We don’t think much about street lights - unless something is wrong with them. They are just there when we need them.
But for Bobby Ellis it was a problem to be solved. With chickens.
Bobby was a bit eccentric who liked to tinker with electronics and was interested in emerging technologies including electricity.
Born in England on July 24, 1862, he and his brothers came to New Zealand in the 1880’s settling in the Upper Motueka Valley at a farm.
Bobby built a water powered flax mill and tried to supplement his income from the mill, including using the water race for wool scouring which failed, making mud bricks for housing, and inventing new uses for flax fibre, such as hardwearing trousers.
He did produce a high pressure turbine to provide electricity to his home.
In 1911 he bought a flour mill in Brightwater looking to harness the power of the Wairoa river to power the mill by day and provide power to nearby homes.
He had trouble getting permission to do it but by 1913 he had the infrastructure in place and was powering five streetlights along with a few homes.
His vision continued to expand and shortly he was powering a fair portion of the surrounding district.
Bobby wanted a way to turn the streetlights on at night and off in the morning. His solution was chickens.
Each night as the chickens went into their coop and hopped up on a perch which sank under their weight and triggered a switch that turned on the street lights. In the morning as the chicken left, The spring loaded perch rose and the lights switched off.
Bobby had married Kate Evans in 1889. She would have been the first woman to have an electric stove and they even had an electric piano.
They had five children, one of which Henry was killed during the First World War and another son was injured not long after. Kate died in 1917 and Bobby in 1924 donated an electric street light to the Brightwater War Memorial Committee and in 1991 one of the old street lights was put near the memorial gates.
Bobby died on March 4,1935 and is buried in St Paul’s Anglican Church cemetery.
Picture by Ben Moreland.​

Margaret Cashmere was newly married and calmly living her life in Wellington when she suddenly became embroiled in an international murder mystery.
It was a strange set of coincidences that led to her being involved in what would be a decade long case that baffled Australian police,
In 1934, the badly burned body of a woman was found on the side of a road partially in a ditch in Albury, New South Wales, Australia with a bullet in her neck. No one knew who she was.
She would come to be known as the pyjama girl because she had been wearing silk pyjamas.
Headlines in newspapers said it was thought she might have been a Kiwi and suddenly a small group in Christchurch came forward saying it might be Beryl Cashmore who they had not seen for a few years.
That didn’t help - there was no Beryl Cashmore. Her friends seemed to remember she had been educated at a convent and some had seen silk pyjamas in a suitcase of hers.
It took a quick witted reporter to find Margaret instead.
Margaret was 26 at the time and had been born in Christchurch where she attended St Mary’s Convent until she was 11 before moving away. She went into domestic service for a while, came to Wellington and married Norman Watt.
It fitted but there was one problem: Margaret was very much alive.
Police were satisfied that it was a case of mistaken identity and New Zealand bowed out of the murder investigation, which was becoming stranger by the day.
As the police failed to identify her, the poor woman’s body was taken to Sydney where it was (gruesomely) put on display to try and help identification.
She was preserved formalin by the medical school until 1942 when she was transferred to police headquarters.
There were any number of theories and suspects. In 1935, a vagrant called Robert Henderson Rae claimed he was the murderer, saying they had arrived from New Zealand together and that he had strangled her.
Then police became concerned that the body might be an Austrian sculptor Countess Coudenhove-Kalgeri - Anita Carola Neuber - who had been in Australia with a man she married there before they went on their honeymoon. That led to police from France and Vienna getting involved but it wasn’t her either.
In 1944, a woman took a court case to prove the body was that of her daughter Philomena Morgan which resulted in police ordering forensic testing of the body. Dental analysis said it was Linda Agostini. Her husband Tony admitted to her murder.
He said he had accidentally shot and killed her in Melbourne then driven the body over state lines to dump it. He had also poured petrol over her and set fire to her.
At trial he was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to six years but only served three before being deported to Italy where he died.
A couple of films were made of the case and at least one book written.
However it is not quite over. A recent book by historian Richard Evans pointed out there were physical differences between Linda and the body and that the police had had a list of many missing women that they had not been able to eliminate.
Agostini might have murdered his wife, but it was not clear that the body found was definitely Linda.
The body - listed as Linda Agostini - was finally buried in Preston General Cemetery in Bundoora, Bunyule City, Victoria.​

