Over the Wide and Trackless Sea

By Megan Hutching

Facing danger, despair, back breaking work and heart breaking loss and loneliness, the women who forged a new life in New Zealand in colonial times have never been celebrated, and their stories, with a few notable exceptions, have not been widely sheared. Best selling historian Megan Hutching has brought together the stories of a dozen women of all walks of life, whose personal tales of triumph and adversity make compelling reading, and whose contribution helped forge the character of contemporary Aotearoa, where their descendants owe their lives, and their lifestyles, to the sacrifices and strength of these women of the late 1800s.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Australia
• Release date: Oct 1, 2008
• ISBN: 9780730445685

Megan Hutching

Megan Hutching has produced six books of oral histories of the Second World War, in the ‘New Zealanders Remember’ series, including most recently, Last Line of Defence: New Zealanders Remember the War at Home. Her first major piece of research was on women opposed to war in New Zealand in the early twentieth century, and this sparked her abiding interest in writing about the extraordinary lives of ordinary women.

Book preview

Table of Contents

Cover Page

INTRODUCTION

SOURCES

CHAPTER ONE Eliza White

CHAPTER TWO Betty Guard

CHAPTER THREE Juliette Daniell

CHAPTER FOUR Amey Daldy

Photos

CHAPTER FIVE Lady Barker (Mary Anne Broome)

CHAPTER SIX Catherine Ralfe

CHAPTER SEVEN Christine Nielsen, Jensine Thomsen, Nielsine Paget, Kirstine Nielsen

CHAPTER EIGHT Jerolima Erceg

BIBLIOGRAPHY

UNPUBLISHED

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Copyright

About the Publisher

INTRODUCTION

With the exception of Juliette Daniell and Jensine Thomsen, all of the eleven women whose stories appear in this book were immigrants to New Zealand. Most remained here after they had made the long and difficult voyage by ship over the ‘wide and trackless sea’, as Eliza White put it. One—Lady Barker, or Mary Anne Broome as she more properly was—left after three years. Juliette Daniell lived here only until she was thirteen years old before going to live in England, where she remained except for a short return visit after her marriage.

Eliza, who had married Wesleyan missionary William White after a brief courtship, was the first of these women to arrive. She sailed with William on a whaling ship which arrived off the Bay of Islands at the end of January 1830, after a four-month voyage. The most recent arrival was Jerolima Erceg. Just over a hundred years ago, she left the small mountain village of Raš ane in Dalmatia to travel to Auckland to meet her husband, Andrija. It was still a long voyage by sea, but steam ships meant that it was now a journey of six or eight weeks rather than the sixteen weeks which Eliza endured.

I chose these eleven women because together their stories illuminate some of the many strands that have gone into weaving the fabric of this country’s history. There are few people now who would argue against the notion that the women who emigrated to this country were as much pioneers as the men whose lives we know far more about. In early histories of Pakeha settlement, these women tended to be silent or, at best, shadowy presences, and few were known by name. In more recent years, the balance has been redressed and there is much more information available about women who were pioneers.

I wanted to give a good range of experiences in this book. I began with Eliza White who arrived here before the place was declared a British colony and when most permanent Pakeha settlers were missionaries or traders. Eliza’s journals, written at the time, give a rich picture of her life at the mission station at Mangungu in the Hokianga Harbour. Her account of her first meeting with a Maori person is very vivid. She evinced an interest tinged with the sort of values that one would expect from such a woman at such a time. Her use of words such as ‘savages’, ‘heathen’ and ‘native’ rings unharmoniously to modern ears, but they were words in general use at the time, especially amongst those who had come with the mission to bring the Word of God to people who had not heard it, and along the way to ‘civilize’ the ‘uncivilized’. Eliza’s self-conscious exploration of her behaviour and motives seems quite a modern thing, except that it is done in the context of her evangelistic Christianity, which, for many of us, makes it rather alien. There are significant gaps in her journals, and events that she does not mention except in a glancing way. She wrote her journals for her parents in England, so it is understandable why she did not record some of the unhappier experiences which were caused by her husband, William. Fortunately, there is enough information recorded in other sources that the most obvious gaps can be filled.

Betty Guard came to New Zealand with her husband Jacky from New South Wales at around the same time as Eliza. Their backgrounds and experiences could not have been more different, however. Betty was probably the only Pakeha woman at the shore whaling stations where she lived, in Te Awaiti and Kakapo Bay. Whaling stations were uncomfortable, smelly and wild places, and Betty’s life here was on the real frontier of Pakeha settlement in this country. Her capture by Ngati Ruanui after a shipwreck in 1834 led to the first engagement between British troops and Maori in New Zealand. She left no records, so it is difficult to get any sense of her personality (although Fiona Kidman has attempted this in her novel, The Captive Wife), but we have brief accounts of her from travellers who met her later in life.

