A scene in the 1960 film version of H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine shows civilisations rising and falling with increasing rapidity as time traveller George flies into the future.
Auckland travel writer Peter Janssen and University of Auckland senior lecturer Dr Elizabeth Anderson have taken a similar, but much slower, view of the trials and tribulations of settlements around New Zealand in their new book, High Hopes and Big Dreams: 165 New Zealand small towns in their twilight (Aotearoa Books).
Some townships have vanished since their beginnings in the early to mid-19th century, while others are enjoying a 21st century renaissance. The ways these towns are linked to political and social change makes for an interesting geography and history lesson.
The book covers the growth and decline of regional farming and mining, as well as port, timber and rail settlements. It also tells of flourishing Māori communities, religious settlements, ethnic groups and even a brewery town — Mangatainoka in the Tararua District.
In the South, Janssen and Anderson take a close look at townships including Kurow, Shag Point, Dunback, Benhar, Beaumont, Kyeburn, Makarora, Waikawa, Ōhai, and Colac Bay/Ōraka.
"You could write a whole book on gold towns. You could write a whole book on coal towns. But it’s often the same story.
"With gold settlements in Otago, the stories are very similar to those elsewhere. The gold runs out, the railway shuts down, the town declines. So, instead, we looked at a geographical spread.
"Some of the towns have completely disappeared. And others have found a new lease of life. Ōwaka is a very good example of that.
"Ōwaka was a port, then declined, railway town, then declined. And now it’s a busy little tourist town for independent travellers. It’s a very pleasant little town."
Janssen visited every one of the townships in the book, young Croatian photographer Josip Bojcic taking most of the published images. The historic photos were chosen from a variety of sources, including the Alexander Turnbull Library, the Hocken Collection, the Otago Witness Collection, the Tuapeka Goldfields Museum and the Glenorchy Community Association.
"Finding those historic photos was very interesting, because some towns have lots of photos — photographs everywhere from Ōwaka — but then you get Bendigo, which was quite a big goldfield, and that was a struggle.
"I tried where I could to use local museums. There’s an awful lot of them and they’re really good, and often have very good photo collections."
Janssen had already gathered a lot of material on twilight small towns across the years.
"But when I really focused on it for the book, it probably took me about a year and a-half.
"A lot of our travelling and visiting was carried out when Covid-19 closed the borders. That actually made things easier, because you didn’t have all the tourists around. I have to say, travelling around New Zealand during Covid times was fabulous."
They were careful "not to just bag towns" by homing in on the fallen-down buildings or dilapidation.
"If you look at Kaitangata, we’ve got the photograph of the restored post office. A lot of these small towns may just have one building like that, of which they are very proud. I wouldn’t feel able to go back to Kaitangata if I had showed a shop with a veranda collapsing.
"You have to be fair to these towns. Their economic base has been pulled out from underneath them, and so it’s very difficult with a declining population to maintain a township which is attractive."
The book highlights where varied diasporas settled in New Zealand and their ongoing contributions to those communities.
"You had the Hungarians of Tūātapere, and the Swiss at Kaponga, and I found so much I hadn’t known before and the scale of it was quite surprising.
"It’s interesting. In the early days, the Māori and Pākehā communities were quite intertwined. They were mutually beneficial. Most whaling stations were alongside Māori communities and most early settlements were alongside Māori communities, partly because they bought land from them, and partly because the relationship was mutually beneficial for both.
"But after 1860, when you had all that fighting, communities then become quite separate. And later settlers did not have the same connection with local Māori communities that the earlier ones did."
The strong Scandinavian communities in the Tararua district and the Wairarapa are good examples of hard-working migrants, Janssen says.
"They were brought over because they were good at cutting down pine trees in Scandinavia, and they were dumped in tōtara forests. There was a great quote like, ‘on the first day we cried, on the second day we got to work’.
"What’s nice is these communities really integrated very well. After a generation or two, everyone was English speaking, but now they’re really reclaiming their heritage. If you go to Norway Day in Norsewood it’s a big thing."
These small settlements often grew from a handful of people coming to New Zealand and then returning to their home countries to encourage family and friends to follow.
A common factor in the rise and fall of small settlements was the arrival of the railway line in town and often its removal decades later.
The network connecting small settlements was enormous compared with today, Janssen says.
"Of course, your Central Otago railway is really well known, but you had the same thing in Southland, the railway line running through from Gore to Lumsden, and then up to Kingston, and another one ran along the coast from Invercargill to Tūātapere."
