CHARLESTON
Later this tram was extended over the bridge to the forest about a mile up the north bank of the river. Charles Nees had, on 22nd January, 1868, been authorised to “construct a tramway commencing at The Nile Steam Sawmills to the eastward of a piece of land held for a toll-house by the proprietors of the Nile bridge, and terminating at the back of the Camp Reserve, Charleston.” This toll-house was the Nile Hotel. Nees also had the right to construct a tramway from Little Beach.
The following advertisement is from the N.Z. Directory of 1867-1868:
“NILE COALMINE, SAWMILL, and TRAMWAYS, NILE RIVER, NEAR CHARLESTON, PAKIHI.
A tramway has been constructed from Charleston to the River Nile, also a coal shoot and good wharf accommodation has been constructed, where cargoes for Charleston can be landed and carried to town at 5/- per ton.
As the resources of the coal-mine are ample, vessels can be loaded in a few hours.
Arrangements have been made for the attendance of a tug in the river to attend to steamers and other craft.
Charles Nees,
Proprietor.”
Whether these were contemplated arrangements, held out as an inducement to shipping to use the river as a port, or whether some small vessels actually worked the river in the early days, cannot be definitely stated; but it is believed that the first steamer to enter the Nile was the P.S. Result, about 1874, and that no sailing vessel ever crossed its bar, although Little Beach was early used as a landing-place. When this sawmill was closed, owing to lack of demand, supplies of sawn timber were obtained from Jock Mitchell who worked a waterwheel plant on the site of Nees’s abandoned battery beside the old Buller Road. In 1880, Mitchell operated a sawmill at Brown’s Terrace in partnership with W. Rickelbaum. The price of sawn timber was reasonable, being 15/- per hundred superficial feet in 1868, and 18/- in 1873. The Marris
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