Development of the Bridle Track
Taranaki iwi Ngati-tama established a pa at Kaiwharawhara around 1825 and a track ran from there north to Porirua. At the top of the hill above the pa at a place named Te Wharau (a name that has gone out of use) were Maori potato gardens, which enjoyed commanding views over the harbour. Middens located there suggest it may have been a popular resting and eating place.The age of the track at the time of European settlement is not known. Historian Anthony Dreaver described the track as being formed by the bare feet of Chief Taringakuri and his people.’However, it seems unlikely that other Maori had not been walking to and from Wellington via the west coast for centuries earlier.
Soon after European settlement of the Wellington region began in early 1840, settlers began exploring further afield. Edward Jerningham Wakefield (son of New Zealand Company founder Edward Gibbon Wakefield) described the route inland as it was that year.
[From Kaiwharawhara] we ascended a steep hill through extensive potato-gardens belonging to Tuarau; and from thence had a noble view of the harbour and the infant settlement. After a tedious march of two or three hours over very undulating ground on the top of the range, along a track constantly obstructed by webs of Kareao, or supplejack, we came to the brow of a descent, from which we had a view of a narrow wooded valley, and a peep of the sea in Cook’s Strait over a low part of the further hills.
The Maori track from Kaiwharawhara was the obvious route to widen to allow horses to travel along it, which is where it got the commonly used name Bridle Track. In 1841 the surveyor Mein Smith designed improvements to the track to make it more accessible to those travelling between Wellington and Porirua (the only other option available at the time was to take passage on a coastal sailing boat). The improvements presumably included re-routing the track around unsuitably steep or narrow sections and the track is generally regarded as having been widened and graded at this time to allow stock and horses to pass. However, as described later, it was probably a largely new alignment; the Maori track would have taken a quite direct route up the hillside, needing to take no consideration of livestock traffic. The cost of the improvement work was paid for by the New Zealand Company. Whatever its origins, the track remained a steep and rather impractical main route north out of the city. In 1842, Charles Heaphy wrote an unfavourable review of the track, stating that ‘…this road is not more than five feet in width, and therefore only serves for the passage of cattle and pack-horses; but, it is of much importance in throwing open the route to Wanganui and Taranake (sic)’.
Many of the settlers began constructing private roads from their sections, and it was the route developed from Captain Daniell’s private road to his farm at Ngaio in 1843 that became the Porirua Road. This road, starting a little further to the south and taking a much more gently graded and wider route, joined up to the Bridle Track at Cockayne Road in the vicinity of Box Hill. The Porirua Road was completed by the government in 1846.
Changes to the Bridle Track
The completion of the Porirua Road meant that the remaining Bridle Track was reduced to the section from Kaiwharawhara to Box Hill, which is where it joined the Porirua Road.
Khandallah remained largely rural during the 19th century, despite the opening of the Wellington-Manawatu Railway in 1886, which passed through the centre of the suburb. It was not until the 1920s that the suburb began to grow substantially and subdivision of properties away from the main road and railway took place. As interest in the area picked up, roads were surveyed and named. Nicholson Road was originally Victoria Road, named after the Queen, and its southward extension (the Bridle Track) was also given that name. With no fewer than 10 Victoria streets in various locations in the city, the fire brigade asked for some of them to be renamed, hence Nicholson Road, which Irvine-Smith surmises was named after General Sir John Nicholson, who was killed in the Siege of Delhi in 1757.
Khandallah was the original name of Captain Edward Battersbee’s property, built in 1857. He had served with the British Army in India and received a free grant of land in New Zealand for his service. Other ex-servicemen from India also settled in the area. In 1884, the then occupant of ‘Khandallah’, Captain Andrews, agreed to give up a portion of his land for the Wellington-Manawatu Railway. A condition of the sale was that a station be placed there and named Khandallah. From then on the area surrounding the station became generally known as Khandallah. In the 1920s many of the suburb’s street names were changed to reflect the connection with India.
