Dacre Cottage and the Weiti Block: their history and preservation
– by Felicity Goodyear-Smith.
2.00pm at MERC, 1045 Beach Road, Long Bay. If possible, please RSVP to info@veritypress.com for catering purposes.
$39 (makes a great gift).
Available online at Canoeandkayak.
The book tells the story of Dacre Cottage and the Weiti block of land on which it is located. Born into an English aristocratic family, Ranulph Dacre was a ship’s captain, Caribbean and Pacific trader, adventurer, entrepreneur and businessman. The book contains many stories about him, his family of eleven children, and many of his contemporaries including Chief Eruera Patuone, Governors William Hobson and George Grey, inn-keeper Maurice Kelly, Sir Joh Logan Campbell, ship-builder and timberman Gordon Davis Browne, and numerous others. There are tales of huge fortunes won and lost.
Dacre built the one-room brick cottage near the beach at Weiti 1855, now the second-oldest building in Auckland. He had purchased the 3333 acre Weiti block of land in 1848. Once he had logged the kauri trees, he brought his 16-year-old son Henry over from Sydney to live in the cottage and farm the land. A few years later, in 1859, Dacre moved the rest of his family from Australia to Auckland, and some of his other sons were to became notable individuals in early colonial New Zealand.
The book outlines the further history of Weiti from farmland to pine forest and now a gated residential community. It documents the restoration of the Cottage as a historical building in 1984, and further efforts to maintain and preserve it up to the present.
Situated between the Ōkura and Weiti Rivers, with no road access, the Weiti block has been spared the loss of coastal bird habitat suffered on the beaches to the north and south, where intensive urbanisation has spread. Many native birds live in the forest, with rare tomtits, stitchbirds, bellbirds and kākā seen on occasion. Migratory godwits return annually to the cheniers, and the lagoon is home to the rare native duck pateke, white-faced herons, banded rail, pied stilts, and other wading birds. Dotterels and oystercatchers breed in the sand-dunes and seabirds patrol the beaches. Stingrays live in the estuary and orcas visit on occasion.
The book reports on the many individuals and groups who have worked tirelessly to protect this unique block of land and the wildlife it contains, addressing the issues of invasive exotic plants and animals, of pollution of the land and of the sea, and endeavouring to preserve both our historic and our natural heritage.
All proceeds from sales of the book go towards the ongoing maintenance and improvement programme for the Cottage and the Historic and Esplanade Reserves.