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Plimmerton Community Website Introduction
Hello, my name is Robin Patterson. Born in 1940 in Wanganui City in the North Island of New Zealand; spent most of my first 30 years in Dunedin City, the "Edinburgh of the South", where I attended Otago Boys' High School and the World's southernmost University, Otago. Since 1971 I have lived with my wife (and subsequently children) close to where my wife was brought up, in Plimmerton.
Welcome to what's probably the World's one and only "Plimmerton", nestled on and above the northern shore of the Porirua Harbour. Porirua City (of about 50,000 people) sits just north of Wellington, the Capital of New Zealand, which is at the south-west tip of the North Island (the smaller of the country's two major islands, but warmer and less mountainous and with about 3 million of NZ's 4 million people).
Plimmerton Origins
Settlement by indigenous Maori people took place long before Europeans saw the place. It was known as Taupo, the home of a great Chief named Te Rauparaha, who was captured by the British in 1846. You can read about that in many other places.
In 1879, building a railway was begun out from Wellington, towards the rest of the North Island along the west coast. Railway company directors bought strategic blocks of land for building villages that would help the line's economics. By 1885, the neck of the eastern arm of the harbour had been bridged. One delightful sheltered sandy beach 2 km to the north, west-facing, with a view of the harbour entrance, became the focus of a village named after director John Plimmer (whose family has been prominent in business and political circles in Wellington over two centuries). In 1894 the family built the 32-room Plimmerton House, an accommodation and refreshment stop right beside the railway station platform with the beach a stone's throw beyond.
By 1900 about 30 holiday cottages and a general store and two private hotels were established, and my own grandparents spent holidays there soon after.
Twentieth-Century Plimmerton
As with most villages near New Zealand's main centres, gradually roads were built (north-west to and beyond Karehana Bay and a little to the east) and the farms were subdivided for housing, though much of the pre-existing native "bush" - trees, climbers, and ferns - was retained. Even the remaining unsold Maori land at Hongoeka Bay further north-west saw some roading and subdivision, with only a tiny gap now between it and the coastal ribbon of European-developed housing.
From about 1970 a substantial planned development to the east, overlooking the eastern arm of the harbour, covered much of the remaining farmland. That area became known as "Camborne", and most of its streets have Cornish names, a tradition begun by the original developer Arthur Cornish. For most practical non-residential purposes, because it has no shop or education facilities or community halls of its own, Camborne is part of Plimmerton. However, the locality divisions are much blurred since the filling of the gap between Camborne and the suburb to the south, "Paremata", which contains the nearest supermarket and tavern and garden centre and squash club and playcentre and petrol station and international hamburger bar (with the golden arches just 2 minutes' walk from the south end of Plimmerton Beach).
On 1 April 1973 Plimmerton was among the communities that left the largely rural Hutt County and amalgamated with fast-growing Porirua City, which has its business centre at the south-west tip of the southern arm of the harbour, visible from much of Camborne. At the 1976 census, Plimmerton, because so many of its houses were decades old and it was so pleasant as to be not the sort of place any resident was keen to leave, had the most balanced distribution of age-groups anywhere in the city.
World Literary Fame
A poem by a New Zealander, the late Denis Glover, which appears on the Internet in a website devoted to international writing for children, dwells on the area, including the following lines:
In Plimmerton, in Plimmerton, the little penguins play,
And I have seen an albatross at Karehana Bay.
Hongoeka Bay writer Patricia Grace had one of her books longlisted for the prestigious Booker Prize in August 2001.
Plimmerton Community Website
To celebrate 30 years in Plimmerton, a community I have developed a great fondness for, I set up a simple website. It contains photographs, news, opinion, and snippets of history, contributed by various members of the community. Because it uses the structure of MyFamily.com, it needs a password for initial access (though once you get there you can bookmark it, and you can get sent email notifications of new postings and/or calendar items with clickable links that take you straight in). You may use a nom-de-plume if you have any concerns about privacy; but it does need an email address to be fully functional for you.
So if you have any ties to Plimmerton or would just like a look at a lovely community in splendid surroundings, send me an email: robinp@xtra.co.nz.
PROBLEM: MyFamily.com decided to stop offering free sites. I told the members I was interested in paying to carry on but I needed the use of someone's credit card. Nobody offered. So the site sits there inaccessible. US$29.95 per year, anyone? - Not necessary: the best images and history are now on another site. I'll tell you all about it if you ask.
Shortly I hope to put a guestbook on this site or a related site so that people who want to ask a question or contribute a reminiscence or try to find old friends can do so without signing up to the main website.
Be seeing you!
Patricia Grace
Porirua City - It's Amazing
A bit about me
My backup Forlong(e) research page, which I must visit every 3 months
IllumiRate's NZ local directories
Send E-Mail to: robinp@xtra.co.nz
Copyright © 2006 Robin F Patterson. All Rights Reserved