Akaroa: ville francaise or New Zealand town? Ca ne fait rien (it matters not)

Press, 16 September 1987, Page 19

Akaroa: ville francaise or New Zealand town? Ca ne fait rien (it matters not)

GORDON OGILVIE

considers some

of the comments on Akaroa style by Charles Fearnley, author of the recently released “Colonial Style”:

Charles Fearnley’s comments on Akaroa are bound to irritate those who have been cultivating the town’s “French charm” and possibly profiting from it. Fearnley writes with insight and affection of Akaroa’s pioneer architecture but sees nothing authentically French about it Rather, it is to him merely a local expression of a colonial style to be seen all over New Zealand. Recent attempts to “Frenchify” the town are to him nothing but a publicity stunt to attract tourists.

Mr Fearnley has a point. French names given during the last decade to restaurants, motels, shops and even petrol signs are certainly an attempt to cash in on the town’s French

ancestry. Most of the French names given to houses and.holiday cottages are also recent. The Louis-Philippe style of the Langlois-Etevenaux House, focal point of the Akaroa museum,

may well be the result of an 1890 s facelift.

The Continental look given St Patrick’s Church, itself designed by an English architect, is via more recent additions, such as the tower and frill round the gable.

The use of “rue” to denote streets is also a late affectation. Samuel Hewling’s 1851 map of the town names Rue Charbonnier and Thomas Cass’s map of 1862 adds Rue Balguerie. All the other thoroughfares were “roads” or “streets.” Most of the present “rues” are twentieth century improvements.

However, the 12-metre width for most of Akaroa’s roads is authentically French. So is the Akaroa Borough Council’s control of the foreshore down to the waterline. The French names of several prominent peaks round the crater rim are genuine, as are the names of French descendants in the telephone directory.

The Gallic cosmetic treatment mentioned earlier probably distresses Charles Fearnley more than it does me. Every town needs a distinct image of some sort, and Akaroa’s promotion as New Zealand’s only holiday town with a foreign accent is actually quite valid.

Akaroa never did look like any other New Zealand township. In the early 1850 s, a number of Canterbury Association officials and settlers who visited the town, then a decade old, commented on its distinctiveness.

Henry Sewell thought it resembled “an Irish fishing village or a rudimentary English watering place.”

Charlotte Godley wrote of Akaroa in November, 1851: "This place seems to be very foreign, from the people about being mostly French; their homes, too, are somewhat different in pattern from our English wooden homes.”

Isabella Aylmer, in her pioneering novel “Distant Homes” (1862), writes of the French settlers of Akaroa living “happy and content in their pretty little whitewashed, vine covered cottages, teaching their children to love la belle France ...”

Nearly all of these original - French houses have disintegrated or been demolished or destroyed. There seems nothing improper or phoney in Akaroa

now trying to recapture something of its original charm.

Nor should the commercialisation of the town be seen as purely a recent development. Akaroa has always been a trading town and rest and recreation centre. As early as the 1840 s, it had hotels, accommodation houses, coffee and grog shops and a variety of stores catering for local and maritime traffic.

Honeymooners, holidaymakers, tourists and excursion parties have been visiting the town in a steady flow since the 1850 s, and the town has always attempted to cater for them with a whole succession of hotels and business enterprises. Naturally, there has always been some tension in Akaroa between those who live there for the quiet life and those who need visitors to survive.

In the early 1840 s, there was much consternation among the townsfolk over the drunken rowdiness and brawling of visiting whalers and seamen. But when the whaling boom began to peter out later in the decade, there was equal dismay over the loss of the town’s livelihood as a provisioning port. Akaroa’s economy has benefited from whaling, fishing, timber, cocksfoot, dairying and all sorts of other passing fashions in its long history. However, two factors have remained constant in the town’s survival — tourism and Akaroa’s persistent reputation for being picturesque and individual. I can understand the distaste many local residents feel for week-enders, bus parties and the

hordes of whooping, honking and litter-flinging day trippers who descend on the town during public holidays. Yet Akaroa cannot have it both ways. Much of the town’s present vitality, as well as the dramatic sprucing up it has ex-

perienced since the 19705,. are the consequence of the attention "outsiders” have given it. No-one who can recall the tatty look which distinguished Akaroa two or three decades ago should want the town to return to those days.

Fortunately, Akaroa’s council.. and Civic Trust have kept a watchful eye on all developments, keeping them in tune with the town’s unique Anglo-French origin. , ■ i Akaroa will survive as a town with genuine style.