Culture and Heritage, 2011. Part of the Roadside Stories series

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Oamaru Harbour

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