Resthills Sports

Great to host Kimura Kiwis Inc. at Resthills today for the Waikato Sambo Open, alongside Hamilton Sambo 🥋

We were happy to help them out with floor space at short notice for their competition. It was awesome seeing their portable mats in action and watching such a well-supported event. Thanks to everyone who travelled and came out! 🙌

💥🏘️ Friday Flashback #5 — The Fields Become Streets

Last time we covered the farming families and the Rukuhia scrapyard. This week: the moment Glenview and southern Melville stopped being paddocks and became the suburb we know today — plus a genuine historical mystery we're still trying to solve.

The Suburban Frontier
By the late 1950s, Hamilton's postwar population boom had finally reached the southern paddocks — the city grew from 22,000 people in 1945 to over 63,000 by 1966, and the old militia-era farmland simply couldn't hold out. Council had the foresight to secure the Reynolds farmland as public reserve ahead of the advancing suburb — the deliberate act that gave us Resthills Park.

🛩 The 1966 aerial captures the transformation of the area mid-stride.

Council at the time actually refused to accept the area's gullies as reserve land, insisting on flat ground instead — part of why the gullies you see today were built up rather than preserved as-is. In one case, 4,000 cubic yards of fill sourced from Chinaman's Hill (see previous post) was used behind Tomin Road and Greta Street. Before development, those gullies were a tangle of blackberry, honeysuckle, and wattle.

🕵️ An Open Mystery: When Was Resthills Park Actually Acquired?
Here's one we genuinely can't answer yet, and we'd love your help. While we know Council secured land through the 1960s and into the early 1970s, the actual acquisition date for the bulk of the Reynolds farmland is still a mystery. If anyone has old Council records, family knowledge, or memories of the original purchase, we would love to hear from you!

The Developers Behind the Street Names
A small group of developers shaped the entire suburb, and their names — and their families' — are still on our street signs:

🔹 Bruce Lugton — the most prominent of them all. His company, Resthills Ltd, gave us Resthill Crescent (1968) and, indirectly, the name of the park itself. Bruce Avenue is named for him.

🔹 M.T. MacDonald ran with a Scottish theme: Macmurdo Avenue, Colstone Street, Forth Crescent, Oban Avenue — and MacDonald Road for himself.

🔹 McLachlan of Chartwell Properties named Sunnyhills Avenue after Auckland relatives, Dawn Rise after his wife, and Lorraine Place after his daughter.

🔹 L.B. Splitt named an entire run of streets after his daughters — Greta, Gwendoline, Jeanette, Keitha, and Sacha — plus Splitt Avenue for himself.

🔹 The Tomin family left the most detailed record of all: Tomin Road for the family, Urlich Avenue for relative Clem Urlich, and Richan Street — a blend of sons Richard and Andrew's nicknames, "Rich" and "An."

🔹 One lovely outlier: Pollen Crescent, named by A.J. Fisk — a beekeeper (hence "Pollen") who also happened to be a former president of the Hamilton Historical Society.

🕵️ The Name "Resthills" — A Second Mystery
The naming archive confirms Resthill Crescent came from Lugton's company, Resthills Ltd — but it also notes, almost in passing, that a "Reston family" lived in the area too. Coincidence, or did the company borrow a name already on the land? If anyone knows more, we'd love to hear it!

🎖️ The Military Streets of Melville
Melville's street grid honours WWII and WWI commanders over more than a decade: Dowding Street for the Battle of Britain's Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding, Beatty Street for WWI naval commander Admiral David Beatty, Odette Street for decorated SOE agent Odette Hallowes, Bader Street for legless flying ace Douglas Bader, Slim Street for "Forgotten Army" commander William Slim, Wingate Street for Chindits founder Orde Wingate, Allenby Street for WWI's Edmund Allenby, and Montgomery Crescent for El Alamein's Bernard Montgomery. Normandy Avenue is the oldest of the lot — renamed from Western Lea Road in 1949 to honour D-Day.

And as housing filled the remaining gaps, developers added an aviation-themed trio — Kittyhawk Place, Corsair Place, and Catalina Drive — a fitting echo of the very aircraft that passed through the Rukuhia scrapyard. ✈️

⚠️ As always — if you have knowledge, corrections, or sources that enrich this history, please share them.

