The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 7, Issue 3 (July 1, 1932)
Modern Hanmer
Modern Hanmer.
Now Hanmer presents a different face. It has farmhouses and great tree plantations, orchards, gardens, and a township where the interest centres in the Government Spa, built at the place where warm mineralised waters bubble up, one of several places in the South Island where hot waters spring to the surface near the main dividing range.
The quantity of mineralized hot water welling from the earth at the Spa is but a trickle as compared with the vast volumes of boiling water pouring out at Rotorua and a hundred other points in the North Island thermal country. The springs of Hanmer, however, are not to be despised even by those who know Rotorua and Taupo; they have their undoubted virtues, and the flow was many years ago considered sufficient to warrant the permanent upkeep of the Spa as a place of healing. The Government Balneologist, Dr. Wohlman, described the springs in a brochure dealing with this wai-ariki of the South. But of scarcely less value is the Hanmer tonic, which comes in no stinted quantity, the gloriously pure, fresh upland ajr, and with it the nerve-soothing quiet of the place, the restfulness; these make a stay in the Hanmer country a feast of health and solace— a beautiful state of repose, best of all medicines for brain-fagged men and women, broods over all this free country. There are social life and amusements of many kinds at Hanmer, but the maximum benefit can be obtained only by developing a habit of country expeditions and long hours in the breezy open.