Elsie, at 104, has nothing to grumble about
By MATT RILKOFF - Taranaki Daily News
Last updated 05:00 02/01/2010
ELSIE LINLEY
MARK DWYER/ Taranaki Daily News
ELSIE LINLEY: At 104, these days her only birthday wish is to have family around when she blows out the candles.
At 104 years old Elsie Linley is not ready to "peg out" just yet.
Her Boxing Day birthday makes her one of, if not the, oldest person in Taranaki
Since being born in Hawera, Mrs Linley has learnt a thing or two about life and love and espouses the benefits of patience and keeping grumbling to a minimum.
"Well they have enough on their shoulders without me complaining," she said with an elegantly cheeky smile.
"Besides there is nothing very much to complain about anyway."
This attitude comes from her mother who, despite a hard life, was always kind and loving to all, Mrs Linley said. And what did she look like?
"She was buxom. I hate saying it but she was a very large woman and I take after her."
Mrs Linley, nee Smith, married Englishman Jack Linley in 1926.
They had three children and lived on farms around the mountain at Oaonui, Okato and Tariki although they maintained an apartment in New Plymouth for weekend jaunts to the city.
She has nine grand-children, nine great-grandchildren and said they were all quite lovely.
Her interests over the decades have included a love of rugby, socialising, playing cards, photography, crochet – and hard work.
She now lives in New Plymouth's Radius Thornleigh Park rest home.
Sunday, January 3
Ghosts of dinners past
Ghosts of dinners past
By HELEN HARVEY - Taranaki Daily News
Last updated 14:06 21/12/2009
ROBERT CHARLES
Taranaki Research Centre information services officer Andrea Wallace with some of the early New Zealand Christmas cards in the centre's collection.
PUKE ARIKI COLLECTION
A Christmas card from colonial New Zealand.
Relevant offers
On Saturday night, December 24, 1887, New Plymouth was buzzing. The main street was full of people and the shops were busy as people did their last- minute Christmas shopping.
The day had been hot, so the cool night air was refreshing to the shoppers, who listened to a band playing while checking out the colourful displays in the shop windows.
The weekly newspaper the Budget reported that shopkeepers appeared to be doing a "fair business considering the dull times and shortness of money".
The butcher shops used to compete with each other to have the best display. The Taranaki Herald reported in 1884 that one butcher's shop window showed bullocks, sheep, lamb, calves, pigs, ducks, geese, turkeys and other fowl.
Grocers had seasonal fruits, little titbits, sweetmeats and tasty treats to attract customers.
And the shops stayed open as late as possible to ensure a good trade. In 1887, the band stopped playing at 10pm and the streets cleared at midnight, when the bell at the Catholic church "resounded through the town", the Budget reported.
Though the hotels were full, there was no drunkenness or breach of order or decorum, the paper said, "which is a credit to the town".
Christmas day dawned bright and clear. It was a Sunday, so the churches were full. The paper recalled the band played Christians Awake on the Barrack Hill (now Marsland Hill) in the morning. Back at home, houses may have been decorated with nikau palms, which were very popular for Christmas decorations in mid-1880s Taranaki.
There may have been a Christmas tree. Christmas trees were a German tradition that became popular in England in the 1840s, when pictures were seen of Queen Victoria, her German husband, Albert, and their children gathered around one.
The Tarrant family, who lived in Taihore, out the back of Strathmore on what's now the Forgotten World Highway, in the 1880s and '90s, had a little rimu sapling for a Christmas tree one year. In the book No One Went to Town, author Phyllis Johnson says it was decorated with buttons and beads.
Taranaki Research Centre team leader Gary Bastin says people had to use local materials and make do. This was true with the Christmas dinner. One popular meat dish was called colonial goose. It wasn't a goose at all - rather a flap of mutton with stuffing inside.
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You could still buy a colonial goose 20 years ago, but then it was a rolled seasoned shoulder of hogget, according to Murray Sattler, better known as Buzz the Butcher in Westown. Then, when farmers got better money for lamb, it became a rolled seasoned shoulder of lamb. But the term has gone out of use, a victim of consumer laws, since it isn't, actually, goose.
