• in the mining settlements themselves, heart timber, usually, for houses and shops, but also needed for town amenities—wharves, boardwalks etc.

Salmon states what old photographs confirm, that 'within a few months' of the first lucrative gold strike at Thames in 1867 'all the kauri and kahikatea trees along the flat had disappeared and the hills themselves were soon denuded.'55 The removal of the vegetative cover of Kauaeranga simply foreshadowed the much greater spoliation of the forest cover of the whole peninsula that took place before the century was out.

The Turua bush, 14 kms from Shortland, lying mainly in the swampy lowland between the Waihou and Piako rivers seemed, at least in part, one obvious solution to Thames's timber problem. This bush, almost entirely kahikatea, was extensive, stretching unbroken roughly from Turua (where the main sawmill was soon to be installed) as far south as Paeroa. Before 1868 it had been milled on a small scale. But with the surge in demand for timber created by the gold rush, the bush seemed ripe for more thoroughgoing exploitation. That was the thinking of a group of seven speculators who acquired a tree felling interest in this bush. Kahikatea appeared to be a tough, physically attractive timber. At first its limitations—lack of durability especially when in contact with the ground, and vulnerability to borer—were not appreciated, and until these shortcomings were exposed over time, it was used in housebuilding, particularly for weatherboards, flooring and joinery, and in general construction, jetties and the like.

Promotion of a company

Following the promotional pattern that had become common among syndicates of miners, these timber speculators decided to convert themselves into a company which would bring in an infusion of Auckland capital, required to pay for necessary milling machinery, and also to enable them (following the gambit of gold-mining stock jobbers) progressively to offload their shares so that they could make capital gains.56 The seven original subscribers were made up of four Shortland businessmen, J.S. Macfarlane (an Auckland entrepreneur), James Mackay and Wiropi Hotoreni Taipari ('Native Assessor', who was the third largest shareholder).57 The speculative intentions of the original promoters were quickly realized. In the first return to the Registrar of Companies (12 April 1870) the promoters had reduced their holdings of 100 shares to 35 (£68 paid up), Taipari having reduced his personal stake from 16 to 2. The new shareholders were almost entirely hard-headed Auckland businessmen such as J.T. MacKelvie, David Nathan and Thomas Russell—not men likely to be sold a pup. The venture was sound. They were determined to keep it so.58

55 Salmon, A History of Goldmining, p. 193. Recent research suggests stripping of the bush there was well under way before 1867.

56 R.C.J. Stone, Makers of Fortune, Auckland, 1973, pp. 54-55.

57 Memorandum of Association, Co. A 38, NARC.

58 Sources used for the history of this company are NARC Dead Companies File (Co. A 38); the Campbell-Walker Report (AJHR, 1877, C-3); Kirk Report (AJHR, 1886, C-3); G.C. Dunstall, 'Colonial Merchant: J.T. Mackelvie, Brown Campbell & Co. and the Business Community of Auckland, 1865-71', MA thesis, Auckland University , 1970, pp. 205-06; Cyclopedia of New Zealand, Vol. 2, (Auckland), Christchurch, 1902, pp. 207, 421.

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