Bryan Winters asserts his moral right to be identified as the author of

this work under the terms of Section 96 of the Copyright Act of 1994
(New Zealand.) All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
produced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, or
mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or information storage
and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher.

© Bryan Winters 2012

ISBN: 978-1-927199-81-7

PO BOX4075MOUNTMAUNGANUISOUTH
BAYOFPLENTY3149NEWZEALAND-AOTEAROA
www.oceanbooks.co.nz
 CONTENTS

Acknowledgments 5

From Epping to Otorohanga 7

The Mayor to Marx 24

Fisherman to engineer 39

Prisoner to poacher 52

Unionist to fish breeder 67

What the web says: 2011 78

What the books say: 1922 99

The birth of invasive 112

A coarse philosophy 127

The fish spreader 140

The growth of invasive 153

Academics against invasives 171

Coarse fishing day 181

Lawbreaker to legend 191

Exit 206
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Contrary to the global norm of six, I think New Zealand has only three degrees
of separation. And it was by such circumstances that Graham and Mavis Dyer
heard about Jenny Argante, and Jenny mentioned something to me about fish and
Communists. That was a curious enough combination to follow up on, and this
book is the end result. Graham and Mavis were simply wonderful, opening up the
trove of documents that either they had, or Stewart Smith had bequeathed to their
care, let alone the list of contacts I was able to follow up on.
I could not have got better insights into Stewart Smith than from Graham and
Mavis, and from Edna Smith, and through some movie footage captured by
Raewyn Turner. Jan and Keith Austen shared invaluable background, and it was
always a pleasure talking with Paul Sutherland, whether over a coffee or alongside
a fishing pond.
I owe a lot to Brendan Hicks who didn't need to see me, but consented to. I
deeply appreciate the fact we can question prevailing views in this nation, and that
some academics like him do not shut their doors to other opinions. That meeting
led on to further communications with government departments, although shortly
after that stage I decided to cease recording names. It is not my intent to
embarrass anyone, as it is hard work running those outfits.
Thankfully Lee Murray and Jenny again worked the grammar and flow over for
me. Kirsty McKenzie added the fish drawings, and the maps came from NIWA
with no questions asked. Nikki Slade-Robinson wonderfully transformed my cover
graphic ideas.
At the end of it all, this is simply a story, hopefully fascinating, about past and
current events that most New Zealanders will not have heard of.

7
 “The trick is growing up without growing old.” Casey Stengel

From Epping to Otorohanga

Sometime in 1999 an eighty-six year old man walked through New
Zealand customs bearing illegal fish ova. He had secretly imported fish
before, and his record was lodged on many files. On this occasion though,
he passed through as if the officials didn't exist. Indeed despite the fact
New Zealand retains electronic exit and entry records, no data on his
passage could be found when the authorities were asked to search for
them.
Obviously the TV series ‘Border Security’ can show only those
miscreants they apprehend. Watching an episode would lead one to believe
all such offenders are wicked, do indeed carry evil substances - or have
been misled. The powers that be had long been citing the elderly Stewart
Smith in all those categories. It is beyond governmental logic that an
individual might bring outlawed organisms into this country under the
belief he was doing something good. Such definitely belong to the misled
section.
Or perhaps that is how we are meant to think.
Most New Zealanders can readily decry some absurd parking regulations
or traffic give-way laws. Yet somehow when it extends to importing living
organisms it sounds to them like smuggling. But this is neither a conspiracy
tale nor an eco-terrorism thriller. Despite the fact his deeds utterly changed
the inland waterways of New Zealand, a wide group of his countrymen
respected Stewart Smith as an alternative thinker. He himself felt that he
fought a lifelong battle attempting to enhance freshwater fishing in the
upper North Island.
This is his story, and the Pandora’s Box of environmental issues,
commercial agendas and blunders that his life’s work exposed.
Before we start, let me explain how it is presented. Stewart Smith wrote a
lot down, or dictated it into a computer. Where possible, we have tidied his
grammar up, and put it in sequential order, but still give him his voice. This
will allow you to build your own picture of him, besides reading tales and
intrigues you haven't heard, stretching from the 1910s to post-World War 2
New Zealand.
Then we get into some environmental background, including a little
science translated into layman's language. Finally we enter the political

9
arena Stewart skirmished in, and uncover agendas left, right and centre -
including, to be absolutely fair, his own.
This is more than a political tale, though it's tempting to portray Stewart
only in terms of his struggle against the powers. That wouldn't do him
justice, if you can ignore the pun. Simply put, he lived every day to the
maximum. Here he is, in his own words, in 1935:

“Barley and George Faulkner were running the ferry service between
Tauranga and Mount Maunganui and they asked us to tow a bargeful of
young cattle out to Motiti Island behind the Rimu. It was my job to push
them all into the sea in Paterson’s Bay on the island.
“It took us longer than we expected to get there, and we knew that with
a dropping tide we could not let that barge touch bottom. If it did, it would
probably be another two tides before we got it off.
“So we anchored about 50 yards off the beach. While Tom (Dobson)
directed operations from the Rimu, I got onto the barge to get the cattle off.
I took an oar with me as a persuader. They were soon bumping into each
other and falling into the sea, which gave me a lot more room on the barge
to manoeuvre.
“The first cows into the sea headed straight for the beach and the rest
started to jump in and follow. But there was a bull, and it had different
ideas. I was doing everything I could to get it overboard but it was
determined not to go, and I think I was more frightened of it than it was
of me.
“From the Rimu, Tom was giving me all sorts of advice, and I
particularly remember one suggestion. ‘Get behind and shove that oar up
its arse!’
“Now, I knew there was no way Tom would come on that barge to help
me so I took my time. I managed to get that bull facing towards me with its
backside near the edge of the barge. Then I hit it hard on the nose and it
fell over backwards into the sea. A second or two later it came up facing in
the wrong direction and started swimming out to sea. 'That way!' Tom
called out. ‘Get in the dinghy and chase the bastard.'
“I knew that Tom could not do anything and that I had to. I got back
on the Rimu, cut off a length of old seine rope, tied a running noose at
one end and fastened the other end to the seat in the dinghy. That bull was
in real trouble and I think it knew it.

