Uretara Hotel, now the Talisman. Early cricket matches were played on a cricket pitch on this land. Photo / www.westernbay.recollect.co.nz/nodes/view/361, Katikati Library Archives
Uretara Hotel, now the Talisman. Early cricket matches were played on a cricket pitch on this land. Photo / www.westernbay.recollect.co.nz/nodes/view/361, Katikati Library Archives
Historian Chris Bedford of Athenree recently wrote a university research assignment about the origins of cricket in Katikati. The following is a condensed version of Chris' assignment.
When any of Katikati Cricket Club's approximately 120 playing members take to the field next summer, they will probably little realise the challenges facing those who first sought to establish cricket in Katikati.
The first recorded game involving a Katikati cricket team was played in Tauranga on March 9, 1878. At that time the Katikati district was sparsely populated, being part of what was known as the Katikati-Te Puna Block, a large area forcibly purchased from Māori following the end of the Tauranga theatre of the New Zealand Land Wars.
Those who first played cricket were mostly men who had arrived in Katikati on the immigrant ships Carisbrooke Castle (1875) and Lady Jocelyn (1878) as part of the settlement established by George Vesey Stewart.
In a new and unfamiliar country, cricket was something familiar, which linked them with their recently departed homeland, and with other settlers. It was a recreation, but more importantly, it provided valuable social contact for settlers who often lived isolated lives.
We are entirely dependent on reports in the Bay of Plenty Times and Clement and McCormack's book The Pioneers, Settlers and Families of Katikati and District (available in Katikati Library) for information about these men of the Katikati Block who were motivated to take time from their pioneering farm work, and introduce cricket to this outpost of Empire.
In particular, it was the arrival of the second echelon of settlers on the Lady Jocelyn in August 1878, that considerably increased the pool of cricket players. The names of many of the early settlers appear in early match reports, with the names of M P (Michael) Stewart, Alexander McDougall Ralston, and Richard Villiers Surtees appearing most prominently over an extended period.
Katikati Cricket Club formed and re-formed several times in the early years of the settlement, with the earliest known reference to the "newly formed Katikati Cricket Club" being in the Bay of Plenty Times of November 14, 1878.
Katikati-Tauranga Highway in the days when it was nothing more than a dirt road. Photo / supplied John Hume, www.westernbay.recollect.co.nz
Challenges Two particular challenges facing early cricketers were those of travelling to wherever the matches were being played, and surviving the vagaries of the locally formed cricket pitches.
Katikati was an isolated settlement in its early days, with uncertain access either by sea or land. Travel by ferry was the default means of getting to Tauranga, a journey that could take three or four hours because of tides, weather, and sandbanks.
The alternative was the "road" from Tauranga to Katikati, not for the fainthearted as it required crossing 10 rivers, all of which had steep or swampy approaches, and none of which were initially bridged. It was not until after 1882 that the road north of Katikati was more than a horse track.
Finding a paddock flat enough for cricket on which a pitch could be formed was difficult. One can imagine the challenge facing those who turned up at Denis Foley's paddock for practice on November 9, 1878, a rough piece of ground adjoining the Te Mania Stream at Rereatukahia.
Later games were played in the paddock next to Uretara Hotel (now the Talisman) – "not quite so level as a billiard table" - and in a paddock belonging to Mr W Lockington, whose farm extended from the western side of the Uretara Stream to Busby Road and included the area where the Highfields subdivision now is. The early cricketers made their own fun in less than ideal conditions.
Lord Ranfurly, the Governor-General, visited Katikati in 1905. This photo was taken outside the old Talisman Hotel. Photo / www.westernbay.recollect.co.nz
Who did the early Katikati cricketers play against? Initially, they played against each other. Games were organised between "North" and "South" with the centrally located Uretara River being the dividing line, or between "Married" and "Single", but links were soon established with the Tauranga Cricket Club and matches organised, notwithstanding the challenges each team experienced travelling to the match venues.
Katikati did not seem fazed by the fact that Tauranga usually won the matches by a significant amount; it seemed everyone simply enjoyed the opportunity to play cricket.
Uretara Hotel From the beginning, Katikati cricket and Uretara Hotel had a symbiotic relationship. The hotel was the centre of social life in the new community.
The Uretara Hotel (now the Talisman) was opened in 1877, and owned by Barney MacDonnell between 1878 and 1896. He was well known and respected for his fairness, and his advice was sought by many locals. He was undoubtedly a very good publican, generous in making his premises available for cricket club meetings and his adjoining paddock for cricket matches and profiting from the liquid refreshment sold to the cricketers and their supporters.
When the members of the present Katikati Cricket Club take to the field in the future, they do so on the shoulders of those first pioneers who came to a new land, faced uncertainty of climate, the difficulty of travel, the roughness of cricket pitches, intermittent organisation, and who took time out from their busy daily lives to continue the game they loved, and give it a future now enjoyed more than 140 years later in the beautiful and prosperous Katikati district.