Christmas was more marked in the 1800s, Mr Bastin says. "[People] lived a more spartan existence, so the notion of having a social time and making a fuss over the meal would have been differentiated over time."
In 1887, the Budget's Christmas stories included one about a feast held by a chief named Henare Punuruka and his wife, Louisa, who lived in Peropero, to which Europeans were invited. The dinner consisted of "roast turkeys, geese, ducks, fowls, lamb, beef, pork, fish, new potatoes, green peas and cabbage". And that was just the first course. There was a Christmas cake and dessert included plum puddings, tarts, pies and jellies of various kinds.
As Christmas is the season of goodwill, spare a thought for the settlers in Christchurch in 1850, whose first Christmas dinner in their new country didn't quite turn out as planned.
A bullock, whose every joint had been ordered, did a runner. It was never found, Alison Clarke says in her book, Holiday Seasons: Christmas, New Year and Easter in Nineteenth Century New Zealand.
An abundance at Christmas was a sign of how well people were doing in the new land.
Agricultural labourer George Douch emigrated in 1875. He had struggled to make a living in his native Sussex, but two years after he arrived in Taranaki, he was building his own house on his own land, Dr Clarke says in her book.
He wrote to his parents saying he would never forget the white plum pudding (lacking fruit because the family was so poor) he'd had in 1855. In New Zealand, his Christmas dinner included new spuds, green peas, roast beef and "nine gallons of ale".
The new potatoes and green peas were a reflection of mixing old traditions with the realities of having Christmas in summer. And despite the weather, the settlers, like a lot of New Zealanders today, still had a hot meal. However, they also had summer desserts, especially strawberries, which they ate along with the traditional Christmas pudding.
In 1857, Taranaki resident Maria Atkinson made a 16-pound (7kg) pudding to feed the 18 people present for Christmas dinner.
"The groaning table also featured beef, turkey, ham, fowl, almonds, raisins, Christmas mincemeat and gooseberry pie".
Making a plum pudding involved family members, who took turns stirring the pudding, during which time they had to make a wish.
Mrs Beaton, a famous cook during the second part of the 19th century, has a recipe for a plain Christmas pudding in one of her cookbooks. The ingredients were flour, breadcrumbs, raisins, currants, suet, eggs, milk, peel, allspice and salt. The pudding was boiled for five hours. It was, according to Mrs Beaton, sufficient for nine or 10 children.
Taranaki Research Centre information services officer Andrea Wallace says when people first came to New Zealand, they would have had wonderful cookbooks. When Christmas rolled around, they would have looked up some recipes and found something they liked.
"Then you'd have looked at the ingredients you had and your lack of kitchen and thought, What can I do in a Dutch oven? Ingenuity reigned supreme and people made their colonial goose."
A Dutch oven is like a camp oven, a big pot with a thick lid that was covered in hot coal and ashes.
The ovens were used until the 1870s, when Henry Shacklock made the first coal range.
"Before then, no one really had coal ranges, because they weren't compatible with local coal."
Despite the difficulties, people were determined to enjoy their Christmas. Nearly 300 new settlers enroute to New Plymouth spent Christmas 1879 on board the Halcione. According to the ship's newsletter The Maraval Jackdaw all were determined to have a good Christmas. "May the smoking joint, the steaming glass and the ringing peal of laughter reign supreme," the newsletter said.
The first Kiwi Christmas was held just offshore in 1642. Dutch explorer Abel Tasman crossed the entrance of Cook Strait and anchored east of Stephens and D'Urville islands. There was what has since become a bit of a Christmas tradition in some parts of the country: bad weather.
NZHistory.net.nz says while sheltering from a storm, the Dutch enjoyed freshly killed pork from the ship's menagerie, washed down with extra rations of wine.
The next Christmas dinner in New Zealand wasn't until 1769, when Captain James Cook first arrived.
The crew of the Endeavour, while battling heavy seas, this time off the tip of the North Island, had a feast of goose pie. Only there was no goose available, so they improvised and botanist Joseph Banks shot a gannet instead. Apparently the Endeavour's crew spent Boxing Day nursing hangovers.
