Essay: High Hopes and Big Dreams:165 New Zealand Small Towns in Their Twilight
Authors:
Peter Janssen & Elizabeth Anderson
Publisher:
White Cloud Books
ISBN:
9781776940325
Date Published:
12 September 2023
Format:
Paperback
RRP:
$49.99
High Hopes and Big Dreams: 165 New Zealand small towns in their twilight is a story of Aotearoa New Zealand’s history which, say authors Peter Janssen & Elizabeth Anderson, is not, in the scheme of things, that long: ‘But it is our history, and it makes us who we are, for better or worse. The book is an introduction to the lively and contradictory, but always fascinating, stories of our small towns and settlements.’
Crushington overlooking the Wealth of Nations and Keep It In The Dark mines. Today this valley is empty. (Blacks Point Museum)
Crushington: its very name says it all. Established in 1873, just three kilometres east of Reefton, this thriving small town grew around several stamper batteries, used to crush gold bearing quartz from mines in the surrounding hills. It was also the birthplace of John “Jack” Lovelock, whose father worked in the Globe Mine, and who won gold and broke the 1500m world record at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. As the gold in the mines was depleted, the batteries closed one by one, and by the 1920s most of the population had drifted away. Today the valley is deserted. The only reminders of the bustling Crushington are a road sign and a simple memorial to Jack Lovelock tucked against the wet bush.
The stories of towns like this one are the subject of High Hopes and Big Dreams. A book of 165 small historic towns that once flourished and now had faded, with historic and contemporary photos, seemed a simple idea - the story of shipping, coal, rail, timber, gold and transport. The reality was somewhat different. More than just a story of growth and decline, the history of New Zealand’s small towns is also the story of social and political change, cultural interaction, and conflict, of immigration, farming, environmental disasters. More importantly, it is the story of high hopes and bitter disappointment.
Covering a wide geographic spread of towns in both islands, most of the settlements have fewer than 500 people living in them, and quite a few have simply vanished. Some towns with a volatile history have now discovered a new purpose and are again on the up.
The rise and fall of farming, ports, mining, timber, and rail are common themes throughout this book, but there are also stories of flourishing Māori communities, religious settlements, ethnic groups and even a brewery town.
It was a challenge to present a balanced view of actions of people in the past from the comfort of a 21st century couch, and what seems to be a very short-sighted approach to the environment was particularly difficult to reconcile. Timber, gold, whaling and flax were all harvested with very little view to the future. And now, as our waterways harbours are increasingly polluted, as so much native wildlife is on the brink of vanishing, and as disastrous floods threaten the future of towns, we confront a bitter question about lessons learnt?
High hopes thwarted (from left): A tiny, ruined cottage is all that remains of Stewart Town;once the largest cheese exporting port in the world, today Patea’s port lies abandoned; Foxton Port and Railway Station 1910 (Manawatu Heritage).
It was surprising too to discover the close integration of Māori and Pākehā communities to the mid-1850s. Earliest whaling stations were located alongside Māori settlements, for the whaler’s needed food, and whaling provided income for local Māori who were skilled and hardworking sailors.
Māori were enthusiastic adopters of European technology, particularly iron tools, cooking pots, blankets and new food plants. Potatoes revolutionised Māori society, enabling them to live in areas where kumara didn’t grow and reading and writing, key to recording whakapapa, were eagerly adopted. In the early days of settlement Pākehā bought land directly from Māori and the two communities were close neighbours. In time Māori, alarmed at growing European immigration, and realising that they might become a minority in their own country, were much more cautious about selling. The growing power and land hunger of settlers and the bitter wars and land confiscation of the 1860s, altered the relationship between settler and Māori communities forever.
After 1860, gold was a huge impetus for the growth of towns, both large and small – but most settlements were short lived, rough and temporary, as miners, in quick to win the easy gold by panning and small-scale mining, just as quickly moved on to the next strike. One of the shortest gold rushes was at Barrytown, which began in February 1867 and was over May, while Stewart Town in Central Otago may sound grand, but never grew past a handful of simple cottages and a cluster of miners’ huts. Later, sluicing, dredging and expensive underground mining extended gold mining, but those activities required fewer workers.
