local folk

Jack Algie

For most Mahurangi residents, Goodall, Goldsworthy, Scandrett, Lawrie, Dawson, Dalton, Davie Martin and Anderson are just local place names, but for Jack Algie they were the families he grew up with. Whether it was sharing farm work, attending church or school, or socialising on a Sunday afternoon, these were the neighbours of his childhood. Last week, Jack celebrated his 85th birthday, when he reminisced about the early days in the bay that bears his family’s name …

The road to Martins Bay was just clay when I was a kid so really only useable during the summer. Once it started to rain it became impassable and we could be cut off for weeks. In earlier times, we had relied on scows like the Jane Gifford to bring in supplies and manure for the farm. She would drop anchor off the bay and someone would go out and load up the horse-drawn sledge. There were plenty of gumdiggers around during the Depression years, mostly Dalmatian or Maori. The paddocks were full of gum, some of it the size of a three-gallon bucket. Uncle Steve used to turn kauri gum bowls and we still get pieces washing up on the beach. There were gumdigger camps in Brickyard Bay [now Brick Bay] and opposite where Amberlea Rest Home is today.

My great grandfather, Alexander Algie, emigrated to NZ from Glasgow, Scotland in the late 1850s. He started work clearing land at Pukekohe, where he met and married Jemima (Mima) Deerness, who had emigrated with her family from the Orkney Islands. They had six children including my grandfather, John Deerness Algie, and moved to Algies Bay in 1867. The original farm was only 50 acres, but Grandpa and his brother expanded it over the years so, at one point, the Algies once owned most of the land surrounding the bay.

In 1900, John and his brother Will built Arcadia House on the water’s edge, a boarding house capable of accommodating up to 100 people. John thought it would give his daughters something to do but, of course, they soon went off and got married and left it to the boys to run. It operated from mid-December to mid-February. The grounds included gardens, a tennis court, golf course on the point and croquet court. My present house is built over part of the old tennis court. There were always boats on hand to ferry guests to picnics in sheltered bays and on nearby islands, and concerts were arranged in the evenings. Alexander opened a post office soon after arriving and it operated from the boarding house until the rural delivery service started in 1947/48. The boarding house was on a party phone line of three – Arcadia House, the Scandretts and the Martins.

It required a fairly big team to keep the place running, so the house was a good employer of locals for those few weeks over summer. There was no power and all cooking was done on two large Shacklock stoves. Maintaining a supply of wood to keep the stoves working was an important job. Home-killed meat was supplied by the Scandretts and was kept high in an oak tree, above fly level because, of course, there were no fridges. The tree grew from one of five acorns that were given to my great grandmother Mima by Governor George Grey during one of his garden parties on Kawau. Two of the trees are still standing. At night, the rooms were lit by candles or kerosene lamps. How it didn’t burn down I don’t know! Eventually the diesel generator at the cowshed was used to charge the batteries to run the lights. Power finally got to the bay in 1954, but by that time the boarding house had closed. The war had happened and there was no-one left to run it.

As well as the boarding house, my father and uncles ran the dairy farm, shipping cream out twice a week via the steamer to Auckland, which also stopped at Matakana and Lower Matakana (Sandspit). Guests arrived on the steamer as well.

About six or seven times a year, I got to go to the sales in Warkworth, which were held every fortnight. Sam Price, and then his son Mansel, were the auctioneers and the Methodist ladies always made the lunch. It wasn’t just cattle and sheep that were for sale – people would bring along anything they wanted to sell, from dinghies to possum traps, from lawn mowers to sewing machines. There would be worn out tools, timber, chooks and roosters, pigs and dogs. It was a real event and I loved it.

We’ve been a boating family for generations and Dad made me my first boat when I was seven. When I was 13, I bought a sailing dinghy, a little Zeddie, by selling possum skins. The pelts had to include both ears and two inches down the back, and council would give you half a crown for each. The Zeddie cost me £30, or 240 dried possum skins. I joined the Kawau Yacht Club in 1953 and raced with the squadron in Auckland for a few years.

I left Warkworth School when I was 17 and got a job with the Matakana builders Norman Roke and Austin Smith. One of the jobs I worked on was the Matakana Hall after the old hall burned down – now that’s a story in itself! Norm died suddenly aged 47, so about two years later, I went into business with Ted Shepherd. We were the first in NZ to make the wide sawhorse called the Chippy. We made thousands of them over the years and sold them for 15 bob each, about $1.50, and that included transport. It just became a nuisance in the end so we got out of it. Ted didn’t want to go back building so we tried our luck fishing. We did that for five years and then I drove the Kawau ferry for 18 months.

Later on, my wife Kathy and I did three months training with the Baptist Union on Great Barrier. This led to a monthlong mission to the Philippines and then I was called to be the pastor at the Baptist Church in Rawene. Although we loved Rawene, it ended up being a harrowing experience when a local man went berserk and killed three people, including two of his own children. The man obviously had mental illness issues, but the church came in for some strong criticism. Church members were accused of having tried to address his illness with faith instead of getting proper treatment. It was a very hard time to live through. I was also the pastor in Kamo for a number of years before returning to Algies.

When I met Kathy, she was recently widowed and had just returned from Australia. She was living with her mother Alison Roberts, who owned the donkey park. She had a three-year-old daughter Jenny, and we went on to expand the family with two adopted boys, Steven and Andrew. The bay is still full of members of the family – there are Athol’s sons Donald, Brian and Evan, Steve’s children Rozzie, Colleen and Grant, and me and Ruth Harvey (nee Algie), as well as some of our children. My sister Marion isn’t too far away either, in Sandspit.

In some ways, it’s a modern miracle that I’m still here at all. Dr Shaw in Warkworth diagnosed my dicky heart when I was seven. They took me to a specialist in Auckland who said I had the congenital heart defect patent ductus arteriosus and told Mum that I might live to be 10 or maybe 11, if I was lucky. I know this because I was sitting in the room, hearing it with my own ears. There was no worrying about psychological distress on children in those days. As it turned out, the pioneering heart surgeon Dr Douglas Robb, who later became Sir Douglas Robb, used to stay at our boarding house and Mum got in touch with him. He operated on me in August 1948 and I guess he must have done a good job as I’ve lived well past 11. A few years ago, I was contacted by someone from the hospital who was very interested in my case. Although I wasn’t the first patient to have the operation, apparently I was the first one to live.