This has also become a bit of a Kiwi tradition. As has going to the races. Boxing Day race meetings were held all over New Zealand in the 1800s.
A lot of families also went on picnics on Boxing Day, something that wouldn't have happened in a European winter. But it was a good way to use up the leftovers and enjoy the summer.
For Hawera residents, catching the train to Normanby, having a picnic and then heading to the races was a popular way to spend Boxing Day.
But in New Plymouth on Boxing Day in 1887, it rained all day and the races were postponed and the picnics abandoned.
Not so traditional
Most of the Christmas traditions enjoyed today date from Queen Victoria's time. Before she came to the throne in 1837, there were no Christmas trees, cards, crackers, Santa Claus or a holiday off work. The wealth and technologies generated by the industrial revolution of the Victorian era changed the face of Christmas forever.
Mass production meant getting toys for Christmas was no longer only for the rich. And the wealth generated meant middle class families in England and Wales were able to take time off and celebrate over two days, Christmas Day and Boxing Day.
In New Zealand, a day off work for Christmas was the norm, but was not law until 1910. Shops and pubs often opened. Newspapers were published on Christmas Day, some of them even into the early 20th century. Christmas cards: The first Christmas card was designed in England in 1843 by John Horsley after Rowland Hill introduced the penny post in 1840. Before 1840, it would not have been feasible for ordinary people to send cards because of the cost of postage. By the 1860s, Christmas cards were very popular in England. Christmas cake: Originally, Christmas cake was eaten on Twelfth Night (January 6). In the late 19th century, people began to eat the traditional Twelfth Night cake at Christmas. Christmas crackers: Crackers were invented in London by Tom Smith in 1846. The original idea was to wrap his lollies in a twist of fancy coloured paper, but this developed and sold much better when he added notes, paper hats, small toys and made them go bang. Boxing Day: December 26th earned its name as the day servants and working people opened the boxes in which they had collected gifts of money from the "rich folk". Christmas stockings: These first became popular around 1870. Traditionally, an orange went in the toe. Christmas carols: A number of popular Christmas carols were written in the 19th century, including O Come All Ye Faithful in 1843, Once in Royal David's City in 1848, O Little Town of Bethlehem in 1868 and Away in a Manger in 1883.
By HELEN HARVEY - Taranaki Daily News
Last updated 14:06 21/12/2009
ROBERT CHARLES
Taranaki Research Centre information services officer Andrea Wallace with some of the early New Zealand Christmas cards in the centre's collection.
PUKE ARIKI COLLECTION
A Christmas card from colonial New Zealand.
Relevant offers
On Saturday night, December 24, 1887, New Plymouth was buzzing. The main street was full of people and the shops were busy as people did their last- minute Christmas shopping.
The day had been hot, so the cool night air was refreshing to the shoppers, who listened to a band playing while checking out the colourful displays in the shop windows.
The weekly newspaper the Budget reported that shopkeepers appeared to be doing a "fair business considering the dull times and shortness of money".
The butcher shops used to compete with each other to have the best display. The Taranaki Herald reported in 1884 that one butcher's shop window showed bullocks, sheep, lamb, calves, pigs, ducks, geese, turkeys and other fowl.
Grocers had seasonal fruits, little titbits, sweetmeats and tasty treats to attract customers.
And the shops stayed open as late as possible to ensure a good trade. In 1887, the band stopped playing at 10pm and the streets cleared at midnight, when the bell at the Catholic church "resounded through the town", the Budget reported.
Though the hotels were full, there was no drunkenness or breach of order or decorum, the paper said, "which is a credit to the town".
Christmas day dawned bright and clear. It was a Sunday, so the churches were full. The paper recalled the band played Christians Awake on the Barrack Hill (now Marsland Hill) in the morning. Back at home, houses may have been decorated with nikau palms, which were very popular for Christmas decorations in mid-1880s Taranaki.
