John S Adam arrived on the Jane Gifford in 1841 along with his sister Elizabeth, keen to take up the land promised to him at the township of Cornwallis by the Scottish and grandly-named New Zealand Manukau and Waitemata Land Company. But as it turned out Cornwallis wasn’t a township at all, and Adam along with many of his fellow immigrants who had been taken in by the scheme took up land elsewhere from the Crown in exchange for their useless acres. Adam ended up on St Georges Road in Avondale, and grew potatoes for a time until he decided he’d had enough and moved to Australia in 1845. There, he would remain for the rest of his days, pursuing a successful career as a draughtsman, involved with Presbyterian Church governance, and as a philanthropist.

Adam purchased his additional properties in Avondale and what would become New Windsor in October 1845, after he had already left this colony for Tasmania, quite likely just as an investment. Apart from perhaps approving the “New Windsor” name though, he had little to do with the area’s story.
Another land investor who came to be interested in the area was Dr Samuel Ford, who was in Kororareka (Russell) at the time of the Northern War of 1845. Taking refuge in Auckland, he purchased a considerable amount of the western isthmus of Auckland, including land on the eastern side of New Windsor Road, from Brydon Place to John Davis Road. His land, like that still owned by the Crown, was subdivided for sale into farmlets in the 1880s. This was when Wolseley (Wolverton) and Garnet (Tiverton) Streets were formed and named by the Avondale Road Board, after Sir Garnet Wolseley, one of the British Empire’s military heroes in Africa.

Some of the earliest Chinese who arrived in New Zealand in 1865 came from the gold mines in Victoria at the invitation of the Otago Chamber of Commerce. They were to rework the central Otago claims abandoned by gold miners who had headed to the new goldrush on the West Coast.

Thousands followed. The following year the Chinese population was recorded as 1219, peaking at 4,700 in 1872 after some 2,000 more came directly from China.

These were not the first, however. Appo Hockton (Wong Ah Poo Hoc Ting) is recorded as the first Chinese immigrant to New Zealand, having jumped ship in Nelson in 1842 – apparently because the captain refused to supply soap with which to wash clothes. On 3 January 1853 Appo became the first naturalised Chinese New Zealander.

Additionally, James Williams, “a native of the Celestial Empire” as described by the Southern Cross, and a “Chinaman” by the New Zealander, was living in Chancery Street in Auckland in 1862. And in Wellington, John Ah Tong, born c.1838 in Canton, on 15 May 1866 became the second Chinese person to be naturalised in New Zealand, after Appo Hockton. By that stage Ah Tong was already established as a businessman (cabinetmaking and upholstery) in Willis Street and his son was born in 1865 to his wife, Caroline Tolhurst.

The majority of Chinese immigrants came from a cluster of counties in the Pearl River Delta region in Guangdong province in southern China, near the capital Guangzhou - also known as Canton - and spoke Cantonese.

Village life revolved around a farming or peasant culture. Some villages were surrounded by rice paddies which grew all year round, producing usually 2-3 crops each year. Land that wasn’t planted with rice might grow sugar cane, peanuts, a Chinese version of kumara, bananas, lychees and water chestnuts.

The villagers were tenant farmers who rented land from the local land-owner, working seven days a week from sun up to sun down. They were so poor they couldn’t afford rice or meat, but had to eat taro-like vegetables and Chinese kumara. They might have pork once a year, and if they were lucky, a fish from the nearby stream.

Forced abroad by poverty and overpopulation, men from Guangdong sought their fortunes in the goldrushes of California (known as Gum Shan or Gold Mountain), Canada, Australia and New Zealand (collectively known as Sun Gum Shan or New Gold Mountain). They were sent by their village or family to work in New Zealand and to send money back home. The money to send them was borrowed with interest, and often the accruing interest was greater than the men could send, and the debt just kept increasing.

Some did well in the gold fields, but the majority didn’t find wealth, and as the gold ran out, rather than ‘lose face’ returning with nothing, many rented land from Māori and European settlers, and took up market gardening, hawked vegetables and in later years opened small businesses such as fruit shops or laundries.