10
 “I was surprised how buoyant it was in the water and I had no trouble
getting the noose under its chin and around its neck. I started to row, and
managed to pull him around facing the shore, and we were on our way. I
rowed like hell to get to the beach and got out smartly.
“Just as well. As soon as the bull felt bottom it took off down the beach
towards the other cattle dragging the dinghy behind it. A group of Maoris
and their cattle dogs had just arrived on the beach and were watching the
proceedings. One of them cut the rope and we rowed the dinghy back to the
Rimu.”

So let's begin.
Although I never met him in the flesh, I can't resist unearthing the little
we know of Stewart Smith's childhood. Now it's tempting to project the
victimisation theories of our own times onto a previous era, and find
psychological reasons why people did what they did, based on how we
think today.
We could analyse how the fifteen-year old Stewart Smith might have
felt in 1928 when his father took him and his younger brother down to the
port of Southampton, and banished them to the other side of the world -
to New Zealand, a land that desperately wanted cheap farm labour.
If Stewart Smith did indeed harbour any such feelings he covered them
well. Instead he proudly recorded how the Mataroa, the ship that brought
him here, did its fastest passage ever, arriving from Britain in 31 days and
fifteen hours. Reminiscing at 94, he happily informed his interviewer, with
a wry grin, that the ship’s sister vessel, the Tamaroa, beat this best time to
New Zealand on her following voyage.
Joseph Stewart Smith was born on January 16th 1913 in West Ham,
County of Essex to Joseph Stewart and Fanny Smith, nee Foote. The
elder Joseph Stewart Smith was registered as a dock trarehouse keeper, an
older term referring to warehousing. He rose to the rank of manager over
his forty-two year career with the Port of London Authority. He and his
wife raised their son Stewart (as he came to be called) with his younger
brother and sisters, Edwin, Joan and Margaret, until that fateful trip to
the Antipodes in 1928.
Stewart's memories go back to a very young age, and he described his
neighbourhood in London:

11
 “Back in 1913 being a Smith, and coming into the world in the East
End of London simply meant that I was one of many, and of little
importance. I was luckier than most, as I had selected the best of mothers,
and was her first child. We lived on a fairly long road, which had only a
single row of houses, and we were about in the middle at number 96 Capel
Road. East London was pretty crowded, but we lived right on the outskirts
facing the Wanstead flats. The road itself supplied ample horse manure for
our rose garden. There was horse manure all over the road, all over the
place.
“On the other side of our houses was a brick wall that divided us from
the very old part of the City of London cemetery. A lot of the graves were
about a hundred years old and covered with weeds, but it was a happy
playground for some of us kids. So long as the caretaker and his dog
didn't chase us. It had conker trees, apple trees, and in the springtime was
a mass of bluebells and daffodils. So compared to most kids in the East
End of London, I had it pretty good.
“Everything was flat in all directions except the five small hills by the
sand hills pond. Several lakes and ponds had been dug out to supply the
builders of the East End of London with the mortar they needed to build
the brick houses we lived in. And so in time they became full of water and
fish. Actually it was all part of Epping Forest, but had no trees, and
back then it also had no cows, because in those days we all knew cows were
very dangerous animals, especially if you had any red on your clothing.
Around the corner from us in Godwin Road, there was a butcher shop.
And every so often two or three cows would be driven past us on their way
there, so we kept well out of their way.
“By the time I was five, I had discovered the sand hills pond and
wonderful ways to catch tiddlers. It was just as much fun as marlin is for a
grown-up and considerably less expensive.
“For several years the sand hills pond became my favourite venue until I
discovered other ponds with different species which were larger. And I
discovered there was money to be made. The Ornamental Waters in
Wanstead Park had some good pike and grown-ups would pay a penny or
a halfpenny each for gudgeon or small roach to be used as live bait.
“Over a period of two or three years I managed to save enough to buy a
bicycle, which gave me a massive amount more freedom. This was about

12
 1920. After midday we would see goalposts being set up all over the flats,
and in the winter time we had the choice of a considerable amount of
football matches to watch. Watching cricket matches in summertime was a
waste of time when there were fish to be caught.”

Even in his earliest days he was an acute observer of how things

worked:

“When I was young I would often hear my dad talking to mum about
the PLA and I didn't have a clue what that was, but eventually I learned
it was the Port of London Authority. When I was old enough, I started to
go to work with him on Saturday mornings. And I started to learn a bit
about the London docks and the different types of ships that came there.
Quite a few times I went with him to KG5, which was King George V
Dock and according to Dad had the largest refrigerator in the world, but
possibly that was because he was in charge of it at the time.
“He told me that all the meat from Australia, New Zealand and
British Argentina was unloaded into that refrigerator, but the process of
unloading was different. Australia and New Zealand ships were unloaded
in the normal manner from the top, but ships from the River Plate in
Argentina were unloaded from the side. A door on the side of the ship
opened and all the carcasses came out hung on an overhead wire. This was
all under cover and so could be worked continuously irrespective of the
weather.
“He also told me of the system they had for loading the ships on the
River Plate. They drove the cattle up to the top of a very long ramp into
the works and they came all the way down into the ship’s hold by gravity. I
don't know why Argentina was also always referred to as British, but it
was. Maybe it was part of the idea then that the sun shone continuously on
the British Empire, but one thing is certain. Families close to the royal
family had large investments there and also in that shipping line.”

He was clever enough in later years to position odd tasks into the
economic framework of the times. Here is his interesting explanation of
the use then of dunnage, and its personal benefits to him:

13
 “My father and I had an arrangement for our mutual benefit. If I
stayed home in the winter time on Sundays and sawed up dunnage I would
not have to go to Sunday school and would not have to join the Boy Scouts.
This of course meant I could go fishing in the summer which was a good
deal.
“Now you probably don't know what dunnage is, but back in those days
it was everywhere until some bright South American shipowner realised he
needed containers, had some made, and started using them. Without
patenting the idea shipowners all over the world were doing the same and
from then on most of the ships being built were designed specifically to
handle containers.
“Even before containers, cargo had to be made safe. And it took a lot of
timber to do this. If the ship was carrying massive heavy cargo like
steamed excavators, it took massive timbers to brace them and stop them
smashing against the ships plates in heavy weather. It was quite usual to
see truck loads of tawa which we call New Zealand Oak, being loaded
into ships for dunnage.
“Dunnage used on foodstuffs could be used only once and so there was
lots of it for me to saw up. So we never went short of firewood. Whenever
we were getting short, Dad would get another load delivered. My father
was never happier than when he was sitting on the back steps chopping
firewood with a bottle of beer by his side.
He was unbelievably fast and accurate chopping up firewood. Anyone else
trying to copy what he did would have chopped their fingers off.
We had a small handcart and I would fill it up with firewood and take
it up the road to some of the neighbours and collect a bottle of beer or
something else. Like at Dillerways’ house, who were well-known bakers,
there was always some cake. We supplied most of our local neighbours
with what firewood they needed and it was much better than walking round
the streets holding up banners with the Boy Scouts.”