👇 Next week: greyhounds, a council compromise, and the Glenview Hotel's Sunday smorgasbord.

💥🚜 Friday Flashback #4 — Made Ground, Market Gardens, and Fighter Planes

Last week we covered the raupatu and the militia soldiers who walked off their swampy land grants. This week: what happened to that land once the speculators moved in — farming, market gardens, a flood story, and a backyard scrapyard full of WWII fighters!

Made Ground
By the late 1800s and early 1900s, a handful of farming families worked the low-lying Rukuhia flats south of Hamilton — but the land itself wasn't natural. It had been radically re-engineered by James Williamson's drainage network: hand-dug V-shaped channels cut through the Rukuhia peat bog by workers using ditching spades and axes, laying timber planks just to stop themselves sinking into the mire. What these families farmed was, in every sense, made ground — and it's still sinking today. Waikato Regional Council has monitored continuous peat subsidence, due to Williamson's 'improvements' since 1924.

Hospital Hill
Before Glenview or Melville had names of their own, the district's identity came from a single landmark: Waikato Hospital, opened in 1887 on the ridge to the north. Locals called the wider area Hospital Hill. Melville takes its name from James Dougal Melville, who arrived in NZ in 1862 aged 13, served aboard the government steamer Sturt during the Waikato Campaign, and settled near Hamilton until his death in 1909. Melville's very first street, though, predates all of this — Mahoe Street was laid out in the 1920s on a crown grant, named simply after a prominent native tree.

The Farming Families
A run of settler families carved up the land after Williamson's Rukuhia Estate broke up — and left their names permanently on our street signs. The Peacocke family farmed the southern river flats (Peacockes Road); Edward and Laura Houchen ran the Tirohanga homestead from the 1920s (Houchens Road); the Tomin family and their relative Clem Urlich subdivided their own land in the mid-1950s, creating Tomin Road and Urlich Avenue, and the Collins family established a prominent early farm and their name is preserved today in Collins Road, which serves as a major dividing line running right through the heart of the Mangakootukutuku catchment. And the acreage that is now Resthills Park itself was carved directly from Reynolds family farmland — permanently marked by Reynolds Drive.

✈️ Rukuhia's Secret: A Fighter Plane Graveyard
After WWII, the RNZAF rapidly downsized — leaving hundreds of combat-ready aircraft suddenly surplus. Between 1945 and the early 1950s, the area that is now Hamilton Airport became a graveyard for over 400 combat aircraft — mostly F4U Corsairs, alongside P-40 Kittyhawks, TBF Avengers and Ventura bombers, sold off for next to nothing by the War Assets Realization Board. Larsen and Co. won the tender to smelt the aluminium airframes onsite into ingots. But plenty were simply bought by locals: drop tanks became tiny "tank boats" and soapbox racers, while fuselages and wings turned into farm sheds, chicken coops, and playground equipment. This history resurfaces later in the street grid too — keep an eye out for Kittyhawk Place, Corsair Place, and Catalina Drive in a future post!

🥬 The Sun Market Gardens
Hamilton's Chinese market gardening community recognised the value of the fertile, along the Mangakootukutuku gully — the Sun Market Gardens supplied fresh vegetables to the growing borough from plots along SH3. One notable figure here is Sam Poy Shum, who established a market garden in southern Glenview; the surrounding hillside being named in period language as "Chinaman's Hill,". His son Alex later recalled the black straw hats and hoes turning the soil — "back-breaking work." Alex's own journey to Hamilton was remarkable: at age 10, he and his mother and sister faced the Japanese invasion of China as war refugees before joining his father here. The family's shop in Glenview is still fondly remembered by older Hamiltonians, and the market garden history lives on nearby in the naming of Soo Yong Place.

🐦 The Pukeko Paddocks — and a Flood Bigger Than the Saxby Road Bridge
Before subdivision, the soggy flats near what's now Resthills Park were known locally as the Pukeko Paddocks — better suited to swamp hens than stock. Flooding hit repeatedly through the 1950s (1953, 1956, 1958), at one point completely washing away the original wooden bridge on Saxbys Road. The culprit wasn't just local rain — it was high water in the main Waipā and Waikato Rivers backing straight up into the Rukuhia network. It took a full regional engineering response to fix: the Lower Waikato–Waipā Flood Protection Scheme, built from 1961 to 1983, which brought dams, floodgates, and pump stations to tame a river system that had been overwhelming local drains for nearly a century.

