European settlers at the Wairau Bar
The Wairau Bar. Image: Supplied/WIlliam Forster.
Barry Holdaway JP, Marlbough Historical Society
The Wairau Bar had been occupied by Maori for around 600 years before occasional visits by European sealers and whalers in the early 19th century. Then an 1840 effort by the Unwin Party from Sydney, via Port Underwood to establish a cattle farm on the Wairau Plain ended in tragedy when their open boat was swamped on the Bar, drowning most of their staff.
So it wasn’t until 1848 that Daniel Dougherty, a former whaler from Cutters Bay, Port Underwood, established a building on the northern side of the Wairau mouth. This was near the remnants of the “Ngati Toa Stockade”, a very large Pa established by Te Rauparaha after his 1920s Musket Wars invasion.
While Daniel Dougherty was living at the river mouth he experienced the great earthquake of 16 October 1848. He noticed the major changes on land and river and decided to take soundings of the water depth in a small open boat. He was interested to find that the Bar could now be negotiated by small trading vessels, and his findings were publicised in the “Nelson Examiner”, leading to a wider interest in settlement of the area. The ship “Triumph” was the first to sail over the Bar and was able to cruise twelve miles up the Opawa River to where Blenheim is today.
Dougherty later left the area to become pilot at the port of Wellington. Settlement continued with Wairau surveyor William Budge establishing his house on the tip of the Boulder Bank. Then in 1849 a former survey lineman, Francis MacDonald, built a two storey Inn on the southern side of the Wairau Bar (Boulder Bank), and James Wynen, a former store keeper at Kakapo Bay added to Dougherty’s building to form another Inn on the Northern side of the river mouth. These two establishments serviced the thirsty crews of small trading vessels and accommodated pastoral farmers coming and going to their stations.
A somewhat fractious competition developed between these two establishments resulting in both parties making submissions to the authorities in Wellington alleging the other was not conforming to the conditions of their licence!
A small European village formed around the MacDonald Inn on the southern side of the Bar, including a wool store and a hoist to lift wool bales aboard the ships alongside.