The story of John McKinnon of Aropaoanui
John McKinnon was born on the Isle of Lewis, the largest of the Western Isles of Scotland, on 13 December, 1823. He was the son of Angus MacKinnon and Ann MacFarlane, who were married at Stornoway, Lewis, on 21 January, 1822.
As a boy John worked as a shepherd on a croft near Stornoway. He went to sea at the age of 13, as boys often did in those days, and spent the next twelve years voyaging around the world, gaining first his mate’s and then his master’s certificates.
A tale he loved to tell was when the sailing ship "Mary Florence" was wrecked off the coast of Africa and everyone on board had to take to the boats. There was a heavy sea running and the boats overturned in the surf. Seven of the ship’s company were drowned, including the captain and his wife. Only the mate, an able-bodied seaman and John McKinnon survived. On reaching shore they were taken prisoner by African tribesmen who marched them inland and tied them to a stake at their camp.
According to John’s story, the mate and the seaman were "eaten by the cannibals", but John managed to escape at night and headed for the coast. Four months later he was picked up by a passing ship and landed at Aden.
He worked for the East India Company for a while and then went to America where he worked for two years on the steamboats of the Mississippi River. At the age of 25 he returned home and married Mary Catherine (Kate) MacIver of Stornoway. Their first child, Catherine (Kate), was born at Stornoway on 23 May 1853.
The following year, John McKinnon sailed from Dundee for Melbourne as mate of the "Kossuth". Their second child, Mary Ann, was born at Stornoway on 8 September, 1854.
John, meantime, had left Melbourne for New Zealand as mate on the brig "Kirkwood". At Wairoa he took command of the 40-tonne schooner "Wave", but shortly afterwards he left the sea and went into the sawmilling business near Wairoa. At this time pit-sawn timber was fetching £1 per hundred superficial feet at Napier.
In 1856 he was appointed pilot for the Port of Napier, the first European to hold that position. He brought the port’s first paddle steamer, the "Wonga-Wonga", into the harbour and the first English ship to her anchorage in the roadstead. He left two years later to take charge of the river ferry at Clive for the next four years.
John McKinnon decided to make his home in New Zealand and in 1857 he wrote to Catherine asking her to join him here with their two daughters. She refused, saying she would not live in a land of cannibals. John is said to have told her that if she didn’t come to New Zealand he would marry a Maori woman. That was too much for Catherine. She sailed at once for New Zealand on the ship "Oliver Lang", with Kate and Mary Ann, now aged 5 and 4, and her brother Murdoch. They arrived at Napier in 1858.
The McKinnons’ first son, Angus, was born in 1859, their second son, John, in 1861, at Clive.
In 1863 John McKinnon took up land on the coast north of Napier. He chose a lonely spot at the mouth of the Aropaoanui River, on the coast between Petane and Mohaka and facing Napier across the sea, a property of about 5000 acres (2023 ha), which he named Arapawanui, a miss-spelling of the original Maori name.
Donald McKinnon, John and Catherine’s third son, was born at Aropaoanui on 23 May, 1863, and their third daughter, Isabella (Bella) was born there on 13 January, 1865.
In those days there was no proper road into Arapawanui. The Coast Road north of Napier went only as far as Tongoio, and a bridle track led from there over the hills to Arapawanui. The Aropaoanui River was tidal and so was the bridle track north along the coast to the mouth of the Moeangiangi River, so travellers often had to stay at Arapawanui to wait for the tide.
The sea was the main highway. All the wool and other heavy goods were taken by horse and dray as far as possible out through the surf to be put onto large whale boats and rowed out to a scow which would be waiting in deeper water. It was wet, strenuous, dangerous work. Friends and relations sometimes took the chance of a sea trip from Napier to Arapawanui. They would be lowered into a whaleboat which was bobbing about alongside the scow and rowed in as close to the beach as possible, then each person would be carried by the men to dry land.
During the land wars, which flared through Taranaki and the East Coast from 1866 to 1872, European settlers living on isolated farms in the province went in daily fear of surprise attack, as the authorities found it difficult to give them any warning.
In 1868 John Powdrell, a young settler from the Wairoa district, was returning home from Napier riding the racehorse "Queen of the Vale" when he was stopped by soldiers and told of a rebel attack on Mohaka. He was asked to warn the McKinnons before returning to Napier to report the attack.
