VICTORIA STREET

Thought to be named after Queen Victoria, there are two victoria streets in Lower Hutt. One is in Petone, where one might find a popular fast food restaurant, however, this Victoria Street runs the length of Alicetown. It starts at the railway tracks at Ava and finishes at the Ewen Bridge.

The area was a former swamp, in part originally covered with puketea forest, created by the discharge of streams from the hills at Normandale, accumulating on the flat land to form a large water-logged area.  Open water collected at the lower end of the swamp to form a lagoon known to the early Pakeha settlers as the “Duck Pond”, and Moreings Creek carried the overflow to the Hutt River at the western side of Gear Island.  The swamp apparently covered an area of over 30 acres. 

Flooding was common in this area, with the great earthquake of 1855 sending a tsunami up the river. Another big flood in 1893 prompted the building of stopbanks, which were completed in 1900. 

The suburb of Alicetown in foreground and Victoria Street with the Ewen Road Bridge over the Hutt River, looking to Lower Hutt City, Wellington Region. Whites Aviation Ltd: Photographs. Ref: WA-07219-G. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. /records/30664440