🛩 The 1961 aerials capture this land in its final farming years — open paddocks, mature hedgerows, a single modest farm building, and the grid of Williamson-era ditches still doing their job a century after being hand-dug. This is Resthills landscape before a single house went up.

⚠️ As always — if you have knowledge, corrections, or sources that enrich this history, please share them. This is a living record.

👇 Next week: the fields become streets — the developers, families, and Scottish clan names behind the modern Glenview/Melville grid.

💥⚔️ Friday Flashback #3 — The Invasion, Raupatu, and the Men Who Got the Land

Last week we explored the Mangakootukutuku / Gully of Fuchsia — the thriving Ngaati Koura economy of flour mills, flax trading, and paa settlements that defined this landscape before 1863. This week, everything changes.

July 1863: Invasion of the Waikato from the North 💥
The peaceful and industrious era of the Mangakootukutuku catchment was violently interrupted when British Imperial forces invaded the Waikato, eventually being led into Kirikiriroa on 24 August 1864 by Captain William Steele. Because the Crown couldn't find local recruits, most men were drawn from Auckland, Melbourne, and Sydney. Over 3,000 men were enrolled across four regiments. Before the invasion, Magistrate Gorst estimated Kirikiriroa Paa had a permanent Maaori population of about 78; the wider Waikato district, around 3,400. Within two years, almost all had been forcibly removed. Many withdrew to Hukanui (Gordonton), or south behind the aukati — the boundary line of the Puniu River — into what became known as the King Country, because the Maaori King had taken refuge there.

The Raupatu
The colonial government's response was the New Zealand Settlements Act December 1863 — one of the most consequential pieces of legislation in New Zealand history. It resulted in the unjust confiscation — raupatu — of approximately 1.2 million acres of ancestral Waikato land. The confiscation swept up the entirety of the Mangakootukutuku catchment, the paa network, the agricultural fields, and the Ngaati Koura flour mill. Ngaati Wairere and Ngaati Koura were forcibly displaced from the river corridors. The legal question of who had originally held mana whenua over this specific zone was formally settled decades later. In the 1909 Moerangi Minute Books of the Maaori Land Court, the elders of Ngaati Maahanga recorded their tribal boundaries — and made no ancestral claim to Mangakootukutuku or Te Rapa. This record indicates that the historical kaitiakitanga of the Glenview/Resthills zone rested with the Ngaati Wairere confederation. The Crown formally acknowledged this injustice in its 1995 apology.

The 4th Waikato Militia
The confiscated land was redistributed primarily to the soldiers of the 4th Waikato Regiment of Militia. The size of their land grant depended entirely on rank — from 400 rural acres for a Field Officer down to a 50-acre rural block plus an additional town lot in Hamilton East or West. John Knox, a sergeant in the 4th Regiment and later Mayor of Hamilton, retained and consolidated his 80-acre rural grant within what is now Glenview rather than selling, anchoring the suburb's northern boundary.

🗺️ The Military Settlements map shows exactly how this looked on the ground — numbered allotments fanning out from the Hamilton town grids, with the large irregular southern rural blocks — the future Glenview, Melville, and Rukuhia — visible at lower left. Note the label "Native Land" near Tamahere in the bottom right: a stark reminder of how little remained outside the confiscation boundary.

Why Most Settlers Left
Despite the promise of free land, the vast majority of ordinary soldiers abandoned their rural lots within three years. The southern blocks were dominated by the Rukuhia Swamp — low-lying, waterlogged, and cut off by a complete absence of roads. Hamilton's population, which reached roughly 1,000 in 1864, had collapsed to around 300 by 1868. 📉

🗺️ The wetlands map shows exactly why the land was so unappealing to European settlers: vast peat swamp systems — the Rukuhia Swamp and its tributaries — blanketed the land immediately south and west of the emerging town. This is the landscape that militia soldiers were handed — and promptly abandoned.