There may have been a Christmas tree. Christmas trees were a German tradition that became popular in England in the 1840s, when pictures were seen of Queen Victoria, her German husband, Albert, and their children gathered around one.
The Tarrant family, who lived in Taihore, out the back of Strathmore on what's now the Forgotten World Highway, in the 1880s and '90s, had a little rimu sapling for a Christmas tree one year. In the book No One Went to Town, author Phyllis Johnson says it was decorated with buttons and beads.
Taranaki Research Centre team leader Gary Bastin says people had to use local materials and make do. This was true with the Christmas dinner. One popular meat dish was called colonial goose. It wasn't a goose at all - rather a flap of mutton with stuffing inside.
Ad Feedback
You could still buy a colonial goose 20 years ago, but then it was a rolled seasoned shoulder of hogget, according to Murray Sattler, better known as Buzz the Butcher in Westown. Then, when farmers got better money for lamb, it became a rolled seasoned shoulder of lamb. But the term has gone out of use, a victim of consumer laws, since it isn't, actually, goose.
Christmas was more marked in the 1800s, Mr Bastin says. "[People] lived a more spartan existence, so the notion of having a social time and making a fuss over the meal would have been differentiated over time."
In 1887, the Budget's Christmas stories included one about a feast held by a chief named Henare Punuruka and his wife, Louisa, who lived in Peropero, to which Europeans were invited. The dinner consisted of "roast turkeys, geese, ducks, fowls, lamb, beef, pork, fish, new potatoes, green peas and cabbage". And that was just the first course. There was a Christmas cake and dessert included plum puddings, tarts, pies and jellies of various kinds.
As Christmas is the season of goodwill, spare a thought for the settlers in Christchurch in 1850, whose first Christmas dinner in their new country didn't quite turn out as planned.
A bullock, whose every joint had been ordered, did a runner. It was never found, Alison Clarke says in her book, Holiday Seasons: Christmas, New Year and Easter in Nineteenth Century New Zealand.
An abundance at Christmas was a sign of how well people were doing in the new land.
Agricultural labourer George Douch emigrated in 1875. He had struggled to make a living in his native Sussex, but two years after he arrived in Taranaki, he was building his own house on his own land, Dr Clarke says in her book.
He wrote to his parents saying he would never forget the white plum pudding (lacking fruit because the family was so poor) he'd had in 1855. In New Zealand, his Christmas dinner included new spuds, green peas, roast beef and "nine gallons of ale".
The new potatoes and green peas were a reflection of mixing old traditions with the realities of having Christmas in summer. And despite the weather, the settlers, like a lot of New Zealanders today, still had a hot meal. However, they also had summer desserts, especially strawberries, which they ate along with the traditional Christmas pudding.
In 1857, Taranaki resident Maria Atkinson made a 16-pound (7kg) pudding to feed the 18 people present for Christmas dinner.
"The groaning table also featured beef, turkey, ham, fowl, almonds, raisins, Christmas mincemeat and gooseberry pie".
Making a plum pudding involved family members, who took turns stirring the pudding, during which time they had to make a wish.
Mrs Beaton, a famous cook during the second part of the 19th century, has a recipe for a plain Christmas pudding in one of her cookbooks. The ingredients were flour, breadcrumbs, raisins, currants, suet, eggs, milk, peel, allspice and salt. The pudding was boiled for five hours. It was, according to Mrs Beaton, sufficient for nine or 10 children.
Taranaki Research Centre information services officer Andrea Wallace says when people first came to New Zealand, they would have had wonderful cookbooks. When Christmas rolled around, they would have looked up some recipes and found something they liked.
"Then you'd have looked at the ingredients you had and your lack of kitchen and thought, What can I do in a Dutch oven? Ingenuity reigned supreme and people made their colonial goose."
A Dutch oven is like a camp oven, a big pot with a thick lid that was covered in hot coal and ashes.
The ovens were used until the 1870s, when Henry Shacklock made the first coal range.
"Before then, no one really had coal ranges, because they weren't compatible with local coal."