The fear of airships - blimps or zeppelins invading was very real. There was even a
name for it Teutonphobia.
Airships must have seemed like extraordinary technology to people just coming out of the 1800s. Huge ships capable of flying large distances.
Newspapers in England began reporting sightings - often called phantom airships and it was near hysteria peak in 1909. It was mostly reports of lights in the sky.
Then, in late July 1909 a report from Dunedin scared people. Moving lights in the sky. Residents stood and watched the unmoving lights in shock, until they suddenly shot away.
It was also seen by Mosgiel residents.
As newspapers began picking up the story more and more people who had seen it came forward. And the story began to grow that it was an airship. People were also saying they heard something like a motorcar - like an engine. Others said there was a number of lights,
It was so unsettling that police were called in to search.
The phenomenon began to move northwards and the story began to grow - and it became a German spy airship, ready to drop bombs.
Perhaps the most spectacular incident took place on Friday July 23rd in broad daylight at Kelso, where 23 schoolchildren and an adult described a Zeppelin-type airship swooping low over the township, of which several detailed sketches were produced by witnesses.
Another described it as a huge illuminated object moving about in the air. Still more said it was a cigar shaped balloon with a carriage beneath it.
By August whatever it was was being seen in Hawke’s Bay then further and further up the country.
Then in September, the sightings stopped.
In later years the potential for it to be an airship has changed. Could it have been UFOs? There has certainly been speculation over the years.
One of the first to see it was John Boyd who had been born in Otago on May 4, 1877 to Edward and Jane Boyd who were settlers in Otago. They had come from Scotland in 1858.
John was one of 11 children and 32 at the time he saw the possible airship. He was considered literate, sociable, musical, and of above-average intelligence and progressive, being in charge of a herd of cows and trialing new milking methods.
He would be considered a credible witness.
John was a founding member and Secretary for the local ‘Glee Club’ – a social group organising musical entertainments, and of him chairing a session of the Benhar Debating Club. He married Florence Hilda Turner.
So what was it he saw? Was it just mass hysteria? Actual airships? Or UFOs?
John never got an answer to his questions about what he saw. He died on January 29, 1964 in Levin and was returned to the South Island and buried in the Balclutha Old Cemetery.
Picture by Biblioteca Valenciana Nicolau Primitiu.​

Who remembers going to the movies for the first time? Seeing the huge screen, the lollies, the blasting sound.
What was once a huge part of our society has waned a bit with streaming services available but most of us still remember seeing a movie on the big screen.
The first New Zealand feature film shown was at the Lyric theatre in Auckland during
the first week of the first World War.
Titled Hinemoa, it was a silent movie with an all Māori cast that told the love story of
Hinemoa who swam across Lake Rotorua toTūtānekai after hearing his music and
falling in love.
Hinemoa was played by Hera Tawhai Rogers and Tūtāneka iby Rua Tawhai both members of a Māori choir.
It was produced by George Hermann Tarr for £50.
George was born in Sydney, Australia on September 22, 1881, the son of Agnes
Herrmann and William Tarr.
He was something of a child star, making his debut on the stage aged five and
toured with theatrical companies most of his childhood. He came to New Zealand in
1902 appearing in vaudeville acts.
George married Alice Mary Blackburn in Melbourne in 1905. At the time he was
working as a signwriter.
In New Zealand theatres were being set up for cinema and George helped Henry
Hayward - a pioneer of the movie industry here - in setting up and managing several.
He was the manager of the Empire Theatre in Napier and the Opera House in
Gisborne.
In 1914, George moved into film production, writing and producing Hinemoa which
was shown throughout the country.
Any movie career was interrupted by the war and in 1917, George enlisted in the
army and served with the machine gun corps in France.
He produced one other major work, Ten thousand miles in the Southern Cross, which he filmed in late 1921 during the mission steamer's annual trip to the New Hebrides (Vanuatu) and the Solomon Islands.
Although the film screened widely in New Zealand and was sold overseas, Tarr did not feel encouraged to continue as a film-maker.
He continued his career in theatre as an actor, producer and scenic artist including designing stage effects at various Auckland theatres.
George was also a life member of the Light Opera club and in many ventures worked alongside his wife Alice - called Darcie - who was a skilled costume designer.
He died at Milford in Auckland on January 7, 1965 and was cremated
at Purewa Cemetery.
And Hinemoa the film was lost to history with only a still from publicity now available.
Picture by Immo Wegmann.​