Between 1913 and 1928, the world fought the Great War, the war to end
all wars, and began to see the rise of the first Socialist state. Lenin is a
name largely unrecognised by today’s youth, but in those days he was both
venerated and hated worldwide. Firstly for successfully establishing
Communism in Russia in 1917, and then for dying prematurely in 1924
and thus clearing the way for Stalin’s Gulag camps. The contemporary

14
saying was, ‘The worst thing to happen to the 20th century was the birth of
Lenin, and the second worst was his death.’
It's interesting to note the later Stewart Smith framing his childhood
memories in light of this. He frequently boarded ships in the docks with
his father, and,
“…almost every time came away with my pockets full of something nice.
This unusual generosity made it apparent to me that my father had a
somewhat privileged position. One day we were walking down the dock and
a group of dock workers were walking off after work. As they were
passing us, they touched their caps to my father, and I realised that we were
upper class and I liked it.”
This was his earliest awareness of the socialism transforming the world.
It was not to be his last, but that would be more than ten years later.
Stewart's childhood was a mixture of the odd and the normal, like all of
us, perhaps:

“At the age of eleven I won a scholarship and went to what was, and
still is, regarded as a very good school- Raines Foundation School in
Stepney. I went there for three and a half years and managed well enough
never to be out of the top three in the class.
“Raines Foundation School in Stepney was quite a long way from Forest
Gate where I lived, so I had quite a long walk to Romford Road to get a
tram to Allgate Road and then walked through to commercial Road where
the school was in Arbour Square. So that journey every day took me
through Stratford, Bow, Limehouse, and Poplar to Allgate and I
remember sometimes I used to count the pubs on either side of the road.
Believe it or not, starting with the Princess Alice there were 27 on that side
of the road, and 19 on the other.
“About half the boys were Jewish because we were in the centre of the
garment trade, but we all got on well together. Firstly in the morning we all
met for prayers and our education was thoroughly British and we learned
that the sun never set on the British Empire and that we were the cream
that our empire of the future depended on. We played rugby and I hated it.
Our rugby field was miles away from the school, and every time I played
there I got covered in mud. Not my idea of sport. It was right alongside
one of the best places on the Lea Canal for fishing, so what was the point?

15
 “At about the age of five I learned how to catch tiddlers and this pastime
became a lifelong passion. My childhood in England was happy, largely
due to those hours spent fishing. London at that time seemed to me to be a
haven of tranquillity.”
Some eccentricity around can expand a child's horizons. Stewart knew a
character whose name, almost unbelievably, was Urban Day:
“He came from Hungary, and was an interpreter for the Port of
London Authority, and was a good pianist. He lived nearby and was a
regular visitor to our place because we had a good piano, but nobody could
play it. Sometimes on a Sunday, Urban Day would play, and Mum would
sing. He was such a good pianist that sometimes our neighbours would
come in to listen to him.
“Sunday was a day of bells. We were surrounded by them and it
seemed as if they vied with each other to see which could sound the loudest
and there was nothing you could do about it.
“Occasionally on Sunday he would go to meet various groups of
Europeans in London who each had their own special churches and needed
him to play the organ. Sometimes he took me with him and I sat beside
him and watched and listened to all the strange goings-on in all the various
Orthodox Churches of his friends. I could not understand a word, but it
was so different from anything else I had ever been to.
“And every place he took me to was so different from the last one. I
really enjoyed sitting alongside the organ and watching all these crazy people
dressed up in their crazy gear doing whatever it was they did. Their church
leaders dressed up in all sorts of fancy hats and other gear and it was
totally different to our local Wesleyan Church. But when he spoke to them
it was as if he was one of them. Shortly before I came to New Zealand
Urban went to Lithuania to teach English at the Kovno University and I
think to encourage them to play English soccer, which he liked to referee. It
was about 1926.”

Undoubtedly his early existence was not angst free, although prior to his
leaving England, he mentioned little of that. In a rare aside, he recalled
how his grandfather died, illustrating perhaps the prides and shames of
those times:

16
 “My mother’s father spent practically all his working life at sea and I
think he had it pretty good. He became the chief steward on the P&O line
and spent many years in that capacity on passenger ships going to India.
So I hardly ever saw him. But I remember how he died not long after he
retired. He sat himself in a tub of warm water with a bottle of rum and
slit his wrist. He had become incontinent.”
Then in 1928, Stewart Smith’s life changed forever:
“One day at the end of the summer holidays my father said to me, quite
casually, 'You are not going back to school. You are going to New
Zealand, and Edwin is going too. It's all been arranged.'
“I knew I could do nothing about it. But it also made sense, because I
knew that something was radically wrong. When I was in bed, and my
parents were in the kitchen, I had heard my father horribly abusing my
mother, because my younger sister was born, and I knew they had real
money problems. I also knew that my father loved gambling with cards
with a bunch of locals and was a bad loser.
“Dad had decided the best way out of it was to get rid of me and my
brother Edwin because we cost too much to keep.”

Were this a modern tale, his parents would be castigated by the media for
their callousness. Indeed it is interesting to note the parallel cases of the
Australian Barwell boys, where later governments, and some churches,
have apologised for this earlier immigration strategy.
In those times, such decisions were actually planned by government and
church authorities. The Rev. D J Garland, Director of Immigration,
Queensland, wrote to the Development and Immigration Commission,
Melbourne, on 21st January 1929 enclosing a news cutting from the Daily
Mail (London) mentioning ‘that Queensland is a place where people
coming young from England can live long lives and prosper.’
How does a fifteen year old handle that? Stewart tells us in his matter of
fact manner:

“So I accepted the idea of going to New Zealand without too much
trouble.
“The matriculation exams were next year, but that was down the drain
and only about a fortnight later the whole family went to Southampton to

17
 wave us goodbye, and that was the last I saw of them for twenty years.
And when I did see them again they were strangers.
“The Church of England had organised a group of 53 boys to go to
New Zealand to learn farming and Edwin and I were the two youngest.
All the rest were 16 or over. I was 15 and my brother Edwin, who from
then on became Jack, was only 14.”

