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Palmerston North's earliest days

by Stuart Birks

Here are some details on the earliest days of European settlement in the Palmerston North area. Palmerston North was initially known as Palmerston. The name change was to avoid confusion with a settlement of the same name established in the South Island.

These extracts and summaries are taken from or draw on Petersen G C (1973) Palmerston North: A Centennial History, Wellington: AH and AW Reed.

The surveyors set up camps at strategic points, one being on the Papaioea clearing, for the purpose of carrying out the work in the immediate vicinity. This camp was known to the survey party as Camp Papaioea and whilst the rough slab huts afforded the men protection from the elements, if not from the mosquitoes, they offered little in the way of comfort. A perusal of the lists of the contents of the camp forwarded to Wellington periodically to satisfy the anxieties of the comfortably housed officials there that the government’s assets were properly safeguarded indicates that the life of the men in the field was Spartan. On 20 February, 1866 Camp Papaioea possessed the following items: One small basin; baking dish; camp oven; 6 billey’s - 2 large; 5 pankins; 3 knives and forks; 4 spoons - 3 new; frying pan; 1 small plate; 2 slashers; 2 tin dishes; 2 tents and 1 fly; bag sugar; bag rice; bag tea; 1 tin coffee; 4½ 100lb bags flour; 1 bag salt; 3 axes; 2 billhooks.

Pp.58-59

Bishop Monrad and his family arrived at Karere early in October 1866.

The Monrads had been at Karere five years before the first settler arrived on the site of the projected township of Palmerston. When the Bishop left Karere in December 1869 there were thirty settlers between Ngawhakarau and Ashhurst.

P.65

In the meantime the site of the township of Palmerston was showing the first feeble stirrings of life. There were, of course, the two whares of the surveyors on what is now the site of the Australia New Zealand Bank on the corner of Coleman Place, a hut on the Rangitikei Line near the present premises of Hodder and Tolley… and, most imposing of all, an accommodation house presided over by Edwin Cole, whose wife was the first white woman to live in Palmerston… This building stood in the main street, approximately on the site of the present Masonic Hotel. After being in charge of Aaron Burr in 1867 the premises passed into the hands of Robert (Bob) Stanley, who held a bush publican’s licence. This lapsed, no doubt because of want of custom, in or about 1869, but was revived in 1870 under the name of Palmerston House, consisting of four rooms. There being no permanent population in the “township”, the patronage of the hostelry was confined to the passing horseman or the gangs engaged in cutting the survey and road lines, as well as the hordes of mosquitoes with which the guests did constant battle.

Pp.67-68