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From Heritage New Zealand, Summer 2007

Road Trip Rigours

by Lew Cormack

A VIP tour of conditions in the north gave MPs and dignitaries more evidence than they bargained for

A rough northern road of 1917. Photo: Archives New Zealand

Safe and comfortable motoring on sealed roads around northern New Zealand is a relatively new phenomenon. Until recently, the preferred mode of travel around the northern harbours was by boat. Hokianga Harbour, for example, is huge and has arms like an octopus’s. Even today, some say that if you can’t get there by boat, it’s probably not worth going.

A 1910 Hupmobile on tour followed by another old Hupmobile. Photo: Far North District Council

Problems for the north’s maritime transport industry began around the turn of the past century. Timber logging, which had supported a thriving maritime business, was slowly declining and along with it the number of boats and ships that were calling. At the same time, land that had been cleared by the felling of kauri forest was being broken in as farmland. As shipping slowed, an increasing number of farmers began experiencing difficulty getting their produce to market. Local politicians and central government received complaints from local farmers and agriculturalists about the state of
Northland’s roads.

Backing up the old tourer to get a better run at a really soft spot in the road. Photo: Archives New Zealand

Colonel Alan Bell, a farmer who owned land near Kaitaia, suggested a VIP tour to lift what many in the north considered to be a veil of ignorance among southern politicians about the woes of the area. In 1917, a group of parliamentarians, led by minister of the Crown Arthur Myers, determined to take their horseless carriages on a tour of the north to see the state of the roads for themselves. On the morning of 16 January 1917, a cavalcade of 34 cars set off from Auckland carrying 120 politicians, business people and other intrepid souls. They left on what they thought would be a whirlwind, 10-day, fact-finding tour of the pleasures of the winterless north. The parliamentarians ended up undertaking a disastrous journey on
some of the worst roads in the country.

A 1915 Moon in celestial condition. Photo: Far North District Council

Travelling up the east coast, they combated kilometre after
kilometre of choking, suffocating clouds of dust. Then, as the cavalcade travelled between Kaitaia and Ahipara, they encountered a series of violent thunderstorms that bogged the cars in a quagmire. Fortunately, help was at hand. Ironically, it was the far north farmers and horsemen themselves who came to the rescue. Teams of horses dragged the vehicles out of the morass of mud and onto the sands of 90 Mile Beach. Here, the vehicles unleashed their potential power. Some were recorded reaching dazzling top speeds of up to 96 kilometres an hour, prompting excitement about the future of a motor racing industry in the area.

Afterwards, note was made of the consummate skill of the many Kaitaia and Ahipara horsemen who, with their inimitable expertise, had used up to five horses a car to get the parliamentarians through the most treacherous parts of the road.

There must have been a great deal of wry grinning and smug
satisfaction among the local farmers, who no doubt felt vindicated for their years of complaints about the extreme difficulties suffered by the communities who relied heavily on the roads for their survival. It was now clear to the politicians that Northland’s economic growth depended heavily upon rapid improvements being made to the roading system.

The excitement of speeding over the sands of Ahipara, however, was merely a brief reprieve. The road on to Kohukohu proved to be more gruelling than anything so far. In the Herekino Gorge, on the back road between Ahipara and Broadwood, the sky opened once again with heavy driving rain.

The cavalcade was travelling along the steep-sided gorge through an area that for thousands of years had been covered in primeval rain forest. The massive kauri that had provided shelter and structure to hold the towering bluffs together had recently been removed. With the rain tumbling down in torrents, the hillside chose to follow it to the bottom of the gorge in sympathy. The road ahead turned into a reeking morass of slush, and a mudslide closed the road behind the
parliamentary cavalcade.

There was no way back and there was no way to get the horses over the slip to help. For the parliamentarians and their colleagues, it was time to roll up their trousers and wade through the mud, hauling the cavalcade along one car at a time. They were forced to find shelter for the night wherever they could. Those who had made it through the bog slept in local farm houses at the end of the gorge. Others were compelled to sleep on hay in village halls. One can only imagine how those who managed to escape the gorge felt when they reached Broadwood with its store, school and hall.

The filthy, mud-caked, road-weary group of stragglers who had dragged themselves and their vehicles through the marsh mucked in together and eventually regrouped. They reassembled at Broadwood and, after a day’s respite, headed off once more towards Kohukohu, 24 kilometres away. The road was in an appalling condition. Ahead lay a brief fine morning of blissful ignorance until the parliamentarians
drove headlong into a heavy afternoon deluge of rain that bucketed down on the convoy, hammering them to a halt. Before nightfall, one vehicle had completely capsized and several others had been abandoned to the forces of the mire.

While the early arrivals in Kohukohu settled in to await the
remainder of the vehicles, many people began to have second
thoughts about the journey, while others gave the whole cavalcade idea a complete rethink. Kohukohu was a prosperous port town with several banks and its own newspaper. There were proper pubs that served good whisky. The hotels had beds with clean sheets. The Masons had built the largest Masonic Lodge in the north, and the town boasted its own shipbuilding enterprise. After three weeks on the road to hell, many of the cavalcade members decided to check
in to one of the hotels while they recovered from pneumonia, and prayed for a change in the weather.

Many of those who bravely pressed on with their journey wished they hadn’t. A week later, when the battered cavalcade reached Kaikohe, the hub of the north, there were only 10 vehicles remaining of the original 34. The parliamentarians had encountered and surmounted many impassable stretches of road. As a result of the tour, the Hokianga’s severely derelict roading system and the treacherous weather conditions were written into history.

The politicians had experienced first hand the harsh reality of
the shamefully neglected roads. However, there would still be time to wait for any improvement in the state of the roads.

In 1918, the Automobile Association convened members of the Chamber of Commerce, Farmers’ Union and other important bodies and formed an organisation which became known as the Good Roads Association of New Zealand to fight for road improvements. But it wasn’t until 1922 that the Main Highways Act became law. It was 15 years before an all-weather road, even as far as Whangarei, was completed. Today, the road from Ahipara to Kohukohu is a pleasant
route through dramatic and beautiful countryside.

The historic tour of four generations ago was recently re-enacted by the Horseless Carriage Club of New Zealand, which followed in the tyre tracks of the original vehicles.

To celebrate the journey of 90 years ago, 55 vintage and
veteran vehicles carried a group of politicians and local members of parliament over the same roads. Far North Mayor Yvonne Sharp hosted a civic reception and parade for the group when it eventually reached Kaikohe, where a toast was drunk to the endurance and dogged persistence of those 1917 travellers.