An unexpected find...

Sometimes, when your research-self is plodding away through a mass of material (or, even worse, very little material), getting nowhere fast, you happen across something entirely unanticipated.

Recently I took a colleague to visit Bryony Macmillan, descendant of Thomas Henry Potts, early conservationist and builder/owner of the original Ohinetahi homestead. Bryony, a gentle, elderly lady living alone in a big house, brought out boxes of material amongst which was this photo, featured below.

Initially I was interested because, unusually, it showed the Ohinetahi homestead from the coastal road. Then I spotted something unexpected - a jetty-like structure jutting out into the mudflats just below the house. I photographed the image and when I was back home, scanned it so that I could enlarge it on the iMac. Sure enough - a jetty about which I knew nothing, even although I had already investigated carefully (as I thought) the jetties at the head of the harbour. 

The jetty would only be functional at/around high tide. When was it built? (the photo is undated). What was its main purpose? How much was it used I wonder and by what sort of craft?? Was it perhaps built to enable the stone quarried from Quail Island and King Billy to be unloaded? This stone was used by Potts to significantly remodel and enlarge the house he had bought. Work on the house was completed by 1867. The structure in this photo looks a bit sad and was perhaps no longer in use by the time the photo was taken.

Whatever its provenance, coming across this image was completely serendipitous and very exciting.  A researcher's reward!

Ohinetahi from the foreshore road. (Bryony Macmillan)