Mercury Bay Historical Society members recently enjoyed a day out around Kuaotunu, to rediscover hidden remnants of its history.
Society Chairman Alastair Brickell dug into research documents, including R.A. Simpson’s authoritative work “This is Kuaotunu”, first printed in 1955 and reprinted several times.
One of the remaining graves at Kuaotunu cemetery; Alastair Brickell shares research at the Kuaotunu School House.
The first stop on the tour was the site of the Dunsdale School, set up in 1922 by Simpson brothers Arthur and Henry on their farm on the Kuaotunu Road. Nothing is left of the converted chaff mill schoolroom, where generations of Simpson children were taught up to 1940. Their first teacher was 16-year-old Winifred Simpson.
The group then ventured into the bush south of Kuaotunu village, to find the Kuaotunu School house built in 1892, which is still standing but unoccupied. Remnants of concrete and rubble mark the spots where the school itself once stood, and lower down the slope, a Catholic Church.
From Alastair’s research they identified the original plantings of kauri and rimu trees.
In the early 1940’s half of the school was moved down to the village and became the Kuaotunu Hall. The other half went to the Mercury Bay School in School Road Whitianga. The Whitianga Art Group now uses that same building. The Catholic Church was removed to Tairua in the 1950’s.
At Kuaotunu Hall Alastair shared information about the framed items around the walls, including the story of Nurse Christina Campbell, the only woman named on the Kuaotunu School Roll of Honour. During the Great War (1914-18) Christina Campbell served in England and France. The Kuaotunu Hall Committee raised funds to preserve all the precious memorabilia now in pride of place in the lovely old hall.
After lunch the convoy stopped halfway up the Blackjack Road, to view some geological samples of ‘blackjack’ inferior coal found locally, the origin of the name given to the road by the early gold miners.
Next stop was the Opito Bay Salt Company, where proprietor Perry Cornish told how the first experiments of the operation have now led to tonnes of the purest high quality salt being obtained by solar power from Opito Bay sea water, earning the company multiple awards.
Further on, property developer Sue Edens (nee Chapman) described her early life on the Chapman farm at Opito, now subdivided. Her parents, ‘Skipper’ and Joyce Chapman are remembered in the names of Skipper’s Road and Joyce Place, and her brother Perry is memorialised at the Perry Chapman Reserve and play area.
Late in the day, a few die-hard historians again ventured into the bush just south of Kuaotunu to the site of the original cemetery. A scattering of headstones dating back to the turn of the century can still be found in the undergrowth, recalling poignant stories of those who pioneered the area.
