Wallingford Station
Have you ever wondered what country living looks like in the back-blocks of rural New Zealand? It looks like this. This is Wallingford Station. “It was originally the home of John Davies Ormond, known as ‘The Master’ by his family and as ‘The Hon. J. D.’ by his parliamentary colleagues, who was born in Wallingford, Berkshire, England, the fourth child and third son of Francis Kirby Ormond and his wife, Frances Hedges.
After the family moved to Plymouth he met his sister’s future husband, E. J. Eyre, lieutenant Governor Designate of New Zealand’s southern province of New Munster and sailed on the ‘Ralph Bernal’ in 1847 to become Eyre’s confidential clerk in 1848 and also, in the following year, his private secretary and clerk of the Executive Council.
At 21 years of age and after trying to make a quick fortune on the Australian goldfields he leased land at Porangahau and drove his stock north. Porangahau is a 45 minute drive from my hometown of Waipukurau. Such leases from Maori owners were illegal. After the Government purchased the Porangahau block in 1857, he acquired by Crown grant a property that he later named Wallingford.
To defend runholders’ interests he took a leading part in the movement to separate Hawke’s Bay from Wellington province in 1858. A year later he was elected Member and Speaker of the first Provincial Council. He served under Donald McLean as Deputy Superintendent. He succeeded McLean in 1869.
Between them they ran the province from 1863 to 1876. He held the Clive seat in the House of Representatives from 1861 to 1881 and the Napier seat from 1884 to 1890. In 1891 he was appointed to the Legislative Council. Although he held cabinet office briefly in the 1870s he was essentially a provincial and local leader.
By the end of 1860 all the creeks from Waipukurau to Blackhead (Blackhead reef provided the wool loading and incoming goods landing area serviced by small coastal vessels) had been bridged and by 1862 Wallingford Village had a store, a blacksmith and two hotels, one of them with eleven bedrooms. It is not known how large the Homestead was at this point suffice it to say that Hannah Ormond’s 1864 journals indicate it was a sizable house.
According also to writings by Sir John Ormond Wallingford was initially known as the Eparaima Settlement after a block of 4,800 acres was leased from Maori. “Taurekaitai”, which was used as a letterhead is the name of the river that ran through the Eparaima Block. By 1861 the name “Wallingford” had replaced Taurekaitai and the Eparaima Settlement.
The Mangangarara Block
By 1873 a map of Hawke’s Bay showed Ormond owning the Mangangarara Block, which included the homestead, and adjacent, to the North East, the Eparaima Block. By this time Ormond ranked sixth among the landowners of Hawke’s Bay. By 1872 he also owned land to the south of Wallingford and at Karamu in Hastings, and later purchased land at Woodville and Mahia. By 1852 he had settled Wallingford Station where he built the Homestead around 1853-54.
In 1869 Ormond was elected to the superintendency of Hawke’s Bay and the family moved to Tintagel in Napier to live, returning to Wallingford for the summer holidays. They had spent the first 9 years of married life at Wallingford but never returned to live there. In the course of Provincial Council business Ormond met the Provincial Auditor George E. G. Richardson, general merchant, commission agent and shipper. On 4 December 1860 Ormond married Richardson’s sister Hannah at the Te Aute Church (now called the Pukehou Church). They were married by the Reverend Samuel Williams..
Together they had six children, the eldest being George Canning. George didn’t go on to take over Wallingford as an older son might have back then instead he took on the challenge of the Mahia property ‘Whangawehi’ instead. George aka as G.C. married Maraea Kiwi Te Ratahi Wharekete, a descendant of the Chieftainess Rongomaiwahine. They produced 16 children.
Fanny never married, Caroline Jane “Carrie” died in infancy, Frank married and divorced. Ada Mary married Hamish Wilson from the Burleigh branch and John Davies Jnr. married Gladys Wilder. It was through this later marriage that the Wallingford branch of the growing Ormond family came.
Wallingford
A township grew up at Wallingford, with a school (later converted into a church), two hotels, a post office and a blacksmith’s shop. Ormond leased and freeholded other properties. In 1863 he acquired over 16,000 acres at Otawhao and Oringi Waiaruhe, but wild pigs and dogs ravaged the stock. He sold his Oringi holding in 1875 and the next year acquired 1,214 acres near Woodville. He also acquired 14,500 acres on the Mahia peninsula, where he sent his eldest son, George, to farm in 1885.
