Historical Background

When the early settlers arrived a little over a hundred years ago the dominant trees of the original forest which clothed the Hutt Valley practically to the Petone foreshore were mainly Podocarpus totara, P. dacrydioides and Dacrydium cupressinum, (totara, white pine and rimu), some Metrosideros robusta (rata) and in swampy areas Laurelia novae-zelandiae (pukatea). By 1870 nearly all the timber had been cleared from the valley, and when the railway was put through to Lower Hutt, in 1874, and extended to Silverstream in 1875, totaras were cut from the adjacent hills. About this time much of the totara forest on the Western Hutt hills was milled and the debris burnt, so that the land could be sown with pasture grasses.

On the area studied the remains of a logging tramway were found in 1912, but no definite information on the date of milling could be ascertained. There are, however, two possible dates, these are approximately 1870 and 1890. By 1851 the road along the foot of the Western Hutt hills reached Belmont, and there was a regular ford across the river to the farms on the eastern side. The area beyond the end of the road was gradually opened up and soon the road was continued over the hills from Belmont to Pahautanui. After the flood of 1858 had swept away nearly all the flat land on the west side of the river, including 90 acres of a farm near Belmont, there was very little land for farming except on the hills, therefore the settlement in the late, 1860's at Pitcaithly's Siding (about a mile and a half north of Belmont) may have been a sawmilling community or the start of farming on these hills. From these facts the most likely date for the milling of the original forest in this area is about 1870.

After the milling much of the Western Hutt hills was intensively grazed, but the steeper, damper slopes apparently soon reverted to second growth of native shrubs and are still shrub covered. The less precipitous slopes are still grazed, but there is a continual tendency to revert to second growth. The composition of this second growth varies according to its exposure to sun and wind. In the gullies and on the damper slopes are mixed shrub communities in which the tree ferns Cyathea and Dicksonia and the small trees Coprosma and Melicytus (mahoe) predominate, while Pteridium (bracken) is common on recently burnt areas. These are replaced by Leptospermum (manuka) and Cassinia (tauhinu) scrub on the drier slopes and exposed ridges.