It was a hot dry day in a summer of hot dry days. Water tanks were empty and stream beds were dry.
Raetihi residents could smell smoke off and on throughout March 18, 1918. That by itself wasn’t unusual.
With farms being established all around the region, bush was cut back and left to dry to be burned off later.
But during the evening the wind picked up, reaching 140kmh. And a fire began to rage out of control.
The wind began carrying ash and sparks far and wide.
Houses and farms began burning and the fire raced toward Raetihi and residents hurried to leave. Some spent hours huddling under a bridge.
Families hurried to save themselves. One hid in an empty water tower while others headed for streams.
On Mangaeturoa South Road, Joseph Akersten abandoned his home along with Edith Harle and a six month old baby girl Edna. With them was their farm worker Sydney Scott.
They ran, but the smoke and heat left them exhausted. Scott opted to climb a tree while the small family decided to keep going.
The smoke was so thick it spread across the North Island, disrupting ferries and closing schools and factories after darkening the sky.
Mid-morning the next day it began to rain. It was just enough to stop the fire spreading further but people found trees and stumps still burning days later.
By the time it was over the full destruction could be seen . Over 100 homes destroyed, 11 mills - the life blood of the area - gone, along with shops, churches, the County Council chambers and a nursing home.
So much stock had died that bulldozers had to be brought in to bury them.
And in the burned remains, the bodies of Joseph, Edith and Edna were found. Scott had survived.
Joseph Michael Akersten had been born in Kaikoura in October 1892 to father Laurence and mother Sarah.
Edith - who had been married to another man Alfred Harle and had three children with him, was living with Joseph by 1918 - Edna had the last name Harle and it is unclear who her father was.
The fire was closely followed by one of the hardest winters ever and then, by November, the start of the influenza epidemic.
While cleared brush might have been responsible, it was also considered that a spark from a train on the newly developed North Island Main Trunk line might have started the fire.
Joseph, Edith and Edna were buried together in the Raetihi Cemetery.​

All around New Zealand were subantarctic islands with caches of food and supplies that had saved the lives of many a stranded sailor.
Isolated at the bottom of the world, the islands around our country were beautiful, welcome to sea weary sailors and very dangerous.
With voyages taking months, having a supply depot was a good idea. Quite a number of castaways had survived on remote islands, living on what they could find. In 1867, the survivors of the General Grant were found on Auckland Island.
Before that both the Grafton and the Invercauld had also wrecked and the Government began a plan of a network of castaway depots and regular visits (although they could be months apart) by government ships.
Emergency depots were set up on Auckland Island, Campbell, Antipodes and Bounty Islands. The first wooden depot was set up at Sandy Bay on Enderby Island and in 1877 the government took over responsibility for managing the network of huts and cabins.
There was nothing fancy about the provisions, tinned meat and biscuits, clothing, blankets, fishing equipment, medicine, matches, tools and some weapons and ammunition.
Along with supplies, the government opted to release animals on the islands, pigs on the Auckland Islands, then goats, sheep, rabbits, cattle on other islands. Some populations did not survive but some few did and because of their limited breeding opportunities have rare characteristics. Some of the caches also had boats or building materials.
It wasn’t long before the depots were plundered. Thieves, whalers and just anyone who saw it as a cheap way to get supplies had a go, completely defeating the purpose of them.
One of the most regular visitors to the depots was George Samuel Hooper, often as the Captain of the Amokura.
The ship had started life as a British Royal Navy ship before being bought by the Government as a training ship and called Amokura.
Captain Hooper took boys aged between 12-14 out, sailing to the subantarctic islands over the summers to teach them.
It was hoped that the boys so trained would provide a nucleus for the New Zealand Division of the Royal Navy as well as being a source of recruitment for the mercantile marine. They often visited the depots.
Many of the boys became deck officers, and at one time a very high proportion of the New Zealand merchant marine was commanded by Amokura boys.
Hooper was born in London in 1874 and came to New Zealand as an officer. He had been apprenticed on to ships at the age of about 14.
He was appointed the training officer in charge of the Amokura in 1906.
He died in Wellington on March 4, 1931 and is buried in Karori Cemetery​