As Ormond became more involved in politics he wanted a property nearer town. In 1864 he obtained a share in the Heretaunga block, illegally leased from the Maori by Thomas Tanner. Subsequently the block was legally leased and purchased by Tanner’s syndicate from Maori owners sorely pressed by their creditors. Ormond’s share was a 1,200 acre property named Karamu. There in 1876 he erected a mansion and laid out a garden, orchard, shelter belts, plantations and an avenue of oaks. Raupo swamp was transformed into rich pasture. Karamu became his stud farm and provided him with many cup-winning racehorses. As Hannah was resolved never again to leave town, he had to build another family home, Tintagel, in Napier.
Ormond regarded the superintendent’s job as that of an executive officer. In Maori Affairs and Defence Ormond was McLean’s adjutant. When war broke out he represented the unprotected state of the province to the government, but to his mind, half the battle was to keep the district quiet. He realised that local Maori were alienated, but did not think they wanted to fight. He kept up useful contacts with them. He opposed calling out the militia which would rouse Maori suspicions, and advised McLean to send a small volunteer force. When Te Kooti and other escaped prisoners returned to the East Coast, he favoured letting them settle down there.
The Minister of Public Works
In the wars that followed he obtained early intelligence from Maori for McLean on Hauhau movements. To facilitate military operations and peacemaking he pushed along the telegraph link between Napier and Auckland, and the strategic Napier-Taupo road. Ormond was Minister of Public Works in 1871-72 and again in 1877. As superintendent he was the first to take advantage of Julius Vogel’s policies. Land was reserved for the Napier-Manawatu railway, the Seventy-Mile Bush purchased, blocks set aside for special settlements, and survey and road work commenced.
Immigrants arrived at regular intervals: gardeners, shepherds, ploughmen and domestics. Ormond took personal responsibility for locating them. By 1877 assisted passages had been provided for immigrants from the British Isles and from the Continent, mainly Scandinavia and Germany. Between 1871 and 1878 the provincial population more than doubled. Two Scandinavian settlements, Norsewood and Dannevirke, were established to provide road labourers.
After two summers the ‘Great South Road’, linking with the government road through the Manawatu Gorge, was almost completed. Ormond fostered small-farm associations; Woodville and Ormondville were founded in this way in 1876. In four years his goal of a continuous line of settlement from Makaretu to Woodville was achieved. Parallel to the road Ormond planned the Napier-Manawatu railway.
As a landowner, he was not disinterested in the battle over routes, his decisions were based on engineers’ reports. He negotiated with John Brogden and Sons to construct the line south from Napier to Takapau. In 1877, when the railhead extended four miles into the bush, he urged the Government to extend it to tap the timber trade and provide a livelihood for destitute settlers. Although Ormond won adulation in the province for these achievements, he had many bitter enemies.
In the early 1860s they were town settlers like William Colenso, who wanted agricultural settlement; in the 1870s they were fellow runholders and rival land purchasers led by H. R. and T. P. Russell. With leading Heretaunga Maori, the Russells encouraged the repudiation of earlier agreements to lease and sell land. Ormond was accused of using his official position to assist his private affairs but McLean was their main target. Ormond defended himself and McLean. In 1872 he resigned as minister.
Associations with Local Government Bodies
Ormond accepted the abolition of the Provincial Governments and believed that most in the province favoured it. In their place he advocated real, local self-government. After 1877 he took a leading part in local bodies and saw their empowering and loan legislation through Parliament. He was associated with a great number of local government bodies and other local organisations, and especially interested in the Hawke’s Bay Education Board and the Napier Harbour Board.
A strongly local man at a time when local interests prevailed in politics, Ormond attained high standing and wide influence in the province he populated and developed. He died on 6 October 1917 in Napier leaving an estate of about 35,000 acres. Oak Avenue in Hastings is now designated ‘a historic area’ and is a fitting memorial to ‘the squire of Karamu’.
Five generations along Wallingford Station is still being run by Ormonds and it stands as a lasting testament to family ties that have remained strong, local, focussed and purposeful throughout the changing seasons of its life.