I spoke with the spry and smiling Edna Smith, widow of Edwin (Jack) in
September 2011. I asked her whether the boys suffered from this early
detachment from their parents. She thought briefly, and happily rejoined,
“I don't think so!”
Even from these early years, we're alerted to some lifelong patterns of
the observer in him - especially on all things to do with fish - even from
the boat coming out here in 1928:
“After we left Panama we had a visitor join us. It was a shark, and I
think the biggest I've ever seen. We were doing 14 knots and how that
thing kept right on our stern between the wash from our two propellers for
at least four or five days was unbelievable. Yet it did. Maybe it was getting
a free ride in the slipstream. Every so often the waste food from the
kitchens went overboard, so it must have been getting enough to eat.”

Stewart and Jack Smith disembarked from the Mataroa in Wellington on

September 1st, 1928.
Life in New Zealand was tough between the two world wars. Still loyal to
Britain, although an independent Dominion since 1907, its 1928
population was less than two million. Most of that was rural. Memories of
the Maori Wars had been replaced by monuments to World War 1, still the
largest loss of life in a war suffered by New Zealand. Some ten percent of
its 1914 population of one million had gone to Europe, and 18,500 slain,
testified to by the name lists on plaques scattered throughout the nation to
this day.
Bulldozers were yet to lessen the physical labour required to clear the
bush, explaining the hunger for muscled young men from England. And in
the middle of that demand, the world depression of the 1930s bit hard
here too. Infamous swagmen roamed the countryside, leaving their special

18
marks on gates or trees, so their fellows could be forewarned of the nature
of the welcome they would receive from any given farmhouse.
Despite the hardships, many a home never turned one away, the
housewife often believing they might 'entertain an angel unawares.'
Children walked to school, although as an occasional treat, could ride the
farm horse. These shire or draught horses could carry two or three little
ones without noticing, but if an infant frolicked too much and fell off, they
had to walk on until an adult could be found to restore them to their
perch.
The times are wonderfully fictionalised in John Mulgan’s Man Alone.
Although Stewart never refers to Mulgan, his observations are frequently
parallel. For example, Mulgan’s central character, Johnson ends his farming
career in the Central North Island after an affair with his employer’s Maori
wife.
Stewart had his own angle on this:

“Girls did not fit very well into the category that farmers required, so
very few of them were brought out here under the scheme, compared with
the number of men, although there was a very definite shortage of women
in the country. This made it very easy for relationships to develop between
Maori girls and European boys. Whether this was intended or not I don't
know, but I think it must have had the effect of largely breaking up the
Maori race, much faster than would normally have happened.”

Whatever the case, Stewart and Jack transitioned from ship to the same
Central North Island that Mulgan’s character knew:

“On board as passengers we had a few animals, among them the two
first Great Danes ever to come to New Zealand and a pedigree Jersey bull
which was going to Mr. Phillips farm at Otorohanga. He had paid a very
high price for it and when it got there it threw him over the fence and killed
him. I was right. Cows are dangerous.
“Jack was on the farm next door and I was only a few miles away. Jack
and I were put on the train for Otorohanga to meet the farmers we had
been assigned to.

19
 “When Jack and I got off the train at Otorohanga there were two
farmers waiting for us. Jacks was a Yugoslav with a new Rugby car and
mine had the first model Ford after the model T. We both took a walk
down the main street (Maniapoto Street) to have a look at the place. The
only building of any size was the Farmers Trading Company, and just to
one side of it there were six old Maori ladies in full moko. Smoking pipes.
I said to myself what the hell have I come to.
“Then I was taken out to a farm at Honikiwi were I was assigned to a
hut of my own outside the house and where for the first time in my life I
found out what fleas could do to me. I was not happy. The arrangement
was that I was supposed to stay on that farm for two years at ten shillings
a week and have Sundays off. I was not looking forward to it. But at least
I was learning to ride a horse, and on Sundays I would take off to explore
the countryside. And meet a few of the local people.

Among many other things no doubt, he also learnt an interesting snippet

on how the rabbit problem on farms was solved back then.

“With us we had a professional rabbiter and he had three polecat ferrets.

These were much larger than ordinary ferrets and were grey in colour. He
got me to make about a dozen circular nets about four feet long. There were
rabbit warrens all over the place and we would place nets over all the
entrances that looked as if they had been used. Then Tunnicliffe would
muzzle one of the ferrets and send it down one of the entrance holes.
“Those rabbits would come out like greased lightning and those that hit
the nets would roll over and over and just lay there kicking, but a lot of
these warrens had so many entrances that most of them got away. Then the
ferrets had to be fed with the choice pieces they liked the most.
“Tunnicliffe also used to set traps and he had a dog which I thought was
a most unusual one for a rabbiter. It was a spaniel with very short legs but
an amazing turn of speed. And because it had been caught in rabbit traps
a couple of times when it was younger, it knew exactly where every trap
was and no way was going to get caught again.
“That dog really understood rabbits. And with the dog after it, a rabbit
would run only a short way in a straight line and then shoot at an angle.
But that dog knew exactly when the rabbit would do that and would get

20
 there at the same time. It would never hurt them, but just hold them until
Tunnicliffe came along.
“Mostly he set his traps in our garden which was quite a large one so we
never went short of rabbits or carrots.”

Most New Zealanders would be hard pressed to locate Honikiwi today

without Google Maps, and to this day very few have visited the beautiful
nearby Kawhia Harbour. Yet it didn't take our youthful fishing enthusiast
long to find it:

“I had left the end of summer in England and arrived at the start of
summer here, and those Sundays were good. One afternoon I was riding
slowly up a hill and as I got to the top the whole vista of the Tasman Sea
opened up in front of me as far as I could see in all directions. I just
stopped the horse and sat and looked at it, and I knew then that somehow
I had to get back to that sea.
“Shortly after that the farmer, his wife, and I went for a Sunday drive to
Kawhia and were taken a mile or so down the harbour on a small launch
to start fishing. As soon as our lines hit the bottom, we were pulling up
snapper as hard as we could go. I thought to myself, this is the life. Why
would anyone want to work on a farm when there is an ocean full of fish
just waiting to be pulled up?”

