Countryside Wandering 1911...1979

Press, 26 December 1979, Page 8

Countryside Wandering 1911...1979

“Countryside D anderings” was the title of a series of articles in “The Press” of 1911. The reporter explored Canterbury's country districts and towns, extolling the “indomitable spirit” of the pioneers.

Before going overseas, JOH\ JT ILSO\. a former staff writer of "The Press, followed in the footsteps of his 1911 predecessor. Over the next nine days of Holiday Pages. II ilson contributes his own “Countryside

The first article in the 1979-80 series is .iSHBI RTON.

In 1911, as today, a traveller by train could make “easy progress” across the Canterbury Plains from Christchurch i to Ashburton. But at that ; earlier time, it was still well within living memory I that the Plains had been j an exposed, mefnotonous ' expanse, cut by wide and I dangerous rivers, the only ! roadways across them ! being the rough tracks of i previous travellers. i * This reflection prompted the reporter of 1911. in I his “Countryside Wander- | ings” series for "The j Press,” to extol the “in- | domitable spirit” of the j pioneers. A few years I earlier another writer about the Ashburton district had marvelled at the way the pioneers had : “transformed the wilderi ness into a veritable agrij cultural paradise.” Much may have changed, but by 1911 Ashburton was already, as it remains today, a solidly, and proudly, farmers’ town. It has, of course, grown, : from about 5000 (with its “suburbs” added in) in 1909 to more than 14,000 I today. But the repctrter of : 1911 described a town

which is recognisably today’s Ashburton — and not just because in 1911 the line was already clearly drawn between the great warehouses and grainstores west of the railway line and the retail premises and civic buildings on the east side. To the eyes of its residents, at least. Ashburton is still an “excellently laid out” town, of “cleanly appearance and general desirability.” In 1911, its fine squares were “an admirable example of the gardener's art..”. But one object of civic pride in 1911 has not survived — the handsome tower housing the Post Office clock, built in 1901 Of brick and Oamaru stone. Ashburton today still has the clock, but it is housed in a structure. that is less imposing than the original tower. The domain was a particular source of civic pride in the Ashburton of 1911. It boasted grass and asphalt tennis courts, cricket and hockey grounds. a swimming baths, and a cycle track. The flourishing state of the town's racing and trotting clubs were further

evidence of the prominent place sport and recreation held in the life erf Ashburton in the first decade of the century. Other civic amenities which today's citizens of Ashburton take for granted were, however, still in the future or only recently installed. The town had, in 1911. only considered an electric lighting system using the fall of the Wakanui Creek and was still lit by gas. And in 1911, the town's high-pressure water supply ’ was less than a year old. Thirty years after the first scheme had been mooted, the pipes had been laid for the system in August, 1910. The town’s agricultural base, too, was ■ not quite the same as it is today, although the two great changes from the late nineteenth century situation — the decline of the big wheat-growing estates and the spread of water races — had alreadyestablished a farming pattern that was not too far from today’s. In the record year for wheat-growing in MidCanterbury, close to 100,000 acres had been planted in grain. By 1910, the acreage in wheat had fallen to a little more than 53.000 acres and frozen meat was already taking the place of wheat, as the district’s premier product. The subdivisions which accompanied this important recent shift had only been possible because of the development which was, in 1911, regarded as the most remarkable of all in the district — the supplying of those huge areas of the plains which were without natural water supplies with the “lifedgiving fluid carried in a most intricate system of races ail over the face of the Ashburton plains.”

The reporter of 1911 found it "quite impossible to estimate the incalculable benefit the whole of the Ashburton district has derived from the successful instalment of its great water race system.” He devoted considerable space in his article to describing the development of the system, from the discovery in the late 1870 s on Duncan Campbell’s Springfield Estate that although the ground was naturally porous, silting would seal the bottom of the races, through to the completion of the 1700 miles of races that laced the plains in 1910. They were maintained in that year by a common charge of 5d a chain. Today, even the larger works that were built later are rather taken for granted; to see the countryside through the eyes of the reporter of 1911 as newly watered is a salutary reminder of the basis of Ashburton’s agricultural productivity. But today’s travellers across the Ashburton plains have less need of the reminder he provides that the plains were once “bare, bleak and exposed to every gale,” and not protected by the "plant a t i o n s innumerable stretching in every direction” on which he remarked in 1911. The still-evi-dent damage inflicted by the great wind of 1975 is a more vivid reminder of the destructive force of the untrammelled nor’ westers which the earliest settlers endured. Today’s pattern of mod-erate-sized, mixed farms, watered by races and protected by shelter-belts and plantations, was already weli-established in the farming districts around Ashburton in 1911. So was the role of the town itself,

as an important centre of agricultural processing and other light industries. Seventy years ago, Ashburton boasted two large flour mills (one of which had only recently changed from water to steam power, while at the other an 18-foot diameter, overshot wheel, driven by the Wakanui Creek, was still in working order), a woollen mills, an aerated water and cordial factory, and a freezing works, established seven or eight years earlier, at Fairfield. There was also a dairy factory, supplied by five creameries at Methven, Anama, Lowcliff, Hinds, and Hekeoa. A recent drought had led to a drop in production. Although the reporter of 1911 predicted that dairying would grow in Ashburton, as it was growing elsewhere in Canterbury at the time, the future of the Ashburton district lay rather with the successors of the one million sheep that were already grazing the plains of the Ashburton County by 1910. The reporter of 1911 has also been proved overoptimistic by later developments in his hope that the mineral resources of Ashburton's hinterland would contribute to the future prosperity of the town. Coal was being mined at Mount Somers and a county tramway up the Ashburton Gorge was bringing the coal out. Building stone was being shipped to Melbourne, and there had been discoveries at Aiford of tin and pitchblende “from which that marvellous substance radium is obtained.” But neither pitchblende then, nor oil later at Chertsey, have unseated farming as the mainstay of the wealth of the Ashburton district.