stage, shipping a large quantity of milled kahikatea to Queensland. Targeting markets was a feature of the shrewd management that enabled the concern not merely to survive the Great Depression but also to emerge from it stronger than before. At an early juncture the directors had appointed as manager a Thames timber trader, G.L. Bagnall. It was a wise appointment. Bagnall was a decisive businessman, as he demonstrated in 1877 by taking up a lease for timber cutting over a substantial part of the Turua bush. Kirk later reported that 'this bush was worked in a most systematic manner, and with an absolute minimum of waste, every available stick being taken out.'59

During the 1880s Bagnall and his five sons moved to make the company a family concern by progressively buying out fellow shareholders who would sell. By 1888, with a majority family block of shareholders behind him, Bagnall was able to bring about a return of the head office to Thames. There, Bagnall switched his marketing policies once again. By this time the great deficiency of kahikatea (its lack of durability) had been exposed. Bagnall exploited its other properties, short-term toughness and absence of odour, to open up an alternative use for the timber. Made up into boxes and casks, kahikatea was an ideal material for containers in which food products, especially butter, could be transported or exported, a veritable coup in the emerging post-refrigeration age. Bagnall's other great achievement was to conduct his milling operations in the Turua bush in tandem with the 'development' of its adjacent lands. He grasped that milling was a precursor to farming; timber workers and mill workers provided a market for farm produce; milling helped clear land and make farming possible. And when the bush was exhausted many timber workers would settle as farmers. (But a Maori resource was destroyed; and settlement of Pakeha meant unsettlement of Hauraki hapu.)

By the time of Bagnall's death, his family held 80% of the company's shares and was itself conducting farming (it was said) 'on a considerable scale' in the vicinity of Turua.60 In 1895 the five Bagnall sons brought about the company's voluntary liquidation and reformed the venture in the following year as 'Bagnall Brothers and Company Ltd'. By the turn of the century it was one of the largest industrial establishments in the province with a workforce of over 200, employed chiefly in its sawing and planing mills and box factory in Turua, and its newly-opened (1897) factory in Auckland.

The Turua kahikatea forest no longer exists.

59 'At the Turua Mills the supply is obtained from freehold land held by the proprietors, or from the land leased by the Natives, or from the settlers; in the latter case the timber is purchased standing, and a royalty of 3d. per 100 ft is paid upon the measured logs, the expense of felling and hauling being defrayed by the purchaser. The cost of felling, conversion and haulage may be estimated at 2s.6d. per 100 ft for labour only.' Kirk Report. AJHR, 1886, C-3, p. 25.

60   Cyclopedia, Vol. 2, p. 421.

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