Social life didn't seem that attractive in the rural scene either:

“Every Saturday evening a dance was held in the local hall, but I’m
afraid I did not fit in very well. I was a stranger and they all knew it. My
cockney accent was a real killer. One night I was walking back to the farm
after the dance. On the way, passing by a neighbour's field, a herd of cows
on the other side of the fence started to go crazy for no reason. They scared
the life out of me. Maybe they didn’t like Pommie bastards.”

The end of his Central North Island farming experience quickly drew to
a close:

21
 “After a spell of several weeks spreading lime and super phosphate by
hand, I’d had enough. It was in my teeth, my eyes, and everywhere. And
there was no shower in the house, just an old tin bath.
“I had been given a dog and a rabbit trap. The farmer showed me how to
set the trap, and the next day the dog got in it. I went to get it out and it
sank its teeth into my upper arm. I still have the remains of the scar to
prove it. I knew then there was no way I could get that dog out. So I
picked up a fence batten and put it out of its misery. This upset me. I’d
never killed anything before, and it was then I decided to quit. I had saved
nearly all the money I had earned, so I had a few pounds. Enough to keep
me going until somehow I found another job.”

22
 “There is nothing half so much worth doing as simply
messing about in boats.” The Water Rat.

The Mayor to Marx

Four months after arriving in New Zealand, in the summer of 1929 at
the age of sixteen years, Stewart Smith gravitated to Tauranga, and what a
different place it was back then. Mount Maunganui just had a few beach
huts, and visitors from Auckland often came by sea. The Auckland railway
to Tauranga had been completed in 1928, so travel patterns were changing,
and its significance as a port was beginning to be realised.
Stewart lived there during these developments, and his learning curve in
the industry of New Zealand fishing began there. He was keener than ever,
but about to learn a few life lessons:

“Over the next two months I learned that there are some ways it is
possible to make a living fishing, and there are a lot of ways it is not.
And trying to catch hapuka with a slow boat and a hungry petrol engine is
one of the ways it is not.
“When I went to Tauranga, I looked around the fishing boats and met
up with a couple of other pommie bastards who were living on a fishing
boat. They talked me into going with them, and making a living catching
hapuka.
“In many ways it was an enjoyable experience, and I’m glad I met up
with two other pommie bastards. Along with these two, we hired a boat
called the Ellen Martha for ten shillings a week and went hapuka fishing.
One of the other two, named Ken Ashdown, had been fishing with an old
alcoholic Swede named Charlie Johanson and his 30ft boat the Valkery,
and thought he knew enough about it to be able to catch more fish than
Charlie did, but it did not work out that way and we soon went broke.
“My first trip to Mayor Island with them was the first I had had on a
boat with a sail up. It was a warm afternoon, with a light breeze. I was
sixteen years old and I figured this was the life. As Mayor Island
gradually got closer I probed Ken for all the information he had about it -
how big was it, who did it belong to? I had read all about the South Sea
Islands when I was a kid in England, and here it was, the real thing. Just
waiting for us to enjoy and make a good easy living.

23
 “From my questions I learned that Captain Cook had named the island
when he had sailed passed it on Lord Mayor’s day about 200 years ago,
that it was about three and a half thousand acres. And that the Maoris
had lived on it for hundreds of years until it became haunted. A
Norwegian boat had been wrecked on it and only one of the crew had got
ashore alive. He was the kumi. He had a big cane knife, and sometimes in
the Bay when the weather was bad... it was interesting.
“As we got closer to the island he (Ken) pointed out the tips of some little
islands I could see away in the distance, and he told me that Captain Cook
had named them the Aldermans. He told me that about halfway to the
Aldermans there was an undersea pinnacle that had loads of hapuka on
it. And that sometimes you could pull them up out of only about 20
fathoms. Also he told me that there were some really good hapuka grounds
he knew around the Aldermans. Obviously he knew his way round these
places.”
Ah, the gullibility of wide eyed youth. We were all young once though,
and in later years, his views of Mayor Island were more of the observer.
“Mayor Island is an extinct volcano of about three and a half thousand
acres, rising to about 1200 feet with an almost sheer drop into the crater,
which is fairly large and has two small lakes, one in the mouth of the
crater itself. The Maoris named the Island Tuhua, the Maori word for
obsidian. About halfway up the Island is a vast seam of (black) obsidian.
They traded obsidian with other Maoris to make cutting tools, and it went
all over New Zealand. It was the only thing they had that would hold an
edge and was easily flaked.”

Back to Stewart's inaugural fishing trip:

“We dropped anchor in Southeast Bay, and cooked as best we could with
a fire pot on the counter stern. Ken said to me, 'Get in the dinghy and go
and get another load of firewood', while they cooked a feed.
“I pulled the dinghy well up the beach, or I thought I did. And went
looking with a sack. I was amazed to see so much coal (obsidian) lying
around and gathered some of that up too.
“I could see a track leading up to a flat part of the island so I went up
to have a look at it. And saw two old horses just standing there. There

24
 were obvious signs that people had once lived there, but a long time ago. A
few fruit trees, the remains of an old hut, and even a few tiny wild
strawberries that I picked.
“But that was all. I said goodbye to the horses and made my way back to
where I had left the sack and the dinghy. But there was no sign of it, and
it was getting dark. I tied my clothes in a small bundle on the back of my
head and swam out to the boat. As we had seen a number of sharks that
day, I made good time.
“I got thoroughly told off, and had some cold potatoes and fish to eat.
What I could not understand was how that dinghy could have floated past
them out of the bay without them seeing it. I found out afterwards that it
was picked up three weeks later off the Opotiki bar over 100 miles south.
“The weather must have been pretty good or else we would have been
drowned, or gone broke before we did. Soon it became obvious to me we
were barely making a living and there was no future in it. Yet while that
fine weather lasted, I was really enjoying it. Just sitting out there in the
middle of the ocean pulling up fish was my idea of living.