🗺️ The Melville Cadastral Map shows what came next: the large consolidated DP-referenced farming blocks across Te Rapa Parish and Waipa County are the speculator estates that replaced the fragmented militia allotments — bought cheaply from soldiers who wanted cash in hand rather than a swamp.

James Williamson and the Rukuhia Estate
The most prominent of these speculators was James Williamson (pictured), a wealthy entrepreneur and politician. Around 1865 he consolidated a vast estate stretching from the western shores of Lake Rotoroa (Hamilton Lake) through Glenview, Melville, and south past Rukuhia Road to Koromatua. Desperate for cash, many militia men sold their grants to Williamson for as little as £5 to £10 per lot — just a few weeks' wages. Known as the Rukuhia Estate, Williamson invested heavily in drainage engineering, digging hundreds of kilometres of drains to convert the swamp into viable pasture. The land remained in large agricultural holdings for decades — it wasn't until the mid-20th century that developers like Lugton Lands began subdividing these old farms into the residential streets of Glenview we know today.

🗺️ The Waipa County map (final image) shows the administrative geography that replaced the confiscated rohe. Waipa County was formally established on 9 January 1877 with five ridings. Rukuhia — visible as its own named district — reflects how Williamson's drained estate had by then become a recognised farming district in its own right.

⚠️ As always — if you have knowledge, corrections, or sources that enrich this history, please share them. This is a living record.

👇 Next week: The farming families who shaped the land — and how the fields of Glenview became a suburb.



Aotearoa New Zealand History

🌳 150+ Plants in the Ground: A Massive Success at Resthills Park! 🌳

What a great turnout for our Hamilton City Council Nature in the City Winter Planting Day! A huge thank you to all the enthusiastic volunteers who came down, rolled up their sleeves, and helped get over 150 native plants into the soil.

📸 Photo Credits
📸 Jimmy Kirk /
(Thank you so much for capturing the energy and spirit of the day!)

🌸 Spotlight on Kootukutuku
Among our new additions is the spectacular Kootukutuku (Tree Fuchsia), a species that used to thrive right along our local Mangakootukutuku gully network. Here is why we are so excited to bring it back to the area it gave it's name to:

Striking Looks: Famous for its distinctive peeling, papery orange bark and flowers with bright blue pollen.

Trunk Flowers: The flowers bloom between August and December, shifting from greenish-yellow to purple-red, growing directly out of the trunk!

Bird Magnet: Produces dark purple, edible sweet berries called koonini—a vital food source for tūī, korimako, and silvereyes.

Cultural History: Maaori women traditionally gathered the bright blue pollen for makeup.

We planted these beauties in the damp, sheltered areas of the park where they can thrive, protected from strong winds.

📲 Stay Connected & Get Involved!
Follow Resthills Sports to keep up with what's happening at the park and around the community hub.

Get involved in future events: Head to volunteerhamilton.rosterfy.co to sign up and help restore nature right here in Kirikiriroa Hamilton!

Look out for our next event!

💥🌿 Friday Flashback #2 — The Gully of Fuchsia

Last week we introduced Wairere, the peacemaker whose birth shaped the entire tribal landscape of Kirikiriroa. This week, we zoom into the land beneath your feet — specifically, the deep gully systems, wetlands, and Maaori economy that once defined what is now Resthills, Glenview, Melville, and Bader.

A landscape nothing like today
Before European settlement, the flat country surrounding what is now Resthills was dominated by vast peat swamp, dense stands of kahikatea and tawa, and rich wetland. Threading through it all was a network of stream gullies — and the most significant of these was Mangakootukutuku: The Gully of Fuchsia, named for the native fuchsia trees (kootukutuku) that lined its banks. This entire southern zone drew its identity from that gully.

Far from being empty wilderness, it was a thriving mahinga kai — a food resource landscape. Kuukupa (wood pigeons) were traditionally harvested among the kahikatea stands. Settlements and horticultural sites clustered tightly along these stream networks feeding into the Waikato awa, with evidence of borrow pits in the area.

