My grandfather, Thomas Hall, lived until 1939 on a five-acre property in Cameron Road, opposite the Roman Catholic Church, near Elizabeth Street.
 
He set up a soft drink manufacturing business called T. H. Hall on a one-acre section in Grey Street in the 1920s (I wish the family still owned that land!).  He also bought a cottage from a Katikati farmer in 1930 and barged it past Matakana Island to Pilot Bay and had it pulled up the beach on logs by horses to a section on the western side of Maunganui Road, one section south of Leinster Street.  Grandfather Hall would rent this cottage during the year but have it available for all his family (daughters and grandchildren) for three months over each summer.
 
However, when the 1939 summer arrived and World War II had started, the Government passed regulations denying the right of landlords to terminate tenancies.  Thus, when my parents and their two sons (I was four) came to the Mount on December 20, 1939, to occupy the bach and found they could not, Dad saw the Town Clerk, whom he knew well, and asked if he could erect a family tent on the side of the Mount, above Pilot Bay.  The Town Clerk said “I can’t hear you, Bill!”  So Dad put up the tent and we camped there for every summer holiday during World War II.  I have a wonderful aerial photo taken in 1944 which shows our tent on the Mount.
 
Also, at that time, the Mount was occupied by thousands of rabbits.  So Dad would always bring a .22 rifle with him and every week, at dusk, he would lift up the back of the tent and quickly shoot three or four rabbits.  The sound of the shots would ring over the Mount town and people would say, “There’s Bill Davies shooting rabbits again.”  And even though it was illegal, he was never prevented.

 
And when he had finished, I, who was very short, had to slink up through the long grass and bring the rabbits back to the tent.

Hall's Cordial factory - Photo 02-575