Coinciding with the 60th celebrations of The Kawerau Borough, which was officially created in April 1954, is the national launch of the Paint New Zealand Beautiful campaign. A series of five walls will be transformed with colourful paintings telling the stories of early Kawerau. Images will depict Fenton’s Mill, the Shanty Town, the Hammerhead Crane, the Milk Cart and the Finnish Sauna. These are being painted by a local landscape artist Bela Ughy.
Kawerau is one of NZ’s youngest towns. The gold that brought Kawerau into being literally grew on trees: timber from the Kaingaroa and other nearby forests. During the economic depression in the early 1930s, Mr. Percy Fenton, a saw miller in the Bay of Plenty, acquired the cutting rights for 1,500 acres of dense Rimu bush located above the headwaters of the Tarawera River behind Lake Okataina. The only access was a fifteen mile wagon trail which left the Rotorua-Whakatane highway about nine miles south of Te Teko. In order to set up the Mill, living quarters, a school etc and get the timber to market, Fenton had to build and maintain an eleven mile stretch of road which included the strengthening of two bridges. In 1935 the Whakatane County Council built a new steel bridge across the Tarawera River near what is Waterhouse Street today. After the bridge was completed, the Council extended the road from the Maori Affairs Block to the new bridge and Percy Fenton built a road to link up to the road to the mill. This later became known as Fenton Mill Road.
In the early 1950s, the Government was involved in the consideration of how to use the timber in the Kaingaroa Forest. It was decided to establish a pulp and paper mill adjacent to Onepu on the banks of the Tarawera River. The Government, the Fletcher Company and others were involved in planning which lead to the formation of the Tasman Pulp & Paper Company (now Norske Skog Tasman / Carter Holt Harvey Tasman) in 1952. The residential area of the town was laid out and buildings established under control of the Ministry of Works. "Shanty town or Snake Gully”, was a private residential area, outside the control of Tasman Pulp and Paper's Mill site at Kawerau in 1954. It has long since been dismantled as the entire town developed on this side of the river.
The local Finnish community built a Sauna close to the Tarawera River and Waterhouse Street in 1955. Saunas are a very important part of the Finnish way of life and this was part of the original contract with the Finnish employees,
In the early days up to the 1980s all milk deliveries were done by Horse and Cart. Many school children earned their extra pocket money with assisting with these deliveries.
The Hammerhead Crane was a dominant feature at the Tasman Pulp and Paper Company Limited site 1955-1990. The Hammerhead Crane was imported from Holland and was erected in early 1955.This giant crane proved to be a high profile piece of equipment, and at 75 feet high it stood out. The function of the crane was to unload the log trains, stockpile the log yard and service the three decks of the Wood Prep Plant. The crane worked 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Lifting capacity was 30 tons (equal to a wagon of logs). In the first 10 years it unloaded 250 million cubic feet of logs and in 27 years it handled 30 million tons of logs. The crane was decommissioned in September 1982.
All these new murals will complement the other murals in Kawerau by Mark Spijkerbosch.
The cache is a Bison Tube. Do not forget to BYO pen!! Please make sure it is concealed when you have finished.
It is situated where you can view the first three of the five new murals by Bela Ughy as part of the 60th celebrations.