The next story is that of Juliette Daniell, who was born in Wellington in 1842. While she was still a child when she left New Zealand, her experiences are included because they give a rare account of an early colonial childhood—in Juliette’s case, someone who grew up amongst the upper set of Wellington society at the time. Her experiences were most definitely pioneering. She gives us an eyewitness account of the huge Wellington earthquake of 1855, as well as a glimpse into the everyday life of those early settlers.

Amey Daldy arrived in Auckland in 1860, at a time when the place was in an uproar because it looked as though there was going to be war between the settler government and the Waikato Maori. I have had to use secondary sources to piece together Amey’s story, and have placed it in the context of the development of Auckland township and the struggle for the extension of women’s rights in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Amey was at the forefront of the women’s suffrage movement in New Zealand, and was a pioneer member of a number of organizations which sought social reform in this country.

Lady Barker has left us two lively accounts of her three years in New Zealand. Her baby son died soon after arrival at Broomielaw, which, along with a terrible snow storm and a destructive flood, cast a shadow over her time here. Her character was such, however, that she was able to rise above these misfortunes and leave us a fine illustration of the life of the Canterbury sheep-station owner. Her three years were a combination of hard physical work and opportunities for entertainment and visiting. Her story is in great contrast to the harsher lives of Catherine Ralfe and the Danish women, Christine Nielsen, Jensine Thomsen, Nielsine Paget and Kirstine Nielsen.

Catherine Ralfe arrived in Christchurch in 1866, a year after Mary Anne Barker, and, although they must have known the same people through their association with the Church of England, their experiences were very different. With her sister-in-law, Catherine shared the responsibility of maintaining the family of her brother Henry. It was a large family, and their existence often teetered on the brink of disaster as a result of Henry’s inability to provide for them successfully. Catherine lived for a few months in Christchurch before moving over to the West Coast goldfield town of Okarito. After some time there, she lived briefly in another mining town, Ross; then Hokitika; and ended her days in Taranaki, after moving there to be close to another of her brothers. Catherine’s memoirs, written at the end of her life, are matter-of-fact about her difficult life, but the accounts of frequent headaches and attacks of breathlessness, along with her temporary loss of Christian faith soon after she arrived, hint that she found her life here very stressful. The fact that her health improved in her happy and secure old age tends to underline that conclusion.

With the exception of Kirstine Nielsen, who arrived a little after the others, the lives of the four Danish women covered in Chapter Seven were ones of unremitting hard work as they helped to turn dense virgin totara bush into farmland, and, at the same time, carry out all the domestic duties that women were expected to do. They each raised large families. The life of Christine Nielsen is particularly poignant, because her husband became an invalid soon after their arrival and so she was single-handedly responsible for the family’s fortunes. Her years of relentless hard work took their toll, and she died aged forty-six, her body worn out. The story of her family’s life in their new land does not end there, however, but is continued by that of her daughter, Jensine Thomsen, who died of old age rather than from overwork.

The experiences of Jerolima Erceg are similar in some ways to those of the Danish women. She, too, came from a non-British background and was unable to speak English when she arrived in 1907. As a result, she, like the Danish women, relied on her children to intercede for her in her dealings with New Zealanders. Her life digging gum in North Auckland, and then developing a fine dairy farm and herd, also relied on her capacity for hard work. All through her life in New Zealand, she maintained the Dalmatian ways of life she had known in her youth, and part of her legacy is that many of them are still practised by her descendants.

As you read the book, certain themes in the women’s stories become apparent. The first is the long and arduous sea voyages most of them undertook to get to New Zealand. The extent of their suffering during the voyage depended on the class of ticket that they had, and the particular captain of the ship. The latter played a huge role in the comfort of the passengers. He was responsible for their safety and comfort and their food. If he was good at his job, then the voyage was not so bad; if he was incompetent or bad-tempered, it could be appalling.

A first-class ticket ensured that the passenger had a reasonably sized cabin and reasonable food, although there was always a great lack of fresh foodstuffs on these trips, especially vegetables. The crew sometimes caught things that today we would not consider eating—sea birds and porpoises, for example—but these were greeted with delight by the passengers, especially when they had had only salted meat for days on end beforehand. Even with the greater comfort of first-class travel, it was still a tedious journey, and often dangerous during stormy weather. Travelling steerage was an unpleasant experience—cramped and noisy, smelly and unhygienic. There was always the danger of sickness and epidemics, especially if it was overcrowded—which it usually was. Once a disease got hold, it was almost impossible to prevent fatalities, especially amongst the babies and children.

A second theme in these accounts is the death of children. Most of the women in this book had children who died in childhood. Before the days of antibiotics and vaccinations, children were extremely susceptible to disease. It is hard to know which would be worse—the death of a baby at birth, or the death of a toddler—but these women experienced both. And they were not alone of course, as a walk around any old graveyard will show. It is a testament to their good housekeeping in the most rudimentary living conditions that they did not suffer more from the effects of poor knowledge about infection.

