[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]The timber firm of Mander & Bradley milled Nihotupu. Francis “Frank” Mander and Samuel Bradley were principals of the company. They bought the rights to mill Wasley’s bush in 1895, from a firm called Clinkard & McLeod who had acquired it from the Wasley family in 1890.
Mander was Onehunga-born and started his working life at 10 years of age. He was in his mid-40s when the Nihotupu operation started, but this was not his first timber-milling venture; he was a lifelong timber man and had already milled at Awhitu, Kaipara and the Northern Wairoa. Mander was later a Member of Parliament and newspaper proprietor.
Mander’s partner, Samuel Bradley, was also Onehunga-born and a successful businessman. The youngest son of a Fencible, Bradley owned coastal ships and successfully raced horses as a hobby.
The Nihotupu trees had survived into the 1890s because they couldn’t be extracted with the usual transport method of driving dams. Mander & Bradley had the know-how and capital to tackle this difficult extraction and they hired as mill manager Nicholas Gibbons who had long experience with his family’s operations at Huia and Whatipu and had managed Mander & Bradley’s Albertland operation. Nicholas’s eldest son, Robert Henry “Bob” Gibbons, then 32 years of age, was the bush contractor. The Nihotupu mill was located in the long shallow basin just west of Waiatarua. It employed 58 men in the summer season and 30 in the winter when the weather and ground conditions affected the output of the mill.
It would have been the Gibbons, father and son, who worked out how to get the trees from Nihotupu down to Henderson Valley 300 metres below. A journalist who Frank Mander invited to come and inspect the system has left us with a very full report of how it worked.
“The mill, under the control of Mr [Nicholas] Gibbons, is well equipped for dealing with the large kauri logs, which average six feet in diameter, running up to eight and 10 feet.”
When the journalist visited in December 1897, 100,000 super feet a week were being produced by the mill. Loads of sawn timber were winched from the mill up to the ridge which is today the Scenic Drive using a horse-powered capstan, then lowered on a precipitous tramway which ran on steep inclines and over sixteen bridges to the valley below. The tramway used a unique three-rail track and gravity system whereby the heavy descending wagon hauled up an empty wagon on the other side, using ropes. Teams of strong horses were used to pull the laden bogies on the three-stage tramway which not only ran across ground, but on viaducts suspended in the air. The tramway dropped 300 metres in 1.5 kilometres on its journey. Ten trucks went out a day, each carrying 1800 to 2000 feet of timber. When the laden trucks reached the depot in Henderson valley, a traction engine took the timber to the rail line or the highest navigable part of Henderson Creek, from whence it was transported by scows pulled by steam tugs to Auckland. All the output of the mill went to the newly established Melbourne syndicate, the Kauri Timber Company, which had headquarters in Customs Street. At one point Bob Gibbons sent down to the Kauri Timber Company’s headquarters a section of a huge kauri that was then exhibited in its window. It stood “the height of a butcher’s block, and is over 36 feet in circumference without a fault or ‘shakes’ in it”. It was so large it was suggested it go to Auckland Museum.
The life of this mill was estimated to be only three years. In January 1899 a fire started by Oliver Wasley burning his boundary, destroyed the mill, damaged the tramlines and burned some of the bush. Mander & Bradley’s Nihotupu mill was valued at £3000 when it burned down. The company said it had no insurance but would rebuild to cut the remaining timber which it said was six months’ supply. By late 1899 Mander & Bradley had wound up operations and taken the equipment to a new site at Puhipuhi, north of Whangarei.
Sandra Coney[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”5334″ img_size=”large”][vc_column_text]A group of men, who are in the process of laying a bush tramway in the Waitakere Ranges, have stopped work for a cup of tea. A couple of their tea billy cans are resting on the tramway. Both sleepers and rails are wooden. From left: Bill Cantwell, ‘Dad’ Mowatt, ‘Yankee Sam’, John Cantwell (nicknamed ‘Grannie’), John Mills (nicknamed ‘Soldier Jack’), Slater and Frank Mander. This was the tramway for Mander and Bradley’s sawmill which was situated in the upper Nihotupu Stream valley. Historical note: For more information about Mander and Bradley’s mill see Ben Copedo’s research document: Mander and Bradley’s Sawmill Workings in the Upper Nihotupu Valley, 1895-1899, (2011)
Photographer: Joseph Hibbs
Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections JTD-08C-01039-1[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”5333″ img_size=”large”][vc_column_text]View of mill buildings at Mander and Bradley’s sawmill in the upper Nihotupu Stream valley in the Waitakere Ranges, showing also the holding pond, road down through the bush and several large kauri trees. In the centre middleground are the mill houses, partly hidden by trees, with the bunk house and cook house at far right. A large amount of sawn timber is piled up at the left side of the mill building. Historical note: For more information about Mander and Bradley’s mill see Ben Copedo’s research document: Mander and Bradley’s Sawmill Workings in the Upper Nihotupu Valley, 1895-1899, (2011).
Photographer: Joseph Hibbs
Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections JTD-08L-00527-1[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]