Church Bay/Kaioruru #2: Quarries

Shortly after the Deep Sea Fishing Company wound up, ‘Payne’s Quarry’ opened on the north-east headland of Church Bay. There was a big demand for ballast for sailing ships. The shingle beach west of Payne’s quarry and the shingle banks in Church Bay were the first sources of ballast to be exploited. The sturdy ballast-boats could be grounded at low tide and filled with shingle before the tide rose to refloat them.[1] Later, when the easy ballast had been lifted, rock was quarried from the cliffs and a trolley wharf would be required to barrow the rock out to the waiting ballast boats. Quarrymen lived in the huts on the Church Bay beach left vacant by the Deep Sea Fishing Company. 

Map showing location of the many Church Bay quarries, drawn by Oliver Hunter. 
(Hunter archive, Mary Harrison)

Names associated with early ballast quarrying at Church Bay include Miller and Maughan, Haydon and Payne and Payne alone. As early as 1859 Miller & Maughan were advertising ballast available from their wharf at Church Bay (where?).[2] The advertisements only appear for a few months. In 1870 John Stinson and Jim Hayden requested permission to build a small jetty on the south-west side of Church Bay.[3] The purpose of such a jetty was to load a ballast boat worked by the two men. They included with their request a letter, indicating permission to build, from Mark Stoddart who owned the land fronting onto the proposed jetty. The Superintendent William Rolleston and the Harbour Board approved the proposal but it is unclear whether such a jetty was ever built.

Lyttelton Times 16 November 1859. Note the early date and reference to a wharf at Church Bay

Stinson & Haydon request to build a small ballasting jetty at Church Bay, February 1870.
Archives New Zealand/ECan, CAAR CH287 19946 Box CP229

Sketch accompanying Stinson and Hayden's application. From the position of the proposed jetty it seems this might have been the quarry later worked by Arthur Hunter (see Oliver Hunter's sketch map at beginning of post).
Archives New Zealand/ECan, CAAR CH287 19946 Box CP229

The quarrying activity on this western side of Church Bay angered James Hay who owned sections 13502 and 839 running between Church Bay and Charteris Bay. Hay claimed that the ballastmen had broken up the chain reserve along his frontage and were encroaching on his land. He wrote to the Secretary for Public Works asking if "they have any right to brake [sic] up and remove our frontage."[4] The authorities could not identify any such damage. James Hay had his own quarry on the Black Point headland. In fact the surprise (to me anyway) in Oliver Hunter's hand-drawn map above is just how many locals had small quarries from which they probably extracted stone for their own use. 

The ballast business was not without its drama. It was a dangerous occupation. It was also highly competitive. In 1872 a case was taken by John Haydon against James Payne. Payne was accused of maliciously damaging the Mystery, jointly owned by Haydon, Stinson and Brown, by boring holes in the boat and scuttling her. Both Payne and Haydon had tendered for ballasting the Ben More with Payne apparently taking it upon himself to eliminate the opposition!

Later the hatchet must have been buried because, by 1876, Payne and Haydon are advertising their services jointly. In July 1879 James Payne was working at the Cameron Brothers quarry in Diamond Harbour. Rock that the ballastmen were about to blast broke away, falling on Payne and killing him almost immediately. We know Haydon continued to work the quarry at Church Bay because in December of 1879 the Press reported that John Burgess and John Laurence, quarrymen at Mr Haydon’s quarry in Church Bay, narrowly escaped being drowned in the harbour. They were heading for the quarry late morning when the wind capsized their boat. The men spent an hour in the water before being rescued, “numbed and exhausted”.[5]

Oliver Hunter evokes the sounds of the quarrymen at work.

I vividly remember carnival-like mixture of sounds when, on a bright moonlight night, I lay in bed in the attic of my parents’ cottage home on the hillside above Church Bay: the crashing of rock being quarried and broken, the tapping and tinkling of steel drills, the constant squealing of the never-oiled axles of overloaded barrows, the rattle as the loads were tipped down a hatch, the flapping of canvas plus minor squeals from block and tackle. And through it all ran the clear call of human voices. Near at hand an irate quarry-man gave a spontaneous and unfavourable opinion of his amateur fellow-driller, while further out beyond the bay some old sailor, at the tiller of his craft, could be heard singing pleasantly “Rolling home to dear old England”.[6]

Looking across Church Bay/Kaioruru to the ballast quarry (centre) on the Black Point headland, no date. There may be a rough road going down to the point? (Hunter archive, Mary Harrison)

The same quarry, still visible though overgrown, in 2018 (Jane Robertson)

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[1] Oliver Hunter, The Magnostic Philosopher of Church Bay, Friends of Diamond Harbour Library, 2006, 31

[2] Lyttelton Times, 16 November 1859

[3] Support for application to erect a jetty at Church Bay. Archives NZ/ECan, CAAR CH287 19946 Box CP 229
[4] Letter from James Hay re ballastmen damage to foreshore July 1875. Archives NZ/ECan, CAAR CH287 19946 Box CP263

[5] Press, 22 December 1879
[6] Press, September 22 1973