Moving house

A bunch of us spent yesterday helping our friend Helen move house. It wasn’t the greatest of days – it always seems to pour with rain as soon as you’ve got the beds on the back of a trailer. So there we were, somewhere between cloudbursts – Helen and I were stuffing stereo components and soft toys in the boot of her car, Mac was tying down furniture on the back of his trailer, Em was trying to persuade baby Isobel that sleep was a good idea, and Murray, Dennis and Ivor were hefting furniture onto another trailer at the front of the house – when Helen said, “how do people who don’t have friends manage this?” Good question – I guess they pay people, or struggle along by themselves. And, as I’m still working through William and Sarah’s first few days in Wellington, the big question for me was, how did the Norgroves manage their move from the immigration barracks at Kaiwharawhara to their first house on Thorndon Flat?

The Norgroves had friends, yes, although possibly not like 6-foot, six and a half inch Dennis, able to pick up large sofas and “persuade” them through narrow doorways. They didn’t have family on hand – no parents looking after the kids and organising sandwiches and bacon-and-egg pie for the workers’ lunch, no sister and brother-in-law to help out. But then again, they didn’t have beds and sofas, sideboards and fridges either. The assisted immigrants who travelled steerage to New Zealand couldn’t bring any furniture with them, unlike the cabin passengers, who could bring whatever they could squeeze into their cabins. The only furniture William and Sarah had for their home was the table that William made for that first cup of tea when they came ashore from Gertrude. There might have been some very basic items of furniture on the mud whare that became their first home – maybe shelves and hooks on the wall, perhaps a rough chair or bench, but probably not even a bed.

Many settlers slept on the floor to start with. The first primitive bed was often made from stout stakes rammed into the earth floor, with a rope and sacking hammock base slung from them, and a sacking mattress stuffed with plant material on top. The wooden boxes that brought possessions from England served double duty as both storage and seating. One large tin tub would have been used for everything from washing dishes to bathing them and the baby.

If William and Sarah couldn’t bring furniture, what would they have brought in the boxes that travelled in Gertrude’s hold? William’s tools were a priority – not just the tools of his plumbing trade, but general purpose tools as well. Sarah tells us that on that first day, William unpacked “saw, hammer and nails”, and began making a table.

Sarah would have brought her essential kitchen cooking equipment, including a camp oven; their first kitchen would also have had their tin or pewter plates, cutlery and mugs from the voyage, as well as their share of Gertrude’s left-over provisions. The immigrant ships stocked provisions for six months, and each mess could elect to use less and draw the remainder on landing. Sarah would have had their share of a month’s rations – around 15 kgs of preserved meat, 25kg of ship’s biscuits, and lesser amounts of flour, rice, preserved potatoes, peas, raisins, suet, butter, sugar, tea, salt, coffee, pepper, mustard and vinegar. She wouldn’t have had anywhere to store it, and one of William’s early priorities would have been the manufacture of some kind of food safe, to keep rats and mice away from the supplies, and perhaps some storage bins to keep the flour, rice and sugar dry.

We have no idea of what else William and Sarah brought with them. They would have had their own clothes, and Ovid’s, and Sarah would probably have brought quantities of several different fabrics along with her sewing bag. Would they have brought a china dinner set, or like many settlers, assumed it could be readily replaced on arrival? I’m sure William would have brought books as well as his painting and drawing materials. And Sarah would have asked, just as friends and family have asked me every time I move house, “do you really need all these books?” And like me, William’s reply would have been, “of course”. In fact, like me, William would have probably jettisoned shirts and trousers and jerseys to fit in a few more essential books! Did Sarah have quantities of best linen – embroidered pillow-cases and table cloths – in addition to the sheets, blankets and towels brought along for use on the ship? Would she have tucked treasured knick-knacks and ornaments, sugar bowls, and glasses, in amongst the clothes? What difficult choices had to be made by these people who had far fewer possessions than most of us these days; what should go to the new country, and what should be left behind?

At least having little luggage and only one piece of furniture should have made moving from the immigration barracks to the new house relatively easy. The distance was around two to three kilometres – half an hour to an hour’s walk. John Plimmer tells us that he “hailed a man who was driving a team of bullocks, and asked him if he would take my luggage to town”; Plimmer viewed the man’s rates as extortionate, but accepted them, and so the Plimmer family left the immigration barracks. The Norgroves had no friends and family rolling up in cars with trailers, and there were no household removal firms. Did they find someone to carry their belongings in a bullock cart, or did they walk to the new house, William perhaps making several trips to bring their boxes? I don’t know; for the purposes of the story I have to guess, and my guess is that they walked, carrying Ovid and their bags. At least it would have given William time to try and prepare Sarah for the fact that their new home was nothing like what they had left behind, although probably nothing could have really prepared her for the first sight of that mud whare with clay floors. And while Sarah might have wanted to collapse on the floor and cry her heart out in disappointment, I bet she just straightened her shoulders and set about turning that rough dwelling into a home for her little family.