George Street (Waitara)

George Street was named after Ernest Alfred George, twice Mayor of Waitara.

Ernest was born in Inglewood on 1 February 1885, the son of railway guard Joseph George and his wife Mathilda. The couple had immigrated to New Zealand from Wolverhampton in 1874 but Mathilda died when Ernest was just seven, leaving his father to bring up ten children.

Joseph moved to Waitara in 1904 and established a successful cordial business. Ernest joined the trade, manufacturing and selling a range of soft drinks using “only the best cane sugar, high-grade essences and filtered water” and delivering the bottles in a Ford Model T truck. Joseph died in 1923, by which time Ernest had been sole proprietor for a decade. He sold the factory in 1944 and it was eventually taken over by the Western Bottling Company then closed.

Ernest was a respected figure in Waitara and won election to the Borough Council in 1919. In 1927 the youthful businessman decided to run for Mayor.  He defeated incumbent ex-schoolteacher Richard Morgan, who was in his late seventies, and was re-elected in 1929, polling 421 to Morgan’s 144. Ernest met Prime Minister Sir Joseph Ward on his visit to Waitara that year and organised fundraising for the victims of the Napier earthquake.

He decided not to stand for a third term in 1931 despite the other councillors asking him to reconsider, but his reputation as “a careful administrator” meant he ended up serving as Mayor again from 1936 to 1938. As well as his public duties, Ernest was master of the local Masonic Lodge, patron of the Waitara Coursing Club and a keen golfer, bowler, dart player and marksman. He also loved cars and founded the Taranaki Automobile Association, with family legend claiming that he once drove over Mount Messenger before the road was metalled.

Ernest married Evelyn Rose Locke in 1912 and the couple had three sons and an adopted daughter. They moved to Auckland in the early 1950s where Ernest died on 24 September 1977. He and Evelyn are both buried at Papatoetoe Cemetery.

This story was originally published in the Taranaki Daily News.