New Zealand boasts the steepest street in the world (sorry Wales, you tried and
failed).
Baldwin Street in Dunedin has been celebrated in many different ways. Including the annual gutbuster where runners go up and down again and the rolling of thousands of Jaffas
down it.
There have also been plenty of stunts, including one man who went up it on a pogo stick and another who used a motorcycle but on one wheel.
Tourists flock to the street, sometimes to the residents’ dismay.
Baldwin Street is a 359m dead end street (although there is a linking walkway at the
top) with a gradient of 34.8 percent - now officially recognised the Guinness Book of
Records.
It was never intended to be that steep. Like many cities in New Zealand, Dunedin was laid out in a grid with no consideration for the terrain.
So how did Baldwin Street get its name?
It’s named after William Baldwin - who was born John Baldwin in 1836 in Ireland.
He served in the army in India before coming to Otago in 1869 and buying a sheep run.
He was one of the first discoverers of gold in Waitahuna. Baldwin tried politics for a short while but never made a career of it. Maybe because he believed the North and South Islands should be separate.
In 1873 he established the Otago Guardian newspaper and became it’s general manager and editor.
He was also a partner in the accountancy and grain firm Baldwin & Ashcroft.
By 1891, he was also the owner of the New Zealand Times.
In the 1890’s he visited Perth in Australia for the first time and fell in love with the
climate. He determined he was going to retire there with his wife Janet Curling Buchanan.
He moved, and took no further part in business but was considered one of Perth’s
best known residents.
He died aged 82 on July 30, 1917 and is buried in Kattakatta Cemetery in Perth.​

Maggie McIntrye was found in the back room of widow Martha Reid’s home scratched up and thin, dressed only in a nightgown on May 16,1877.
It was a far cry from the plump girl who had gone to work for her only a few months before.
When detective Thomas Neil checked her it was obvious she was dead. There were only a couple of mattresses in the room and one window had no glass in it and she wore only a thin nightdress.
How and why she had died - aged only 17 - was a mystery and it went to an inquest - which in those days had a jury.
Maggie - Margaret - had gone to work for Martha Mary Harris Gill Reid as a servant on February 16, 1877 - and the last time her parents /Daniel and Ann had seen her she was healthy and plump
Several people told the jury having seen Maggie, spotting her looking thin, silent and cold looking. And never properly dressed for a Dunedin heading into a full winter.
John Blakeley who lived nearby saw her out on the street one winter’s evening picking up stones. She told him Mrs Reid had told her to do it. He told her to go inside but she continued picking up stones.
At least one mentioned that in February Maggie had looked healthy.
A week before her death a Sunday school teacher had seen her and worried she had been hit but satisfied himself it seemed to be ill-health. Another teacher was told Maggie was made to work without any shoes.
There was also circumstantial evidence that Maggie was being beaten.
Another girl Kate Telfer who had previously worked for Reid for a short time said she had never had enough to eat and had ended up sleeping on the floor. But her evidence was controversial - with Reid’s lawyer complaining that the treatment of other staff did not mean anything about Maggie.
Another witness had seen Reid hit Maggie.
Doctors disagreed on why Maggie had died. One has considered starvation while another thought meningitis was a possibility.
Reid for her part said Maggie had been ill and had been thin since she came to work for her.
The coroner said the jury had to consider why Maggie had made no attempt to escape the situation but the jury wasn’t having it and found that Mrs Reid would be guilty of manslaughter by neglect.
Reid was sent for trial in the Supreme Court and by then one of the doctors told of a brain bleed likely to have been caused by a blow to the head and that the cause of death was starvation.
Hundreds tried to get into the trial at the Supreme Court in Dunedin in July 1877.
Despite what seems like a great deal of evidence, the jury found her not guilty - the judge himself had said that Reid would not be guilty of manslaughter simply because she did not provide enough food and shelter, as the victim could have removed herself from the situation.
Reid, who had been born in England, promptly returned there soon after the trial and never came back to New Zealand.
Maggie is buried in the Southern Cemetery in Dunedin.​

New Zealand is known for its sheep. We’ve all heard the statistics that there is more
sheep than people.
We are also known for our lamb exports.
Thursday was National Lamb Day. But the frozen meat trade was nearly over
before it had begun and was rescued by one quick thinking man.
We’ve told the story of the Dunedin before, the ship that carried the first lot of frozen meat to Britain. Weirdly, the Dunedin and its sister ship the Marlborough, disappeared during their sailings never to be seen again.
But that first voyage was on February 15, 1882 the Dunedin sailed with 4331 mutton, 598 lamb and 22 pig carcasses, 250 kegs of butter, hare, pheasant, turkey, chicken and 2226 sheep tongues.
It was under the command of Captain John Whitson. He had captained the Dunedin since it was an immigrant ship and had also overseen its conversion to carry frozen meat.
The journey started well enough but once in the tropics the ship was becalmed, delaying its progress.
It was then the crew noticed that the freezing air, necessary to keep the meat at a cold enough temperature, was not circulating properly.
Like many at the time, Whitson was a jack of all trades. Immediately he rolled up his sleeves and went to work. He went into the freezing hold and began drilling holes to allow the air to move more freely.
He nearly froze to death to keep his historic cargo from spoiling. He had to be pulled out by the crew and resuscitated.
The Dunedin arrived in London 98 days after leaving New Zealand with it’s cargo intact, kicking off the frozen meat trade.
Whitson had been born in Perthshire, Scotland to John and Charlottee and become a master mariner. He had married Elizabeth Hall Illingworth who died in 1877 leaving him with two daughters.
Whitson captained the ship during several other voyages but before its last one he was taken ill and when the ship arrived at Port Chalmers on March 1, 1886, he was so ill he had to relinquish command and seek medical aid. Yet he was at the Oamaru wharf in May to wave farewell to his former command but he died within 24 hours of her leaving port, on 4 May, 1886 at age 45. His body was sent by train to Dunedin and his burial on 8 May was attended by some 200 mourners.
He is buried in Dunedin’s Northern Cemetery.
Picture by Judith Prins​