Despite the difficulties, people were determined to enjoy their Christmas. Nearly 300 new settlers enroute to New Plymouth spent Christmas 1879 on board the Halcione. According to the ship's newsletter The Maraval Jackdaw all were determined to have a good Christmas. "May the smoking joint, the steaming glass and the ringing peal of laughter reign supreme," the newsletter said.
The first Kiwi Christmas was held just offshore in 1642. Dutch explorer Abel Tasman crossed the entrance of Cook Strait and anchored east of Stephens and D'Urville islands. There was what has since become a bit of a Christmas tradition in some parts of the country: bad weather.
NZHistory.net.nz says while sheltering from a storm, the Dutch enjoyed freshly killed pork from the ship's menagerie, washed down with extra rations of wine.
The next Christmas dinner in New Zealand wasn't until 1769, when Captain James Cook first arrived.
The crew of the Endeavour, while battling heavy seas, this time off the tip of the North Island, had a feast of goose pie. Only there was no goose available, so they improvised and botanist Joseph Banks shot a gannet instead. Apparently the Endeavour's crew spent Boxing Day nursing hangovers.
This has also become a bit of a Kiwi tradition. As has going to the races. Boxing Day race meetings were held all over New Zealand in the 1800s.
A lot of families also went on picnics on Boxing Day, something that wouldn't have happened in a European winter. But it was a good way to use up the leftovers and enjoy the summer.
For Hawera residents, catching the train to Normanby, having a picnic and then heading to the races was a popular way to spend Boxing Day.
But in New Plymouth on Boxing Day in 1887, it rained all day and the races were postponed and the picnics abandoned.
Not so traditional
Most of the Christmas traditions enjoyed today date from Queen Victoria's time. Before she came to the throne in 1837, there were no Christmas trees, cards, crackers, Santa Claus or a holiday off work. The wealth and technologies generated by the industrial revolution of the Victorian era changed the face of Christmas forever.
Mass production meant getting toys for Christmas was no longer only for the rich. And the wealth generated meant middle class families in England and Wales were able to take time off and celebrate over two days, Christmas Day and Boxing Day.
In New Zealand, a day off work for Christmas was the norm, but was not law until 1910. Shops and pubs often opened. Newspapers were published on Christmas Day, some of them even into the early 20th century. Christmas cards: The first Christmas card was designed in England in 1843 by John Horsley after Rowland Hill introduced the penny post in 1840. Before 1840, it would not have been feasible for ordinary people to send cards because of the cost of postage. By the 1860s, Christmas cards were very popular in England. Christmas cake: Originally, Christmas cake was eaten on Twelfth Night (January 6). In the late 19th century, people began to eat the traditional Twelfth Night cake at Christmas. Christmas crackers: Crackers were invented in London by Tom Smith in 1846. The original idea was to wrap his lollies in a twist of fancy coloured paper, but this developed and sold much better when he added notes, paper hats, small toys and made them go bang. Boxing Day: December 26th earned its name as the day servants and working people opened the boxes in which they had collected gifts of money from the "rich folk". Christmas stockings: These first became popular around 1870. Traditionally, an orange went in the toe. Christmas carols: A number of popular Christmas carols were written in the 19th century, including O Come All Ye Faithful in 1843, Once in Royal David's City in 1848, O Little Town of Bethlehem in 1868 and Away in a Manger in 1883.
Happy birthday , Eltham
Eltham begins celebrating its 125th birthday today. Rob Maetzig, who grew up there, takes a lighthearted look at the town.
Taranaki Daily News
Last updated 10:37 07/12/2009
ROBERT CHARLES
Taking time out: Long-time Eltham residents Beulah and Max Hucker enjoy a moment under art deco artwork in the town's Stark Park.
There are quite a few Elthams around the world, but none quite compares with ours.
Consider the Eltham in the London borough of Greenwich, for instance. Famous people born there might include comedian Bob Hope and musician Boy George, but the New Zealand Eltham produced cut-the-hedge- with-a-lawnmower All Black Jazz Muller.
Eltham in Victoria, Australia, might be where the paralucia pyrodiscus lucida - the Eltham Copper Butterfly to us - was discovered, but our Eltham had this country's first fully tarsealed main street.
The Eltham in New Kent County, Virginia, might be where the New Kent-Charles City Chronicle is published, but our town has got the Eltham Argus.
But wait, there's more. Our Eltham had New Zealand's first commercial butter factory, which made the first-ever classic pound of butter. And it's got the first commercial building ever to have a suspended concrete floor. And Eltham even hosted the first-ever world axemen's carnival.
No comparison, really. But that's Eltham.
The town actually likes to describe itself as a town of firsts, because it is true that many years ago, it did pioneer everything from tarsealed streets to pounds of butter - which in some ways is ironic, because Eltham was the last place in Taranaki to be settled between Patea and New Plymouth.
Historians say this was because Central Taranaki was difficult country. If in the mid- 19th century it took several days for a bullock dray to travel the 21 kilometres between Inglewood and Stratford, it must have taken even longer to negotiate that valley where Eltham now is.
The town is nestled between the Waingongoro River on one side and the Ngaere Swamp on the other, and the whole area is crisscrossed with numerous smaller streams and creeks, so in those early days, it must have been a very muddy place when it was wet.
No wonder a few years later it became the first town in New Zealand to tarseal its main street.
Actually - and maybe this was because of the difficulty of the country - it almost seems that in the very early days, no one even wanted to claim the Eltham district.
In 1876, when the Patea County Council was formed, Eltham was lumped into its area of jurisdiction. Then, five years later, when the Hawera County Council was created, it was given the fledgling township.
It took another three years for Eltham to be declared a town district. Mind you, at that stage, it only had a population of 25 settlers.
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But the town quickly grew, thanks first to the timber industry and then the development of dairy farms. This meant that by the beginning of the 20th century, the district was sufficiently populated to allow the urban area to be declared a borough and the country surrounding it a county.
One of the things I enjoy about Eltham is that its first mayor was the powerfully named and United States-born George Washington Tayler, and that among the borough council's first decisions were to ban driving stock through the main street, outlaw spitting on pavements and curtail cycling on footpaths.
Obviously, this would all have been part of a big move to bring respectability to a town that, by then, would have been getting quite prosperous. The beautiful Victorian and Edwardian buildings that are there today are proof of that - everything from the Coronation Hotel (it opened in 1902, the year of King Edward VII's coronation), to the Post Office Building opened in 1904, to the Eltham Courthouse opened in 1908.
And what about the Pease Building down on the corner of Bridge and Stanners streets? Built in 1909, it was the first such commercial building outside of Europe to have a fully suspended floor. That's flash. So was the fact that during World War II, it was officially designated an air raid shelter.
Mind you, when I was a child, we didn't know that building as the Pease Building. It was Carmen's, because that's where one of those traditional old booksellers-cum-giftshops was located.
Locals do that sort of thing, you see. That's why the Coronation Hotel is known simply as the Corrie, why the little stream running through the centre of town isn't known as the Mangawharawhara but the Town Creek, and why the Waingongoro River on Eltham's western boundary is simply called the Wong - just like the sound of a stone plopping into one of its deep pools, wrote the late Douglas Stewart, famous ex- Eltham author and poet.
And how about this? Down by the golf course there's a green area officially known as Soldiers Memorial Park, but which everyone calls the Gully. And the golf course has a hole called not Suicide but Sewerside, because it runs alongside what used to be a sewage outfall into the Town Creek.
Instead of sorting out the pollution at the time, Eltham named a golf hole after it. Now that's local.
But let's get back to history. These days, Eltham is most famous for the magnificent selection of cheeses it produces and that history goes right back to the late 1880s, when Chinese entrepreneur Chew Chong built a dairy factory on the banks of the Waingongoro River.
He exported his butter under the Jubilee Butter brand, because the factory was opened on the date of Queen Victoria's jubilee. Maybe these days it might have been called Chong Wong Butter.
Anyway, the story goes that within a few years, Chong's suppliers didn't like it when he told them he could not pay more than tuppence per gallon for their milk - and that the payout would probably be half that the following year - so the farmers formed their own Eltham Co- operative Dairy Company.
