Emigration to New Zealand
Early Years in Pakuranga- Page 1

from the book "A Quota of Qualtrough" Pages 41-47

IT WAS spring in New Zealand when the jaunty Mermaid swept into Auckland waters well ahead of her illustrious rival, the Maori, on 19 October, 1859.

Triple-coned Rangitoto, awesome guardian of the Waitemata, a volcanic peak merely dormant, dominated the other half-dozen of inshore islands.

"Waitemata? It means 'sparkling waters'."

The translation rippled through the ship as excitement mounted. The end of the voyage!

Old gravures show Auckland of those days with wooden jetties on a shoreline no longer in existence, high up in what is now a multi-story Downtown of Auckland City. There were buildings -the first warehouses and business offices, hotels, private guest-houses, a few shops and silhouetted on the skyline, Partington's Mill. Here and there, a horse-team drawn cart, a bullock wagon, a saddled horse, await further orders and pedestrians moved grace-fully on cobbled streets. The men, in narrow-legged trousers, longish jackets and high hats, escorted ladies in full skirts, bonnets and often with parasols. Pictures which included Maoris showed them in European clothing with tattooed faces, many of them bewhiskered, some with long greenstone ear pendants, somewhat incongruous in their satirical anachronisms.

Looking South from Queen Street (Auckland) Wharf in the 1850s. A similar scene must have greeted the QUALTROUGHs on their arrival in 1859. In the foreground is the Queen Street and Shortland Street intersection.
Partington's Mill is in the background.