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Gilbert Natusch
First published in Ngā Ākau ki te Tonga Southern Bays number 2 2006
Gilbert Natusch, (I917-2005), son of Charles Aleck Natusch and grandson of the architect Charles Tilleard Natusch (CTN) Lived in Ōwhiro Bay for 55 years. He prepared this article some years before his death.
Charles Aleck Natusch, the eldest son of Charles Tilleard Natusch (CTN) and his wife Ada (nee Spencer), was born on 15 December 1883 at Southend-on-Sea, Essex, in England, where his father was engaged in the development of a housing estate.
In 1886 the family sailed for New Zealand in the ship Canterbury. Aleck was less than three, and his sole memory of England was of the steam, smoke, and bustle at Liverpool Street station, presumably when catching the train to Tilbury dock and the ship. He also had some recollection of the ship and sailors in the rigging.
During their frrst year or so in Wellington they lived in a variety of accommodation. The young Aleck particularly remembered a flat above a shop in Manners Street about where the Opera House now stands. Opposite was the fire station. Fire engines were horse drawn and carried a boiler to provide steam for pumps. A permanent attendant saw to the horses and ensured that the boiler was kept near the boil by a gas jet. When the fire bell was rung the part-time firemen reported to the station and when a skeleton crew had assembled the engine lefc at a full gallop with the boiler being stoked furiously.
In New Zealand a depression had raged for several years so architectural and engineering work was scarce, but a major fire had burnt a length of the western side of Lambton Quay so Charles Tilleard Natusch was engaged by Aitken and Clare to assist with measuring up for insurance purposes.
Business was slack and the firm was neither able to offer him a partnership, nor a permanent job, so CTN set up his own office.
For £125 he bought 25 acres in what is now the Beach Street gully at the western end of Island Bay. There he built a cottage into which the family moved, afcer a spell in John Street where Nora was born (in 1887). Aleck remembered sleeping in a partly finished room with his brother Rene during a southerly gale. There was a crash and on looking up he could see the stars where the roof had been. Sheets of iron were later picked up on the racecourse that was then in the block now bounded by Mersey, Clyde, Humber and Derwent Streets.
This cottage still exists as 21 Beach Street, but has been much extended since the 1950s. CTN followed with a larger house at 11 High Street. It too has been altered since the 1950s. (It is likely that it was from this building that the roof was blown.)
Between the cottage and the sea there were sand hills backed by a swamp. The children commonly played near the beach. On one occasion the young Rene was buried up to his neck in an unfilled posthole. Panic set in when a draught horse came along to investigate the head sticking out of the sand. The children rushed off for help. Fortunately, the horse no more than sneezed over the head, covering it with slobber. What Mum said when the children got home has not been related.
Along the coast to the west of CTN's land there was a small colony of huts occupied by fishermen, Shetland Islanders. They worked from open boats, and sometimes would give the children a fish to 'take home to your mother'. CTN offered to build more substantial cabins for them, but they preferred their own ways.
The roadman also lived with the group. He was an old man with a long white beard and told the children Irish fairy tales. On days the 'Frisco mail closed he would ask CTN to post a letter home. It was always addressed to the Earl of Plunket.
To get to work CTN walked the 4 km to Newtown from where he took the horse tram to town. It was a long 8 km to go and return each day, especially in wet weather, but at some stage he had a horse. His wife, Ada, although she was a strong young woman in her late twenties, must have found it a major expedition with two young boys, a baby in the pram, and another on the way. She left the pram at a shop in Adelaide Road opposite Luxford Street and went over the hill to the tram in Newtown. There were no sealed roads, but the traffic was not heavy.
Aleck did not remember pushing into the wind when going into town, and it is probable that these expeditions were not frequent, and only when the weather promised fine. However, he did remember coming home into a southerly and howling with the pain of sand stinging his legs as they went through the cutting at the south end of Derwent Street.
C. Tilleard Natusch - Photograph Courtesy Natusch Family
Gilbert Natusch Photograph: Courtesy Natusch Family
On Sundays CTN would sometimes go east to see the 'Hermit of Island Bay' in his cave at Houghton Bay. Aleck remembered it as smoky with a shelf of books on one side. (About 1959 I was told by Miss Noeline Baker, daughter of J Baker, the Commissioner of Crown Lands in the 1890s that as a girl she also visited the Hermit with her father. She told me who he was but other than that he belonged to one of the old English county families, I have forgotten. A bit of history lost.)
On one occasion CTN walked with Aleck to the west past Ōwhiro Bay to what is now known as Spooky Gully. There had apparently been an illicit whiskey still there, which was raided. Aleck could remember the cart tracks left when it was taken away. He thought that its existence had been known for some time, but the authorities had to cake action when there was a fight there and someone was injured.
What is now The Parade was interrupted at Mersey Street, which connected to Clyde Street to the east and Derwent Street to the west, by the racecourse bounded to the south by Humber Street.
At Island Bay there was a hotel facing on to what is now Reef Street, [did he mean Trent Street?-Ed] and a few houses. A Mr Brunskill was the only name he remembered. He lived about where the bus terminus now is and as a hobby fished off the beach, drifting his line out with what is now called a Kontiki.
Other memories included watching the annual shoot by the Volunteers of 'D' Battery, who fired at a sheet set up on the island. The noise, and its effect on the seagulls, was spectacular.
In 1890 or 1891, CTN acquired a practice in Masterton - Nacusch Shattky & Co - and continued his architectural work there.
Shalimar - a typical example of CTN's work, 1905, built of heart totara, heart matai, rimu and redwood. Named after the Indian gardens and built for retired farmer, David Walter Strang, on a 26 acre section at Awapuni, west of Palmerston North. 1926: New Zealand sheep farmers, to acknowledge the bravery of British seamen in the First World War, set up a trust to train the seamen's children in matters of farming. 1939: A rest home for farmers' wives. 1958: destroyed by fire.
Photograph: Courtesy Palmerston North City Library
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