Vintage Photo Of The Day

[Papaw]

My Grandpa and his crew with a steam tractor turning sod at the Japanese Nursery in Alvin, Texas 1909.

[goodfellow]

So cool -- that you have such a rich pictorial history of your family Noel.

[Uncle Buck]

Notice the dog in the picture. 

[goodfellow]

Found these on another site -- how far we have come! =-=LOL

[jabberwoki]

Cool even without the script.

[Rural53]

Draining of the swamps east of Tauranga to convert to farmland.

The Rangitaiki Outlet diversion to sea at Thornton.
In January 1912 The Lands Dept. ordered from England , by cable , two steam powered PRIESTMAN Dredges . They duly arrived in Auckland in March 1913 ,then delivered by scow , one to Whakatane and one to Matata. The pontoons had been constructed locally , ready for the Priestman components to be assembled and mounted.
One unit known as #4 was then towed to the job site .
Meanwhile the sand dunes had been parted by horse and scoop teams and a channel formed for the dredge.
Photo shows #4 excavating with a clamshell bucket and depositing onto either of the two chutes that slid the material well away from the working , to become stopbanks.
Note the size of the machine relevant to the man standing.
Interesting statistic;
In the 1914 financial year Priestman #4 removed 82,850 cubic yards at a cost of 3.9d per yard . The horse scoop teams excavated 35,650 cubic yards at 6d per cubic yard.
Subsequently two further Priestman’s were ordered.

[Rural53]

Another from the Rangitaiki Plains swamp land drainage programme.
A BAY CITY DIPPER DREDGE working in 1921 on the Awakaponga canal ( between Edgecumbe and Matata) in extremely difficult country where it proved admirable.
The bucket from this dredge is mounted on a concrete pad in the reserve by Thornton bridge along with a large brass plaque commemorating the drainage scheme.
Note the stabiliser spuds to support the pontoon.
But look at the house on a separate pontoon tethered to the dredge pontoon. Quite literally “ living on the job.” Well there wasn’t any dry land for a house , or even roads.
Coal for the dredge steam engine was ferried to it by scow.
Hard torturously slow pioneering work . Absolutely amazing!

[Rural53]

Another from the Rangitaiki Plains swamp land drainage programme.

The Tarawera River flowed close to the foothills, outlet being in Matata lagoon. It was an extremely meandering river looping back and around at many points , fairly shallow and prone to entrapping great quantities of pumice and silt from way upstream. The consequence of these factors caused frequent and bad flooding of the adjacent land.
In 1911 a Hammond Pony dredge was purchased locally and mounted to a pontoon constructed on site at Matata.
This was a bucket-ladder type dredge designed to dig and lift 1.5 cubic yards a minute to a depth of 12 feet and discharge the material by a conveyor. The entire machinery works was driven by a 30 hp Standard oil-engine.
The Hammond Pony was put to work to straighten and widen , and deepen the river to lower the water level by 2 ft 6 ins. and up to 3 ft 3 ins. It continued deepening and widening its earlier cuts to create a faster unrestricted flow , until it was done and decommissioned in 1919 , 8 years later.
Note :-
* The house on the rear of the pontoon.
* The jib crane for transferring provisions.
* The bloke standing in the foreground, slasher in hand, not one to miss a photo opportunity.

[Rural53]

A friend of mine, Shaun, is the source of the photos above. Here is a photo of him, a long time ago, with a scrub roller set up. A scrub roller is a big roller with blades on it. It is released from the ridge top smashing and breaking the scrub before being hauled back to the ridge with the winch. The crushed scrub is left to dry then burnt before grass is sown.

[Rural53]

Another one.

So once the Rangitaiki outlet and many other canals and drains were nearing completion (1910 to 1925 ), the water table was lowering to a point where settlers could start developing their allotted blocks.
Photo shows a typical scene of a dense scrub covered area being ploughed. A Samson Sieve Grip Tractor is being used pulling a single furrow deep board swamp plough. This had to penetrate deep enough to bring the soil up from beneath the Tarawera ash layer and by means of an attached loop chain bury the scrub sticks and vegetation in the bottom of the furrow.
This was photographed circa 1923. Prior to the arrival of this type tractor , a 6 horse team was used but success was limited in such conditions.

[goodfellow]

Pretty amazing pics Rural -- I think we often forget that hard frontier life wasn't all that long ago.

[slip knot]

Some tough old guys back then. We got it pretty good today.

[Elroy]

Some tough old guys back then. We got it pretty good today.

Isn't that the truth

[muddy]

Moving?

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[Papaw]

So cool -- that you have such a rich pictorial history of your family Noel.

With the extended family's help, my uncle and a cousin collected photos from all relatives in order to scan and digitize them. We have several hundred photos from as far back as just after the War of Northern Aggression, along with scanned documents leading the Madara family line all the way to the Madeira Islands off the coast of Portugal in the early 1700s. This includes at east three immigrant families that came to the US by way of France and Alsace Lorraine. We can trace ancestors from the War of Independence, War or 1812, Civil War, and the world wars. Most stayed in the Pennsylvania area, but some went as far as The Dakotas before they were states.