ROADS

The Glenbrook roads were in the main only tracks when we came here.  The road from Waiuku was metalled as far as the Waitangi bridge.  My father, who was elected to the Road Board shortly after arriving here, got busy and got the main road metalled as far as the hall.  This was all done by hand-napped metal.  Heaps of spawls were placed along the road and men napped the metal at so much a yard.  The late Eddie Dromgool was reckoned the best napper around here.  Most of the local farmers earned a bit of money either supplying spawls or napping.  There was plenty of metal about those days.  The hall road was next done, but the stone crusher was used for that job.  Most of the metal came out of a quarry in front of Mrs. Mitchell’s house.  The metalling of Brown Gully, Mission Bush and McCrystal’s roads are quite recent.  For many years the short piece between the Glenbrook Railway Station and Ti Ti corner was left undone, and people with motor cars in those days had to go to Pukekohe via Waiuku in the winter time.  The only metalled road to Auckland in those days was via Waiuku-Pukekohe.  Pukekohe East to the Great South Road took nearly all day to get to town.

MOTOR CAR

The first cars in Glenbrook were a Daimler owner by Mr. T. Reid.  Then Mr. J.R. McElwain got one; then ours, a Chevrolet.

Did you know that there were bushrangers in Glenbrook in the early days?  Yes, in the Mission Bush area, but Ossie Mellsop, Harry Flavell and other Brookside schoolboys soon chased them out of there.

Mr. J.T. Mellsop and his son, H.O. Mellsop, could both write J.P. after their names.