With my dog, Alfred, I regularly walk the streets on Island Bay. As I look around on one of our regular routes, this is what I see. We need historical signage so all can know more about our past. 

What was here first?

There are no detailed descriptions of Island Bay's original vegetation. However, former resident and botanist Dr Maggy Wassilieff says from observations nearby we can get a good idea:

“The valley floor and bottoms of the side gullies were swampy and landward (towards Berhampore) probably supported a semi-swamp forest with tall kahikatea and pukatea as the main canopy trees. Near the sea, the flat land was very poorly drained and for much of the year carried standing water. It was too wet for forest and swamp plants such as toitoi, tī, (cabbage tree), mānuka, swamp flax, raupo and giant cutty-grass sedge flourished here. 

“Forest very similar to Ōtari-Wilton's Bush grew on the well-drained hill slopes and ridges of Island Bay. Tawa, tītoki, hīnau, māhoe (whitey wood), rimu, kohekohe, tōtara, nīkau, rewarewa, matai and miro would all have figured to some extent as canopy trees. Under them grew smaller trees and shrubs such as kawakawa, rangiora, tree ferns (whēki and ponga), putaputawētā, kaikōmako, lemonwood (tarata), hangehange, māpau, and karamū. The forest floor was dominated by ferns. Vines such as supplejack (kareao), bush lawyer (tātarāmoa), kiekie, native passionfruit (kōhia) and native jasmine (akakiore) would have been common throughout the forest.

“Drifting sand on Island Bay's dunes was stabilised by kōwhangatara (spinifex), a native grass, and pīngao, a sedge. Sand coprosma (tātaraheke), piripiri and native bindweed (panahi) sprawled over consolidated sand dunes. Sand daphne (pīnatoro) and a couple of other sedges (noded sedge and sand sedge) grew here too. Where coarser materials - fine and coarse gravels - accumulated, scabweed (raoulia) and iceplant mats flourished.

“After the earthquake In 1855 a massive earthquake uplifted a fringe of rocky land on either side of Island Bay's sandy beach as well as a rock platform bounding Tapu Te Ranga Island. Low-growing, hardy shrubs and herbaceous plants established in the new foreshore's nooks and crannies. Coastal flax and divaricating shrubs were prominent. Alongside brackish pools salt-tolerant plants such as oioi rush, glasswort, remuremu and shore primrose grew. 

“An open shrubland and low forest grew on the rocky headlands and cliffs on either side of Island Bay and probably covered the upper slopes of Tapu Te Ranga Island. Coastal flax, wild spaniard and silver tussock grew on the most exposed gale-swept sites. Akiraho, tree koromiko, kōwhai, taupata, Solander's daisy, tauhinu, māhoe, and mānuka, grew in slightly more sheltered sites where a thin soil developed.

“The forests seem to have been totally cleared in the first decades of European settlement, between 1840 and 1880 and sown to pasture. The earliest photographs of Island Bay (1890s) show pasture land on the hill slopes -with no logs or burnt trunks visible. Secondary scrub is apparent in some gullies, but by 1900 there was no longer any tall forest in Island Bay”.

On the eastern side (left side facing the sea) of The Parade is the Island Bay Scout Hall, staking a further Island Bay claim to Wakefield Park. The park itself is named for Edward Gibbon Wakefield, the theoretician behind the New Zealand Company using ideas he developed while in prison for abducting and marrying a teenage heiress. The earlier name was ‘Duppa St Park’, a reference to the street on the northern side. The 1966 Encyclopedia of New Zealand describes George Duppa as being “held in scant respect by his contemporaries and [taking] no part in the civic affairs of the young colony; indeed, he made no secret of the fact that his guiding ambition was to make a fortune so that he could return to England to live at ease in his birthplace’. And so he did.  ‘Island Bay Park’ was proposed as an alternative name but the Council chose ‘Wakefield’. And so it has remained. 

A small area of bush can be seen at the edge of the golf course close to the Home of Compassion and the northern end of Eden St. Have a look. Hidden there are 26 concrete pyramids about a metre high. They were part of a tank trap installed at the point where The Parade becomes Adelaide Road. In World War ll there was serious concern that Japanese forces might attempt a landing at Island Bay despite the need for the Emperor’s forces to wait for a calm day. The trap consisted of the concrete obstacles and large metal beams. 

