Exotic animals drew ‘huge curiosity’ in remote New Zealand: Michael Fowler

Sitting on elephants from Ashton’s Circus in May 1967 (from left): Maurice Elliot, John Minty and Keith Startup line up for their elephant race from Railway Road to King Street, through Heretaunga Street West. Photo / Hawke’s Bay Knowledge Bank C A Hill Collection

Michael Fowler is a contracted Hawke’s Bay author and historian mfhistory@gmail.com

Elephants were of huge curiosity to a remote country such as New Zealand – as were the other wild animals of a circus troupe such as tigers, lions, monkeys, panthers, zebras and gorillas.

Hastings’ first chance to see an elephant perform occurred in 1893 (Napier’s was in 1884) when the Fillis’ Great Circus and Menagerie set up in the block where the Quest Hotel is today, off Eastbourne Street East. Fillis was a South African-based circus.

An elephant in this circus called “Little Bess” had a routine where it played on a see-saw with a pony, and after this they both took supper together, with “a grotesque monkey” acting as a waiter for them both. This brought the house down in great laughter.

From this point of time, until around the 1970s, the visit of an animal circus to town was a big event in the life of Hastings (in fact any community).

The public (and newspaper reporters, many of them angling to get a free seat, sometimes successfully) were amazed at what the elephants could perform.

In Hastings in 1898, an elephant called “Lizzie” in Fitzgerald Bros” Circus rode a tricycle with a full-grown lion called “Leo” on its back around the arena (encased in an iron cage) while the circus band played A Bicycle Built For Two. This act was said to be “the greatest sensation of the circus”.

A newspaper reporter said he was “astonished at an elephant which can do whatever he is told, even sitting in a chair at afternoon tea, or playing a drum and cymbals”.

What most people did not know then was the often cruel methods used to train the elephants for their entertainment.

Cornwall Park, as many know, has an aviary and at one point had monkeys. An opportunity in 1927 presented itself for Hastings to purchase an elephant from Wellington Zoo at a cost of £150 (2025: $19,000). Not only was the elephant for Cornwall Park’s zoo, but to also replace the borough council’s horses for its works department. “We might consider it later on,” said Mayor George Maddison – but they never did.

Circus elephants did get up to mischief everywhere they went, and Hawke’s Bay was no exception.

When a circus train stopped at Clive in 1930, the elephant’s carriage was situated next to Roy Dockery’s pumpkin patch – of which he took great pride. The elephant decided the pumpkin patch looked good, and its trunk stretched into Dockery’s garden to grab one, and then enjoyed in the carriage an unexpected treat of a large pumpkin.

Alice, an elephant belonging to the German circus, Wirth’s, loved plain bread and butter.

A man in 1949, who was watching the circus being unloaded at the Hastings railway yards, did not notice Alice’s long trunk “deftly removing” two large loaves of bread from his basket. Alice disposed of them in a single gulp. Feeling a nudge, the man turned and saw a pound of butter disappearing into Alice’s mouth.

In 1934, Philip Wirth senior and junior gave an address to Hastings Rotary on the history of their circus. One animal they mentioned was Alice, and they stated the elephant could push a 365-ton train (370,857 kg) with its head.

And this is what had happened in 1922, when many people gathered at the Hastings railway station to watch the unloading of Wirth’s circus. They watched, astonished, Alice, under a word of command, easily move a line of 10 circus train carriages. When Alice had moved the carriages on past the track points on the railway line, the order to stop was given, and the elephant moved behind one the carriages and shunted them to another line.

Elephant street races were held in various locations around New Zealand in the 1960s and the various circuses gladly gave their animals for this purpose as publicity. These events were usually part of charity fundraising.

In 1963, the elephants of Bullens Circus came to Hastings, and a street race was held over a mile (1.6km). Hastings held the record for the fastest time over a mile that year of 10.5 minutes. Greater Hastings secretary John Minty was the winning jockey.

Minty would once again line up as a jockey in May 1967 on an Ashton Circus’s elephant, joined by fellow jockeys, the Hastings Lions Club president Maurice Elliot and Jaycees president Keith Startup.

They were to race over two central business district blocks down Heretaunga Street West from Railway Road (now outside Paper Plus) to King Street.

Minty’s elephant was given a block’s head start due to his elephant’s lesser speed, and Elliot and Startup would begin at Railway Road.

Elliot’s elephant raced away from Startup’s very quickly from the start, and would pass Minty’s well before the finishing line, the latter only able to coax no more than a slow walk out of his elephant, despite his handicap, and came last.

Crowds flocked to see the race and hundreds of children (yes, it happened) swarmed out into the street to run at the heels of the elephants.

The real winner was the charity of New Zealand Nursing education and Research Foundation, who received £61 10 shillings (2025: $2,900).

Michael Fowler is doing a talk on the history of Hastings’s Fantasyland on Wednesday 3 September– eventfinda.co.nz for details.