A Holiday

It's Waitangi Day - our national holiday - celebrated by me by taking a day to spend on myself, with William and Sarah. Not that it would have meant anything to them - the anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi wasn't marked until 1934, and didn't become a public holiday until 1974. I've been thinking about Wellington Anniversary Day, which is now celebrated with a public holiday in the Wellington Province. I didn't make anything special of it this year, because it was actually the last day of my month-long summer vacation - I was thinking about work and getting ready to go back to the office. But then, how many of the thousands who celebrated with the traditional trip to the beach/river/lake and a barbecue were thinking about the original Wellington Anniversary Day?

The day was first celebrated in 1841, to mark the anniversary of the arrival of the Aurora, the first of the New Zealand Company settler ships to arrive in Wellington. The following year, William and Sarah would have been barely three months in Wellington when the second anniversary day rolled around. It wasn't a public holiday as we know them today, although it was celebrated on the nearest Monday, rather than the actual day, just as we do now.

There was a varied sports programme for the day, starting with a sailing match (boats with under 30 foot keel) and a rowing match between whaleboats in the morning. There was horse-racing over hurdles. For those with only themselvs to enter competition, there were sack-jumping races, the traditional catch-a-greasy-pig and climb-a-greasy-pole events, a one mile running race and a rifle-shooting match. In the evening, Maori from the Wellington side of the harbour staged a canoe race against those from the Petone side, won by the Petone men. The same day, the Wellington Horicultural and Botanical Society held its first exhibition, which saw fruit and vegetables of surpising quality and size exhibited. At 9pm, a ball was held - ticket price 10/6 for the men, who were free to bring as many ladies as they could persuade to join them.

How did William, Sarah and Ovid spend Wellington Anniversary Day 1842? I have absolutely no idea! At this stage I think it's unlikely that William would have had his own business up and running. I think he would probably have been taking work wherever he could get it, as a contractor and a labourer. There seems to have been plenty of labouring work around, clearing land and building roads. If he had the day off on Anniversary Day, it wouldn't have been a paid holiday, but it seems like everyone who could took the day to celebrate. I imagine that Sarah packed up a picnic of some kind (succeeding generations of Norgroves have been indefatigable picnickers) and they headed out into the sunny morning to watch the races from the beach. I think they would have gone along to the Horticultural Exhibition to check out the vegetables - they might have got a vegie garden of their own started by now, and would be keen to see what sort of specimens other people were producing. They could have walked along to Te Aro to take Ovid to watch the horse racing, and then back along the harbour to see the waka race. I see William networking with everyone he knew, and even those he didn't, his mind churning with ideas and possibilities. Perhaps he would have taken his sketch pad, and in quieter moments sketched the scenes in front of him - the sails in the distance, the whale boat, the Maori and their waka, the crowds gathered in the sun - trying to catch something of the simple enjoyment people were taking in their holiday fete. Sarah would have been catching up with friends from the Gertrude, the women comparing notes on how they were settling in, and how their children were coming along. Ovid would have been bounding around, wanting to look at everything, touch things, taste them - a source of constant concern to his mother in case he fell in the water or got trampled underfoot. The only time Sarah would have stopped glancing around anxiously to check on him would have been when he was safely on his father's shoulders, watching a race or catching a ride as they walked along.

By the time the waka race finished early in the evening, the light would have been fading, and the family would have been tired from all the walking and talking, and probably a little sunburned into the bargain. As they wouldn't have been going to the ball (not having 10/6 to spare, and not really being of the ball-going class) they might have just gone quietly home for supper and an early night. Or perhaps they joined friends for a private party at someone's house, taking food and sitting around talking, maybe dancing a few country dances to the sound of a fiddle. And at the very end of the day, before going to sleep, perhaps William and Sarah lay snuggled up in bed and reflected on the day, the different sights and sounds, the strange juxtaposition of the traditional English rural games against the unfamiliar Maori in their canoes. They would have been reminded of how far they were from their old home and the families they had left behind. Wellington, so alien at first, they realised had become home; after such a short time, it seemed like they had been here forever.