Natural disasters were also a fact of life. The women in this book survived fire, snow storm, earthquake and flood at a time when there were no emergency services and their survival depended on their own efforts. Lady Barker’s account of the great snow storm of 1867 is entertaining, but also manages to convey just how close she and her household were to disaster. These dramatic events show how tenuous was the settlers’ grip on the land in which they lived.

Religion also played an important part in the lives of most of the women. This is most obvious with Eliza White, but Catherine Ralfe and Amey Daldy also had strong religious beliefs. Catherine wrote in her memoirs of the influence that her Christian faith had on her life, and Amey Daldy’s Congregationalism was a very strong inspiration for her public work. Because we know about their work in secular areas, such as women’s suffrage, modern readers often forget the significance of the word ‘Christian’ in the names of organizations such as the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and the Young Women’s Christian Association.

With the probable exception of Betty Guard, all the women in this book would have attended religious services of one denomination or another as regularly as they were able: Eliza was a Methodist, and became a stalwart of the Pitt Street Methodist church in Auckland after her move to that town; Amey Daldy was a Congregationalist and an important member, with her husband William, of the Beresford Street Congregationalist Church. Lady Barker and Catherine Ralfe were both Anglicans and had close contacts among the hierarchy of the Church of England in Christchurch. The four Danish women were all most likely Lutheran. The importance of their religion to the Danish settlers is illustrated by their raising funds early on for the employment of a minister and the construction of Lutheran churches in the Seventy Mile Bush. Jerolima Erceg was a Catholic and regularly attended Mass, even when living on the isolated gumfields of Northland.

Although their existence as pioneer women was hard, there were still opportunities for the enjoyment of life. For some of them this came through their family life and their religion, but others took part in more frivolous activities, such as picnics and walking for walking’s sake. Juliette Daniell and Lady Barker both came from backgrounds where they enjoyed going on lavish picnics, which involved walking to a suitable site and partaking of delicious food and drink on arrival.

None of the women had second thoughts about embarking on long walks, although these were almost always from necessity rather than for pleasure. Eliza White wrote in her journal of going for walks with friends, and of the pleasures to be had from visiting and having visitors; while for Christine Nielsen walking to Waipawa for the stores was a feat of endurance. For those who could, riding was also a pastime as well as a method of transport.

Others had less active pursuits. Kirstine Nielsen worked with her hands making traditional Danish handcrafts, and Jerolima Erceg’s hands were never idle, spinning and knitting wool. Her work was probably more necessity than pastime, as was the hand- and machine-sewing which many of the women spent hours doing.

Some of these women—such as Eliza White, Betty Guard, Juliette Daniell and the four Danish women—were pioneers in the traditional sense of being among the first to settle in a new area. Jerolima Erceg was a pioneer in that she was one of a few Dalmatian women who came to New Zealand in the early twentieth century and worked on the gumfields of North Auckland. For her work in the struggle for women’s suffrage, Amey Daldy was a pioneer in the sense of helping to build something new, not only in New Zealand but in the world. Kirstine Nielsen introduced the idea of health stamps to New Zealand and had the resolve to ensure that they were adopted by the Post Office.

Whether they were the first in any sense, all of the women in this book had lives that make people like me wonder at their endurance and strength of character, and appreciate how their unceasing hard work helped to build the foundations of the lives of modern-day women. Regardless of whether one admires them and their reasons for coming to New Zealand, we can only respect their determination through times of fortune and misfortune.

SOURCES

Not all of these women are unknown. Betty Gilderdale has written a biography of Mary Anne Barker, and Barker herself wrote two charming books about her brief time on her Canterbury sheep station, Broomielaw. Amey Daldy is well-known to those who have studied the history of first-wave feminists in this country, for her involvement in the campaign for women’s suffrage and in early women’s organizations. Eliza White’s experiences have been mentioned in some of the studies of early missionary women in New Zealand. Her journals are archived at the Kinder Library at St John’s College in Auckland. Betty Guard is known, not from her own writings, but because of her capture by Ngati Ruanui and subsequent rescue in 1834. There are various accounts of the incident, the most comprehensive of which is in Don Grady’s Guards of the Sea.

The other seven are less well-known, except among their descendants or in their local areas. Catherine Ralfe arrived in Lyttelton in November 1866 to join her brother Henry and his family. Around thirty years later, she wrote a vivid memoir of her early life in Christchurch, Okarito and, finally, Taranaki, which is now archived at the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington. As an old woman, Juliette Daniell also wrote a memoir of her childhood during the very early days of Wellington’s settlement by Pakeha immigrants, which can also be found at the Alexander Turnbull Library.