Cheese was the first product to be manufactured, as it was considered a safer export commodity, and Eltham's cheese industry took off from there. These days, a massive selection of cheeses, ranging from traditional cheddar to French- style and processed, roll out of two big plants in the town.
But there is one particular cheese that Eltham is most famous for: blue vein - that product that smells like foot odour but tastes divine.
This tangy, salty cheese has been made in Eltham since 1952. Today the town might also make a variety of cheese on the blue- vein theme, but nothing beats the grunty original version that is quite addictive.
Over on the other side of the railway tracks, there's the Riverlands meatworks, which produces damn good steaks. In fact, a couple of years ago, its porterhouse took out New Zealand's prestigious Steak of Origin title.
Besides the cheese and meat industries, there's not a lot left in Eltham these days. A few decades ago, its main throughfares of High Street and Bridge Street were alive with shops. Most of these retail premises are empty now, although retro and second- hand shops have opened up and are popular.
The reasons are obvious. It used to be quite a journey to the big city lights of New Plymouth. Today, it's just a half-hour scoot up the road in the average family car. That means many people choose to live somewhere else and commute to Eltham to work, and that in turn has hurt the financial viability of retail businesses.
But if Eltham's business area is looking a bit bony these days, the town's soul is still very much there. In fact, it's turning back to its past as the means towards its future. Take Time Out is the mantra now being promoted by the Eltham Business and Professional Association as it encourages visitors to spend time in the village and sample both its history and its wares.
And that includes popping into the little cheese bar on Bridge Street, where there's usually a big selection of Eltham-made cheeses, often at ridiculously low prices. Just why this cheese bar isn't out on the main street, I'll never know. Then again, its almost-hidden location makes it a neat sort of Taranaki secret that's quite appealing, because you have to take time out to find it.
That's the thing about Eltham - you have to take time out there to begin to appreciate it. So how about this: pop into the town and pick up a brochure outlining the histories of all the beautiful old buildings in the central area. Head off on a walking tour of these buildings and, along the way, pop into the cheese bar for some blue vein and the Corrie for a few beers.
Then head down to the Wong for a picnic. And if you're really hungry, set up a barbie and cook a Riverlands steak. That'd be the true spirit of taking time out.
Taranaki Daily News
Last updated 10:37 07/12/2009
ROBERT CHARLES
Taking time out: Long-time Eltham residents Beulah and Max Hucker enjoy a moment under art deco artwork in the town's Stark Park.
There are quite a few Elthams around the world, but none quite compares with ours.
Consider the Eltham in the London borough of Greenwich, for instance. Famous people born there might include comedian Bob Hope and musician Boy George, but the New Zealand Eltham produced cut-the-hedge- with-a-lawnmower All Black Jazz Muller.
Eltham in Victoria, Australia, might be where the paralucia pyrodiscus lucida - the Eltham Copper Butterfly to us - was discovered, but our Eltham had this country's first fully tarsealed main street.
The Eltham in New Kent County, Virginia, might be where the New Kent-Charles City Chronicle is published, but our town has got the Eltham Argus.
But wait, there's more. Our Eltham had New Zealand's first commercial butter factory, which made the first-ever classic pound of butter. And it's got the first commercial building ever to have a suspended concrete floor. And Eltham even hosted the first-ever world axemen's carnival.
No comparison, really. But that's Eltham.
The town actually likes to describe itself as a town of firsts, because it is true that many years ago, it did pioneer everything from tarsealed streets to pounds of butter - which in some ways is ironic, because Eltham was the last place in Taranaki to be settled between Patea and New Plymouth.
Historians say this was because Central Taranaki was difficult country. If in the mid- 19th century it took several days for a bullock dray to travel the 21 kilometres between Inglewood and Stratford, it must have taken even longer to negotiate that valley where Eltham now is.
The town is nestled between the Waingongoro River on one side and the Ngaere Swamp on the other, and the whole area is crisscrossed with numerous smaller streams and creeks, so in those early days, it must have been a very muddy place when it was wet.
