18/07/2026
A longer version of my history on the Johnston brothers from Hawera, Taranaki. Please enjoy.
NATHANIEL & MARK JOHNSTON
Brewers and Aerated Water Manufacturers
Richard and Mary Johnston of Waimea West had four sons: Nathaniel (b. 1853, d. unknown), Hugh (b. 1854, d. 1943), John (b. 1858, d. unknown), and Mark (b. 1859, d. 1934). Two of these men would play an instrumental role as brewers, bottlers, and aerated water manufacturers during the foundational years of Hāwera.
Nathaniel Johnston, born in Nelson, was educated in the public school system. After leaving school, he tried his hand at farming before joining the Mounted Constabulary Field Force. Upon leaving the force, he established himself as a successful hotelier, running the Ketemarae Hotel and later the Imperial Hotel in Normanby. In 1880, he was induced by a Mr. John Burton to purchase the Hawera Brewery on Princes Street. Knowing absolutely nothing of the craft, Nathaniel was forced to hire an experienced brewer at heavy expense. Determined to master the trade himself, he meticulously studied the secrets of the art under his employee's tutelage, ultimately developing a reputation as one of the finest practical brewers in the North Island.
Just as the business began to recoup its initial heavy losses, a catastrophic fire gutted the Princes Street establishment, forcing Nathaniel to discontinue the lease. In the wake of the disaster, Nathaniel and his brother Mark endeavoured to establish a smaller brewery in Normanby, but the venture failed. Nathaniel then relocated to the Manawatu district, taking up the lease of a brewery on the Foxton line. When the property owner passed away shortly thereafter, Nathaniel let the lease lapse and returned to Taranaki, determined to rebuild in Hāwera.
In 1884, Nathaniel partnered with Mark to establish a substantial new brewery on a quarter-acre High Street site, flanked by a natural running creek. Capitalizing on Nathaniel's hard-won expertise, the brothers spared no expense to improve upon the arrangements of their past ventures. They invested over £2,000 in a state-of-the-art facility designed around a highly efficient vertical gravity flow; it cost £400 alone to obtain water suitable for brewing purposes.
In July 1886, the Johnstons expanded their footprint by re-acquiring a site in Princes Street. By December of that year, the brothers announced they had commenced a commercial bottling business in connection with the brewery, aiming to vigorously push their trade into cordials and aerated waters. It is highly probable that their initial soda machinery was purchased from the estate of Adolphus Gower, a Hāwera aerated water manufacturer who had died in 1885. This brief, initial era of unified operations is preserved today by the rare Lamont-style bottle on display.
The enterprise was split into two independent operations: Nathaniel retained the Hawera Brewery, while Mark took sole ownership of the Aerated Water & Cordial Manufactory.
Following the split, Mark ran a highly successful independent operation. A telling 1891 announcement in the Hawera & Normanby Star detailed the arrival of a massive shipment of 10,800 bottles (75 gross, or 900 dozen) for "Johnston’s celebrated Hawera aerated waters."
This importation from London, via the ship Orari, was timed perfectly to accommodate the demand of the upcoming South Taranaki summer rush. The shipment also contained 30 cwt (approximately 3,360 lbs) of bicarbonate of soda and 50 gross of ale corks.
In the factory, the bicarbonate of soda was reacted with sulfuric acid in a gas generator to produce carbon dioxide gas. Accounting for 19th-century mechanical inefficiencies and gas losses during manual bottling, trade benchmarks estimate a real-world yield of 66 bottles per pound of bicarb, giving this specific chemical stockpile a total carbonating capacity of roughly 221,760 bottles. Cross-referencing the 1891 New Zealand Census, Johnston’s true trading footprint encompassed an estimated total of 5,631 people—comprising 1,284 residents in the Hāwera Borough and 4,347 in the surrounding Hāwera County.
