COLLINS Bert
Personal Details
Also known asHerbert Wilson Collins
Life dates1886 - 1967BiographyBert was born the eldest of a family of sixteen, one of whom was the bush photographer Tudor Collins. Bert was a bushman from the start, beginning his career at about thirteen years old with Bob Gibbons, an old bush contractor in the Puhipuhi Forest. In his early twenties he left for Tairua where he was employed in cross cutting and jacking logs and also in making the skidded roads over which the bullocks hauled the catamarans loaded with the great kauri logs. He next started contracting on his own account. He arrived in Katikati in 1936 to take over the mill site above Woodlands Road in Katikati left abandoned when Benjamin Leonard Knight left in 1914. The rights to mill were sold to him by the Government Public Works Department who had taken over Knight's operation in 1921 with the view to using the timber in the construction of the East Coast Railway - this never happened, so Collins bought the rights to mill in 1936. The mill ceased operations in 1942 after Bert was unable to recover financially from a flash flood in 1940 which caused him to lose a large number of logs into Tauranga Harbour. Bert and Edie eventually retired and built a house in Mangere, Auckland.Place of birthPaiakaOccupationBushman, mill manager and operator.
Life dates1886 - 1967BiographyBert was born the eldest of a family of sixteen, one of whom was the bush photographer Tudor Collins. Bert was a bushman from the start, beginning his career at about thirteen years old with Bob Gibbons, an old bush contractor in the Puhipuhi Forest. In his early twenties he left for Tairua where he was employed in cross cutting and jacking logs and also in making the skidded roads over which the bullocks hauled the catamarans loaded with the great kauri logs. He next started contracting on his own account. He arrived in Katikati in 1936 to take over the mill site above Woodlands Road in Katikati left abandoned when Benjamin Leonard Knight left in 1914. The rights to mill were sold to him by the Government Public Works Department who had taken over Knight's operation in 1921 with the view to using the timber in the construction of the East Coast Railway - this never happened, so Collins bought the rights to mill in 1936. The mill ceased operations in 1942 after Bert was unable to recover financially from a flash flood in 1940 which caused him to lose a large number of logs into Tauranga Harbour. Bert and Edie eventually retired and built a house in Mangere, Auckland.Place of birthPaiakaOccupationBushman, mill manager and operator.Photographs
People
Publications
Family
Father's nameHenry CollinsMother's nameSarah Collins (nee Wilson)SpouseEdith (Edie) Margaret COLLINS (nee Flower)
Mother's nameSarah Collins (nee Wilson)SpouseEdith (Edie) Margaret COLLINS (nee Flower)Early Settler Data
Pioneer or Early Settler pre1900No
Related Information
DocumentsKauri Logging in the KatiKati Forests
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COLLINS Bert. Western Bay of Plenty Community Archives, accessed 19/03/2026, https://westernbay.recollect.co.nz/nodes/view/956
