1841: Cornwallis

Cornwallis, on the Waitakaries side of Maunkau Harbour was once intended to be a great Auckland township. Today substantial houses and suburban-style dwellings are displacing the summer holiday batches that used to be the mainstay.

Into the 1960s Cornwallis still had a post office and store (ref. image.) All of that changed during the 1970s when Auckland Council flip-flopped on allowing the batches and had them bulldozed to the ground.

T’was a Scottish scheme and named for Lord Cornwallis of British Raj fame, or, on the other hand, for Captain William Cornwallis Symonds. The idea was to establish a milling town and to that end the first and only colonist ship, The Brilliant, lurched its way from Scotland to Manukau Harbour. ‘Brilliant’ was a slow, risky, piece of junk which crew and passengers abandoned along the way but those remaining landed on 29 October 1841.

Were the colonists met by a prepared township? No; It was a beach and bush wilderness. Symonds may have done his bit to sort things out had he not “drowned” in the act four weeks later but he is remembered by the cemetery and street named for him in central Auckland. Symond’s body was never found; He has no grave in any cemetery.

Captain Theophilus Heale¹ came though for the settlement, bringing the Manukau Steam Sawmill and a hotel within a few months. A colonist from the Brilliant named Lachlan McLachlan picked up Symonds’ slack but it wasn’t enough and the scheme folded.

Into the 1890s the area had become a derelict ‘no mans land’. Auckland Council tried to sell it off to recoup their rates (hard to justify. Did they even maintain a road or warf?) but the very hour before the sale a mystery individual paid the rates, leaving Cornwallis preserved.

In 1910, McLachlan’s son signed over Cornwallis as a gift to Auckland Council. Sounds suspicious to an Anarchist that they finally got their hands on the land and I wonder under what circumstances? Between the war years, the Council started permitting the building of those holiday batches mentioned above. This particular thread of State mischief is best understood by an analysis of the politics of the Auckland Council over its history.

As for how it got started and why it failed, that is a thread of the short-lived William Hobson Gang. More about that some other time.

—
1 Heale is a fascinating man. The settlement is partly his own idea and I’ll write a post about that soon too

See Also: 1863: Pollok Settlement

Image ref. Cornwallas 1961; Sir George Grey Special Collections

Image ref. John Symonds and Theophilus Heale as Members of the House of Representatives; Alexander Turnbull Library
(John was William’s brother)

Image ref. Overlooking Cornwallis from the west; AHNZ Archives (May 2015)

Image ref. 1840 street plan, nzmuseums.co.nz

Ref. NZ Herald 4 November 1892; Papers Past