Historic HB: After much ado the swing bridge was finally built

Puketpu Swing Bridge in 1909. Credit: Lester Oliver

Settlement by Europeans on land around Hawke's Bay in the 1850s and 1860s meant bridge building became of importance, as unlike Māori who used waterways – drays and packhorses needed an easier passage across rivers.

Puketapu, which means "sacred hill" in Māori, became a settlement when the 65th Regiment militia, who were building the road to Patoka and Rissington in the 1860s, encamped there. They also built a bridge over the Tutaekuri river to Moteo.

Before roads were built, the provincial Government of Hawke's Bay advertised a tender in 1859 for a mail delivery to Puketapu to be conducted every Tuesday morning via the Tutaekuri river. Return mail from Puketapu was taken to Napier the same way on Wednesday afternoons.

Major George Whitmore had purchased land from the Crown in 1861 in partnership with Captain John Carstairs McNeill. George had named Rissington after his family's home village in Gloucestershire, England.

He also just happened to be the commander of the 65th Regiment, and owned most of the land which the road was to pass through on the way to his property, Rissington.

When E. H. Bold became County Engineer in 1877, one of his first duties was to make a report on the Puketapu bridge built by the militia in the 1860s. He found it unsafe, and ordered immediate repairs by replacing rotting timber.

A better bridge was needed, however, and those in the area argued for a new one to be built. They had many years of "fruitless applications to the authorities – who contended that a traffic bridge at this point would be enormously expensive".

In 1892, it looked like a bridge would eventuate when Charles Dugald Kennedy, the Hawke's Bay County Council engineer, said a new Puketapu bridge would cost £1,700 (2022: $381,000). But the Council was unwilling to authorise the money, saying it was too expensive.

The great floods of 1897 saw the 1860s Puketapu bridge swept away, and a temporary one was put up on the old piles so drays and livestock could pass over.

It appears a ford (raised part of a river) was used to cross over the Tutaekuri river near the Puketapu settlement, so the temporary bridge may not have lasted long.

There is an account from the early 1900s that school children could not cross the river after heavy rain, so they had to stay at home (perhaps not very reluctantly). The ford was dangerous, and people had drowned crossing or had lucky escapes.

Finally, in 1906, a swing bridge was built, with the work starting in June. It would avoid costly structural piles by being suspended over the Tutaekuri river. It was the government which stepped in to fund it, after the Hawke's Bay County Council's continual reluctance to build one.

They bought the land to build the approach to the bridge for £100 ($19,000) and made a grant of £850 ($160,000) to build it. The Hawke's Bay County Council decided to give £300 ($56,000) "in order to make a thoroughly satisfactory and efficient job of it all."

The swing bridge, at 494 feet (150m) in length was believed to have been the longest single-span structure of its type in the North Island. There was ten 700 feet (213m) supporting cables of plough steel (high quality steel containing carbon, used to make wire ropes) imported from England.

Each of the ten cables had passed the 'admiralty test', which meant they had to have a breaking strain of 55.5 tons (55,500kg).

The wooden towers supporting the bridge were built on 16 concrete pedestals, and the bridge's support anchors were four blocks of concrete 21 feet (6.4m) in length, seven feet (2.1m) high and five feet (1.5m) thick. All of the foundations of the pedestals and the tower stands were all embedded in the solid limestone rock.

Joyful Puketapu residents turned out in force to the opening on 24 October 1906, to see the wife of the Hawke's Bay County Chairman T. Mason Chambers, Margaret, cutting the ribbon, which "was severed and the structure was declared open for traffic."

The first across the bridge was a Puketapu resident who was a few months old – Jean Ballantyne – pushed across in her pram by her mother. Many will remember Jean affectionally as a teacher of dancing to four generations of children. She was married to Cedric Wright, long-time caretaker and manager of the Hastings Municipal Theatre.

Apparently crossing the swing bridge could be a frightening experience in high winds – as testified by John Marshall, saying it "swayed all over the place".

Marshall was on the bridge during the 1931 Hawke's Bay earthquake, and said it "rocked, swayed and groaned horribly and the river behaved like Rotorua geysers, throwing up water spouts".

Tragedy struck in 1948 when Henry Burton and his son Joseph, aged 5, were killed when his truck carrying a heavy load of concrete posts and piles was too heavy for the bridge to support, crashing down 40 feet (12.1m) into the river. The truck landed upside down, and they were trapped in five feet (1.5m) of water.

The present Puketapu bridge to replace the swing bridge, was opened in 1963, costing £32,000 ($1.497 million).

Michael Fowler (mfhistory@gmail.com) is a contract researcher and takes commissions to write business history in Hawke's Bay. Follow him on facebook.com/michaelfowlerhistory