Wharekaka Township
A notice in a Feb 1869 paper: ‘J D Baird C. E. has honor of informing his friends, inhabitants of Wellington, Wairarapa, commencing business in Greytown. Surveyor, Architect, Land Agent.
In May 1870 Edward Harris offered for tender the erection of two miles of fence at the Waihenga Ferry. His Waihenga Ferry Hotel was the first in the district offering ‘good accommodation for travellers, good paddocks and stock yards’.
In September 1870 Harris got competition when D Haggerty was granted a ‘Bush Licence’ for his Wharekaka Hotel. Seems the Hotel preceded the township for a October 1870 paper announced: ‘The undersigned , having purchased the land on Wharekaka Plain belonging to the late G Meredith Esq. The purpose to form a township there adjoining Waihenga Ferry. Applications for allotments of town acres and suburban sections can be made at Mr Palmerson’s Survey Office Greytown, where plan are on view. Sgd. J D Baird 8th October 1870’
Another item presumably to fire a bit of interest : ‘Expect sections will be in demand. Mr Palmerson has been intrusted with survey. His previous experience, work will be thoroughly done. Greytown people a village is wanted greatly in the southern section of the valley’.
By the first week of November a notice announced that ‘sections in the township of Wharekaka were nearly all taken up, very few remained for selection’.
News items reported in the paper included that A Gillies had been horned by a wild cattle beast in the local stock yards. Last month Mr Hastwell, Mr W Harris and Mr Benge each met with accidents on the Rimutaka Hill Road. Shearing season was in full swing with going rates of between fifteen shillings and one pound per hundred sheep.
Butchers wanted to undertake killing and cutting up of sheep for Huangarua Boiling Down Works – approximately 12,000 sheep. Tallow was fetching up to forty pounds per ton. A Boiling Down Works at Featherston, with a capacity of 13,000 sheep, was adverting to process sheep for one shilling a head.
