During a recent trip to Japan, he and Ginette researched a possible solution to the problem of sea erosion along the beach. Before I leave, he shows me his collection of model fire engines and suggests I talk to Cyril Thomas, who makes Foxton flatties flat-bottomed river boats. Cyril, now in his eighties, is a stocky sea-dog-cum-builder-cum-engineer with a warm smile. Despite fragile health, once launched, Cyril talks with the confidence of a man who can make anything.
In the garden is a flatty he made 13 years ago. She was a topsail schooner. Later he gives me a bottle of home-distilled rum to take away—40 per cent proof although he can do up to 70 per cent. The cook was in his eighties. Port a Bit, we called him—he had a list to one side. Falling timber had smashed his shoulder and he used to get around with a list to port, you see. Nine times out of ten the police brought them back to the ship. Cyril takes me out in the Oldsmobile and points out all the houses he has built, including the one he put up for himself and his wife, Dawn, when they got married.
For all that the times are a changing at the Beach, it is in Foxton town that recent developments are most noticeable. The town has also decided to promote good old-fashioned hospitality and to do up shop frontages, concentrating on Main Street. Another boost to the tourism profile of Foxton came in , when the vanes of the octagonal smock windmill began turning in the air above Main Street and producing flour. The mill opened in April and has been drawing thousands of visitors ever since.
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De Molen is picturesque, inside and out. There are displays explaining milling traditions in New Zealand and Holland, and visitors can view the mill machinery in action—once they have climbed the almost vertical stairs. Foxton joiner Dave Seavers made the hoppers and surrounds for the two sets of massive millstones. The pair on the west side, called An, measure 1. The stones are cast in a pattern of ridges and grooves. The grain is ground by the upper stone of each pair as it rotates over the stationary lower stone. Both moving stones are weighted by ballast and driven through a spur-wheel arrangement by the wind-powered vanes.
John pours grain into one of the hoppers, from where it slides onto the turning millstones below. The flour, warm from the friction of grinding, shoots out into a sack, and John tests its texture by hand. He also tunes in to the sound of the stones and adjusts the settings accordingly: a deep tone indicates fragments of stone are breaking off and getting in the flour. Stone grinding heats the flour less than commercial processing and retains more nutrients and bran. Visitors who are unable to climb the stairs to the upper levels can watch the inner workings of the mill on television screens on the ground floor, where they may also purchase souvenirs and freshly ground flour.
Further attractions under consideration are a Dutch museum and bakery. Around the mill and nearby Manawatu River, a boardwalk threads its way through flax, or harakeke Phormium tenax , and other natives, planted to enhance the natural environment.
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The Keep Foxton Beautiful group was a prime mover behind much of this landscaping and the eventual establishment of the Foxton Flax Walk. The Foxton Flax Stripping Museum opened in Since then visitors have been able to watch Gordon Burr strip the fibre out of flax leaves on the Sutton Decorticator—the same machine he helped to build when he was an apprentice fitter and turner at the New Zealand Woolpack and Textiles factory in The first such machine, designed by Mr E.
Sutton and built in , was capable of stripping 16 tonnes of flax leaf in a day. The fibre is washed and spread outside to dry and bleach in the sun. Gordon then puts it through a lateth-century scutcher, a huge drum with rotating blades inside that beat it out, giving it a smooth finish. The machine screeches into action, and seconds later has reduced a bundle of thick leaves to a handful of thin strips. The stripper does in three minutes what used to take three weeks by hand. Maori scraped harakeke with mussel shells to remove the fibre, which they used to make mats, rope, kits or kete—baskets and clothing.
Gordon says his forbears were living in the area in , which pre-dates the official establishment of the borough. The millinery and dressmaking business of his great-grandmother, Lydia Burr, is mentioned in a listing of enterprises in Foxton — The First Years. The stripper was later moved to Bonded Felts, which closed in Man-made materials had become the cheaper, preferred option. Feltex Carpets remains a major employer, and, despite economic diversification in and around Foxton, closure of the factory would put several hundred locals out of work.
The flax-stripping museum is close to other working tourist attractions, and Gordon maintains good relations with de Molen on one side and the Maori Arts and Crafts shop on the other, occasionally giving the latter a koha, or gift, of fibre.
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He also supplies weavers throughout New Zealand with fibre. Flax could almost be booming again on a modest scale. You can use two or three different plants for making very fine cloaks, or kuruwai, and I can produce the fibre very quickly for them. Maori presence in the area, of course, pre-dates that of Pakeha by centuries.
Moa and shellfish remains indicate human habitation from at least AD. Two simple white, wooden Anglican and Presbyterian churches on Main Street look much as they would have done when they were built over years ago.
For a town in which poultry farming is a major industry, the setting—four feather-strewn cages in a hen battery inhabited by variously neurotic, recalcitrant and conformist fowls—was particularly apt. The Little Theatre celebrated its 60th anniversary in , a year when many other Foxton clubs and groups had major birthdays. For a small town, Foxton is endowed with an astonishing range of museums: not only are trolley buses, dolls and flax-stripping on view, so are pottery, glass, local history and the old courthouse.
It comprises a collection of audiovisual technology for which Te Papa has no room, much of it in working order. A local resident, Peter Edwards, founded it in , basing it round a personal collection he had accumulated over many years. Retired electronics expert Terry Bicknell is the chairman of the MAVtech trustees, volunteering his time like so many skilled Foxton retirees.
There is a functioning sound studio where visitors can listen to such old-time delights as the first recorded session of the popular Australian Radio serial Dad and Dave. One glass case contains a display of painted records. The painting of vinyl discs was an early advertising strategy, soon superseded by sleeves. In another case, historic coated paper and steel wire recorders can be seen. A massive Dictaphone compares in size with a sink table. In a corner stands a cinematographic projector dating from the s.
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The council has just renovated the building, which dates from There were things about the past worth preserving, and we are using those as a springboard for the future, which is why people feel comfortable with it. They see we are working for all generations. More by Aaron Smale. Unlimited access to every NZGeo story ever written and hundreds of hours of natural history documentaries on all your devices.
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