Experience the best of Island Bay history with this Wellington walking tour led by historian Colin Feslier (Right). This heritage walk covers the suburb’s Māori history, early European settlement, original wetlands and bush ecology, and the transformation of Island Bay into one of Wellington’s most loved coastal communities.
The tour explores key historic sites, including Uruhau Pā, Taputeranga Island, hidden WWII tank traps, early Island Bay churches (Catholic, Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, Anglican, Serbian Orthodox), and major community landmarks such as the Home of Compassion and Taputeranga Marae.
Visitors also learn about Island Bay’s Italian fishing families, early market gardeners, well-known local characters, and changing architecture, from Edwardian villas to modern housing. The walk finishes at Shorland Park, the Island Bay seawall, the band rotunda, and views across the Taputeranga Marine Reserve, making it ideal for anyone searching for Wellington coastal walks, historic tours, or Island Bay attractions.
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”.
We start our walking tour at Wakefield park which traditionally marks the boundary of Island Bay and Berhampore. Berhampore is the older residential suburb. The great green swathe of the municipal golf course, part of the town belt, marks the unofficial boundary. Whether the lower part of the golf course and Wakefield park itself is a part of Island Bay is open to debate. Certainly the home of the local football team, Island Bay United is on Wakefield Park. The club began in 1931 as Wellington Technical College Old Boys and in 1966 changed its name to Island Bay United. The green white and red flag on club’s crest is a reference to Island Bay’s Italian heritage. As noted elsewhere in this edition of Southern Bays Island Bay softball also has a very long association with the park.
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.
Cr Fleur Fitzsimons on a visit with the Editor to the dumped tank traps – she is looking at what might be done to make them more apparent and to recognise the local wartime history. One suggestion is a seat and a plaque noting the work of the Island Bay Home Guard during World War ll.
The Tennis and Squash club is on the western side just past Wakefield Park, the base for the Island Bay Services Club, the ‘RSA’ for many years. The RSA was an active and important part of local life until the 1970s when the old soldiers of World War ll began to fade away, joining those of World War I who had originally formed the Association.
Swinging across to the east and Dover St you can glimpse a former institutional building now in flats – this was the school for the deaf run by the Dominican sisters and founded in 1944.
A former National Party Minister of Health and Ambassador to the United States, Air Commodore Sir Frank Gill CBE; DSO was brought up as one of a large family further up the hill on Jackson St. He was born in 1917 and died in 1982. (Pictured left)
Turn to the west and on the hill you can glimpse the Home of Compassion. The Home of Compassion was one of the works of the famous Suzanne Aubert, the only Island Bay resident in the running to be formally recognised as a saint.
In preparation for her eventual canonisation she has a new resting place beside the modernist chapel at the home featuring stained glass by local famed artist John Drawbridge. There is also a museum devoted to her works and that of the religious order she founded, the Sisters of Compassion. The home was for many years an orphanage and a home for what were called ‘incurables’ - children and older people we would now say had ‘multiple special needs’. Suzanne Aubert was insistent that the members of her order sought out formal nursing qualifications and eventually a surgical hospital became a part of the services based there. Its most famous patient was Prime Minister Norman Kirk, who died there in 1974.
The Home of Compassion welcomes visitors and anyone with any interest in Island Bay, New Zealand, medical or Catholic history should visit.
The original building was opened in 1905 and demolished in 1987. Parts of the old building are incorporated in the modern complex which seems destined to become a major pilgrimage site in the future.
We are now at the corner of The Parade and Dee St. On the western side is a complex of apartments – an example of the medium density housing that is beginning its takeover of Island Bay’s Edwardian streets.
Space was available for this development because of the closure of the Fire Services College about 2004. Previously the area was used as a market garden leased from the Home of Compassion. The gardener, Wong Chew, and Suzanne Aubert had a good relationship and the Home of Compassion was well supplied with vegetables. The story is told of nuns becoming tired of an over-abundance of celery, eaten in every possible form at every possible meal. Prayers for an end to this were followed by a flood that took out the remaining excess crop.
