Pictures From The Past

Anybody who suffered the trials of travel on the East Coast back in the '20's would well remember the Fairlie family, whose name is indelibly linked with the early days of motor-coach services in this district.

The other day Frank Fairlie, who was down here from Auckland, for the Te Hapara School jubilee, called at our office with his album illustrating the days when he and his father and three brothers operated the AARD services out of Gisborne, over roads which were often little better than mud-tracks.

AARD was an extension of a travel service originating in Napier, was sometimes known as the "Amalgamated Association of Rough Drivers". Travelling on the roads then, as these pictures show, was certainly a rough business, and the drivers had to be tough and skilled. Probably the passengers had to be tough too.

AARD was succeeded by an owner-driver association, and later still, R. J. Kerridge, now of Kerridge-Odeon fame, ran the "De Luxe" service.

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Two pictures of the firm's Cadillacs on Seymour's Hill, just north of the Whangara Hotel.

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Hudson Super-Sixes on the Motu Road.

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One of the district's early horse floats, a Model T Ford, capsized in a ditch.

It was always said that the mud up the East Coast was the stickiest in the world.

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On Tatapouri Hill, eight miles from Gisborne, passengers fill in the ruts with stones.

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And it looks like it in this picture of a coach trying to get up a hill road near Tolaga Bay. This was the "main highway".

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Truck with load of timber trying to get up Tatapouri Hill.

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Coaches stuck in the mud on the Tolaga Bay road.

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A service car struggling up Takapau Hill, near Tokomaru Bay. The ruts steered the car for the driver!