Baxter Commune Likely to be Closed

Poet James K. Baxter’s lonely Wanganui River commune is in danger. Local Maori landowners want Baxter and his ‘family’ out of the area so they can clean up the Jerusalem Pa and attract Maoris back to the area.

A final decision by the landowners is expected today.

This follows the announcement by one of the two principal owners of the land on which the commune is sited of her intention to evict them as soon as she gains the agreement of one member of the community.

The rest, she says, agree that the commune should go.

She has, in fact, already told Baxter to remove the commune and he has stated his willingness to do so, but only if it is the wish of both landowners and the Maori community in general.

A spokesman for the Maori community, who wished to be referred to merely as a member of the Tairua family, said yesterday that only one resident had not yet fully agreed to the commune’s eviction.

The planned removal of Baxter’s commune is the first stage of a plan to ‘clean up’ the old Jerusalem Pa in an effort to attract Maoris back there, the spokeswoman said.

Baxter himself, says that if the Maori community asked him to go, he page 372 would ‘leave tomorrow’, and that he did not dispute in the slightest degree the right of the local Maoris to reclaim their land.

‘I am pleased that the Maoris here want to clean up the pa and attract young people back to it,’ he said.

The old Maori pa provided a community life which the pakeha cannot hope to equal.

He said there was the same idea of community life behind his commune and that there was no actual clash of ideas between him and the Maori residents.

‘Their way of doing it is just different to mine but I am quite happy to bow to theirs and go, as I respect the Maori people,’ he said.

He said that he had no intention of setting up another commune as he was starting to get the feeling that he was ‘on his own’ in trying to introduce community life to the pakeha.

‘I grow very tired at times,’ he said.

‘I think I would buy a house in Auckland and write poetry,’ he said.

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