Still looking west is the site of Taputeranga Marae, founded by Bruce Stewart as a place of focus of Māori in the city. It is being rebuilt following a fire that destroyed the complex of comfortable but not always fully-consented buildings. Bruce Stewart is buried on the site. His is one of only two known graves still in the area, along with the nearby grave of Suzanne Aubert
In life, Bruce Stewart was closely involved, as were the Sisters of Compassion, in the development of Manawa Karioi, a large area on Tapu te Ranga Trust land that is being transformed into a reserve for native flora and fauna. Manawa Karioi Society Incorporated was formed in 1990. The first seedlings were planted in 1991. The trust translates its name as 'the heart desires to linger'.
On the eastern side of The Parade we come to the first of the many churches on our walk. It is now the Church of St Sava and was, before being sold to the Serbian Orthodox Church, the first Island Bay Roman Catholic church. It was originally served by the Marist order and the priests lived in the purpose-built presbytery still standing behind the church. The building to the right of the church as you face it is now the St Sava church hall but was originally the school room of the first Catholic primary school, St Madelaine Sophie’s. It was moved to a site on the grounds of Erskine College. (see image below) Before moving to it's current site on Mersey Street, Being renamed to St Francis de Sales.
A little further down The Parade on the right is the Presbyterian church on the site of the original church built very early in our suburb’s history. On the southern end of the site is the Nordmeyer garden and play area named for Sir Arnold and Frances, Lady Nordmeyer. Sir Arnold was a finance Minister and leader of the Labour Party, part of the famous 1935 Labour Government.
Look east again and you can see the chapel of Erskine College. It has category one historic status. The rest of the once-dominating college buildings were demolished in 2019. It’s been replaced by dozens of medium density housing units.
Erskine College, also known as Sacred Heart College was run by the religious order The Society of the Sacred Heart. It was known as Sacred Heart College until the 1960s when its name was changed to avoid confusion with a Lower Hutt college of the same name. The founder of the society was St Madeline Sophie Barat, a French nun. Her name was originally given to the local Catholic Primary school, now St Francis de Sales. The school known as St Madeline Sophie’s was in the area now known as Erskine Close and demolished when the new school was built alongside the new Catholic Church.
Walk along Clyde St until you can see Island Bay School on the corner with Thames St. Diagonally opposite the school is a large building which once had retail premises on the ground floor and was probably always rented as flats or rooms. It dates from around 1905. The school itself pre-dated most of the buildings in Island Bay and opened in 1900. The original building was finally demolished in the late 1970s. A memorial to those students at the school killed in the world wars is used as a focus for ANZAC day ceremonies.
Further down Clyde St you come to the intersection with Mersey . The modernist St Francis de Sales Church, beside its primary school, is perhaps the single most identifiable landmark in Island Bay. It is built on the site of one of the earliest homes in Island Bay which was demolished in the 1950s to allow the Church to be constructed. The house and land had been bought by the Church in 1946 and housed Polish refugee boys after the war.
The ferro-concrete church features a mosaic of Christ on the cross made from 135,000 pieces of ceramic glass and plastic tiles. Its ‘stained glass’ is similarly not glass but polyester in keeping with the sensibilities of the 1960s. Italian marble is used for the three altars. Statues of Mary and Joseph also come from Italy, as does a statue of St Anthony, removed from the old church (now St Sava’s) on The Parade. Another old church relic is the smaller of the two bells seen on the tower.
Behind the Catholic church is number one Mersey St, occupied by the Missionary Sisters of St Peter Claver, who have been there since 1952. Their convent was originally called ‘Hurston’ the home of the famed architect William Chatfield. It dates to the 1890s and is therefore likely to be the Bay’s oldest house. William Chatfield-designed buildings include the Wellington Opera House (1886) and Stewart Dawson’s Corner (1900). Hurston is said to have been built on the sunniest spot in Island Bay.
Turn back to the north and on the corner of Clyde and Mersey St are a pair of modern townhouses.
They occupy the place where the Methodist Church once stood, notable as the first ferro-concrete church in New Zealand. It was built in 1908, held the last service in 1983, and was demolished in 1985. The church was known successively as Wesley Church, Wesley Methodist Church and Wesley Union Church and housed a Casson-designed positive pipe organ installed in 1919.
