A Sawmill on Arawhata Road

The tram track leading into the bush

Today's Taranaki sees cows munching grass on the gently sloping ringplain of a snow capped mountain. 100 years ago some of this land was still covered with tall trees and thick bush, or their blackened stumps. It was the time of the disappearing bush.

Rewind

This week we travel back to the early years of last century so what was happening in New Zealand way back then? Decide whether the events below are true or false:
 

1. It's 1900 and the previous decade has seen about 36,000 square kilometres of bush cleared for farms. Most of it is burnt in the North Island.
2. In 1900 only the towns of Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin have populations of over 1000.
3. The Government decides it should provide health care after a case of plague is discovered in Auckland.
4. The Government notices that New Zealand's bush cover is disappearing fast. In 1901 they get prisoners to plant introduced trees.
5. In 1900 an Australian Company still owns and mills huge areas of New Zealand's kauri forest. The timber goes to Australia.

Answers at the bottom of the page

Word Watch

All the words and phrases below are in this week's story. Decide on the best meaning and check your answers when you read the story.

1. balloted (a) to draw lots i.e. to pick out of a hat (a) to win in a raffle 
2. boom years (a) a time of growth and prosperity (b) the years of the Taranaki wars
3. arduous task (a) dangerous task or (b) exhausting task
4. stout (a) large or (b) sturdy
5. flourished (a) continued or (b) prospered
6. hazards (a) risky places or (b) foggy patches
7. bogged (a) spooked or (b) stuck
8. the 1919 depression (a) a time of unemployment and hardship (b) a particularly harsh winter
9. hoodlum (a) young hooligan or delinquent or (b) crook or gangster
10. contractors (a) people that agree to perform services or supply something at a set price or (b) people with the skills needed to perform difficult

Answers at the bottom of the page.

Why clear the land?

Clearing the land was one of the first tasks new settlers did in Taranaki. They needed crops to feed themselves and their animals. Just clearing coastal fern was hard enough.

Some parts grew two metres tall and it was pretty hard to walk through. It all had to burnt and grubbed out by hand.

Bush farmers had to make some money while they cleared their farms. Some worked on the roads or felled the bush on contract while others collected fungus and sold it to Chew Chong, the Chinese merchant. There's a Taranaki story about Chew Chong here

Clearing the bush for farms began in the 1850s and 1860s and the peak years were the 1870s and 1880s. This week's story tells us that the 1890s were the boom years for the Taranaki. These were the years when Taranaki really went ahead.

So why were the 1890s the boom years? Think, pair and then share your ideas with a classmate.

Work out the order

Clearing the bush for farms was done in stages and could take three to four years to clear a paddock. The order below is as tangled as some of the bush the new farmers cleared. Pair up with a classmate and work out the right order for the tasks.

The burn: It's summer and there is a strong wind. The mass of tangled bush is set alight.

The smaller trees: Trees up to four metres are felled with an axe or cross cut saw and left to dry.

The grass: Farmers sow the grass seed into ash that was still warm. It gives an excellent crop in a short time.

The Underscrub:  Supplejack, small trees and fern is cut.

The Drive: The big trees are cut halfway through. One is felled so it crashes into the others and makes them fall like dominoes. Branches are lopped off to help the vegetation burn.

The tidy up: Some stumps rot while others are exploded out of the ground. Oxen pull out the remains. The field is ploughed but work stops every time the plough hits some roots. Swamps are drained and hollows and creeks filled in.

Let's mill!

With the population growing, Taranaki needed timber, so it wasn't all cut and burnt.

This week's story is about the Bartle brothers who set up their mill in the rugged Taranaki bush. They weren't the first to mill. The idea had been around for some time.

In 1772, just three years after Captain James Cook's first visit, a band of French sailors  were milling some trees for ship's spars in the Bay of Islands. They were attacked and killed by local Maori.

The timber export trade began as early as 1794. Britain's Royal Navy loved our trees. By 1840 the Navy even had a Purveyor of Timber living in New Zealand. His job was to make sure the Navy got all the best logs.

The Australians had 30 mills operating in New Zealand in the 1880s and most of the timber milled from our very best trees, went straight to Australia.

By the 1920s it looked as if New Zealand would run out of indigenous trees to mill. These were the ones that had always been here like kauri, rimu and totara. The Government put limits on exports but these trees could still be milled for the local market.

Read the first part of this week's story and find three reasons why Henry and John Bartle thought sawmilling would be a worthwhile business.

Ready to roll

"An arduous task begins" and "A fine new business" shows just how difficult it was to set up a mill.

Read this part of the story and then use this map to work out where the Bartle's sawmill was:

Use the scale on the map to work out how far it was from the mill to Opunake and from the mill to Manaia- the towns where the timber was sold.

These days little cranes on the back of trucks can lift big loads. Work out how the large steam boiler and the engine were loaded on and off the tram line wagon. The boilers and engines were big and heavy. They needed more than pure man power.

Won't be easy

Setting up a business one hundred years ago was similar to setting up one today. The Bartle brothers would have:

1. Decided how their sawmill could make a profit.
2. Thought about the things that could go wrong.
3. Solved some problems and prevented others.
4. And... they would have worked with others and in teams.

A conversation like the one below might have taken place when the business decision was made. Read this short play with a classmate.

Henry: What say we shift dad's old mill up to the Arawhata John?

John:  Well it's not much good on the Kahui Road Henry. The old man cleared most of the big trees around Rahotu. Any sawmill has be close to the big stuff Henry.
 
Henry: There's a lot of big timber close to the mountain John.

John: Big timber and good timber Henry.

