Island Bay on a Fine Day

This photograph illustrates a beautiful summer’s midday. The still parasols and calm sea show the rare lack of Wellington’s forceful wind. Children take advantage of the low tide to hunt for shells and scramble along the coast, drawn there by the rock pools, or curiosity about the boat repair yard on the foreshore, a place where fishermen stored their equipment and dried their nets.  It is a far cry away from the modern day Wellington beach scene. There is not a bikini to be seen, the majority of men are wearing suits and hats and sunbathing consists of sitting under a parasol rather than soaking up the rays whilst cooking on a towel. Adults sit in solitude breathing in the fresh, salty air or supervising the children brave enough to venture out into the sea. (The cold water is surely affected by the same southerly current Island Bay residents are so familiar with.) The two children in the foreground are dressed in modest bathing costumes, ready to take the plunge, using parasols to shade themselves from the hot midday sun. The photograph says: “this is a typical day at the beach, a perfect day at the beach: nothing beats Island Bay on a fine day”. It evokes Katherine Mansfield’s comment on the same scene: “Oh, what a glorious day this is”.

This photo shows the prescience of the Evening Post in 1905. In an article titled Island Bay: Development of the District, the Tramway extension, Looking into the Future  the newspaper recognised the potential of what was then an ‘out of the way suburb’ potential as a delightful place to spend the summer months: “Island Bay on a fine day is one of the very finest resorts about Wellington”. 

The popularity of the beach was predicted to increase immensely with the extension of the novel electric tramway all the way to the beach. The new electric trams, introduced to Wellington in 1904, were the first of their kind in the Southern Hemisphere. They were very effective forms of transportation in terms of their speed, regular schedules and capacity to carry large numbers of passengers. When the trams reached the beach in December 1905, they immediately hastened the development of the district. The predictions of Island Bay’s appeal and popularity came true. In September 1905, “Private enterprise is preparing to take advantage of the coming popularity of Island Bay as a holiday resort…plans prepared for a building which will provide tea-rooms, a concert hall and a dancing floor”. By the end of that same year, the ease of hopping on a tram as far away as busy Lambton Quay and being taken on a short journey to a peaceful seaside resort, initially for just one penny, proved very appealing, with a big expansion of tourist services.

People were encouraged to visit Island Bay and various accommodation and attractions were promoted. The Island Bay Hotel in what is now Trent Street did good business, as did the Blue Platter and Cliff House tea rooms.  A diving stage was erected in the bay and can be seen in this photograph, with it, and its descendants, lasting well into living memory.  A ladies’ changing shed can also be seen in this picture and although not visible, a male changing shed stood in the centre of the beach. Such structures imposed on an otherwise wild scene transform nature into public recreation areas. 

During today’s summer it seems that Oriental Bay and Scorching Bay attract the most devoted beach-lovers. In contrast to the present day attraction of Oriental Bay’s close proximity to town, Island Bay in the 1920s gave people an opportunity to escape from the noise and bustle of the city. People could take a mini holiday; Island Bay was close enough to be easily accessed by all Wellingtonians all over town, but far enough away from everyday city life. Katherine Mansfield herself enjoyed the beach and uses delicate imagery in a way that illuminates this photograph:

I am at the sea—at Island Bay, in fact—lying flat on my face on the warm white sand. And before me the sea stretches. To my right—shrouded in mist, like a fairy land— a dream country—the snow mountains of the South Island; to my left fold upon fold of splendid golden hills. Two white light-houses, like great watching birds perched upon them. A huge yellow dog lies by me. He is wet and ruffled and I have no boots or stockings on—a pink dress—a panama hat—a big parasol. Adeläida, I wish that you were with me. (First draft of Katherine Mansfield’s Vignette Evening by the Sea)

Robin Hyde, another Wellington author, lived in this area as a child and was also inspired by Island Bay, and her words, too, seem to caption this photograph. In her novel The Godwits Fly, her central character Eliza is the agent through which Robin portrays her love of the early beauty of the bay:

Half-way through the war, Eliza became a poet. It happened in a white dinghy down at Island Bay, where Augusta used to take them in the summer evenings…But always…the sand had splayed out in fawn-coloured drifts, and the pale paraha bells had trembled their taut mauve silk, elastic to the touch, against the wind. It was a cold sea, hurt and tired.

It was a beach for everyone: adults promenaded along the esplanade and children played and frolicked to their heart’s content. Picnics and afternoon tea were often had on the rocks or the sand. The Blue Platter Tea-Rooms directly across the road from the beach, enabled parents to gossip while their children played. The tea-rooms attracted others to the area who wanted to enjoy the bay’s surroundings without having to brave the well-known, natural elements of a Wellington beach scene. Katherine Mansfield writes of another tea-room at Island Bay:

 I shall stay here until after dark—walking along the beach—the waves going over my feet—drinking a great deal of tea—and eating a preposterous amount of bread and apricot jam at a little place called the Cliff House. 

Whichever tea-room beach-goers favoured, they would have no doubt loved the quick dash across the road for a scone or a cup of tea, worn out by the hot sun or perhaps shivering from the icy seawater. The men in this photograph would have enjoyed such a convenient escape into the shade of the cool indoors, away from the sun pounding into their dark suits, common male attire for a day at the beach in the 1920s. Others, like Katherine, would have loved to simply alternate their leisure time between lying under a parasol on the sand and sipping tea inside. 

The depiction of Island Bay as a holiday resort does not overshadow its roots as a fishing community. In this photograph, fishing features create the backdrop. Fishing boats can be seen out in the bay and nets and boats lie on the beach. Three fishing boats on the shore dominate the foreground creating a central focus to this important part of Island Bay’s history. In the 1890s, Island Bay was a fishing settlement. Italian fishermen, with a few Shetland Islanders and Scotsmen, established a fishing community:

 She heard the fishermen shouting, their oars splashed as they rowed out to drag the ends of their huge nets from the buoys. They were an Italian colony, who ate fried octopus and hung strings of garlic and red-gold onions in their hut”. (Robin Hyde; The Godwits Fly). 

The first fishermen built themselves small huts along the beach front; the closer they were to the beach the better.  By the time of this photograph, the villa had replaced the hut.

The presence of the fishermen and their boats at the bay was clearly quite captivating. An exciting attraction in the right foreground of this photograph is some fishermen coming in from the sea. Children crowd around them, entranced just as Katherine Mansfield was. She describes the fishermen in a way that transforms their almost trivial day to day activity into a beautiful vision:

Far away a little boat is sailing in the sweet water. And now the Italian fishermen are sailing in— their white sail bellying in the breeze. Several come rowing in a little boat. They spring ashore. The sun shines on their crisp black hair—it shines on their faces so that their skin is the colour of hot amber— on their bare legs and strong bare arms. They are dragging towards them their boat. The long black wet rope running through their fingers—falling in a mystic pattern on the foam blown sand. They call to one another. I cannot hear what they say, but against the long rhythmic pulse of the sea, their voices sound curiously mystical like voices in a dream. (Evening by the Sea)