John Roy was appointed provincial engineer in 1860 for the province of Otago, which was then bigger economically than Wellington.
He had purchased a sheep run in Hawke's Bay in the late 1850s, and is thought to have taken this up in July 1861 after leaving his position in Otago that year.
The stay in our part of the country seems to have been short lived when he returned to Otago. John passed away at Otago aged 41 in February 1864, after visiting Napier just the month before.
He had significant land investments in the lower North Island which were sold at auction in September 1864. John's wife Mary (1833-1922) outlived him by 58 years.
This writer is not aware who named Roy's Hill but the earliest reference to it I could find was 1891.
John Roy had other areas named after him in the South Island, such as Mount Roy and Roy's Peak.
Roy's Hill has had a number of different activities conducted there over the years, and is now well-known as a grape growing district. It was for many years a rifle range from at least the early 1900s.
The army has over the past 50 years had training camps there. Go-karting is also associated with Roy's Hill, beginning there in 1969.
The club continues today as Kartsport Hawke's Bay, where V8 super car champion and Bathurst multi-winner Greg Murphy raced in his younger days. Thunder Park – a drag racing strip was also nearby but closed in 1997.
Roy's Hill once contained a rubbish dump operated by the then Hastings City Council from 1954.
When it became apparent in the early 1970s that pollution could infiltrate the unconfined aquifer (shingle not protected by overlays of silt or mud) on which the Roy's Hill 10.97ha rubbish dump was situated, the dump would have to be removed.
The Roy's Hill dump site was closed to the general public in 1988, when a new landfill at Omarunui was opened.
Clean hardfill material was allowed by the council to form a stable cap over the unconfined aquifer until 2000.
The new Hastings District Council and the Landmarks Trust identified in 2002 the former Roy's Hill dump area as a potential public open space area but had to wait until 2006 when the shaping of the protective cap over the unconfined aquifer was completed.
Plantings of over 6000 native shrubs have occurred since 2009 and the protective cap area was grassed in 2010. It has been a community effort to transform the former rubbish dump at Roy's Hill into the Roy's Hill Reserve.
A new regional prison was also planned for Roy's Hill in the 1970s – but as no industry could be near the unconfined aquifer, the Hastings City Council offered another site at Mangaroa.
Such was the unpopularity of the proposed Mangaroa site, authorisation to build was not given until 1983.
From once an area considered a wasteland due to its shingle base created from the nearby Ngaruroro River breaking its banks over time, the Roy's Hill area has now been transformed due to the land being valuable for viticulture, and the old dump site transformed into a green public space.
You can find out more about the work of Landmarks Trust at https://www.hastingsdc.govt.nz/hastings/about-hastings/landmarks/
• Do you have any photos of Thunderpark Raceway or were involved with it? I would like to do a story on it in 2018. Please email me or phone 027 4521 056
• Last week I mentioned David Kennedy was a Marist Brother. He was in fact a priest of the Society of Mary (Marist Fathers). Many have also pointed out Nasa didn't exist in 1910. It used the Meeanee observatory photos of Halley's Comet in the 1980s to commemorate its reappearance in 1986.
• Michael Fowler (mfhistory@gmail.com) is an EIT accounting lecturer, and in his spare time a recorder of Hawke's Bay's history.
