By Virginia Winder

If you've ever taken the Cream Trip up the Mokau River, you will have marvelled at the peace and its people-free state.

But look closely at the banks as the Cygnet chugs up the caramel-coloured river. Among waving wands of grass, rugged farmland and reviving bush you will see relics of old machinery. These are signs, as telling as Greek ruins, of a past civilization.

New Plymouth woman Irene Sutton remembers when the banks of the Mokau supported a thriving community and industry.

"It was early in the 1920s when we went from New Plymouth to Mokau," Mrs Sutton says, remembering her original glimpse of the river.

Mystery trip upstream

That journey, led by her father, Wieland Christoffel, was full of adventure and intrigue.

"We crossed the river in a punt. My father engaged Victor (Sjolund), a Swede, who owned the Cygnet (creamboat) and we went up the river. We didn't know where he was going. Fifteen miles up on the left-hand side we got out and there was this area of open land. My father said 'I think this is where we will establish the mill'."

The Cygnet: These days the boat takes tourists up the river, but in its past life the vessel was a lifeline to people living on the banks of the upper Mokau.

That was the first she had heard of her dad's plan to mill kahikatea (white pine), which would later be made into boxes for butter and cheese.

The mill's life was short. It opened in 1925 and closed in 1928. "There had been lots of mills up the river. Most of the timber had been taken," she says.

"There are still remnants of the bridge that my father had a winch on to pull the logs down, from up in the hills, to the river."

Hive of industry

Sawmilling along the river began in the 1890s, and by the start of the 20th century there were six sawmills dotted along 16 miles of the Mokau. Farming was even more prolific, with 15 dairy farms nudging 22 miles of muddy banks.

Taranaki historian Ron Lambert says there were also coalmines, with deposits first reported along the river as early as the 1840s.

"In 1884, the first sales of coal from Mokau were made. Over the next 40 years, many companies worked mines along the difficult Mokau River. To transport the coal to the rest of Taranaki, small steamers braved the snag-filled river, with its treacherous and shallow sand bar," the Puke Ariki researcher says.

"In 1915, a disastrous flood choked the river with tonnes of logs. This effectively killed the coal industry, though several small operations continued until the 1950s.

"Open-cast mines near Mahoenui, on the northern edge of the Mokau field, continued to operate until the 1990s," Mr Lambert says.

Busy as a road

The Mokau River was as busy as a road in the early years of last century and so became the only river in New Zealand gazetted as a highway, a status it still holds.

Wieland Christoffel added to the traffic. After his sawmill closed, he had the land prospected for coal. "They found a seam, so my father formed the Mokau Coal Company," Mrs Sutton says.

Work began there in 1930, three years after the Mokau Bridge opened.

While Mr Christoffel's businesses were based on the river, the family lived in New Plymouth, where the oldest four children were educated.

Mrs Sutton says they lived a privileged life in town, with a maid and good education. "We all had five years at high school."

During the school holidays, the Christoffel children would camp out in a workers' whare (hut) on the banks of the Mokau. "I remember waking up to what I would call the dawn chorus," she says. "Oh, and the wonderful bush walks going through virgin bush, scrambling through supplejack and moss-covered trees..."

Place of great beauty

Historian James Cowan was also inspired by the natural beauty.

"Of all my loves amongst the rivers of New Zealand, Mokau is the One," he wrote in 1911. "Because of its aloofness from the tracks of the tourist, for one thing; for its atmosphere of adventure and exploitation, for its almost unbroken forests, and its untamed rapids.

"...The Mokau, I suppose, is seventy miles in length from source to sea; it is navigable for small sea-going steamers for about twenty-five miles, and for Maori canoes for forty-five," he writes.

"I have forded it where it is but a small thread of water, cascading down from the Rangitoto Ranges. There it is out in the open fern and limestone lands. But for the greater part of its course it flows through the thick forest, deep, except where its numerous rapids break its course," he writes.

Fun of water

There was excitement to be had on the Mokau, Mrs Sutton recalls.

"My father made an aqua plane - a forerunner of the water ski. The water was very, very deep, so we had to be able to swim," she says producing a photo of herself riding the river.

Wieland Christoffel was a firm believer in young people being fit. "We had horizontal bars and a trapeze. My father had these exercises - you had to be healthy."

Sport was a big part of Mrs Sutton's life, especially at the New Plymouth High School. She was a star at tennis and netball (called basketball back then), and even met her future husband because of the racquet sport. But that comes later.

"We had a great life," she says, talking of going to plays and concerts in New Plymouth.

"My father had a car, so we were brought up with a lot of travelling. My mother drove from those early days. We were very much pro-women folk - it was in my grandfather's family; the aunts all had the say."