John McKinnon thought that the family should leave together and seek refuge in some place where the children would be safe, but all the horses had been turned out and none could be caught immediately.
Mrs McKinnon and the children set out at once for Napier escorted by Mr Powdrell. The younger children were piled on the back of the racehorse, while Mrs McKinnon, Mr Powdrell and the older girls walked alongside.
John remained behind to bury the family valuables and round up the horses. He overtook his family some hours later with as many horses as he’d been able to find. After a gruelling journey over the hills to Tongoio and along the Coast Road, the party arrived at Petane quite exhausted. The hotel was already overflowing with women and children seeking refuge and they slept in the loft over the stables.
When the refugees reached Western Spit the following day, they found that the only hotel in the hamlet had been burned down and they had to camp overnight in a sail-maker’s loft. A macabre touch, according to the Hawkes Bay Herald, was a rope still dangling from a beam from which a man had hanged himself a few days before.
Next morning they saw a party of Volunteers being ferried across from Napier to Western Spit to intercept the rebel force advancing on Napier. This was the first meeting between Mary Ann, now 14, and her future husband, Peter Dinwiddie, an officer with the Volunteers.
The rebel force attacked the settlement at Petane but was beaten back. By now the military were ready for them and ambushed the retreating Maoris in the Tongoio Valley, killing several. The rebels were finally defeated at the Battle of Omahu, near Taradale, and the threat to Napier was averted.
Many of the settlers’ homesteads north of Napier were burned down but the McKinnon family returned home to find their house and farm buildings untouched. And, as a bonus, friendly local Maoris had brought back the missing horses and cattle.
William (Willie) McKinnon and his still-born twin were born at Arapawanui on Christmas Day, 1869, and Norman McKinnon on 27 January, 1871. Joanna, the McKinnon’s youngest daughter, was born on 26 June, 1873.
Mary Ann McKinnon and Peter Forrest Dinwiddie were married at Arapawanui on 26 December 1872. Mary Ann was just 18 and her husband 38. After the ceremony, they set out on horseback for Napier, their future home.
In 1886 John McKinnon took up a Crown leasehold property extending from the coast right up to Lake Tutira, in the Wairoa County, and in 1892 he bought the Moeangiangi Estate of 5000 acres freehold with 5000 acres leasehold (altogether more than 4000 ha), together with 13 000 sheep, for £15 000. By the turn of the century the McKinnons ran 9000 crossbred sheep and 100 head of cattle.
Joanna McKinnon died in 1888 and was buried on a sunny terrace overlooking the mouth of the Aropaoanui River. She was only fifteen.
In his later years, John McKinnon liked to sit by the river and write poetry. He was nostalgic about his old home on the Island of Lewis and translated several old Hebridean folk songs from his native Gaelic into English — but he also wrote long poems about his new New Zealand valley.
John and Catherine McKinnon celebrated their golden wedding at Arapawanui over Christmas Day and Boxing Day in 1898. Most of their children and grandchildren, 24 in all, and many friends were there to join in the festivities. Several photographs survive, some of them family snap-shots, some taken by a Napier professional, showing a bearded patriarch with his lady, their prosperous-looking sons and daughters, and a tribe of happy children.
A faded snapshot taken three years later shows four generations of McKinnons — Catherine, her daughter Mary Ann Dinwiddie, Mary Ann’s daughter Edith Gregorie with her husband Fred and their two sons David and Eric, Catherine’s and John’s great-grandchildren.
By then John McKinnon was a prominent farmer and landowner, with broad holdings totalling some 20 000 acres (8000 ha), three generations of descendants and a wide circle of friends. He had been a member of the first Wairoa County Council and an early member of the Napier Harbour Board — and this was the man who had tended sheep as a lad on a Hebridean croft.
Catherine McKinnon died on 12 December 1902 at the age of 74 after a long illness. The steamer "Fairy" made a special trip up from Napier to take mourners to the funeral. She was buried in the same plot as her youngest daughter Joanna and an inscription on the tombstone, in Gaelic and English, commemorates them both.
In 1904, John McKinnon placed Arapawanui in the hands of his sons Angus and William, and returned to Scotland. He died at Stornoway on 13 November 1912 in his 89th year.