The beams have long gone but the pyramids remain reminding us of the wartime experiences of the people of Island Bay. It would be a good place for a memorial seat, possibly in honour of the local home guard. 

Keep on along Humber St to the West and you will come (on the south side) to the Humber St hall. This was built as a hall-for-hire  and finished in 1907 at a cost of 1,000 pounds. It was used for dances, meetings, fund-raising events and as a meeting place for the Baptist community before they bought the then Methodist Church on The Parade in 1915. Later it was used by the Salvation Army for services, as a skating rink, a billiard parlour and then as a second Church by the Catholic community, becoming the Church of the Holy Name of Jesus. Those Catholics, including members of the Italian community, who lived towards the island end of the Bay appreciated no longer having to trudge up The Parade for Sunday Mass. But the inconvenience returned in 1942 when the great earthquake of that year left the hall unsuitable for use. Since then it has been used mainly for storage. It has lost its once-grand façade.

Derwent St is not only named for a river – at times it has literally been a river. Periodic flooding of low-lying properties was finally ended with the installation of enormous underground pipes in the 1990s. Possibly it was for this that far-sighted councillors set the width of the road in 1906.

Some well-known people have lived in and around Derwent St – the first leader of the Labour Party, Alfred Hindmarsh lived at number 46, and the painter Petrus Van Der Velden at number 56. Ribble St, off Derwent, is the venue of the Ribble St trolley races. On the right you can see the site of the imposing home of Colonel Jackie Gethin Hughes the first New Zealander to be awarded a DSO, for gallantry in the South African War. He was also awarded a CMG for similar bravery in World War l. He was the patron of the Island Bay RSA until his death in 1954. The novelist Ian Cross lived at 129 Eden St overlooking Derwent St for a short time and Professor James Ritchie, a famous educationalist noted as a negotiator for Tainui during their historic treaty claim, was brought up at the corner of Medway and Eden St. At 201, now flats, lived Mrs Helena Barnard, the famous ‘Gingernut Lady’ of the World Wars. 

Above on the west is Freeling St, once the location of a brothel that stirred the faux outrage of Truth newspaper during World War One. The sex workers would travel by tram to Courtney Place, find customers, and return with them the same way for a night of partying.

Across the road is the supermarket. You can see where the spur behind was blasted away for the race course. In front of the supermarket you can see, under a rare yellow-flowering pōhutukawa, one of the many examples of pieces of Pariwhero, Red Rocks, quarried from that historic and geologically unique area and used for landscaping. A small campaign to get them all returned is underway, probably with little chance of success.

Continuing our walk along The Parade we can see the Baptist Church. (see above). The Church has a long history of welcoming local organisations to use its facilities, including the Southern Bays Historical Society. 

Passing St Hilda’s (already discussed) on the eastern side we come to the bus terminus area and another small group of shops. This was also the terminus for the trams when they ran. The line stopped just beside the western end of the park. Just before the shops is Trent St, in and around which a number of Italian families have lived since first immigrating. When Italy entered the Second World War armed guards were briefly stationed on the street and the local Italian community was subject to scrutiny by the police and restrictions on their movements. Some were interned on Somes Island; fishing boats for a time had observers posted on them for fear of contact being made with Japanese submarines. The fear was not entirely without foundation: there is good evidence of a submarine being seen just a kilometre south of Island Bay. 

Looking north, if you climb up Milne Terrace, you can see a lot of what we have missed on our walk. The lower hills on the eastern, sunny side, have many splendid older homes especially in Melbourne Road. On the flat there are a mixture of homes built for sale to those who would live in them and homes built originally to rent. The streets were once dotted with little shops and businesses. In the early 1940s there were more than 70. One still there - or at least in business at the same premises - is Island Bay Motors in Derwent St. There’s been a garage there since the 1920s. There were many dairies, fruiterers, butchers, hardware shops and cobblers. Many people in Island Bay now live in old shops. 

The beach is separated from the Esplanade by the seawall, a much-loved feature to many locals. It forms part of the character of the bay. So too, does the bait house originally used for that purpose by the fishing industry but now occupied by the Island Bay Marine Education Centre. The surf club, long an important community organisation, is now defunct but its building remains. It is, as someone observed, ‘very nice on the inside’. 