The paa of the southern zone
Two key archaeological sites anchored this landscape:

Kairokiroki Paa (S14/46) — Located on the south bank of the Waikato River, accessible via the Glenview Club Inc on Peacockes Road and opposite Hamilton Gardens. This is the most significant, well-preserved archaeological site nearby to Resthills. A significant heritage site, it features intact ditch-and-bank defences, a terraced river platform roughly 95 metres long, and clear evidence of an extensive associated gardening landscape stretching across the entire Peacockes Road river flat. When first formally recorded in 1968, the land was still being actively farmed by the Peacocke family — creating a direct thread to the pastoral history we'll cover in a later post.

Te Rapa Paa (S14/34) & Te Kourahi Paa (S14/59) — Further north near modern Cobham Drive and the Waikato Hospital, Te Rapa served as the principal ancestral stronghold of Ngaati Koura. Its satellite paa, Te Kourahi, sat only 200 metres away — and was later largely destroyed by the construction of Cobham Drive. The modern State Highway 3 traces the route of the ancient walking track 👣 that once connected these northern and southern hubs.

Ngaati Koura and the flour mill 🍞
The hapuu who held mana whenua over this southern zone was Ngaati Koura, a principal hapuu of Ngaati Wairere. By 1857 they had built a commercial flour mill — part of a remarkable, often overlooked chapter of Waikato Maaori history. Between 1846 and 1860, missionaries helped Waikato hapuu establish at least eight such mills across the region. Ngaati Koura's mill sat on the Kourahi stream beside the Te Rapa/Te Kourahi Paa cluster — a location confirmed by Hochstetter's 1859 survey map (image included🗺️), one of the earliest European records of this area. Today, this is the site used by 🏹 River Glade Archers. (Ridler's Flour Mill, built in the 1870s, was also located in the area now behind the Urlich Shopping Centre.) Active flax and produce trading extended the length of the Mangakootukutuku gully — with the entire catchment from Te Rapa south to the gully mouth functioning as an interconnected rohe of enterprise.

Hera Te Onetapu
At the centre of this landscape stands one of the area's important ancestral figures. The portrait image is believed to be Hera Te Onetapu (c.1830–1890), of Ngaati Koura and Ngaati Whawhaakia, whose descendants number in the thousands today. According to oral testimony, much of what is now Glenview, Frankton, and Dinsdale was her land — then largely a swamp providing flax for export — while her brother Te Wetini occupied Pukete and Mangaharakeke Paa to the north.

⚠️ As always — if you have knowledge, corrections, or sources that enrich or clarify this history, please share them. This is a living record.

👇 Next week: Raupatu — how everything changed in 1863.



Aotearoa New Zealand History

That is how you wrap up a massive event! ⚡️

Those relay races were chaos, and you just know there were some great gooseys and footwork leaving defenders grabbing at air! 🪿💨

Massive credit to the@Apex Foundation NZ crew, the coaches, rangatahi support team, and the whaanau for putting in the mahi to pull this off. What a win for the Waikato Junior Rugby League community! 🙌🏉

Let's work together and make this regular!

💥📜For our very first flashback, we are stepping right back to the 1500s and 1600s—long before Resthills was a modern sports park or a suburban reserve. The whenua we play and recreate on today sits within a traditional landscape deeply shaped by geopolitical alliances, identity, and a historic peace.

During this era, the Hamilton area was a pre-colonial Maaori landscape. Known natively as Kirikiriroa (meaning "long stretch of gravel or river alluvial soils"), the region featured extensive river-terrace gardens explicitly designed for cultivating kuumara. The map image attached shows locations of known archeological sites nearby.

At the centre of this landscape's tribal history is Wairere, the famous eponymous ancestor of Ngati Wairere, the local iwi upon whose traditional lands Kirikiriroa (Hamilton) is built. Wairere's parents were Tamainupoo and Tukotuku. Tamainupoo was the son of Kookako (of Mataatua descent) and Whaeatapoko (of Tainui descent) — meaning he himself already bridged two great waka traditions. Tukotuku was the daughter of Maahanga, a direct descendant of Hoturoa, captain of the Tainui canoe. The whakapapa diagram above captures these two converging lines. Prior to Wairere's birth, his grandfathers, Kookako and Maahanga, were bitter adversaries—with tribal histories recording that Kookako was believed to be responsible for the drowning of Maahanga’s father, Tuuheitia. However, Wairere’s birth in the 16th century served as a profound diplomatic catalyst. His birth was deemed so politically significant that a historic truce was struck between Kookako and Maahanga at Puurakau Pa—the fortified kaainga of Maahanga located at the confluence of the Waipaa River and the Kaniwhaniwha stream. True to his name, which translates to "flowing water," Wairere grew to be remembered as a diplomat and a peacemaker rather than a warrior. His lineage expanded across the region, establishing the foundations of Ngati Wairere and the paramount chieftainship of Ngati Tuuwharetoa. Today, Wairere Drive is named in honour of this history.