They discovered some history, too:

“One afternoon we were fishing for hapuka on the pakaranui (‘big bald
head.’) This is an old-time Maori hapuka ground, a mile or two off the
island which was marked eighty one fathoms on the chart.
“It is a fairly large patch of rocky boulder bottom and Charlie Johansen
was fishing about a hundred yards away. As it started to get dark, Charlie
tried to pull up his grapple but was unable to do so, and was in obvious
trouble. Charlie was cursing and calling out to God for help in Swedish.
Ken said, 'You two get in the dinghy and give Charlie a hand.'
“After a long hard haul we did get that grapple up - and found it had
picked up a large round rock with a hole in the middle. With a few words
I’d rather not repeat, we sent it back where it had come from. It was not
until many years after on a visit to the Auckland Museum, I realised what
we had done.
“We had thrown back an old Maori anchor. At least it was proof
enough that the Maoris had been fishing that ground long before the
Pakeha arrived.”

25
 Following this unsuccessful venture, he needed a change. A chance
encounter was to alter the passage of his thinking, and his activities, for the
remainder of his life:

“The first thing I had done when I got to Tauranga was to buy a cheap
bicycle. I had left it at the fish shed while I was away fishing. Those other
two poms and I were broke, and owed money for groceries. So I got on the
bicycle and rode out to the back of Tauranga looking for a job and
something to eat. I don’t know whether I was lucky or not, but a few miles
out I met a farmer. He not only gave me a meal, but changed my whole life
and in a way eventually got me into jail.
“He took pity on me, and I worked on his orchard. I was able to save
enough to pay the grocery bill we had on the boat, and later I was glad that
I did. He was a good honest man, and he made a great change in my life,
because he turned me into a Communist. Even though he himself
eventually became the chairman of the Tauranga Harbour board.
“His name was Jack Alach and he was mainly responsible for the
development of the Tauranga Harbour as it is sixty years later. Today the
entrance to that harbour is safe in almost any weather, unlike entrances to
the other harbours in the Bay of Plenty. The people of Tauranga have a
lot to thank him for. When I first started fishing there, at low tide there
was only 18 feet of water in the harbour entrance.”

(There is now at least 50 feet of water there.)

Jack Alach came to Tauranga in 1992 and farmed first at Matapihi and
then Cambridge Road. He served 24 years on the Tauranga Harbour
Board from 1944 to 1967, and was Chairman from 1946 to 1952.
Like any convert, Stewart's eyes were now 'opened' and he devoured the
Communist worldview. Later in life he recalled his early enthusiasm,
tempered with the sagacity of hindsight:

“Jack Alach came from Dalmatia. He had a citrus fruit orchard. But
he also had a wonderful library, depending on whether you consider a pile
of Communist literature a wonderful library. I did, and all the time I was
there I soaked it up like a sponge. Worst still, it has stayed with me, more
or less ever since.

26
 “From memory I think the first book Jack gave me to read was Robert
Ingersoll's Some Mistakes of Moses, which is a real classic, though I’ve
never seen a copy since. I’m told one of the Christian sects bought all the
copies they could find, in second hand bookshops, and burnt them. A much
larger book, which was obviously done after many years of research was
Rulers of America by Anna Rochester. It gave me a wonderful insight
into the way the world’s financial system works but that book has long
been out of print.”

(Both these works are available as free downloads today on the Internet.)
The following recollection and opinions reveals something significant
about Stewart’s thinking:

“The history of JP Morgan & Co and also of the Chase National

Bank of the Rockefeller Group has been a continual source of interest to
me since those early days. Today they have become JPMorgan Chase &
Co. Before the two Towers of the World Trade Centre were demolished,
JPMorgan Chase occupied fifty-one levels in one of them. But their
headquarters were at Number 23 Wall Street.
“And I believe they are the main organisation that controls the world’s
monetary system. Their history goes a long way back and over the years I
have read at least seven or eight books about them. The latest one is a large
and heavy volume indeed, called The House of Morgan.
“As I had previously read much of their early history I found this book
disappointing, and that, in fact, it largely covered up what had happened in
their early days.
“Nowadays insider information is illegal and people get prosecuted for it.
But in those early days insider information was the name of the game.
And it was used to the maximum. Rumours were deliberately spread, to
undermine the value of some stocks and to increase the value of others.
Although of course this is going back at least a hundred years or more. As
I now receive a monthly cheque from them, perhaps I should keep my big
mouth shut.”

As a writer personally drawn to the human inclination to hold opposing

ideas, I find Stewart’s thoughts, written after September 11th 2001,
illuminating.

27
 Here we have an intelligent young man forming a viable world view in
the 1930s, during that decade of intellectual romance with Communism.
News of Stalin’s Gulag camps had yet to escape to the west. The most
famous Communist double-agent spy cluster of them all, the Cambridge
Five, was comprised of university graduates from the early thirties. Other
idealistic young men from the world over volunteered for the Communist
Russian-backed International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War of 1936,
immortalised in Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls.
For the man in the street though, Communists had been officially
distrusted in the west ever since they took Russia out of World War 1 and
declared their open antipathy towards capitalism. In that time of the Great
Depression, the thinking man who read a little cannot be blamed for
seeing there might have been a better way to run the world. Not only that,
he would experience rejection for his ideas, and start to sense conspiracy in
the air as a grand explanation.
There is another angle to this. A youth’s transition to manhood is not
always easy and Stewart Smith had more than his share of trials. It's not
difficult to imagine this young man, in some despair after his run at
farming, then further down on his luck after his fishing disaster, wondering
what life was all about. At this point of questioning, he is open to, almost
seeking, a world view to help him explain what was happening. And he
meets a man with such an explanation. As an analogy, it is well known that
most converts to religion do so in their youth.
Then, in the later stages of life, almost with that wry grin again, he
confessed he was earning money from the system that he believed was
destroying us – like us all somewhere, a man of contradictions.
None of this impacted his love of fishing, and in 1931 he returned to it.