Establishing how much the present Bridle Track follows the original converted Maori track is very difficult and there is no complete timeline for the changes to its alignment. Subdivision and other maps from the early 20th century included the old track and one shows it leaving Kaiwharawhara, crossing Fore and Winchester Streets and ascending steeply in a westerly direction to the top of Te Wharau Ridge (to the south of the present Whitu Street) and concluding there. Another shows it heading in more northerly direction from Winchester Street and running largely parallel with the present Bridle Track, crossing Calcutta Street and heading over Khandallah Hill to Box Hill. None of these maps show that the old track was used as the basis for any subsequent road, including Nicholson Road, or the realigned Bridle Track. It is entirely possible that no trace remains of any portion of the Maori track on the Bridle Track route or anywhere else.
Just when the present track was formed is not known. It seems likely to be largely the same route as that surveyed by Mein Smith in 1841. However, in 1843, for instance, one account of the trip from Kaiwharawhara mentioned a steep walk to the potato gardens, which was a feature of the original Maori track. It is of course possible that the Mein Smith route also passed the potato gardens, or that the Maori track remained in parts as a deviation from the Bridle Track. Regardless, the track that now exists was obviously built some time in the 19th century and with horses in mind, as it maintains a reasonably steady, if somewhat steep grade as it sidles across the hillside.
For many years the Bridle Track was generally referred to as Victoria Track, an extension of Victoria Road (now Nicholson Road). Initially the track included that portion of present day Nicholson Road from Calcutta Street to at least Jubilee Road, but this was widened to a proper road about 1916. In 1908 lights were provided for walking the track at night.The track’s grade was an on-going issue for a variety of reasons. As Khandallah started to grow, residents wanted more direct access to the Hutt Road but its steepness apparently made it impractical to turn it into any sort of proper road. A surveyor’s report from 1914 stated that ‘no amount of regrading would be of much value, as the track from our investigation seems too high up to allow of any good approach from Kaiwarra’. This may refer to the starting point of the track, which appears to have been very difficult to get to from Kaiwharawhara. Alternatively it might simply refer to the extraordinarily steep Winchester Street, which was the starting point for the track for many years.
The lack of suitable access from the Kaiwharawhara end was a bone of contention for Onslow Borough ratepayers for many years and the Onslow Borough Council was regularly lobbied about it. In 1922 the Evening Post reported:
For some considerable time past the executive of the Onslow Progressive Association has been devoting attention to the matter of improving the approach to Khandallah and Te Kaianga via what is known as the Victoria Track. Shortly after leaving Kaiwarra the grade of the present track increases to one in four for some six or seven chains, and exceptionally steep approach is trying to pedestrians, particularly ladies and children. The executive suggested that the difficulty might be overcome if the Railway Department would agree to pedestrians using the lower end of the new road into the Railway Settlement at Kaiwarra, and the City Council would construct a short length of new track from the western boundary of the railway settlement to join with Victoria track above the top of the steep grade already referred to.
This change was approved by the Railways Department and work was reported as having begun almost immediately to build the lower route to meet the track and carry it through the railway settlement. However, it turned out that construction was subject to considerable delay and was not completed until the following year.
By the 1920s the track was getting a great deal of use, partly from commuters walking to and from Kaiwharawhara Station or catching bus services at Kaiwharawhara. Letters to the editor suggested that seats be built for those walking home from the station, while others railed about the hundreds of people walking the track daily who could be driving up and down it if a road was constructed. Politicians resisted calls for a road to be built, no doubt aware of the difficulties and expense involved in such a scheme.
Gradually, calls for a road direct to Khandallah died down and residents accepted that it would not be built. The Bridle Track remained on the same alignment until the early 2000s, undergoing regular maintenance; at some point it was sealed. When a subdivision of the former Railway settlement at Kaiwharawhara was undertaken in the 2000s the access track from Fore Street to the Bridle Track was discontinued and a new track formed to replace it in roughly the same location.
History of key structures
The most important 20th century development near the track was the construction of the railway settlement at the Kaiwharawhara end in the early 1920s. The New Zealand Railways Housing Department constructed a housing development for its workers. Access to these houses was from a newly formed road – Cameron Street – which followed the curve of the hill below the bridle track. The houses were removed in the 1970s and the area remained largely unused and overgrown until a new subdivision began in the early 2000s. Development of this area remains on-going.