Equally transient were timber towns with simple cottages housing workers for a few short years until the timber ran out. Milling companies moved on and workers followed. Farming followed timber and in the early twentieth century dairying boomed - by the 1920s, there were over 600 dairy factories supplied by small farms in every part of the country. The Apiti Small Farmers dinner in 1932 attracted over 200 people, mostly dairy farmers - the book features a fine photograph of that event! Producing 20 tonnes of butter per day the Waharoa dairy factory in the Waikato was the largest butter producer in the world, and during the same period Patea in South Taranaki was world’s largest cheese exporting port. Farms amalgamated into larger holdings, better transport made the small dairy factories redundant, and the myriad of small rural communities faded away. But look carefully- it is not hard to find derelict and repurposed dairy factories in every corner of New Zealand.
Flax, now a forgotten industry, was in widespread and nowhere more so than in the Manawatu where the vast Makarua swamp was New Zealand’s largest flax-growing area. As many as 50 flax mills crowded the banks of the Manawatū River and Foxton was a major port exporting 22,000 tonnes of flax between 1869 and 1873. As with timber, farming followed on the rich lands cleared of flax.
Burkes Pass: The Burkes Pass Hotel 1914 with tourists on their way to Mt Cook (Mckenzie District Archives).
Transport, especially shipping and rail, played a vital role in the establishment of towns. So many towns - far too many to include in this book - flourished with the arrival of railway, only to die a slow death when the railways began closing after 1950. Some villages built around coaching stops and ferry crossings continued to flourish with the coming of the railways. Sheffield in Canterbury is one - it transformed for a time into a major transport hub but is now best known for its pies. And Burkes Pass optimistically provided land for a railway that never arrived, leaving the town to quietly stagnate. Towns such as Otira and Raurimu boomed at the heart of large railway construction projects, only to fade away once the job was done. In the 20th century the same process centred on hydro dams creating towns such as Mangakino, Kurow, Tuai and Roxburgh’s ‘Vanished Village’.
In a land where thick forest blanketed very rugged and steep country, building roads was difficult and expensive. Sheltered harbours were key to settlement in the 19th century and our coastline is littered with the ghosts of townships built around a wharf. A settlement was often determined by how far up a river boat could travel. Pirongia on the Waipa River and well inland, was a major river port and substantial town until the new railway was built through Te Awamutu to the east and put the riverboats out of business. On the Southland coast, Fortrose is an example of both a whaling station and an important port, but today only an old whaling try pot and a WWI war memorial among a scattering of holiday homes are the only reminders of its former importance.
Coal towns have had a tough time as their decline has been relatively recent. Of the 260 coal mines operating in 1953 only 78 remained open just 20 years a later and during the same period the work force dropped from 5000 to 1500. North or south, the fortune of coal towns spiralled downward, and a low point was reached in 1989 when houses in Nightcaps Southland sold for $1 and shops for $2. In the era of gold mining, once the jobs went so did the people. When the gold mine at Waiuta closed in 1951 the township was abandoned within three months. With coal towns, many people, mainly older, couldn’t afford to move as their houses were worth so little. They stayed on, while those that could get work elsewhere left, and newcomers, attracted by low house prices or minimal rents., moved in. Almost without exception, coal towns are not in good shape and things are only set to get worse.
Blackball Store: Once the centre of a thriving coal town, the Blackball Store still serves a tiny local population.
So, what to the future of our small towns? The gold towns such at Lyell, Oreville, Canton, Tokatea, Waiorongamai and Stewart Town are gone for good. The small ports and redundant railway towns are not likely to spring back to life anytime soon. For coal towns the future does not look bright. However, the news is not all grim. Owaka, Collingwood, Rawene, Tuatapere and Whangamomona are popular destinations for independent travellers. Towns close to larger centres such as Pirongia, Tokomaru, Okato, Cust and the Lyttleton Harbour settlements now attract new residents. If a rural township can hang to its school or pub, a strong sense of community is likely to continue.
The human history of Aotearoa/New Zealand is not, in the scheme of things, that long. But it is our history, and it makes us who we are, for better or worse. The book is an introduction to the lively and contradictory, but always fascinating, stories of our small towns and settlements.
High Hopes and Big Dreams: 165 New Zealand small towns in their twilight, written by Peter Janssen and Elizabeth Anderson, $49.99 RRP (White Cloud Books, Upstart Press).
