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Constantly 'Inconstant'- Colonial Wellington - Page 2

© Philippa Jane Ballantine

John Plimmer from Shropshire England was both a master builder and a plaster, and there can't have been a better trade to have in such a young nation. He put it to immediate use. Settling in Te Aro he began his own timber business, and set about making his fortune.

It was then that the one lady he would be remembered for came into his life. 1849 and the 'Inconstant' ran aground at Pencarrow head, it was a notorious spot for shipwrecks. The barque was damaged so severely her owners decided to get rid of her, and it was John Plimmer who eventually bought her. Using her as a warehouse and auction rooms, he made the ship and odd but integral part of the main street of colonial Wellington. Parked half in the water half out, crinolined ladies toiling through the mud to get to their favorite store must have wondered what on earth was going on, as the 'Inconstant' was shored in place, but soon she became just another part of the Beach, and later that became even more true. She earned the nick name of 'Plimmer's (or Noah's) Ark'.

But changes were a foot. Fifteen years later Wellington became the capital of New Zealand, winning that honor from the more northern Auckland. The citizens had forever altered the face of the harbor with reclamation of land changing the quaintly named 'Beach' into the more regal 'Lambton Quay'. With the loss of the shoreline, the 'Inconstant' must have looked more and more like a fish out of water, and by 1861 she had been swallowed alive by the relentless reclamations. John Plimmer built a longer wharf to compensate, and the last remains of the Ark were covered up by the building of the National Mutual Building. John Plimmer went on to be Town and Provincial Councilor, foundation member of the Chamber of Commerce and revered as 'the Father of Wellington'. While the poor old ship had been relegated to paintings and memory only. But things have a way of not staying buried as they say, and the 'Inconstant' has emerged almost phoenix like from her tomb. Work men in 1997 couldn't have been more surprised to discover the well preserved ship lying directly in their path during the renovations of the Old Bank of New Zealand site on Lambton Quay. Some people had remembered she was there, but oddly no one expected her. The street names of Wellington are still the same, and even some of the buildings have survived, but somehow the 'Inconstant' is a more vivid remembrance of those times gone by, and the drive and determination of the men and women who created a nation.

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