“The problem was, Jack’s wife was a terrible cook, and I got sick of
living on rice and apple pudding. I had a desire to see the Bay of Islands. I
stayed with Jack Alach about six months. After I left Jack's place I got a
lift to Hamilton. It was about 1930.
“I worked for a farmer at Horsham Downs for a while. I was nearly
seventeen and it was there I first learned to drive horses - three big
Clydesdales pulling a set of disks, which I sat on at the back.
“One morning, coming up to a barbed wire fence, the bridles holding
them together broke. One horse came round one way and the other two the

28
 other way. I turned off the back of those disks and ran for my life. I got
ahead of the horses, and managed to stop them before they turned the disks
over. That really scared me.
I packed my bag, and rode my bicycle back into Hamilton. The
Depression had arrived, and it seemed the world was closing down. I met
up with a young farmer. He and his wife, Mr. and Mrs Frank, were
deeply religious, and saw in me the possibility of a new recruit for Jesus.
He needed a farmhand, and anything was better than nothing. So I kept
my big mouth shut about Lenin, Stalin and Molotov, and went with him
on his little Chevy truck out to Te Uku. They were deeply disappointed
when they found I was a nonbeliever.
“A couple of months later they found me in bed, unable to move. They
took me into Hamilton hospital, where I lay for the best part of a month,
with a tube coming out of my tummy, draining stuff into a little bag.
Then Mr. and Mrs Frank collected me and looked after me until I started
to work again. There was a spread of gorse on the place, and there were
also lots of Californian quail. They are lovely little birds, but not very big.
Why, I wondered, did they introduce such small quail here? They could
have got those big fat English quail just as easily. That was the sort of
question I was to ask myself over many things in the years to come.”

He didn't get to the Bay of Islands this time, ending up back in the Bay
of Plenty, a placename that intrigued Stewart his entire life.

“I had to get back on the fishing boats, and eventually I did, and joined
Chad (Ernie Chadban) and Fred Wilkins (in Tauranga) on the Kingfish.
Chad was quite a character. Originally from Australia he had come to
Tauranga and set up a barber shop. Then he got the pub in Mercury Bay,
and according to what he told me, he was the first to entice Zane Gray to
come to New Zealand. That would have been about 1925. Zane Gray
and his friend Captain Mitchell between them caught some record fish
there. This was before the later years, when they fished the Bay of Islands
and game fishing in New Zealand started to become famous.
“Chad and his wife drank themselves out of the pub and about 1931
came back to Tauranga. He got the Kingfish, and Fred Wilkins and I
joined him to go long lining commercially. I was the one that picked up the
lines in the dinghy, which was not so easy when it was blowing hard. So

29
 Fred and Chad had a long history together, and as each of them were
assertive characters they did not always agree on things. In the summer
months they were using the Kingfish for game fishing parties, and I was not
needed and got on another boat.”

By this stage, our character is still less than nineteen years old.

“A couple of cow cockies came up from Taranaki and decided to go

fishing for a living, and bought themselves a little boat. But they had a
problem – every time they went out on the harbour they got seasick.
“So one went back to Taranaki, and the other one asked me, 'Would I
take it at ten shillings a week and sell the fish to him?' He would hawk
them around in his Austin Seven.
“I must have been mad to take it on, but I did. The boat was 22 feet
long with a tiny four cylinder petrol engine, and the other fishermen called it
the Coffin.
“At that time, anyone could go to the beach at the Mount, and pick up a
sack of pipis in half an hour. The population of the place was about
300, and there were sections for sale along the main road for £35.
“When I think back about some of the things I did on that boat, I'm
horrified at my stupidity. I should have been drowned, and on my last trip
I nearly was. The cockies had made up four longlines of 150 hooks each,
and I blew up schools of trevally for bait.
“Considering how things were at the time, we both did well out of it, but
there was no way it could last. I'll never forget that last trip. It was
November 1931, and I had gone out to Karewa Island, a tiny island
about seven miles up the coast. I was fishing probably less than a hundred
yards outside it for hapuka in fairly shallow water.
“The weather was starting to come in a fresh northerly. I was sitting over
a big school of hapuka, and in little more than an hour I had all I could
carry. The wind was getting fresh, I was rolling around a bit, and I knew
I could be in trouble. I pulled up my grapple again while I cleaned my
spark plugs and started the motor again.
“That trip back to the Mount was not too bad until I got to the harbour
entrance. With the swell coming in and the tide going out, I was stripped
off to swim. I was lucky. I managed to get in without the boat sinking, but

30
 it had taken in a lot of water, and with the hapuka floating around in it,
I had quite a job to bail it out.
“I had more fish than the cow cockie with the Austin Seven could
handle. So I went to the fish shed and there Major Moore of the Salvation
Army, who owned the fish shed, offered me two shillings and sixpence each
for those big fish, which were normally worth five shillings each.
“As they say, life wasn't meant to be easy.”

Even if he did say that, he was enjoying himself, absorbing tales, and
making friends. The reader may wish to investigate the truth of the
following that he dated to 1932:

“Ben Arkahau told me this story about the Ngapuhis. I had taken him
and his two daughters out to a shallow reef on the other side of the
(Mayor) island to dive for crayfish. I didn’t think they’d get any and was
surprised when I saw those girls’ happy faces when they hit the surface with
a crayfish in their hands. They were two big, strong girls. While they were
doing this, Ben lit his pipe and with obviously enjoyment told me how they
had killed all those Ngapuhis.
“Sometime before any Pakehas had settled in the area, the big Ngapuhi
tribe of the far north had amused themselves by terrorising the smaller
tribes down the coast with their raiding parties.
“On their last trip to the South they had got to Mayor Island in the
early hours of the morning and killed a lot of people, but unbeknown to
them one canoe got away to Motiti Island, which was more heavily
populated, and included some from Mayor who had settled there. Maori
Bay on the Norwest part of Motiti faces towards the Mayor, about twenty
miles away.
“When the Ngapuhi canoes arrived, as usual just before day break,
everything was organised for them. Half of the Motiti tribe was hiding in
the scrub behind the bay. On the beach itself, the huge boulders that had
been washed up over the centuries were ideal cover for their warriors. Not
far offshore, around the corner of the island, there are two high, free-
standing rocks. Behind them the Motiti islanders had every canoe they
could muster.
“That fleet of long Ngapuhi canoes had come right into the Bay and
onto the beach before they realised there was another lot of canoes blocking

31
 their escape back to sea. They were trapped in every direction, Ben told me.
The slaughter was complete. Not one got away. So those Ngapuhi canoes
that were supposed to go back north with ample supplies of raw materials
for Ngapuhi cutting tools, never made it. And Motiti Island scored a fleet
of seagoing canoes.
“When Ben told me that none got away I started to wonder, did any of
them finish up in a cooking pot, but he had asked me if I would like a
couple of those crayfish, so I kept my big mouth shut.”

One of his most entertaining stories achieved huge popularity even

though he didn't put it down himself. Graham Dyer relates it, warning us
that Stewart always had a glint in his eye when he told it.

