Official Bay from St Barnabas Point
1864 (Daniel Manders Beere) - 2025

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Official Bay, Auckland. Beere, Daniel Manders, 1833-1909: Negatives of New Zealand and Australia. Ref: 1/2-096113-G. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. /records/23205636

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This transition should not be taken too literally; Beere's camera position must have been here or hereabouts on St Barnabas Point (on modern-day Augustus Terrace) but it's difficult to determine with certainty after the passage of one hundred and sixty years.

Below: three crops from Beere's plate, which is sharp and detailed; he was clearly a skilled user of the relatively recently introduced wet plate photographic process.


Along the skyline are buildings on Princes Street, at whose northern end (at right) stands old St Paul's church. On the slopes leading down to the sea (modern Beach Road follows this shoreline) are houses which belonged (or would belong) to various notable figures of the period, including JT Mackelvie and Sir John Logan Campbell. The house with a veranda at right may be Mackelvie's "The Retreat" (if the 1864 date for Beere's picture is correct, then Mackelvie, who arrived in Auckland in 1865, had yet to move in). Mostly hidden by trees near centre was Campbell's "Logan Bank" of which a few forlorn remains still exist on a rubbish-strewn and graffiti-covered site below modern Anzac Avenue.


Mackelvie's "The Retreat" in 1876 (unknown photographer).

Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections 7-A3454 (cropped)

Collapsed concrete pillar on the site of Logan Bank.

 


At left in the detail above is the house of the politician Sir Frederick Whitaker on Emily Place. On the shoreline at right is Wynyard Pier, with Dangar's flour mill behind, and part of Fort Britomart above. Click here for a then-and-now treatment of a John Kinder photograph of Wynyard Pier (from the same period) looking back toward Parnell and St Barnabas Point.

Below: a final detail from Beere's image showing Wynyard Pier, Point Britomart and shipping in the harbour.



Below: a view very similar to Beere's, made by an unknown photographer from somewhat farther north along St Barnabas Point, also dates from 1864.


1864 image: unknown photographer | Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections