AUCKLAND MUNICIPAL HANDBOOK
In 1908 the Board decided to obtain authority to borrow a further £1,000,000, and an empowering Bill was promoted and successfully passed through Parliament.
The following years were busy ones for the Board. Construction work was continued, but trade and shipping increased at a greater rate than provision could be made for them. Northern Wharf, for the accommodation of the fleet of coastal steamers, was completed; the reclamation of Freemans Bay (67 acres) was finished; arrangements were made with the Auckland City Council for widening and improving the streets on the waterfront; and the reclamation of Mechanics Bay, to provide railway yards, was begun. The main harbour and its approaches were re-surveyed by arrangement with the Admiralty, and every effort was made to make the Harbour safe at all times by the provision of lights, buoys and beacons. The old wooden Queen's Wharf was replaced with a longer and wider structure of ferro-concrete, equipped with large transit sheds (three of them of two stories), electric cranes and capstans, railway sidings on the quay sides, and a centre roadway 60 feet wide. Central Wharf, similarly equipped, followed; the Western Breakwater and the first 1000 feet of Western Wharf, off the Freeman's Bay Reclamation, were completed. At the same time a slipway, or marine railway, capable of taking up vessels of 600 tons displacement, was built and commissioned, and other reclamations to the eastward of King's Wharf were undertaken.
207