In summer a small raft serves a similar purpose to what was once called the ‘pier’ a diving platform that would no doubt be considered unsafe now. If not, we should put it back! The other structure, much used for wedding photos in which veils threaten to fly off over Cook Strait, is a protruding stormwater drain. Through it runs the Kawakawa stream which once meandered across the Island Bay plain. No doubt it was lessened in its size by the uplift following the 1855 earthquake which also raised up much of the rocky foreshore around the beach and the island. 

The dominant landscape feature here of course is Taputeranga Island from which the suburb gets its name. The name does not indicate any particular tapu associated with the island. According to Rangitane historian J.E. (Jock) McEwan the name was brought here by settlers from Heretaunga, (Hawkes Bay) where it is the name of what is known to some as Watchman’s Island, near Napier. Previously, the name came from Hawaiki, the ancestral setting-off place of the ancestors of the tāngata whenua of Aotearoa.

In Māori lore the first person to see Island Bay was also from Hawaiki – the explorer Kupe. He was chasing a giant wheke, or octopus, a pet of his rival Muturangi. It is said he spotted the wheke from Taputeranga. 

There are stories of battles between tāngata whenua such as Ngāi Tara and Muaupoko in this area but no physical traces have been entered in the historical record. Later, in the 1820s the Ngāi Ira leader Tamairangi made a last stand against Ngāti Toarangatira on Taputeranga. She was later captured. It is said her lament for her lost lands was of such beauty that her captor, Te Rangihaeata, took her under his protection by placing his korowai (cloak) over her.  She and her son Kekerengu lived for a time with Ngāti Toa at Tītahi Bay but their peaceful coexistence was short-lived, with Kekerengu going to the South Island where it is said his presence formed part of the reason behind Ngāti Toa incursions there. Descendants of Tamairangi and Kekerengu and their Ngāti Ira whanau are now based in southern Wairarapa. 

Ngāi Tara or their descendants known as Ngāti Ira had a line of fortified pā  on the ridgeline Te Ranga a Hiwi, from Ōmaru- kai-kuru (Point Jerningham) through Mount Victoria/ Matairangi to Uruhau above Island Bay. Other pā in the area were Te Whetukairangi and Rangitatau on the Miramar Peninsula, then the island of Te Motukairangi. One of the tupuna associated with Rangitatau (where the Ataturk memorial is now) was Tūteremoana. An oriori (lullaby with tribal history) for him is still sung giving this area a link to perhaps the oldest known New Zealand literature. Two pou, one on the old site of Uruhau and one at the corner of Reef St and the Esplanade mark the Te Atiawa role in the area and their recognition as mana whenua. Ngāti Toarangatira, through the treaty settlement process, has secured recognition of their interest in the island itself. 

It seems likely to me that Island Bay was never a permanent pre-European settlement. Why live here when you could live at Karaka Bay or Makara or across Te Moana o Raukawa at Wairau or in the sounds or at Whakatū (Nelson)? It seems far more likely that the pā Uruhau on the eastern headland was occupied when needed as a lookout and that some crops were grown in the summer as an adjunct to fishing and seafood gathering at Taputeranga, Haewai (Houghton) and Ōwhiro bays. So instead of imagining a permanent Māori settlement in the old days we should perhaps think of many scattered small temporary whare and the sight of shellfish strung on lines to dry, of shark oil being extracted, of other fish being smoked, and of seabirds, perhaps, being stored for winter in kelp containers. 

Island Bay’s Pākehā fishing industry, so famous because of the picturesque boats moored in the shelter of Taputeranga, dates from the 1870s. The Shetland and Italian fishers whose boats are such an important part of the visual pleasure our suburb offers came a little later.  

This meandering tour takes in only a small part of what is, and once was, in Island Bay. The 16 issues of Southern Bays, bitter community arguments, to the Island Bay dog poisoner, to the experiences of war and epidemics help flesh out these glimpses. And no, we don’t know why Island Bay Streets are named for rivers, mainly British or Australian. The list of river names includes, at least: Albert, Avon, Brighton, Bristol, Cam, Carlisle, Clyde, Danube, Dart, Dee, Derwent, Don, Dover, Eden, Hudson, Humber, Jackson, Jordan, Liffey, Maybury, Medway, Melbourne, Mersey, Moselle, Rhine, Ribble, Seine, Severn, Tamar, Thames, Tiber, Travancore, Trent, Tyne, Volga, Waikato, and Wye.