What would the Thames gold fields have been without the
contrast of Tararu’s celebrated pleasure gardens? Far removed from the dirty,
loud and bustling township, the gardens provided a peaceful oasis for the town’s
deafened and grimy citizens. Situated where
Dickson’s Holiday Park now stands, the gardens were a weekend escape and a
favourite school field trip destination for a generation of Thames families.
Nearly as old as Grahamstown itself, Tararu Gardens
was founded by Robert Graham in about 1868. Before the road between the two
townships was complete, you could catch the tram between Albert Street in
Grahamstown and Wilson Street in Tararu – New Zealand’s first urban steam
tramway. From there, it was a short walk to the gardens, or you could pay a visit
to Tararu’s nearby racecourse and sports grounds.
Famed for its strawberry patch (buy some with cream
for sixpence), the gardens were an ideal spot for a Sunday afternoon picnic or
a concert on the green. Dancing, games and river swimming were all popular
pastimes for garden visitors.
Also popular were the regular trips to the gardens
organised by local church and school groups. One such trip was the Catholic
Sunday School Fete, one autumn weekend in 1881. ‘Headed by the fine band of the
Hibernian Society, and bearing banners and flags,’ reported the Thames Star, ‘the
little ones, to the number of 400 marched to Grahamstown whence they were
conveyed by the Grahamstown-Tararu tramway to the Tararu Gardens.’ The Star
reports that the group indulged in ‘all the sports so dear to juveniles,’ and
all went ‘merry as a wedding bell’ despite the morning rain.
A similar fete took place in 1877, when another four
hundred children from the St. George’s Sunday School in Rolleston Street made
the journey to Tararu, to spend the day with three hundred more children from
the Eureka, Tararu Presbyterian and Tararu Board Wesleyan Sunday Schools. Armed
with rosettes, the St. George’s students were marched to Grahamstown to catch
the tram. The Thames Star reported that the ‘conveyances were so densely packed
that it was as much as some could do to get standing room. We counted as many
as forty little ones in one of the larger carriages.’ When the children
arrived, they were set loose, ‘regaled with tea, buns and other good things,’
and left to spend the day as they pleased. At the time the Thames Star went to
press, the group had yet to return to town.
Not everything about the garden was so idyllic,
however. The strawberries weren’t without scandal, and an angry letter to the
editor of the Thames Advertiser in 1877 questioned the sinful nature of an
advertised ‘boys eating strawberries and cream’ competition. ‘Is it possible
that the youth of the Thames are to be publicly invited to debase themselves by
exhibiting their proficiency in the sin of gluttony, for the amusement of the ‘Christian’
public?’ The prize for the competition
was five shillings.
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