Signposts - a blog about Te Ara the Encyclopedia of New Zealand

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.

A dog and his miner

March 24th is Otago’s anniversary day holiday, but this year it’s also the Monday after Easter, so a holiday for everyone, not just Otago. I’m pleased therefore to learn that the anniversary holiday’s still being observed – on the immediately following Tuesday. Nice work Otago.

I’m presently researching and writing the encyclopedia entry for Otago, but browsing round Te Ara it’s already easy to find lots of Otago angles.

An obvious place to start is with the Scots, given that Otago originated as a Free Church of Scotland settlement in 1848. Though it is interesting to learn that Otago was never completely Scottish – even in its first years Scots accounted for only just over half of the settlers.

And from a few years before, in the European Exploration entry you can find Te Huruhuru’s 1844 map of the Otago lakes Wakatipu, Wanaka and Hawea, at that time unsighted by any European.

From 1861 the search for gold in the interior brought many miners across the Tasman from Victoria in Australia. News of the bitterly cold Central Otago winter of 1862 didn’t deter everyone, as is evident from this Melbourne Punch cartoon.

And if that doesn’t make you feel cold, read George Barrington’s 1863–64 journal of his abortive six-month gold-seeking expedition into the country between Lake Wakatipu and the West Coast. After about five months of travel he writes ‘this is the most miserable day of my existence’. Barrington and his companions made it back to Wakatipu in the early winter, not much more than skeletons, but alive.

Central Otago can of course be very hot as well as very cold. Dunedin residents will undoubtedly use this holiday weekend to enjoy its fine, warm and calm late summer weather. Have a great time.