Town, country and bush

Using our survey of the virgin forest harvest we can now make a preliminary examination of the usefulness of this ‘town, country, bush and linking railway’ pattern for studying and comparing regions. Figure 11.4 diagrams six varied examples of the pattern. It will be seen that the Wanganui-Rangitikei-Manawatu and Wellington-Wairarapa regions are fairly close to the Hawke's Bay archetype. For both of them the importance of the forest harvest in the page 141

Figure 11.4 ‘Town, Country, Bush’—and Railway, 1885 (For Southern Hawke's Bay see Figure 3.1, p. 39 above)

page 142 local economy is shown by the preponderance of timber and firewood in the railway tonnage. Both have large sheep numbers and in both the railway effectively ties bush, sheep stations and port capital together into a unified local economy. Foxton was never a threat to Wanganui as the main port of its region. The Wellington-Wairarapa pattern differs from that of Hawke's Bay in that the capital was built on a bush-fringed harbour and the railway serviced a forest harvest from the Hutt Valley and the Rimutakas before reaching squatter country in the Wairarapa. In Marlborough also the railway left the sea through bush-clad hills before reaching open country and sheep stations. Here too the forest harvest dominated the railway freight. But Blenheim was having difficulty in establishing itself as the local capital as over against Picton. Both were ports, but Picton's was a fine deep water one, Blenheim's an inferior river one. Picton took the bigger ships; in 1885 212 vessels arrived, including two from overseas, the total tonnage being 111,498. Blenheim's 241 vessels totalled only 11,893 tons. Blenheim was better placed for the convenience of the squatters, but the railway had not penetrated very far into their country. Nelson had no room for extensive sheep runs. Its rail way served the open country yeomen of the Waimea Plain. While the line tapped the forests at Belgrove, most of the province's scattered bush settlers were among the hills beyond its reach and less than half its freight came from the forests.

Our last two cases differ more markedly from the Hawke's Bay model. In contrast to the small Little River example, South Canterbury gives us the colony's largest ‘town, country, bush and railway’ pattern. Through its position on the colony's most extensive railway system, South Canterbury was receiving timber from Southland and firewood from North Otago to help compensate for Canterbury's deficiency in forests. This, together with the activities of Timaru's port, made South Canterbury part of a ‘town, country, bush’ system that operated to a significant extent independently of the Christchurch-Lyttelton port-capital. Timaru's port handled 8.6 per cent by value of Canterbury's exports in 1885, and also had 529 sailings of coastal shipping. It is not surprising that there were separatist rumblings in South Canterbury in provincial days, or that the region south of the Rangitata became the South Canterbury Education Board District in 1877.

As Figure 11.4 shows, the Auckland story is different again. Neither timber nor sheep were of much significance to the Waikato line, but it had a little over half of the colony's 1885 railway cattle traffic. It was the Helensville line that tapped the forest harvest, though only 18,290 tons of timber and firewood were involved. The Waikato line, then, was ‘country’ and the Helensville line ‘bush’. But the railway was playing a pretty insignificant part in Auckland's bush story. This can be well illustrated by a comparison with Canterbury. Canterbury, which produced only 15,662 tons of timber page 143 in 1885, railed 37,247 tons in the year to 31 March 1886. Auckland, which produced 185,432 tons railed only 22,063 tons. Canterbury, in other words, was railing both most of its own production and its considerable imports, thereby enhancing the significance of the Christchurch-Lyttelton capital-port complex. Auckland, with nearly half the colony's timber production, was handling most of it by sea. The year's overseas exports from the Northland ports of Russell, Whangaroa, Mangonui, Hokianga and Kaipara totalled 36,807 tons; Auckland's were a mere 13,062 tons. The same Nordiland ports cleared more than 879 coasters during the year,²⁵ with timber for all parts of the colony. Auckland, then, had no tight ‘town, country, bush and railway’ systems on the Hawke's Bay model. This alone makes its colonial history markedly different to that of the rest of the colony.