Waipa, Hawea and Arawa.

I've always walked past 33-37 Cambridge Street and wondered what the inspiration behind the names was.  Speaking to one of the residents I had heard they were New Zealand lakes.  Let's see if we can confirm that.

I first decided to google the three names at once to see if anything came up.  One hit was the Journal of the Polynesian Society, which confirmed the NZ connection.  Some interesting findings but nothing that really links them all together:

• Waipa is a river in the Waikato area, and also does have some wetlands and a peat lake.  It was also an electorate in NZ which existed for various periods from 1876 to 1996.  
• Hawea were considered the earliest inhabitants of the South Island, but it is also a lake near Wanaka; and 
• Arawa is, according to Maori tradition, the name of one of the great canoes that was used in the migrations to Aotearoa (aka NZ).  

The second link was more promising.  This was an old newspaper from the NZ national library.  It was the shipping news from the port of Lyttelton on 19 January 1885.  Turns out that those were also names of steam ships running the inter-colonial trade back in the day (& maybe not so coincidentally, when these houses were constructed).

Now given the prominence of shipping matters back in Sydney in the 1880s/90s (and the couple of Ships Captains living on the street) I think it is quite likely that the builder / owner / developer of 33-37 just might have taken some inspiration from the Shipping News in the local press.  Anyway, that is my theory.  Now let's look at some pictures of old boats ...

Above is an old photo of the clipper-type steamship Arawa.  This photo is from 1885 and was taken in Otago harbour.   This was a pretty big boat for the day (over 5,000 tons) and worked the UK - NZ run.  Here is a link with some more info.

Next off the rank is the Waipa.  Originally constructed as a fully rigged vessel but then converted to a barque (not that I really know what any of that means).  Apologies for the grainy image but this is the best the internet I could find.  This 1,000 ton vessel was built in 1875 by Palmer's Iron Shipbuilding Company at Newcastle upon Tyne for the New Zealand Shipping Company (the same company that ran the Arawa).  This ship also ran the UK - NZ run.  More on this ship in this link.

Finally we have the Hawea.   The top photo dates from the 1880s so was certainly the ship getting around when Cambridge Street was built.  It was built in about 1875 and was 720 tons.  Small compared to the Arawa but apparently still big for the time, especially for the coastal trade.  It was part of the Union Steam Ship Co. which had the most of the Trans-Tasman trade.  The bottom image is from 1908 when this ship (or its successor) had the unfortunate circumstance to run ashore at the entrance to the Grey River in Greymouth.