Perversely, Fortrose, on a lagoon at the mouth of the Mataura River on the Southland coast is a good example of one town for which the railway was not a godsend.
The book says: "Fortrose flourished as a small port exporting timber, grain and wool from the region east of the river, and the town reached its peak around 1900, when there was at least one church, two hotels, a school and several stores.
"However, when the railway line reached Waimāhaka in 1899 and Tokanui in 1911, the port became redundant and fell into disuse."
Janssen considers it one of the more memorable stories which he wrote about.
"We’ve got a wonderful photograph of the cavalry at Fortrose. And if you look at this picture, with men all dressed up on the horses, you can’t help thinking, ‘what was the cavalry doing at Fortrose?’. What was the use of any cavalry there? I just can’t imagine what they had to do there."
Were there other favourite stories in the book?
"I do like the story of Waikouaiti and Johnny Jones. He had ambitions to buy the entire South Island.
"He was very generous. He donated a lot of money to the lovely little church that’s still there. And he kept out of politics because he didn’t want to get wrapped up with politicians and sidetracked. Both he and his wife came from convict backgrounds."
Janssen, who lives in Auckland’s Mt Albert, obviously knows the nooks and crannies of Aotearoa well. But where would he like to live if he could?
"That’s a hard one. Because you build up circles of friends, you build up contacts, and when you get older they are much harder to leave.
"But where would I go for a holiday? I’d have a holiday in Geraldine, South Canterbury. It’s a beautiful spot, which is why so many people go there, in a lovely part of the country, and there’s lots of little places to go and it’s into the foothills. It’s just really pleasant."
"Mitchell’s Cottage is one of my favourite historic buildings in Otago. The cottage is beautifully built, well-preserved, and the way it sits on that slab of rock makes the house in perfect harmony with the land. To cap it off, the view over the valley is stunning.
"Then there’s the historic picture theatre in Roxburgh and it is impossible to drive past Jimmy’s without stocking up on mutton pies."
In Southland, Janssen has a fondness for Otautau and its overlooked and "enchanting" location at the foot of the Longwood Range next to the Aparima River.
"Otautau takes pride in its historic buildings, with a fine museum and unique war memorial with two World War1 field guns — one German and the other Turkish. I’ve always wondered how these guns ended up in Otautau and I like to think that a few of the local lads said, ‘hey guys, let’s take these guns back home with us’.
"At the heart of the town is the lovely Otautau pub, which holds personal memories for me as, at the tender age of 20, I spent a long and lively New Year’s Eve in there."
He also has a soft spot for other small Southland townships and villages like Nightcaps and Ōhai.
"And Waikawa and Waikaia. I especially love Waikaia. It was such a ‘wild west’ place, but now it’s such a solid and lovely little town. I have to say, and it’s got a really good atmosphere.
"But it was considered to be almost too wild in the 1870s. I think the first thing they built there officially was a courthouse."
According to the book, Waikaia and the at-times interchangeable settlement of Switzers "had a reputation for its raucous hotels, dancing halls, gambling dens and general lawlessness".
"When the new courthouse was built, an early case involved a fierce fight between Chinese and European men over a water claim."
Today, however, Janssen waxes lyrical about the Bottle House, containing nearly 20,000 empty green wine bottles, believed to be the only such construction in the southern hemisphere.
"The construction may sound a bit ‘down on the farm’, but the building is surprisingly lovely. On a bright day the heavy green glass diffuses the sunshine, and the interior is lit with a beautiful ethereal glow."
The author of 20 travel and guide books, Janssen is already planning his next few publications. For obvious reasons he is a little vague about these, but suggests he may write something on the country’s phalanx of small museums, and also a book on historic engineering projects.
"I can’t get over how energetic and industrious these people were. Some of those big projects they built, those bridges and railways — a lot of it was hand-built. We were really innovative and hard-working people.
"I don’t think that industriousness ever stopped, but I think it is easy for us to underestimate just how much physical hard work those earlier generations did.
"Today we think an hour in the gym is working hard-out. Even some farmers now have a problem with their weight because they sit on their quadbikes too much. An overweight, unfit farmer would have been unthinkable even 30 years ago."
The book
High Hopes and Big Dreams: 165 New Zealand small towns in their twilight, by Peter Janssen and Elizabeth Anderson (White Cloud Books) is out now.
