Ours is a nice house ours is,
A nice house ours is, ours is,
The front's at the front, and the back's at the back
The roof's intact of our dear little shack
Ours is a nice house ours is.
There ain't no rats or mouses
It's cheap, cheap, cheap
But it's sweet, sweet, sweet
Ours is a nice house ours is
— jingle sung by Russell and Mary Matthews when they lived in their corrugated iron shed
The Tin Hut
On return from their honeymoon in England in 1932, Russell and Mary Matthews lived at Tupare for 18 months in a corrugated iron shed that contained one room with a fireplace and no hot water, and a tiny bedroom.
This caused their parents some anxiety with Mother Brodie and Mother Matthews having long discussions on the telephone on whether or not “it was right for poor Mary” to live under such conditions.
Their first child Elizabeth was born during this time, in 1933.
The Matthews moved in to the house while it was still being built and lived with the concrete and its dust. When carpet was finally laid, Mary Matthews got down on the floor and rolled on it in delight.
And the Tin Hut? It was later transformed into the gardener's cottage, and is now the Tupare information centre.
Sir Russell the road-builder
Russell Matthews' working life began as an assistant engineer for the New Plymouth Borough Council for four years. In 1913/14 he researched the use of bitumen sealing, devised a heating system and spray unit, and supervised the application of the first bitumen to a road surface in New Zealand in New Plymouth's Currie Street (from Devon Street to the railway goods shed).
The bitumen was Californian crude 80/100, purchased from Union Asphalt in wooden barrels. As it was the first lot of bitumen to be landed in New Zealand, no one really knew how to handle it. Unaware that it had to be heated to 400° F, they heated it to about 200° F. As a result, the bitumen came out “looking like worms.”
The equipment was built by the Nixon Foundry (on the corner of Courtenay and Hobson Streets, New Plymouth) using a 400-gallon inner tank and a 600-gallon outer tank with a wood fire – the wood supplied by the barrel staves. It had a hand-cranked gear pump, and was horse-drawn with a special release mechanism to allow the horses to escape in the event of a fire.
This first stretch of tar-sealing in New Zealand received three times the required bitumen and lasted more than 15 years.
Because of the war, no more bitumen was landed in New Zealand for some time, and for several years Currie Street remained the only bitumen-sealed road in the country.
Russell Matthews was initially rejected for military service as “medically unfit”, then was accepted in 1917 and served for 10 months overseas during WWI. He stayed on in England when the war ended to study road construction, completing a 3-year engineering course in London. He returned to New Zealand in 1922, where he met Henry Isherwood and Bertie Bellam and joined the engineering firm Isherwood, Bellam and Co, who were engaged in laying bitumen roads in Auckland.
Then, as a partner and managing director, he saw the firm grow into New Zealand’s largest road sealing company.
In 1936, Russell Matthews formed Matthews & Kirkby Ltd., road-sealing contractors in New Plymouth.
By 1942 he had his own road-sealing business, Russell Matthews & Co., which became New Zealand’s largest, operating throughout the country. This company sealed more than 3,000 kilometres of road from Whangarei to Invercargill.
Lively parties and noble visitors
Tupare was considered to be an important house in New Plymouth and many local people were very proud to have it in the city. It was a private residence, but everyone knew that Russell and Mary Matthews lived there, and that it was a very attractive home. The Matthews were considered to be very prominent people in the city, and people took an interest in the house.
In the 1960s, busloads of members of various societies visited Tupare including the Compost Club, the Camellia Society and the Lily Society. One particularly memorable group was a busload of dendrologists from the United Kingdom almost all of whom had titles.
Tupare attracted many local and international visitors including Roger Whittaker, Joy Adamson, Alistair Cooke, Sir Roy Jack and Lloyd Geering. Many of the visitors were connected to the oil industry and Ivon Watkins, the chemical company Russell Matthews had helped finance. Americans involved with the International Harvester agency he had were frequent visitors, as were people connected with his horticultural interests.
There were many parties in the house, sometimes involving singsongs around the piano and famously including Russell Matthews doing the sword dance in his long-johns with the swords that hung above the mantelpiece.
The liveliest parties included the Australian and American Shell BP Todd explorers based in Taranaki.
They were often treated to a showing of a 16mm film of the Coronation that Russell Matthews took in London in 1953 from his position between Buckingham Palace and the Mall. It was taken in the rain and underexposed other than a little bright, purchased segment spliced into the middle, that showed the inside the Abbey. There was no sound, so Russell Matthews would play a record of the Grenadier Guards band playing patriotic marches.
Russell Matthew’s reedy, falsetto voice could be heard singing “Land of Hope and Glory” above the clatter of the big projector which was placed in the hall to get maximum projection to the screen in the living room.
When the Marquis and Marchioness of Huntly came to stay after opening the Commonwealth Games in Perth in the 1960s, the Bentley was washed and waxed and three bottles of Blue Nun Leibfraumilch white wine from Germany were placed on the mantelpiece and sizzled from the heat of the fire below. One bottle was allocated for each night. It wasn’t a wine culture in New Zealand in those days so this was a gallant attempt to do the right thing by the Marquis.
