Historic Petone

One of the best things about my new locale, Petone, is the history associated with the area. Since we are all restricted to short walks in our local area during the Covid-19 pandemic let me invite you to a virtual walk through Discover Historic Petone. Many of the Petone streets are named after the early settler ships.

The Tory arrived Sep 1839 with Colonel William Wakefield of the New Zealand Company who made a dodgy land purchase from Te Ati Awa. Cuba was the NZ Company’s survey ship which arrived in Jan 1840. The first Pakeha immigrants arrived on the Aurora (22 Jan 1840), Oriental (31 Jan 1840), Duke of Roxburgh (7 Feb 1840), Bengal Merchant (21 Feb 1840) and ships continued to arrive in droves from then on.

My ancestors arrived in Wellington harbour on the Duke of Roxburgh. After landing on the beach at Pito-one my ggg-grandfather, John Brown Reading, went into business as a carpenter at a settlement called Britannia about a mile up the Hutt River. The area was subject to flooding and at the end of 1840, he relocated to Karori where he later became the Postmaster.

In 1894, not far from the site of the abandoned settlement of Britannia, Leila Adair made a balloon ascent from the Wellington Agricultural & Pastoral Association’s Showgrounds.

Her new manager had a nifty plan, whereby spectators bought the shilling admission ticket as part of the train fare, thereby hoping to avoid “deadheads” who watched the exhibition from outside the grounds for free. Unfortunately, this plan ran into unforeseen problems when the inflation took longer than anticipated, forcing Leila to make a brief hurried ascent before the return train was due to depart.

Nothing remains of the Showgrounds as the land was sold off for sections in 1904. The sections initially advertised for £140, were still being advertised a year later for £5 deposit with monthly instalments of £1.

There are very few buildings left in Petone that date from the time of Leila Adair’s visit, but the Petone Historical Society, Jackson Street Programme, and Heritage NZ have made efforts to preserve what remains. Jackson Street was designated a historic area in 1996.

Apart from the history, Petone has a great selection of multicultural restaurants, food speciality shops, boutiques and would you believe – seven op-shops! Let’s hope they all get to reopen soon.