Our 270 km drive from Napier to Martinborough took us through orchard country, grazing land and then vineyards. It was an interesting drive – nothing spectacular – but we did come across some interestig places.
The Pekapeka swamp and wetlands, south of Napier, is all that is left of what was once a much larger wetland complex. Tree roots have been found beneath the peat that suggests the wetland was once forested – more than 10,000 years ago.
Pekapeka is one of the few remaining large wetlands of its type in Hawke’s Bay. It has a high biodiversity value and was ranked by NZ’s Department of Conservation as being very valuable to the environment. Pekapeka is thought to be named after the bats that inhabited nearby caves as pekapeka is Māori for ‘bat’. I didn’t see any bats but I did notice a good number of black swans. I’ll have to do some more research to see if they are native to NZ, or perhaps imported from Australia.
Further down the road, a sign pointed us to the historic village of Norsewood. This little town was founded by mainly Norwegian settlers in 1872 as a loggers’ settlement and retains something of a Scandinavian flavor The village was carved out of the forest, and was subsequently destroyed in a fire in 1888. and then rebuilt A Scandinavian festival is held every year and traditional celebrations of Norway’s Constitution Day are held on the Sunday closest to 17 May. In the park is an oak tree that was planted in 1892.
The post office is one of the oldest buildings in the town. The only new building is the police station.
A war memorial in the park, again, shows the contribution that NZ made to WW1. From a tiny village, twenty six soldiers did not returm home.
Another town with an intersting histopry was Pahiatua. It was the location of one of New Zealand’s most powerful earthquakes when on 5 March 1934 a magnitude 7.6 quake struck . Apparently. the earthquake was felt as far away as Auckland and Dunedin. A gigantic mural has been painted in the side of the Regent Theatre to depict five New Zealand films: King Kong, The Quiet Earth, The Piano, Lord of the Rings and Vigil.
On 1 November 1944, 838 Polish refugees, of which 733 were children, were sent to a refugee camp about 2 kilometres south of the town. The camp had been used as an internment camp for foreigners at the start of World War II. The camp even had a Polish elementary school and a Polish gymnasium. The settlement was expected to be a temporary measure, but with the occupation of Central Europe, including Poland, by the Soviet Union and its subsequent imposition of communist regimes after the end of the war, the refugees stayed on at the camp until 1949 at which point they were naturalised. In 1951, the camp was used for over 900 refugees from Central and Eastern Europe. A memorial now marks the site of the old camp.
In the afternoon, we passed through the large town (city?) of Masterton. I had presented a couple of residential workshops there in my working days. There are a number of historic buildings in the town – some of the ones we passed were the local newspaper offices, the Masterton Club and the old Masonic Hall that is now an Indian Restaurant.
Masterton was founded in 1854 by a Small Farms Association. The association was led by Joseph Masters – after whom the town was named – and aimed to settle working people in villages and on the land. At first Masterton grew slowly, but as its farming hinterland became more productive it began to prosper. It boomed over decades as it ‘lived off the sheep’s back’. Much of its growth ended with that sector’s loss of exports after the 1974 British entry to the European Union.
The city did not quite qualify to be a city by 1989 when NZ’s minimum population requirement for that status was lifted from 20,000 to 50,000. What excellent bureaucracy!
We finished our day with a nice meal at the Martinborough Hotel where we have previously stayed. It is located on the corner of the main street and opposite the town’s main parkland square.
Martinborough began in 1870 and in its first decade, churches, a school, hotel, general store and post office opened. In 1879 John Martin, a wealthy local runholder, purchased neighbouring land and founded a new town, naming it after himself. Martinborough grew steadily in the early 20th century but started to decline in the 1960s. It has become renewed through its excellent wineries.
