[Waves and instrumental music plays. Auckland Council pōhutukawa logo sits in the top right of the screen.]
[Video: Footage of water rippling into the shore, Joan in the water and boats out in the bay.]
Joan: I'm Joan Scandrett. I've been living on this park since 1961 and spending a lot of holidays in the preceding six years here. We loved the bay, the water, we used to swim at the higher tides. We used to spend the whole day virtually down here with the children and our visitors which were very many.
[Screen title: Living at Scandretts Bay.]
[Footage of Joan swimming past the boat shed.]
Joan: Well, we came when we were children. I became absolutely thrilled with the way life was here. It was such a lovely, relaxed atmosphere with farming, plenty of farming to be done…cattle and sheep. And at those early days we milked a herd of cows, general life, it was just beautiful farm life.
[Video: Footage of Joan standing at the edge of the water. This is followed by a selection of photos including some being held up by Joan.]
Joan: This photo would have been taken on perhaps our first family visit to Scandretts Bay about 1940. I would have been about nine years old at that stage - there just that's me under that hat.
[Video: Footage of Joan holding up a series of photos of herself and the launch in the bay, pointing out items of interest.]
Joan: And the next one is a picture of me, must have been a year or so later in front of the Scandrett’s first launch, the Aroha 1. The next photo I have is of a scene looking along the beach with Aroha 2 in the picture.
Joan: On the beach are the cows coming along to the milking shed for evening milking. That is the tent that we put up in the bay that first year we came up to camp.
[Video: Footage of a dotterel running along the beach and Joan talking outside one of the baches. This is followed by a series of photos of people with dogs and on boats.]
Joan: That would have been about 1952. And this particular Christmas we had a very great friend who had a beautiful fifty-four foot launch. He offered to tow our yacht up, we had a twelve-foot-six Z class yacht, and he offered to tow us up, with all our camping gear. So we got a small tent and we put everything in the yacht, and he towed us up, dropped us off here, it was just my younger sister and this friend of ours – had a wonderful summer!
[Video: Footage of the bay and old cowshed from the top of the hill, and Joan walking on the beach.]
Joan: Well it was lovely, we were able to participate in any farm activities.
[Video: Footage of Joan walking along the beach, along the bay and Joan talking.]
Joan: We used to enjoy looking and helping with the milking. We spent a good deal of time sailing of course in round the bay. George said we could leave the boat here if we liked but we decided to take it back, and then the next year we were towed up again. And then it was pretty well every summer we used to come up. Being here for that first summer was just magic.
[A series of photos of George and Joan's wedding day, the wedding party and family.]
Joan: We would have become an item I suppose about 1953. So, in 1961 we married, and that was the way I came to live here after our wedding.
[Series of photos of George and Joan, and some of the grandchildren.]
Joan: I enjoyed the full life of the farm - cooking, shearing, haymaking… yes.
[Series of photos of a shearers and workers collecting fleece, and children playing on the beach.]
Joan: I used to come and help with the milking, particularly at night. It was always easy for me. I'd get the dinner ready and it was nice. Often we were down swimming in the evening if it was an evening tide, so I used to spend a lot of time down here at the cow shed. I enjoyed milking cows and being a city girl it was something unusual.
[Aerial photo of the regional park showing Scandretts Bay and Mullet Point.]
Joan: The Scandrett family have owned the land in Scandretts Bay since 1864. George's grandfather bought it and it was very difficult, it was covered in mānuka.
[Series of historical photos of family members and the homestead, followed by footage of Joan talking.]
Joan: He started off with a few chickens and ducks and things like that and gradually did a bit of gardening and gradually brought in a bit of gardening and gradually brought in a bit of area so they could just subsist really.
[Series of historical photos of the Scandrett Homestead and the bay, men working on the farm and family members.]
[Video: Sound of waves lapping on the beach.]
Joan: George and Ray ran the farm together. They'd bought the farm off their mother who had survived her husband who'd died when he was only fifty.
[Series of historical photos of family members.]
Joan: The boys ran the farm with their brother Thomas who was younger and intellectually handicapped, and it was a wonderful place for him to live.
