IN A SMALL PLACE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27580, 23 December 1950, Page 4

IN A SMALL PLACE

Introduction To “ Matau ”

The township of Matau is neither completely real nor completely imaginary. It is, rather, a synthesis, a little bit of one real Otago township added to another, and the whole spiced with a dash of pure invention. Its people and its affairs are the same—some real, some imaginary, and most a liberal mixture of the two. All names are fictitious.

By Sylvester Smith.

I. The holiday-minded traveller passing through Matau on his way to more famous, more exciting places scarcely notices our existence. He may. or more often may not, obey the peremptory order to reduce speed because he is entering what is rather prosaically known as a “ built-up area." Apart from that notice, there is actually little evidence of 1 our existence to casual travellers on the main highway. A dog or two perhaps, some half-dozen houses nearly buried in trees, and occasionally a boy describing highly dangerous curves on the road on an ancient and battered bicycle.

Farther along in what we are pleased to call, for lack of a better name, “ the town,” the more observant traveller will notice a shop or two, an aged public-house somewhat grandly known to the outside world as the “ Hotel Matau,” but to us simply as “Hughie MacDonald’s.” Also in the town, and just as important a meeting place for the local men as the pub, is our one and only garage, Tom Delaney’s. Once upon a time, it was .one of the town’s three smithies, and one can still see faintly traced on the battered corrugated iron “Thos. Delaney, Blacksmith and Wheelwright, Est. 1865.” That was young Tom’s grandfather. Three glaring petrol pumps, blatantly out of place in such decrepit surroundings, are the only external evidence' that transport in Matau has progressed since the day of the horse and buggy. • Also established in 1865, according to the ornate legend on its psuedoGreek facade, was the “ Matau Athenaeum and Mechanics Institute.” A grand sounding name for such a dilapidated memorial to our grandparents’ pomposity. The plaster is flaking off the Greek pillars and the iron* filigree window surrounds are rusty gnd buckled and thickly draped with cobwebs. The Matau Progressive Society at its last meeting decided to paint them and to rough-cast the whole exterior of the Athenaeum. “ Deep cream’s a nice fresh colour with a bit of green for facings,” decided Joe Morris, the President of the Progressive Society. And since no one, since nineteen hundred or so, has dared to disagree with Joe, Matau in the near future will be the proud possessor of a cream and green Greek temple, surely an architectbal oddity quite as touristworthy as Brighton Pavilion or, the Leaning Tower of Pisa. What else is there of Matau? Not much, to the casual eye, unless we count the two or three nondescript, houses which straggle along the main road . beyond the Athenaeum, their orderly gardens alternating with empty paddocks and tumble down sheds. The Post Office turns its back severely on the rest of the town and maintains its official dignity In a back street. The Railway Station, giving us the cold shoulder, completely hides itself over the brow of the only hill in Matau. A pleasing enough separation, except that it prevents us from observing who leaves and who arrives by the daily train. Since we consider such knowledge to be ours by divine right the situation of the railway station causes us considerable inconvenience. The Matau Town Hall, an elegant structure of raw concrete and corrugated iron, is equally off the beaten track. A really curious and persevering visitor might eventually find it in a bend of the crooked road which wanders off past the Post Office, ambles around by St. Bride’s Catholic Church and continues with splendid open-mindedness past the -Presbyterians and the Anglicahs and on down to the river ... a delightful, surprising, inconsequential road that leads to nowhere in particular ... a road that goes quite unnoticed by that casual traveller, the fellow who puts his foot on the accelerator and says ..as he passes through Matau: “Pretty place. Sleepy though. Looks as if nothing’s happened since the year one.” v Little does he know!