The Man in the Gig, by Lyn Harpham

One day about 1926 we had a picnic on the eastern side of the Sulphur Point sandspit which is now covered by the huge reclamation. Family members were sitting at the edge of tussock grass while I dabbled among shells at low tide.

Suddenly a man driving a horse and gig came over the dunes and down to the sea where the horse, without faltering, went straight into the water and began swimming toward the opposite shore. The man, wearing a black suit and bowler hat, sat on a box on the seat. At about halfway the horse splashed across a submerged sandbank, then went down to swim a second channel, coming ashore at Whareroa. They disappeared among trees about where the fertilizer works now stands.

Astonished, I asked my father “Where did he come from?” Evidently he knew the man for he said, “He came from Ōtūmoetai.”

At that time neither road nor rail bridge spanned the Waikareao Estuary so the man must have driven down Coach Road and over the beach to the channel ford, Whakapakawaka; thence along firm sand below the Domain cliff and by Marsh Street to Sulphur Point.

Wherever their destination lay – Mount Maunganui, Te Puke or places in between – alternative road travel in that area could only have taken the man and his horse up hill and down dale via Welcome Bay.