To serve this population, a production estimate during the peak summer demand of 720 bottles (60 dozen) per day is realistic. This is equivalent to about 12% of the local population consuming a single bottle a day to combat the summer heat or mix drinks at the district's 10 to 12 bustling hotels and pubs. This daily volume perfectly matches 1891 machinery capabilities when running a standard, manual two-man bottling plant at a highly efficient 75% to 80% operating capacity. At a daily material burn rate of 9.1 lbs of bicarb to meet this demand, the chemical stockpile would last Johnston approximately 14 to 15 months, effortlessly carrying his production through the slow winter and across two overlapping peak summer seasons.
Furthermore, the alignment between the 720-bottle daily demand and the 10,800 imported bottles reveals that this shipment was not a minor top-up, but likely constituted a significant enlargement of Johnston's reserves. An inventory of 10,800 bottles provided exactly 15 days of continuous summer production, a timeline consistent with a horse-and-wagon distribution network across a largely rural consumer base.
stock at the factory, those out on delivery, empty bottles in reserve, bottles returning as empties, and bottles in the washing troughs.
Attrition has been reported to be 10% to 15% annually, largely due to breakages and loss. Rather than paying exorbitant freight and customs fees on small annual trickles to replace an annual attrition rate of about 1,000 bottles, international shipping economics made it vastly more profitable for Johnston to import and supplement his operational stock in a single bulk consignment, giving him years of reserve glass to maintain his trade.
Some of Mark’s bottles featured his iconic running rabbit trademark—a memorable, highly visual pictorial brand—with embossed variations of "MARK" or "M" "JOHNSTON", "HAWERA" or "HAWERA N.Z." distributed across Lamont, Codd (marble-stoppered), and internal glass-thread stoppered varieties. Mark successfully operated the cordial works until 1895, when he sold the business to Arthur Richdale and John McLachlan, the latter having been a trusted employee of the Johnston brothers for over eight years.
Nathaniel continued running the High Street brewery alone, adding commercial vinegar manufacturing to his repertoire. Around July 1893, disaster struck a second time when a fire destroyed his original bottling shed, causing a £600 uninsured loss.
bottling and drying room adjacent to an innovative cellar storeroom. In November 1894, the sale of the Hawera Brewery was reported; Nathaniel had sold the enterprise to a Mr. W. H. Hutson, a former licensee of the Commercial Hotel.
Outside of the brewery, Nathaniel established himself as a prominent public figure who dominated Hāwera's emergency and military networks. In 1889, he was elected Captain of the Hāwera Fire Brigade, serving as the town's chief fire officer until 1892. Having previously served as Lieutenant of the Hawera Rifle Corps before it disbanded, he canvassed the district circa 1890 to form a new corps that became known as the Hawera Mounted Rifles, accepting the captaincy at the district's inducement. On April 26, 1895, Nathaniel’s transfer was approved by the Governor to take on the Captaincy of the Heretaunga Mounted Rifles, a Wellington-based cavalry unit he commanded successfully.
However, by early 1897, a formal warrant for his arrest on charges of child desertion was published in the New Zealand Police Gazette. The notice described the former brewer as an imposing man of 44 years of age, standing 6 feet 1 inch tall with a stout build, soldierly bearing, dark-brown curly hair, and a large sandy moustache. His tenure with the corps came to an abrupt end on May 7, 1897, when official notices confirmed his sudden resignation. By August 1900, word reached home via a letter from fellow Hāwera veteran Fred Carter that Nathaniel had resurfaced under active wartime conditions, serving as a Lieutenant in Brabant’s Light Horse—a famous colonial irregular cavalry unit.
Mark’s life took a more somber turn back home when his wife tragically died in 1899. Seeking a fresh start, Mark relocated to Epsom, Auckland, where he remarried. He later moved to New Plymouth, opening a prominent grocery store on the corner of Elliot and Devon Streets. Mark passed away in New Plymouth in 1934 at the age of 77, closing the final chapter on a family partnership that left a highly successful industrial legacy, but a deeply fractured personal history, in the soil of early Taranaki.
