R D Brown (right), inside the plane over Hastings being presented (person unknown) with the goodwill message from the mayor of Hastings, England. Photo / Hastings District Council
R D Brown (right), inside the plane over Hastings being presented (person unknown) with the goodwill message from the mayor of Hastings, England. Photo / Hastings District Council
The question is often asked whether Hastings was named after the English seaside city of the same name – famous for the 1066 Battle of Hastings.
Not helping the situation were English seaside towns of Eastbourne, Southampton, and St Aubyn – all given street names when Hastings, New Zealand, was laid out in the 1870s.
Hastings, New Zealand, was in fact named after Warren Hastings, a governor of British-ruled India in the 19th century – and Warren and Hastings Sts are named for him.
Ties between Hastings, England, and Hastings, New Zealand, were once very strong.
The relationship started on Empire Day on May 24, 1908 (a celebration day of the British Empire) when each school child at the Hastings District School gave a penny to purchase a Union Jack flag for a school in England. (This scheme was started in Australia by K S Smithhurst).
During World War II, tons of honey (organised by Havelock North’s Woodford House principal, Doris Holland, and their old girls), homemade toys, and small children’s clothes were dispatched to Hastings, England.
After the war, when the fastest and largest troop transport aircraft the Royal Air Force had ever built – which was named Handley Page Hastings (named for Hastings, England), it was decided to bring it to New Zealand in April 1948 to test its “performance in the tropics”. The Handley Page could carry 50 paratroopers, or a payload of 7.5 tons.
The aircraft set off on the 26,000 mile (41,842km) “proving flight” over the “Empire route” to India, Pakistan, Australia and New Zealand. Its cruising speed was 276mp/h (444km/h) and top speed 354mp/h (570km/h).
The Handley Page Hastings touched down at Whenuapai on April 25, 1948, and the same day left for Ohakea.
Waiting at Ohakea was Hastings mayor, R D Brown, and some of his councillors. On board the aircraft was a goodwill message from the mayor of Hastings, England, to R D Brown – no doubt thanking them for their support during World War II. Hastings was bombed 85 times from July 1940 to the end of the war in 1945.
R D Brown – a pilot and founder of the Hawke’s Bay Aero Club, Hastings, and his councillors, would be taken for a flight, which would circle Hastings for 17 minutes, completing some low passes over the town.
When the aircraft was circling over Hastings, the goodwill message was presented to R D Brown, “thus forging yet another link of friendship and goodwill between the two towns”.
The strong bonds with the Northern and Southern Hemisphere Hastings towns diminished around the 1960s. Hastings formalised a sister city relationship with Guilin, China, in March 1981. This was signed by Hastings mayor J J O’Connor and Guilin’s Liang Shan.
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