The road to Mangamahu

the long version

From the 1880s until the beginning of World War One, Mangamahu was an overnight stop on the main route from the port city of Wanganui to the volcanic plateau and Napier. It was bustling with pack horses, wagons, a supply store and a hotel. Then the Main Trunk Railway line opened in the next valley: Mangamahu went into a Rip Van Winkle phase, and remained for decades in its 1905 state. But aerial topdressing in the 1950s brought a new spurt of growth, until a slump in the 1980s, and this book was written to let the dispossessed Mangamahu children of 1980s know of their heritage. Jean Morris, a history graduate who had married a Mangamahu farmer after WW2, spent her retirement in the Wanganui Library poring over old Wanganui newspapers for details of Mangamahu's road-building, civic board, schools, telephone lines, hotels, stables, bus service, storekeepers and churches. And also the sports clubs - rugby, rifle-shooting, golf, pony club etc As we read the family histories, we move up the Whangaehu River valley from Margaret Campion's world of big rich river-flat properties at the lower end of the valley like Okirae through the marginal properties of Pat Garland's steep and dissected hill county in mid valley, then up to the isolated but magnificent high country stations at Aranui and Mount View. Along with the social services and land-owners, there are tales of the farm-workers, single or separated, who did so much to open up the land.