Transport

Tauriko used to have a lot less traffic than we do today.

The main Tauriko road is a very popular highway these days.

People had to use wooden carts before cars and trucks were invented. It would take a long time to travel; it would take days, weeks, even months.

Oxen, horses and donkeys were used to pull their carts.

People used a barge along the Wairoa River to take deliveries such as wooden sleepers and fertiliser.

The cars were about the same size of today’s cars, maybe a little bigger and made of metal. Not many people had cars, only about one car went down the road per hour.

Children used to ride ponies to school. When they arrived the eldest children would take their ponies to a shed that the school had for all the ponies and take all the tack off and put them out in a large field at the back of the school, and they would tack the ponies up again when it was time to go home.

People didn’t travel very often, they would go to town every once in a while and get a lot of groceries and they would survive on them until they ran out.

In the industrial revolution John Loudon McAdam designed the first modern highways, using cheap paving material of soil and stone aggregate and he embanked roads a few feet higher than the surrounding terrain to cause water to drain away from the surface.

With the development of motor transport there was an increased need for hard topped roads to reduce wash away’s, bogging and dust on both urban and rural roads, originally using cobble stones and wooden paving in major western cities and in the early 20th century tar bound tarmac and concrete paving were extending to the countryside.

They soon had many kinds of cars from the good old model A to the speedy skylines and soon they’ll have hover cars!

In the 1817’s bicycles were invented there were many fabulous bicycles like:

The first bike the 1817’s Draisine bike, the 1870’s Penny Farthing, 1880’s the Tricycle.

In the 1894’s the first motor bikes were invented:

And finally the cars the 1769’s steam carriage, the 1897’s electric cab, the 1927’s bugati, 1935’s the auburn, the 1962 Ferrari.

Transport has changed hugely over the last 100 years and I think we will see a lot more change in the future.

By Ashlee