[Series of historical photos of family gatherings, the brothers with their dogs and activities around the property.]
Joan: The Scandrett brothers established I think that name in the late 1940s, early 1950s. George was the sort of the senior one once his father died and he ran the stock side of things.
Joan: Ray was more interested once his father died and he ran the stock side of things. Ray was more interested in maintenance and vehicles and that sort of thing, although they didn't have a tractor in those days – everything was done with horse and sledges and things like that.
[Series of historical photos of horses pulling a sledge, the boatshed, and the beach and the bay.]
Joan: In the early days, all transport was by scow or launch. When the stock was brought up – horses, cattle, everything was brought up on the scows and the sling was lowered over the side. They had to swim ashore in those days. All their fertiliser, everything used to come by water, and all their apricots, fruit that they used to send to Auckland went back on the scows, and that's the way they traded.
[Footage of Joan walking along the edge of the water and in front of the boat shed. This is followed by a series of photos of Mansion House, women, boats in the bay and the launch moored in the bay.]
Joan: In those days when we brought the yacht up, George and Ray had a launch for the charter that they had supplying Kawau with food for their hotel which it was at the time. And they’d charter boating parties, fishing trips, and they used to take it round to Warkworth up to the wharf there because there was no road through.
[Footage of Joan talking on the beach and pointing across the bay to Mullet Point. This is followed by an aerial photo of Kawau Island and Mullet Point.]
Joan: The launch was moored out in the middle of the bay. Kawau is only, it's only three miles across to Mansion House Bay round Mullet Point which is that point out beyond there. And they supplied meat and milk, cream, butter, things like that.
[Series of photos and footage of the old boat winch, the boat and winch inside the boat shed and looking over the hills and bay.]
Joan: The boat shed's been here since early 1900s, may have even been earlier than that. We used to keep our dinghies in there, but originally they used it to house the launch. They'd pull it up by winch and work on the boat there, and in the wintertime that's where it was housed.
Joan: Ray lived alone in the old homestead along in the corner of the bay. George had built his house up on top of the hill, with the maximum amount of sunlight was what he'd tried to get.
[Series of photos of the homestead, around the park and along the beach. This is followed by footage of Joan talking, the baches along the beach and an aerial view of the land.]
Joan: Over the Christmas period people would come and camp, mostly in fact all were friends or relations, and a few baches were built. And they were on leasehold sections which was very good because they provided some sort of an income to supplement the dairy farm.
Joan: The first bach Moonlight was built by – he was our vet of the farm at the time, and he decided that he'd love to come and camp and George said “Well why don’t you put up a small building?” and so that’s how the first one came. Well, in the end there were seven baches so once they built a bach they could leave their stuff here so they came more often.
[Footage of the area as it was originally, the hills and surrounding land. This is followed by a series of photos of people on the beach, the bay and boats.]
Joan: Over the years, some of the bach people, their friends and relations would want to come and stay and they'd ask us could they put up a tent and gradually we had more tents come. And during those summer days there would have been several hundred I would say people used to come and stay.
Joan: And of course all their children, it was really family and that's what made it so delightful. And they all became friends, and one relation would tell another “Oh we went up and parked at Scandretts, you know, you want to bring a tent up some time?" And that's the way it grew.
[Series of photos of a group on the beach, a sea plane and a person holding a large fish. This is followed by footage of cows walking along the beach.]
Joan: And it was wonderful, just generally everybody having a typical New Zealand beach holiday.
[Video: Instrumental music plays with the sound of waves lapping against the shore.]
[Footage of Joan standing on the edge of the water and the boat sheds. This is followed by a photo of a man on the beach with a dog.]
[Text on screen: Many thanks to:
- Joan Scandrett
- Beckie Trigg (Park Ranger – Scandrett Regional Park)
- Joan Scandrett and the Bowman family
- Michelle Edge – Project Manager
- Kirsty MacDonald – Director, Camera, Editor
- 2018.]
[Bird song]
[Auckland Council logo]
[Video ends]