Point Howard is a suburb on the eastern side of Wellington Harbour, in

Lower Hutt Lower Hutt ( mi, Te Awa Kairangi ki Tai) is a city in the Wellington Region of New Zealand. Administered by the Hutt City Council, it is one of the four cities that constitute the Wellington metropolitan area. It is New Zealand's sixth most p ...

, New Zealand.

Geography

Point Howard is a headland and bay situated near the swamp land around

Waiwhetū Waiwhetū is an eastern suburb of Lower Hutt in the Wellington Region situated in the south of the North Island of New Zealand. In the 19th-century period of European settlement it was worked by Irish-born Alfred Ludlam, who was a member of thr ...

and the estuary of Hutt River.Ruakura Consultants, Te Awakairangi – Hutt River, Wainuiomata River, Akatarewa River and other Hutt River Tributaries, Cultural Value Report, 2017 It is the first of a series of bays on the eastern side of Wellington Harbour which wind their way to the Pencarrow headland.

Māori Māori or Maori can refer to: Relating to the Māori people * Māori people of New Zealand, or members of that group * Māori language, the language of the Māori people of New Zealand * Māori culture * Cook Islanders, the Māori people of the C ...

legends and oral history record the hills in this area being clad in rare New Zealand beech forest which reached down to the shoreline.A. Beaglehole and A. Carew, Eastbourne; a history of the eastern bays of wellington harbour, Historical Society of Eastbourne, Eastbourne, 2001.

Pre-European settlement

Māori were first associated with the Eastern Bays around 1400. The Wellington area () was occupied by Ngati Tara around 800 years ago and they were in turn supplanted by

Ngāti Ira Iwi () are the largest social units in New Zealand Māori society. In Māori roughly means "people" or "nation", and is often translated as "tribe", or "a confederation of tribes". The word is both singular and plural in the Māori language, an ...

and their

Rangitāne Rangitāne is a Māori people, Māori iwi (tribe). Their rohe (territory) is in the Manawatū-Whanganui, Manawatū, Horowhenua, Wairarapa and Marlborough Region, Marlborough areas of New Zealand.Ngati Kahungunu ''Ngati'' is a 1987 New Zealand feature film directed by Barry Barclay, written by Tama Poata and produced by John O'Shea. Production ''Ngati'' is of historical and cultural significance in New Zealand as it is the first feature film written an ...

whose lands stretched into

Wairarapa The Wairarapa (; ), a geographical region of New Zealand, lies in the south-eastern corner of the North Island, east of metropolitan Wellington and south-west of the Hawke's Bay Region. It is lightly populated, having several rural service ...

and

Hawke's Bay Hawke's Bay ( mi, Te Matau-a-Māui) is a local government region on the east coast of New Zealand's North Island. The region's name derives from Hawke Bay, which was named by Captain James Cook in honour of Admiral Edward Hawke. The region is ...

. Between 1820 and 1840 they competed for control of the land with

Ngāti Mutunga Ngāti Mutunga is a Māori iwi (tribe) of New Zealand, whose original tribal lands were in north Taranaki. They migrated from Taranaki, first to Wellington (with Ngāti Toa and other Taranaki Hāpu), and then to the Chatham Islands (along with ...

and

Ngāti Toa Ngāti Toa, Ngāti Toarangatira or Ngāti Toa Rangatira, is a Māori ''iwi'' (tribe) based in the southern North Island and in the northern South Island of New Zealand. Its ''rohe'' (tribal area) extends from Whanganui in the north, Palmerston N ...

from North Taranaki and after losing several battles the Ngāti Toa supported the iwi of

Ngāti Tama Ngāti Tama is a historic Māori iwi of present-day New Zealand which whakapapas back to Tama Ariki, the chief navigator on the Tokomaru waka. The iwi of Ngati Tama is located in north Taranaki around Poutama. The Mōhakatino river marks their ...

and Ngāti Rangatahi in their occupation of lands around the Hutt Valley. By 1840 Ngati Toa Rangitira was the dominant iwi in the Wellington region. During this period the Eastern Bays were sparsely inhabited and primarily used as fishing grounds. The major Māori pā in the area was at Waiwhetu and land access to the eastern bays was by a steep track which ran up the long sloping ridge named Ngaumatau ('bite of the fishhook') by Ngati Ira. Te Atiawa chief Puakawa was killed in his garden at Ngaumatau shortly after the arrival of European settlers in the ship ''Tory'' in 1839.