An educated woman

Because of this, it was natural that Mrs Sutton went to university, which was a rare occurrence for women in those days. She studied in Auckland, getting a Bachelor of Arts in Latin, French, Greek and history, plus a teaching diploma. She graduated in 1934.

By then, thanks to a loss in fortunes, the Christoffel family was living in a large, unfinished house up the Mokau River,

It was depression time and the coalmine floundered, its lifespan even shorter than the sawmill. By the end of 1932, the mine was closed.

However, the Christoffels lived a fine life on the river. They even had a tennis court, which was made with the help of "the bachelors", Don, Alton, Roy and Keith Sutton, who lived across the river.

That's how Don and the athletic Irene Christoffel met. "Nobody knew anything about us," Mrs Sutton says.

She laughs at the memory of the Christoffel family telling Don he should visit Irene when he was in Auckland for a holiday. "Little did they know that's why he was going!"

But she wasn't lured from her studies to marriage. "I always had it in my mind that I was not doing anything until I got my degree."

And a learned man

Don himself was a learned man. He had an agricultural degree from Lincoln University in Christchurch, and taught at Wanganui Collegiate. "But farming was his love," Mrs Sutton says, explaining how he ended up on his father's land.

When Irene finished her degree, Don took Mr Christoffel for a walk and asked him for his daughter's hand in marriage. The older man's answer was practical.

"My father said wouldn't it be better if he married Olga or Norma - they didn't have a job. But he (Don) said no," Mrs Sutton laughs. "That wasn't the point!"

In March 1935, Don Sutton and Irene Christoffel were married at St Mary's Church (now a pro-cathedral) in New Plymouth.

They moved into one of the two new houses built on the Sutton farm, across the river from the Christoffel property. The other house was for Keith Sutton and his new wife Gwennyth Every.

Battle for a bridge

Both women were schoolteachers, and were greatly needed up and down the river and in the Mokau and Awakino districts.

Access to some of the schools wasn't easy, with each day beginning with a wild ride across the river. Using the cable from the logging operation, her father had rigged up a flying fox, from one side to another.

"We called it the trolley," she says. "The shrieks I have heard from people coming over on it!"

But Mrs Sutton says the precarious mode of transport had to go, especially after she became a mother. Carrying Angela (born 1937) and Diane (1941), plus packages, was time-consuming and unwieldy.

"I went to Parliament and saw the minister (of transport). We eventually got the upper Mokau River bridge, which was finished in 1957. What a boon that wonderful bridge was. Then they had to build a road (the Awakau) on our side of the river."

Prior to that, machinery had to be brought up the river on a punt. This didn't always prove successful. "This big machine, a bulldozer, it slid off and there it was at the bottom of the river. We had to get divers from Auckland and they said they had never been in such a murky river in their lives."

Long and wild way

She remembers her own accident-prone trips getting to Mackford School, called after brother and sister settlers who had a farm of the same name. As a compromise, they joined their last names - McKenzie and Radford - to label the land.

Every morning, she would cross the river, mount a horse, with young brother David on behind. "Sometimes the horse would come to a log and we would fall off. I was no horse person - can you tell that?"

Astride the horse, they would travel to the Randall farm, where they left the horse in a paddock. "Then we crossed the river with the Randalls in a tub of a boat - it was a dreadful thing - then walk all the way up to the hill where the Coplestones are now. Then we did it all in reverse coming back."

The Coplestones are the main stop on the Mokau River Cruise, now run by Grant and Pauline Taylor. Min Coplestone provides creamboat travellers with refreshments in her glorious garden and also gives spinning demonstrations.

Entertainment and electricity

Handcrafts and art were part of life around Awakino and Mokau. "We had dress-making classes, we had floral art classes, millinery classes, Kate Stocker for drama. We produced plays and had wonderful scenery. I had a wonderful social life," she says.

"I never had to work on the farm. I know nothing about animals. I worked. I was a good cook, we baked for all the functions."

Luckily, the river folk got electricity in 1937. "So I didn't have to spend much time cooking on a coal stove."

Husband Don was also a community person, heading associations and organisations, including the Masonic Lodge.

"I had the most wonderful husband. We had so many honeymoons!"

The Suttons left the river in January 1964, a year of great change. "I had my two girls get married. I was teaching at Mahoenui and we sold the farm, and we had to move - all in that year," she says.

Now, Irene Sutton is 91. She's been away from Mokau for nearly 40 years, but still goes back to visit, to reminisce about the days when her life flowed with that wide, caramel river.

She takes the creamboat trip and spies remnants of a past civilization - her own.