A man, a ship and a strange souvenir
‘‘At 25 I decided to come to New Zealand…’’
He arrived in Foxton in 1866 and started a small cabinetmaking business.
‘‘In 1871,’’ he continues, ‘‘I started a store in Palmerston North and was appointed agent for the first immigrants who came out. At this time there was only a track from Foxton to Palmerston, and it was such bad travelling that it used to take a day to get from Oroua Bridge to Palmerston.’’ There was only one hotel, ‘‘kept by Messrs Cole and Stanley’’ and one store, run by George Snelson.
Anders tells that one day he bought an eight-day clock from Snelson, and on the way back to Foxton, found that the route was flooded. ‘‘The water was so high I had to leave the clock tied to the wheel of a half-submerged dray stuck on the road, and when I came back to it in seven days it was there safe and sound, and still going, which will show how very little traffic there was in those days.’’
Anders started a sash and door factory on a section he’d bought in Foxton, and built his own boat, which he named the Ivy. ‘‘I was also the first to build a house on the beach at Foxton,’’ he said.
Anders was married three times. His first wife, mother of his daughters Ada and Lynda and son Arthur, died in 1874. His second marriage was to Eliza Slater in 1875, and they had two sons, George and Charlie. In 1887 he married Elizabeth Govier.
On the storm-tossed night and dawn of June 24 and 25, 1878, at Waiterere Beach, a catastrophe happened that would leave a legend and a lasting mark with the district.
It would also leave Anders Jonson a souvenir.
The Hydrabad, a Scottish-built iron ship carrying broad-gauge railway rolling stock, was bound for Adelaide, Australia, with Captain C Holmwood in charge. Caught in the full fury of the storm, Holmwood manoeuvred the ship to run aground on Waitarere Beach, increasing the chances of survival for the approximately 40 passengers and crew.
No lives were lost; everyone made it to shore, and were helped by various local people.
Over the next weeks, attempts to re-float the Hydrabad failed. The cargo was eventually unloaded, but later a fire ripped through the vessel, buckling its hull planks.
The ship was left abandoned in its sandy grave.
A man named Burchley was said to have salvaged the Hydrabad’s figurehead – which represented a bearded man wearing a robe, sash, dagger and turban – and taken it to Foxton.
But at some point, it appeared in the front garden of Anders Jonson’s home in Avenue Rd, Foxton, becoming an attraction for years among visitors to the settlement.
A family story says Anders willed the figurehead to the Auckland Museum, but that his wife wouldn’t allow it to be taken away.
No-one now remembers what happened to it. One story was it that it simply rotted away; another that it was eventually chopped up for firewood.
Anders (now long known as Andrew) became the Wellington Acclimatisation Society’s ranger.
In 1899 he would petition Railways to have the railway line extended to Foxton, but was unsuccessful.
Anders was also the Foxton undertaker. As necessary, he would borrow friend Bernard Spelman’s horse Blackie – which would normally shunt coal trucks around the station yard – for duty as the funeral horse. At first Blackie pulled a dray, but in 1896 Anders acquired a four-wheel buggy to serve as hearse.
On October 19, 1917, Anders himself died, aged 77.
The Manawatu Herald reported that the graveside service was conducted by the Rev JH Bredin, and ‘‘the Masonic funeral service was impressively conducted by Wor Bro Stevenson, WM, and the brethren of the local Masonic Lodge of which deceased was a member’’.
The Hydrabad wreck, left behind on the beach 139 years ago, slowly rusted away through the generations. Its remains visible until relatively recently, it has now vanished.
Only fragments remain, buried under the sand. A marker points to the spot.
With thanks to Bert Mcgarry. Email: tinawhite29@gmail.com