“In the mid-thirties they used to fish with gelignite. They would toss some
into the middle of a school of kawhai, and blow up a whole bunch. It used
to work on everything except bonito, because they found that bonito sank
when they died. They used to store the gelignite and the detonators in a
locked shed up above the clubhouse on Mayor Island.
“Now there plenty of wild pigs on Mayor Island. The fishermen
anchoring in the bay would sometimes lay out a baited line tied to a tree. A
wild pig might eat the bait, but when it started to trot off, the hook would
dig in, and the pig would start shrieking with the pain. The boys would
tumble out, and they had pork for dinner.
“One day Stewart picked up a piglet left behind after the fishermen took
a sow. For a couple of months it lived with him on the boat until he got
tired of it, and he put it back on Mayor Island.
“Later, he went up to the gelignite shed, but this pig had broken in
through the door and made a mess and started eating some of the
detonators. Pigs will eat anything.
“Stewart was mad at the animal, which was hanging around him
because it was tame now. He kicked the pig, and it blew up. There was
pork everywhere in that shed.”

Now it seems that Stewart decided it was a good time to start working
for someone, rather than go it alone:

32
 “At that stage, in 1932, I quit and went to work for Tom Dobson, seine
netting in his launch, the Rimu. For the first time since I had come to New
Zealand I was with a family with kids.
“I concentrated on learning how to repair nets. Back in those days they
were all made of cotton so I got plenty of practice. Nylon and the other
synthetic threads had yet to be invented, so all our nets were cotton. As we
were the first ever to net that coast, it had a lot of very big old snapper,
which tore all sorts of holes in our nets. Repairing nets unevenly is easy –
repairing them neatly and evenly is not. But gradually I learned, or at least
my fingers did.
“When we first started seine netting on the coast, Whangamata was an
empty piece of nowhere. Except for a hotel about three miles away, there
was one house a fair way back from the beach, and another smaller, rough
shelter. There was a wharf there, and occasionally a scow called the Paroto
would arrive with supplies for the hotel.
“Working for Tom Dobson had one big advantage. Mrs Dobson was a
wonderful cook, especially with fish and as things were at the time, that
was mainly what we lived on. The Rimu was an old boat with a two
cylinder 16hp Union engine that was ancient, but at least it was reliable.
For the next two years, when the weather was suitable, we worked the coast
mainly between Waihi Beach and Whangamata.

So began several years fishing in the early to mid-1930s. Ever the

observer, Stewart gave some insights into the art and technology of fishing
back then.

“The two or three small seine netting boats working out of Tauranga in
the early 30s had low-power and could work only in relatively shallow
water. So in the spring when the jellyfish started to appear, we put our
seine netting gear ashore, and went line fishing instead until the autumn.
The much larger and more powerful Auckland seine netters worked deeper
water.
“We were the first to work that coast with Danish seine gear and for the
most part we shot the gear early morning and late evening, trying to get the
light just right as the net was closing. Hopefully the fish could not see it.
“Normally the water is fairly clear and on a dark night the phosphorus
would light the net up so that the fish could see it coming. Fish are not

33
 stupid. The opening in the net from top to bottom would be only a few feet
and if they could see it they simply went over the top. Naturally, we
wouldn’t catch any. The art was to get the net closing when there was
enough light to kill the phosphorous, but not enough for the fish to see the
net. So we worked on moonlit nights, when the moonlight was enough to
stop the action of the phosphorus. If the moon clouded over as the net was
closing, we were dead unlucky.”
“These seine netters were wonderful sea boats. They had to be. Mostly
they were about 50 feet long. They went to sea with about four tonnes of
ice, and on a good trip would come home with about ten tonnes or more of
fish.
“One I have always been particularly interested in is the Melodeon, a 55
footer built in 1934. When I first went aboard her, I met the Mills family
who were busy filling her up with fish a short way out from Tauranga. She
had a German diesel, a Deutz.
“There were times in especially heavy nor’west weather when the entrance
to the Tauranga harbour could be dangerous for small boats. The worst
time of all was about an hour before dead low tide when the current
running out meets the long swells coming in. The seas became extremely
steep and a boat could become completely unmanageable. I watched one
afternoon as the Melodeon came in and became buried up to her funnel.
The crew were lucky. She came up but minus over two miles of rope and
all her nets.
“That same afternoon Alec Duthie, who had come in on the last of the
high tide on the Margaret, went out again to warn his nephew on the Joan
not to come in. They both headed out to Mayor Island and South East
Bay for shelter.”

Stewart kept in touch over the decades, reminiscing sometime during the
past decade.

“That was about 70 years ago. I think the Melodeon is still fishing today
out of Leigh, about 30 miles north of Auckland.”

34
Sources:

www.doc.govt.nz
www.fishandgame.org.nz
www.fish.govt.nz
www.nzine.co.nz/features/jackrogers2.html
The Invasive Species Specialist Group (ISSG) 2004: 100 of the World’s
Worst Invasive Alien Species
D. K. Rowe and P. D. Champion: BIOMANIPULATION OF PLANTS
AND FISH TO RESTORE LAKE PARKINSON: A CASE STUDY
AND ITS IMPLICATIONS 1994
W. Lindsay Chadderton: Management of invasive freshwater fish: striking
the right balance!
C. GARCIA DE LEANIZ1, G. GAJARDO2 & S. CONSUEGRA3: From
Best to Pest: changing perspectives on the impact of exotic salmonids in
the southern hemisphere (2010)
James M. Beers: Invasive Species
Brendan J. Hicks: Biology and potential impacts of rudd (Scardinius
erythrophthalmus L.) in New Zealand
R. M. McDowall (1968): Interactions of the Native and Alien Faunas of
New Zealand and the Problem of Fish Introductions, Transactions of the
American Fisheries Society, 97:1, 1-11
G. M. Thomson: The naturalisation of animals & plants in New Zealand
(1922)
William L. Lane: THE POPULATION DYNAMICS, FOOD AND
REPRODUCTIVE HABITS OF RUDD (Scardinius erythrophthalmus L.)
IN NEW ZEALAND
Stewart Smith personal notes
The Auckland Star
The New Zealand Herald
The Western Leader

35
 THE AUTHOR
Bryan Winters lives in Mount Maunganui
w
i
t
h

h
i
s

w
i
f
e

R
o
s
i
e

36