The stories of the four Danish women—Christine Nielsen, Jensine Thomsen, Nielsine Paget and Kirstine Nielsen—appeared in the first volume of Miriam Macgregor’s ground-breaking series, Petticoat Pioneers. Jerolima Erceg was a private woman who never learnt English throughout her long life in New Zealand. For details about her life I was able to interview her eldest granddaughter, Valerie Belich, who spent much time with her as a child and was able to talk to her in Croatian (or Serbo-Croat, as it was then known). Valerie’s memories of her grandmother were essential, as they allowed me access to the story of a woman who did not write English and who left no records.

CHAPTER ONE

Eliza White

Eliza White came to live at the Wesleyan mission station at Mangungu on the Hokianga Harbour, in the far north of the North Island, in 1830; ten years before the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi. She was truly a pioneer Pakeha woman, and seems more so now when to get to Mangungu means travelling along a narrow, unsealed road through sparsely inhabited country. It is a tiny, sleepy place where the most exciting thing that happens is the daily visit (in summer) of a tourist boat from Rawene bringing visitors to the mission house which, along with a small chapel, is the only surviving building of the once-flourishing station. While the journey from Paihia does not take anywhere near as long as Eliza’s did in 1830, to a modern-day visitor Mangungu feels more isolated after the fifty-minute car trip than it must have to Eliza after her thirteen-hour epic by litter and by boat to what was then a good-sized settlement on the busy Hokianga Harbour.

Eliza Leigh was born on 11 July 1809, the daughter of Thomas and Elizabeth Leigh who lived in Earith on the northerly banks of the Great Ouse River in England’s fen district. Her father was a coal and timber merchant, so the family was reasonably prosperous. She had three older brothers, James, John and Thomas, and was born when her mother was forty-three, so she was the only daughter and the youngest child of doting older parents.

The family was religious. Although Baptists, they attended Wesleyan services and Eliza was converted to Wesleyanism when she was sixteen. In his preaching, John Wesley had promoted what he termed ‘Christian perfection’, or holiness of heart and life, and insisted that in this life the Christian could come to a state where the love of God, or ‘perfect love’ as he called it, reigned supreme in one’s heart. The constant struggles to be a good Christian which are reflected in Eliza’s journal are a symptom of her devout Wesleyanism, and her desire to be a missionary was a result of her conversion. When Reverend William White came on the scene, looking for a wife to take back to New Zealand to help with his missionary work among the Maori, it seemed like the answer to her prayers. The couple were married on 30 June 1829, a few days before Eliza’s twentieth birthday.

White, along with Samuel Leigh, Nathaniel Turner, James Stack and John Hobbs, had established a mission station in 1823 under the protection of the local Ngatiuru people, at a place they called Wesleydale in the Whangaroa Harbour, near present-day Kaeo. The men did not get on particularly well together, and there were tensions between Maori hapu in the area. As a result, the mission was not especially successful. White, Hobbs and Stack were single men. It was felt by the English missionary societies that it was better if the missionaries were married, as it kept them from the temptation of sleeping with local women and meant that their wives could help to educate and civilize the local people. At the end of 1823, William White had gone to Sydney in an unsuccessful attempt to find a wife. His visit to England, beginning in February 1826, was to achieve the same purpose. This time he was successful.

At the port of Deal in mid-September 1829, Eliza and William boarded the Sisters, a whaling ship bound for New Zealand. Eliza’s father and Mr Ludlas, the Wesleyan minister of Deal, came on board with them, stayed for a short while and then took their leave. Eliza was upset at the parting, ‘but the words of the Saviour are constantly on my mind: Whoso love their Father or Mother more than me is not worthy of me.’ The leaving cannot have been helped by the fact that she barely knew William White, a man sixteen years her senior, and that she was the only woman on board the Sisters.

She was also already pregnant and was seasick for the first couple of weeks of the voyage, as was her husband. On board ship she started to learn Maori from William, who had become reasonably proficient during his time in New Zealand.

By the beginning of October the weather was getting warm, and in her journal, written to send back to her family in Earith, she thinks of them ‘sitting round your fire while we have all our windows open and can dispense with some of our outer garments. We expect the heat will increase till we get into the Southern Hemisphere. This Afternoon we have had a very smooth sea—scarcely any motion of the Ship. I could work, read or write as well as in my own little room at home.’

A result of the calmer seas was that she got her appetite back. There was not much to see on board the ship, so Eliza did needlework until the midday dinner. She sometimes helped to prepare the dinner, and she was able to wash and iron clothes, but her position as the only woman on board the Sisters was an uncomfortable one. She felt that she needed to stay in the cabin most of the time, which meant that she spent most of the days alone. While this did not usually worry her, at times she missed the company which she had been used to at her parents’ house