We keep walking down Clyde St until we come to the old Masonic Hall. Its formal activities were restricted to the upper floor but the lower hall was available to local organisations to rent. Users included the Italian community and the Catholic Church for fundraisers and social events – an indication of the historical lack of tension between religious groups as the Masons and Catholics are traditionally not the best of friends.
Beside the Masonic Hall is what is probably the first shop in Island Bay. There is little information in our records about it.
We are now in Humber St. Standing in front of St Hilda’s church’s back lawn if you look to the north you will see where once the local fire station stood.
The Anglican Church of St Hilda on the south side of the street. Its back shed was designed by the famous architect Chapman-Taylor. Next door is the two-story building that for decades was the vicarage. Before that it was the police station in the very early years of the suburb.
These images (details from old postcards) show the vicarage and original Anglican church on the far left, the Methodist (later Baptist) church further to the right and the Humber St Hall on the right. Note the construction of the new St Hilda’s in the second image and the addition to the Baptist church. The ‘old’ St Hilda’s is now the church hall.
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.
Humber St, Derwent St, Medway St and The Parade formed, roughly, the four sides of the famous Island Bay racecourse. On the corner of Derwent and Humber St you are just about over the road from where the grandstand used to be. Looking carefully at the hills you can see where rocky spurs were dynamited to make more space and get the fill to level the racecourse. The last races were in the 1890s. A steeplechase ran up as far as Clyde St.
If you head back the direction in which you came along Derwent St you’ll see a remarkable series of examples of house renovations showing the changes people thought appropriate in the years following the 1900-1920 period in which most of the houses were built. You can see Edwardian features transformed with windows from the 30s, concrete from the 40s, stucco from the 50s and any number of other innovations. In recent years some houses have been restored to their original state. Unfortunately the streetscape is being ruined by many tall fences. We are not sure why this road and the Parade are so wide. But a bylaw was passed in 1906 prohibiting building within 33 feet of the centre line of the road.
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.
Look south and you will see a glimpse of a block of flats that many years ago was one of the ancestral sites of the private school now known as Chilton St James in the Hutt Valley. It had a brief life in our area.
Look west and up and you will see a glimpse of a house among tall pines. This is the site of the famous ‘ghost house’ that excited two or three generations of local children. It was built by Charles Freeling Reeves in 1912 on the exposed site in an effort to help his daughter, who had tuberculosis. After she died he left for South Africa and after a time as a rental the house became rundown and was abandoned. It burned down in 1943 apparently as a result of small boys roasting potatoes on the floorboards. Its spooky reputation is referenced by, among others, author Robyn Hyde.
That’s brought us into Medway St. On the western corner with Derwent St is a house with windows directly on the street. This was home to one of the many small business that used to flourish in the Bay. The cobbler Herbert Avery worked here from 1918 to 1952. He worked in the room with large windows on the street corner. His son Herbert Joseph was killed on active service in Egypt in 1941.
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.
This old postcard, c1910, shows Island Bay School, in the foreground, the rear of the shopping village and the large scar left by quarrying where the supermarket is now. It’s thought that blasting this material, and that from other spurs jutting into the valley made fill to level the race course.
And so, we come again to The Parade, a wonderful street with wonderful houses many of which deserve a history of their own to be written. This is the first ‘main shopping area’ of Island Bay. On the west (tavern) side of the street most original shop buildings have been demolished and replaced, but the eastern side, with the exception of the pharmacy which is entirely replaced, gives a feel for the original nature of this little village centre. The shops sprang up around the first terminus for the tram line. It was not until 1905 that it reached to where Shorland Park is now. The trams ran down the middle of the street. They were much loved, at least in retrospect. In life they were noisy, crowded and cold in winter. But they ran regularly and often and enabled people to live in Island Bay and commute to the factories and other work places of Newtown and Wellington. Previously the trams ended just north of Wakefield Park. The Island Bay tram line was then, as now with the buses, route number one.
