IT IS HALF past six in the morning and I am standing on the corner of Great South Road and Broadway. The traffic pulsing through the lights into Newmarket and the city beyond feeds mostly from Manukau Road. Great South Road, which crests a rise and drops out of sight towards Greenlane, is still quiet at this hour. An unexceptional crossroads, with a Mercedes-Benz dealership on one corner and an Indian tandoori restaurant on another, this spot marks the start of what was in the mid-19th century the great route south from the colonial capital.

In 1843, when work on the road began, Auckland was little more than a huddle of raupo whare, tents and rough clapboard buildings, its streets rutted, and the enclosing countryside for the most part a fern-covered wasteland. Even Newmarket’s Broadway, now a canyon of glass-fronted boutiques, was then a mere track among cleared hills connecting a handful of scattered buildings.

In the 1860s, when disgruntled Maori began to lose patience with Pakeha ways, declaring the King Country out of bounds and harassing settlers from Hunua to the Manukau Harbour, British soldiers used the Great South Road to reach the seat of war—the northern hinterland of the mighty Waikato River. In those days the road began in the heart of Auckland, the mileposts taking their measure from a grocery store on Shortland Crescent. The men left their barracks in what is now Albert Park and marched through Parnell and Newmarket, while the commissariat wagons took a gentler route along the ridge of Symonds Street and down Khyber Pass.

The 12th Regiment of Foot, the 14th, the 18th Royal Irish, the 40th, the 65th York and Lancashire, the 70th, the Royal Artillery and the Engineers—at one time or another all stepped out down this road on their controversial missions into the heart of Maoridom. Then, as always, military effectiveness hinged on mobility, on bringing weight to bear. To this end the road, and later the river, was to prove invaluable.

The road proper had been pushed through to Drury by 1855, and a bridle track cut from there to the Waikato. In places it was knee-deep in mire, and travellers had to make a canoe crossing at Whangamarino. Toll houses were set up near the capital to help pay for metalling as far as Papakura, and settlers’ clearings in the heavy bush south of Drury were incorporated into the road. By 1859, even the rough track through the Maori kainga (village) at Rangiriri and along the east bank of the river as far as Ngaruawahia was being dignified with the name “Great South Road.”

When Sir George Grey returned from Cape Colony, South Africa, in September 1861 to serve a second term as governor of New Zealand, he took the precaution of ordering the road to be widened and improved as far as the river. The job fell to soldiers lately from Taranaki and from India—some 2500 of them, minus 500 for garrison duty at Auckland and 400 at Otahuhu.

In June 1862, John Martyn, a farmer at Rama-rama, a few miles south of Drury, recorded his impressions of life in the midst of the “bustle and excitement” of soldiers: “As soon as morning dawns, we are aroused first by the bugles and after by the drums and fifes,” he wrote. “The day comes, and bodies of men are seen along the line of the road, cutting and blasting. The long line of artillery drays carting metal—the Land Transport Corps with its almost endless teams of bullocks, horses, drays and packhorses.”

To Martyn, the camps of the various regiments contrasted pleasantly with the green walls of the forest, and the music of the bands enlivened the day. Army horses and bullocks grazed on his land, and two companies were camped directly across from his house. With sentries parading around the clock and police on the road at night, the farmer declared himself well protected.
Just 12 months later, Grey was mustering the district militia. Relations with Maori had fallen into a tailspin and, for good or ill, he had determined to invade the Wai-kato. Hefting blankets, overcoat, rifle and 60 rounds, haversack and cooking utensils, militiamen and volunteers marched along Broadway, wheeling into Great South Road through the intersection over which the flags of Mercedes-Benz now flutter and on towards Otahuhu.