1868: Okaihau
April 2, 2021
By AHNZ
On 1 April, 1868, one of the human race’s greatest migrations was completed. From Scotland, to Nova Scotia, and at last to Okaihau. They had inherited a wilderness to settle and set to cultivating wheat.
“The Maoris on the eastern side of our settlement were at first somewhat unfriendly, as they claimed the land had been sold without their permission. But as we got better acquainted this feeling gradually wore off, ” Northland Age (1931); Papers Past
These Scotish Canadians, like their more famous kin settling at Waipu are little known now but were once a powerful force. A big town, it sent scores of men to fight and die when the Government summoned them to the Great War.
This happened in 1914, just as the Okaihau Branch railway line was completed to link Okaihau with the rest of New Zealand by rail. The plan was always to keep up the work, connecting on toward the Hokianga but the War put an end to that. Little did the soldiers know that the home they were fighting to defend was being unplugged from further progress.
In the 1920s, after Government initially refusing further work, the extension was picked up again at last which inluded this railway tunnel (pictured.) Then, catastrophically to the line and town, the 1930s Depression was used as an excuse to halt further work and rip up the scavenged line to be sent elsewhere. Okaihau now started going backwards and began to be scavenged itself (eg church¹, museum², population) by Kaikohe.
Even though they’d made it, they’d connected to the sea via the Hokianga River at a railway platform at Rangiahua, the new Labour 1.0 Government snatched it away. The perfectly good railway was scrapped and sent to build the Dargaville Branch Line in 1940 rather than used. The people of Okaihau must have felt betrayed and furious.
Labour 4.0 delivered the final indignity, tearing out the now-closed Okaihau Branch line itself in 1988. This, despite expected need for it as forrestry plantations would shortly be in need of logging.
I’m thinking about how badly treated Okaihau has been by The State, especially after all their hard pioneering work and sacrifice in two World Wars. They were mistaken, like so many of us, to trust the Government and have been repaid with a feast of empty hot air signifying nothing.
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1 Historic church on move; Stuff (2004)
2 Ref. Northland Firehouse Museum in 2018; NZH&H, Facebook
Note: Okaihau translates to ‘feast of the winds’. This is in reference to plundering Maoris in antiquity who found nothing and nobody to eat but the wind on the occasion of an invasion.
Image ref. Old tunnel, old platform, Okaihau; AHNZ Archive (2019)
Image ref. Okaihau station in the 1950s; Ron Clark, Sir George Grey Special Collections; Timespanner; New Zealand: History & Natural History
Ref. So many fighters, so many deaths; Okaihau First World War memorial, NZ History.govt
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