The existing ‘old’ shops were built in the years up to 1926. They have been declared a heritage area by the City Council which provides a little protection. Some are stickered as ‘earthquake prone’ and greater enthusiasm from locals will be needed if they are to survive.
The medical centre, just south of the shops, is in a house built in 1913. The Centre has kept its street appeal while massively extending it to the rear. The centre dates back to the early 1960s, founded by Dr Malcolm Nicholson who was also a member of the hospital board.
On the western side of The Parade are large pōhutukawa trees. They were planted in the 1930s. Originally, from old photos, it seems there were tī kouka (cabbage trees) planted on the eastern side. It’s not known what happened to them. Possibly they went one-by-one as enraged locals mowing their lawns attacked them in response to the tangles caused by their fallen leaves.
The next group of commercial buildings, around the intersection with Mersey St included the wonderfully-redeveloped Empire Cinema which returned to its original purpose after life as a hardware shop (in which, by the way, you could buy almost anything). Across the road is the Salvation Army church, now used as a base for relief work.
Were you to head up Mersey St to the corner with Albert St you can see an institutional building erected by the Salvation Army in 1906 with the intention of using it as a base for recently-released prisoners. The local reaction was less than accepting and the home has been since used for many other purposes.
On the western side is the bowling club, perhaps our oldest secular institution. The original clubrooms, built in 1918, were themselves bowled in recent times and replaced. Originally the rooms faced north.
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.
Trent St also the site of the recently-demolished Island Bay Hotel which dated back to the 1880s. It was tucked under the little hill, sheltered from the northerly, where the modern apartments are now. The hotel hit hard times when the area ‘went dry’ (voted to have no alcohol sales) and the building used as flats for most of the 20th century.
It formed part of the ‘Island Bay entertainment area’ which also included tearooms such as those at the eastern end of Trent St, the very large Blue Platter tea rooms where Shorland Park is now, Cliff House, still there near where Derwent St joins the Esplanade, and the Crows Nest Cabaret on the hill accessed by Milne Terrace.
All these sprang up to meet the demand from weekend visitors from Wellington who came to enjoy first the races and then a day at the beach. Island Bay since the 1880s has been a favourite spot for Wellingtonians. Few people from outside seem to visit.
Shorland Park was developed as a children’s playground in the 1930s. Some houses on the north side of Reef St were demolished to enable this. Here you can see the end of the North Island section of Te Ara Roa, the ‘long path’ through the entire country. If you follow the signs and head north you will reach Te Reinga! Island Bay-ite and former Mayor Celia Wade-Brown has done this walk and spoken to the Society about the experience.
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.
And then there is the band rotunda. It was built in the 1930s and for many years served its purpose on weekends as bands played to picnic-ing crowds. By the 1970s this had died out but at least once a year at the Island Bay Festival the rotunda returns to its intended use.
The rotunda is a memorial to those who served in the first and second world war. The names of the World War l soldiers and nurses were gathered in the 1930s. The names are of those who fought, only some of whom died. And some names are those of soldiers whose families moved here after World War l. And there are others from the area who fought and died who by the 1930s were not remembered by anyone in Island Bay. Their names are not on the memorial. Hundreds of Island Bay young men, and a few women, served. Many died and many were injured in body or in mind. Many also served in World War ll. Some families lost more than one son. They all await a development of the war memorial that tells a fuller story.
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.
Looking east the Esplanade continues until it reaches Houghton Bay and becomes Queens Drive. If you walk that way you will pass the site, now almost dynamited away, of the cave of the once famous ‘Hermit of Island Bay’. Houghton Bay - properly Haewai - is a more recently developed area but in living memory supplied the milk (on horse-drawn cart) to the Southern Bays. The area is bisected by a great green park and regenerating bush which we owe to the landfill beneath it. It poses an on-going problems for the coast as seepage makes its way, inevitably, down.
Look west and you look towards Ōwhiro Bay a site of Māori food growing and gathering and a part of our city that was among the last to throw off its rural nature. A few horses continue to graze there but the cattle and sheep are gone. The stream, another victim of landfill seepage, is being actively restored.
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.