European colonisation

Lowry Bay, Eastbourne, and cyclist, taken from the south point of Mahina Bay c

The first Europeans to visit the bays were probably whalers and traders but European colonisation of Point Howard began with the 1826 survey of Wellington Harbour by Captain James Herd on board the ship ''Rosanna''. This was followed by Colonel William Wakefield and the New Zealand Company's choice of the harbour for their first settlement and the arrival of the first settlers in 1839, on board the ship ''Tory''. Captain Chaffers named the headland next to Lowry Bay, Point Howard, after Philip Howard, a member of the New Zealand Committee Association. Point Howard was originally part of

Lowry Bay Lowry may refer to: People * Calvin Lowry (born 1983), American football player * Dave Lowry (born 1965), Canadian ice hockey player * Desiree Lowry (born 1972), Puerto Rican beauty pageant titleholder * Hiram Harrison Lowry (1843–1924), Ameri ...

but remained undeveloped by Europeans for most of the nineteenth century. The Wairarapa Earthquake of 1855 was a significant event as it saw the land around the estuary uplift by nearly two metres to create land access along the base of Point Howard and was the beginning of road access to the southern bays. Hugh Sinclair of

Wainuiomata Wainuiomata () is a large suburb of Lower Hutt, in the Wellington Region of New Zealand's North Island. Origin of name The word 'Wainui-o-mata' is a Māori name made up of the words Wai = water, Nui = big, O = of, and Mata – which could refer ...

, owned much of the land around Point Howard, and in 1877 he laid out plans for a subdivision which included multiple access roads. Few sections were sold in the initial offer and the development was abandoned. By 1891, the land was still part of Lowry Bay and owned by the wealthy lawyer

Dillon Bell Sir Francis Dillon Bell (8 October 1822 – 15 July 1898) was a New Zealand politician of the late 19th century. He served as New Zealand's third Minister of Finance (New Zealand), Minister of Finance (the first parliamentary finance minister), ...

. In 1905 legal requirements of Bell's family trust forced the subdivision of his land. The Lowry Bay Estate Company was formed to subdivide the northern section which included current Point Howard. Thirty-six subscribers brought 1000-pound shares to qualify for a ballot for the prime sections but it was 1920s before all the sections were sold. By 1938 there were 29 houses on the whole estate. In 1907 the Hutt County Council began work on widening and constructing a properly formed road around the Eastern Bays and after the Second World War, better roads and cars increased its popularity as a picnic destination and home for wealthy Wellingtonians. The Hutt Council erected a bathing shelter across from Point Howard beach in 1926.

Industrial expansion

An expansion of industrial sites at Seaview on the northern approach to Point Howard in the 1920s led to major developments for the suburb. After Seaview was identified as a site for the storage of oil the

Texas Oil Company Texaco, Inc. ("The Texas Company") is an American oil brand owned and operated by Chevron Corporation. Its flagship product is its fuel "Texaco with Techron". It also owned the Havoline motor oil brand. Texaco was an independent company until ...

(Texaco and later Caltex) bought five acres in 1929 and built oil storage tanks. In the same year the Harbour Board started work on the construction of a new oil wharf at Point Howard. The original wharf was made from hardwood logs, long. As the wharf was not being used to offload general cargo it was designed with an approach that was only wide, much narrower than a normal wharf. The wharf was completed in March 1930 and while limited numbers of tankers used the wharf initially the expansion of related industries in Sea View saw more demand for use of the wharf. In 1930, the

Vacuum Oil Company Vacuum Oil Company was an American oil company known for its ''Gargoyle'' 600-W steam cylinder motor oil. After being taken over by the original Standard Oil Company and then becoming independent again, in 1931 Vacuum Oil merged with the Standar ...

completed their major works on their petroleum and kerosene works on Sea View road and their two 750,000 gallon petroleum tanks were connected by an 8-inch pipeline with the Point Howard Wharf. In 1933 the wharf pilings were joined to extend the width of the wharf to cater with demand. In February 1934, the largest oil tanker to visit New Zealand, Texas Company's ''Australia'', berthed at Point Howard wharf with her load of two million gallons of petroleum. Up until the 1930s the eastern bays were reliant on rainwater or access to a stream but in January 1932 work began on the area's water and sewage infrastructure.Alison Carew & Mary McCallum, Eastbourne 100years; the borough of Eastbourne 1906 – 1989 and beyond, Pencarrow Press with the Historical Society of Eastbourne, 2006. As this coincided with the depression years men on relief wages were employed to excavate a site at the top of Point Howard for a new reservoir to supply the Eastern Bays with water.

References

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External links