Henry: Be a huge job John, getting the old boiler and engine to the Arawhata.

John: Massive Henry.

Henry: Is it worth it John?

John: It's worth it Henry and I'll tell you why. I was talking to Bob Doyle in Opunake yesterday.

Henry: Bob the builder?

John: He's taken on three new apprentices. He's got more work than he can handle but can't get enough good sawn timber. He's forever waiting for wagon loads from New Plymouth.

Henry: That right?

John: Opunake's going ahead John. And Manaia - I hear the railway's coming to Manaia Henry.

Henry: They'll need sleepers John.

John: Sleepers and timber for the station and railway houses.

Henry: Pubs John, they'll need timber for the pubs. I  think they've only got two pubs.
 
John: Shift the old mill Henry and we can supply the Opunake and Manaia market. We'll make a bob or two mate.

Henry: I tell you what John. Why not lay tracks up to the Arawhata? Wooden tram tracks.
 
John: Run the boiler and engine up the line you mean?

Henry: Either that or haul them on the wagon. We'll need a tramline though John.

John: How many men do you reckon we'll need Henry?

Henry: I'll tell you what John. There's that many men looking for a job we'll never be short of workers.

John: We'll do it then Henry- a sawmill on the Arawhata Road.

Henry: Good on you mate.

Make a business plan

Find a business partner and use information from the story and the play to fill in the gaps on this business plan:

Letters to the teacher

The story tells us that the Bartle children often missed days at school but they weren't the only ones. Kids from dairy farms all over Taranaki either missed school or were late after rounding up the cows and then milking them by hand.

Missing school was quite common and Puke Ariki has some of the letters that parents wrote to their children's teachers. They're on display in the Taranaki life gallery.

Write speech bubbles that could come from some the students in the photo below. Each bubble should have one really good excuse for missing or being late to school.

Arawhata Road School pupils

A sawdust shampoo

Read "Workers with odd pasts" and "Milling around the river" and find out what the kids got up to in this era.

There's no way a mill would be allowed to dump their sawdust in rivers these days but Taranaki's streams and rivers carried waste products for years. Blood and guts would flow from freezing works and dairy waste would flow from factories and farms. It was quite normal.

Today there are big fines for dumping anything in rivers so businesses find other ways to deal with their waste products. Making money out of waste is the best idea of all.

What if the Bartle brothers were ahead of the times? Instead of throwing waste like sawdust and bark away, they found a market for it.

Design a display advertisement for the old Taranaki Daily News that shows the products the Arawhata sawmill has for sale.

The odd fellows

That part of the story also told of the men of the 1919 depression- men who had lost money and their farms. Jim and his mates thought that some of these men were a bit odd but these were odd times.

The Government tried to help soldiers that had returned from the war and lent them money to buy land for farms. Many men borrowed heavily at high rates of interest and when prices for farm products fell, they were in trouble. They owed money to banks, the Government, private money lenders and to previous owners.

Farmers on good land were okay. They just spent less and produced more. The returned servicemen however were often on poor land that needed clearing, fencing and buildings. They struggled to make any money.

Many of these men grew up in towns and then went to war so they were inexperienced farmers. They simply walked off their land to find work elsewhere.

Some of these men ended up at the Arawhata sawmill and that's probably why Jim noticed that some were "very disturbing". They had survived a terrible war, returned home with high hopes and then lost all they owned.

Today, special agencies help people like this out. What would have happened then? Discuss it with a classmate.

The end of an era

Finish the story now and find out what the Bartle family did when the timber industry levelled off. – when sawmills began to make less money than they had in the peak years.

Design the business card for the Bartle brothers' new business. In the centre write the company name- a catchy one. Under that write a contact address-(no mobile numbers or emails). In each corner write down a service or some goods they may have provided.

More family stories?

Rhonda Bartle wrote this week's story. Henry and John and Mary and Jim are all on Rhonda's family tree. Check out your family tree. There may be a story you can write.

Fast forward

Forests today cover about 30 percent or 8.1 million hectares of New Zealand's land area. Of this, about 6.4 million hectares are in natural forest with indigenous trees like rimu, totara and beech.

1.7 million hectares are production forests covered in introduced trees like pinus radiata. All these trees are harvested.

The logging of indigenous forests has slowed right down in recent years. In 2001 for example the Government ended the logging of all state owned indigenous forests. They even transferred ownership of all of Timberlands West Coast forests to DOC - The Department of Conservation.

Now Councils around New Zealand are out identifying important native ecosystems (habitats) in their areas. Some farmers, including Taranaki ones have placed a permanent protection covenants on parts their land. The local Council or a trust has paid for fencing and that piece of bush will stay a wilderness area forever. It can't be destroyed even if the farm is sold.

Other farmers worry that parts of their land may one day be locked up without any payment or consultation. They say they will still have to pay rates on the land but they won't be able to make an income off it. Extra costs might include weed control, fence maintenance and even fire protection and that doesn't seem fair.

Some farmers have already destroyed their natural bush areas to avoid future restrictions. They don't like the idea of their rights being taken away.

100 years ago people didn't worry too much about wilderness areas. They knocked them down to create farms but there are still patches left. How do we protect these patches and protect the farmer's rights at the same time?

Form a small group and discuss and come up with a solution. Share it in class.

Answers

Rewind

1. True
2. False. New Zealand has 52 communities with a population of over 1,000.
3. True
4. True
5. True

Word watch

1a, 2a, 3b, 4b, 5b, 6a, 7b, 8a, 9a, 10a

Clearing the bush

The land was cleared in this order
1. The underscrub
2. The smaller trees
3. The drive
4. The burn
5. The grass
6. The tidy up