Southland: coming soon to Te Ara
Posted 2 July 2008 // Malcolm McKinnon
Outside the Eastern Southland Gallery in Gore
On 19 June the weekly newspaper The Independent featured an unusual image of New Zealand on its front page - it was upside down and had Southland at the top, crowded with buildings and general busy-ness. The rest of the country was shrunken and empty.
This tribute to recent boom times in the southern province is very timely for Te Ara, as we’re now in the final stages of preparing our entry on Southland and Fiordland – the 11th out of 22 regions.
Southland has had a long history. In the early 19th century the shores of Foveaux Strait were one of the first meeting zones between Māori and Pākehā – mostly sealers and whalers.
The Wakatipu and other gold rushes in the early 1860s prompted a short-lived boom, as did Vogel’s immigration and public works programme in the early 1870s.
In the late 19th and early 20th century the province grew rapidly as swamps were drained, forests cleared, and dairy factories and meat freezing works thrived. Invercargill grew apace to match.
The 20 years after the Second World War was another golden age for farming, when Gore was reputedly the country’s richest town and Invercargill one of its most prosperous and established cities.
To help us in preparing our entry, we’re calling all Southlanders, past, present and future (more people are going to live in Southland than leaving). We’re looking for pictures and other resources about Southland and Fiordland, to bring the entry alive.
We’ve created a Te Ara group on Flickr, which anyone can join and contribute photos to. You can also contribute personal accounts or family stories about Southland or its history, by filling in a ‘Your Stories’ form online.
So help us make sure ‘our’ Southland meets ‘your’ Southland.