Today is Valentine’s Day - the day for love, when if you listen very carefully you may hear the twang of Cupid’s arrow, but more likely the sound of an empty wallet and the rustle of florist paper wrapped around an over-priced rose.
But while you’re (hopefully) snuggling up to your nearest and dearest, spare a thought for poor Alfred Webb, whose quest for love failed - dismally.
His is almost the time-honoured story; boy meets girl, boy falls in love, boy fails to meet girl’s mother’s standard, boy loses girl, boy is branded a lunatic and dies alone in an asylum. We did say almost!
Alfred was born sometime around 1844, where is not known, nor are the names of his parents. He landed up in Whanganui where he served in the Armed Constabulary, a police force which operated in Taranaki between 1846 and 1867 and aimed to protect settlers.
Alfred also worked as a messenger for the Post Office, was active in his church Sunday School and by all accounts was a well-respected, honest young man.
Early in 1869, Alfred contracted Rheumatic Fever. Remarkably he survived, but the illness left him with memory problems and made him appear quite simple-minded.
It is not known when Alfred met Emily Soulby, the girl who stole his heart, but it was at Sunday School.
Emily was born in Whanganui in 1852, the only child of Joseph Soulby, a wealthy mill owner and his wife Mary Jane (nee Shield). Joseph died in 1868, leaving Mary, then aged 53, a widow with a 14-year-old daughter.
Alfred’s (perhaps one-sided) romance with Emily saw him bring her gifts of cakes and he often called on her at her home – despite the protests of her mother.
On September 15, 1869, things took a turn for the worse when Alfred was found in the Soulby’s garden trying to see Emily. Mary finally had enough. She had him arrested.
Alfred appeared in court the next day and was sentenced to a week in prison. While there, he was assessed as being insane (no doubt his memory problems aided the diagnosis) and he was shipped off to the notorious Karori Lunatic Asylum in Wellington.
Many in the Whanganui community who knew Alfred protested that he was quite sane and was being harshly punished, while others thought the treatment might help him recover from his memory problems.
But Alfred’s fate was sealed. He spent around six months in the asylum before being released. He returned to Whanganui but found that being labelled a lunatic left him unemployable. Alfred refused to take charity and was arrested for vagrancy in June 1870, then again in July for which he was imprisoned for a month with hard labour. In October he was again charged with vagrancy and was sent back to Karori.
The Karori asylum closed in 1873 due to its horrendous conditions and lack of actual treatment and Alfred became one of the first patients at the new Mount View Lunatic Asylum near the Basin Reserve (where the Governor General’s residence is now).
He never left. Alfred died from tuberculosis on March 20, 1885, aged 41. He is buried in Bolton Street Cemetery.
But, as it is nearing Valentine’s Day, we will end on a happier note. Emily did meet someone who passed her mother’s scratch test. In 1872 she married William Lingard, a former trooper in the Colonial Forces and the first recipient of the New Zealand Cross (the equivalent of the Victoria Cross). William was also a founder of Whanganui’s Bell Brewery. Probably much to his mother-in-law’s disappointment, however, William became bankrupt in 1883 owing £13,300.
William found work as an insurance agent and in about 1889 the couple and, most likely, Emily’s mother, moved to Wellington. They bought a large house on Wesley Road, Kelburn. Ironically the house was just a few hundred metres from Bolton Street Cemetery, where Alfred was buried.
Mary died in January 1905, William in June 1922 and Emily two years later in 1924. All three are buried in Karori Cemetery. William and Emily had five daughters, four of whom lived into adulthood.
Picture by Kelly Sekkema.​