Some Tainui hapuu which descend from Wairere include:
Ngaati Iranui
Ngaati Parekirangi
Ngaati Haanui
Ngaati Waikai
Ngaati Te Hiko
Ngaati Ruru
Ngaati Waenganui
Ngaati Tahunaraukawa
Ngaati Koura
Ngaati Huakatoa

But did you know that Wairere’s early life is also permanently bound to the identity of our region's main waterway? Traditional accounts record that he was baptised in a sacred Tohi (baptismal ritual) at Taipouri Island. (Some recorded versions place this baptismal island near Raahui Pookeka Huntly, while others place it closer to Rangiriri). At the time, the river was known as Te Awanui o Taikehu. During the ritual, karamu leaves were dipped into the water, and a distinct plucking or casting motion was used to sprinkle droplets over the child to release him from the tapu of childbirth. Following this significant ceremony, the river's ancient name was changed to Waikato, which literally translates to “to pluck water,” referencing the ritual mechanics of Wairere's baptism.

🗺️ Check out the map (Te Porotaka o Ngaati Maahanga):
If you look closely at the top right of the map, you can spot the river labelled with that ancient name, Te Awanui o Taikehu! It also outlines the principal district of Wairere's grandfather, Maahanga, showing how interconnected local geography is.

⚠️ A quick note from us: History is a living, breathing thing, and we recognise that we may not always get every detail exactly right. If you spot a date that looks off, a name we missed, or a story that needs correcting, please let us know! We would absolutely love your advice, corrections, and sources.

👇Can you Help? Have you got old photos, memories, team shots, newspaper clippings, or stories from the area? Send them through or drop a comment below. Let’s build this history together!

Next week, we’ll fast-forward a few centuries to explore the "Gully of Fuchsia" and the early economics that thrived right on our back doorstep!



Aotearoa New Zealand History

🌪️ Extreme Hamilton! Come for the stories, stay for the advice. ⛈️🏛️

Hey South Hamilton community! Did you know that Resthills Sports is a part of the local South Community Resilience Plan? Building a strong, prepared neighbourhood starts with knowing our history and knowing what to do when severe weather hits.

Join the Hamilton City Libraries Historic Team and Civil Defence Waikato for a look back—and forward—at how we handle the elements.

The History: Discover stories and archival photos of Hamilton’s extreme weather events of the past.

The Plan: Get expert advice from the Civil Defence team on personal preparedness so we can keep our households, neighbours, and community hubs like Resthills ready for anything.

📅 When: Saturday 18 July, 2:00pm – 3:00pm
📍 Where: Te Kete Aronui Rototuna Library
🎟️ Cost: FREE (Adult focus)

Let’s look out for each other and build a more resilient community together. Tag your neighbours below! 👇

⚾️ HAVE A GO!! Our friends at Hamilton Raiders are holding a Have-a- Go event. ⚾️

Whether you are swinging a bat for the very first time or looking to pick up a new hobby, everyone is welcome to come down and try baseball! No need to register - just show up - and join in.

Here is everything you need to know:
📅 When: Sunday, 19 July
🕐 Time: 1:00 PM – 3:00 PM
📍 Where: Mahoe Park, Melville
👶 Ages: 4+ years old

Why come along?
✅ No experience needed – perfect for total beginners!
✅ All gear provided – just bring yourself and a smile.
✅ Fun games & activities – plenty of action to keep everyone smiling.
✅ Everyone welcome!

Bring the family, enjoy some fresh air, and see what baseball is all about. 🧢✨

👉 Ready to join the fun? Scan the QR code on the flyer below to register or find out more!