A House named Waikouaiti

Number 95, The Terrace, Hurstville, Sydney is a narrow two storied Victorian terrace house.  Built in 1885, the six room house is heritage listed, being the oldest building in the suburb.  Now converted into classrooms as part of the adjoining School, the old house was originally built as a ‘model home’ by a respectable gentleman accountant.                              

Charles Robert Creed named the house ‘Waikouaiti’ in reference to his family’s history and it is strangely fitting that the building has been restored by the Church - its builder was no stranger to religious observances; Charles Creed was the only child of missionary parents and spent most of the first ten years of his life at his father’s mission station in Waikouaiti.                                                           Charles’ father (also named Charles) had been sent to Waikouaiti to relieve the Reverend Watkin – a man whose health had been broken by the herculean task of converting the native population to Christianity. The Reverend Watkin greeted his successor, with a handshake and the memorable phrase “Missionary Creed, Welcome to Purgatory.”   Perhaps no joke had been intended - both men had been sent to this remote mission outpost after having behaved scandalously elsewhere.  The Reverend Watkin (a self-confessed “miserable sinner”) had considered his posting to the ‘barren rock’ of Waikouaiti to be an appropriate punishment.  After creating a scandal by acting ‘improperly’ with a native woman at a Mission in Tonga in 1838 he had been suspended and sent back to Sydney for rehabilitation. His mission to Waikouaiti had been an attempt at redemption.                                                                                                                                                           

Creed’s exile to Waikouaiti had been slightly more complicated.  The oil painting ‘Arrival of the Missionaries’ by George Baxter depicts the Creed family disembarking from the missionary ship ‘The Triton’ in Taranaki in 1841.  The painting was a fine piece of Methodist missionary propaganda, designed to convince prospective missionaries that they could expect a rapturous welcomed from the native population.   The reality must have been somewhat different.

Charles Creed found himself completely alone in a remote and neglected outpost.  He and his wife Eliza were forced to inhabit a flea infested hut without doors, windows or a floor.  Soon after arriving, Eliza gave birth to a baby boy that they named Charles Robert; the child lived for only two weeks.  Two years later a second son was born, Charles Robert (the second) was still a baby when the family were forced to leave Taranaki under a cloud of scandal and amid threats of violence.                                                                                       Eliza Creed had been the first European woman to set foot in Taranaki; however her isolation was brief. New Zealand Company immigrant ships soon arrived and hundreds of disgruntled immigrants disembarked. The Taranaki settlers were dissatisfied with their temporary accommodation and as supplies dwindled, they were soon both hungry and cold.  Land that had been promised (and in some cases purchased) in England had never been acquired and as the settlers began to spread out taking possession of Maori land, disputes arose.  Having no legal authority, the Reverend Creed was powerless to intervene, he preached patience.  Locals responded by threatening to burn his mission house to the ground. 

Amid this climate of conflict and hostility, the Reverend Creed’s unwise affair with a young Maori servant girl was revealed.  A letter that he had written to her surfaced, rumours circulated and the Reverend Creed was accused of adultery.  He was ordered to leave Taranaki and sent to Waikouaiti where he was ‘welcomed to purgatory.’ Creed’s  travelling companion the Reverend Wohlers described this cautionary greeting and recorded his first impressions of the settlement. “The landscape is beautiful.  It consists of hills and mountains of moderate size with valleys and little flats, intersected by small streams.”                             Eliza too may have been pleasantly surprised by their new posting; the mission house was new, warm and weather tight. The tiny, quaint parsonage had four rooms and an attic and stood on a terrace with a magnificent view of distant Matanaka – the site of patron Johnny Jones’ home.  In addition to pleasant accommodation, the Creed’s also had polite company; in 1844 at least six other European families were resident there as well as a dozen or so single men.  The Reverend Watkin had worked hard, local Maori were civil and peaceable and many had embraced the tenets of Christianity – refusing to work on the Sabbath, much to Johnny Jones’ disgust.                                                                                                           The Creed family spent nine years in Waikouaiti, they were well respected, but like his predecessor, Charles Creed was eventually worn down by the enormity of his task – tending to a parish that extended from Foveaux Straight to Kaikoura.  In 1853 with his ‘vitality exhausted’ the Reverend Creed was transferred to a position in Wellington and not long after moved his family to Glebe in New South Wales.                                                                                                   

What became of Charles Creed Junior, the man who built ‘Waikouaiti?’ Unlike Reverend Watkin’s sons, Charles did not enter the ministry.  His occupation is recorded in newspapers accounts as ‘Clerk’ or ‘Accountant.’ Public documents record little else of his life with the exception of the scandal that surrounded his unfortunate first and his bigamous second marriage.                 On September 1^st, 1869 Charles Junior married a woman named Marian Fynney Jarvis.  The ceremony was held in the bride’s parents’ home in the town of Forbes, New South Wales.  His father, the Reverend Charles Creed officiated.  Marian left him almost immediately – for another man (he claimed), - or to care for her sick mother (she claimed).  They were never reconciled, nor were they divorced.                                                               Charles subsequently travelled to Fiji, where in 1878 he married a woman named Elizabeth Buckley.  Charles and Elizabeth returned to Sydney soon after, here two daughters were born and Charles obtained a position as a clerk in a ‘drapery establishment.’ In January 1881, Charles Junior “a highly respectable looking man” was arrested at his place of employment and charged with bigamy.  The evidence presented at his trial was incontrovertible, documentary proof of two marriages was produced and both wives were forced to testify.  Charges of bigamy, adultery and desertion were proven and a divorce was granted.  Within weeks of the divorce being finalised, Charles (very privately) remarried his ‘wife’ Elizabeth, thereby legitimising their relationship and their two daughters.  Elizabeth must have forgiven him; four years after the conclusion of the trial he built her a beautiful ‘model home’ and eventually ‘Waikouaiti’ housed his family of seven children.  Perhaps memories of a happy childhood spent fishing and playing on Waikouaiti beach inspired its name, possibly its name was intended to be a mark of respect for his family’s missionary endeavours, however subsequent owners must have found ‘Waikouaiti’ to be unpronounceable and obscure.  The house was soon renamed ‘Ardo.’                                                                                                

Charles’ father the Reverend Creed never lived to learn of his son’s scandal or see his fine new house.  He died in 1879 and is buried in Rookwood Cemetery, Sydney not far from the grave of his colleague the Reverend Watkin.  Would his Methodist sensibilities have been offended by his son’s casual bigamy? Or might he have shown Christian forgiveness knowing from experience that even the most devout and well-meaning of men are not always morally responsible?