No wonder a few years later it became the first town in New Zealand to tarseal its main street.
Actually - and maybe this was because of the difficulty of the country - it almost seems that in the very early days, no one even wanted to claim the Eltham district.
In 1876, when the Patea County Council was formed, Eltham was lumped into its area of jurisdiction. Then, five years later, when the Hawera County Council was created, it was given the fledgling township.
It took another three years for Eltham to be declared a town district. Mind you, at that stage, it only had a population of 25 settlers.
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But the town quickly grew, thanks first to the timber industry and then the development of dairy farms. This meant that by the beginning of the 20th century, the district was sufficiently populated to allow the urban area to be declared a borough and the country surrounding it a county.
One of the things I enjoy about Eltham is that its first mayor was the powerfully named and United States-born George Washington Tayler, and that among the borough council's first decisions were to ban driving stock through the main street, outlaw spitting on pavements and curtail cycling on footpaths.
Obviously, this would all have been part of a big move to bring respectability to a town that, by then, would have been getting quite prosperous. The beautiful Victorian and Edwardian buildings that are there today are proof of that - everything from the Coronation Hotel (it opened in 1902, the year of King Edward VII's coronation), to the Post Office Building opened in 1904, to the Eltham Courthouse opened in 1908.
And what about the Pease Building down on the corner of Bridge and Stanners streets? Built in 1909, it was the first such commercial building outside of Europe to have a fully suspended floor. That's flash. So was the fact that during World War II, it was officially designated an air raid shelter.
Mind you, when I was a child, we didn't know that building as the Pease Building. It was Carmen's, because that's where one of those traditional old booksellers-cum-giftshops was located.
Locals do that sort of thing, you see. That's why the Coronation Hotel is known simply as the Corrie, why the little stream running through the centre of town isn't known as the Mangawharawhara but the Town Creek, and why the Waingongoro River on Eltham's western boundary is simply called the Wong - just like the sound of a stone plopping into one of its deep pools, wrote the late Douglas Stewart, famous ex- Eltham author and poet.
And how about this? Down by the golf course there's a green area officially known as Soldiers Memorial Park, but which everyone calls the Gully. And the golf course has a hole called not Suicide but Sewerside, because it runs alongside what used to be a sewage outfall into the Town Creek.
Instead of sorting out the pollution at the time, Eltham named a golf hole after it. Now that's local.
But let's get back to history. These days, Eltham is most famous for the magnificent selection of cheeses it produces and that history goes right back to the late 1880s, when Chinese entrepreneur Chew Chong built a dairy factory on the banks of the Waingongoro River.
He exported his butter under the Jubilee Butter brand, because the factory was opened on the date of Queen Victoria's jubilee. Maybe these days it might have been called Chong Wong Butter.
Anyway, the story goes that within a few years, Chong's suppliers didn't like it when he told them he could not pay more than tuppence per gallon for their milk - and that the payout would probably be half that the following year - so the farmers formed their own Eltham Co- operative Dairy Company.
Cheese was the first product to be manufactured, as it was considered a safer export commodity, and Eltham's cheese industry took off from there. These days, a massive selection of cheeses, ranging from traditional cheddar to French- style and processed, roll out of two big plants in the town.
But there is one particular cheese that Eltham is most famous for: blue vein - that product that smells like foot odour but tastes divine.
This tangy, salty cheese has been made in Eltham since 1952. Today the town might also make a variety of cheese on the blue- vein theme, but nothing beats the grunty original version that is quite addictive.
Over on the other side of the railway tracks, there's the Riverlands meatworks, which produces damn good steaks. In fact, a couple of years ago, its porterhouse took out New Zealand's prestigious Steak of Origin title.
Besides the cheese and meat industries, there's not a lot left in Eltham these days. A few decades ago, its main throughfares of High Street and Bridge Street were alive with shops. Most of these retail premises are empty now, although retro and second- hand shops have opened up and are popular.
The reasons are obvious. It used to be quite a journey to the big city lights of New Plymouth. Today, it's just a half-hour scoot up the road in the average family car. That means many people choose to live somewhere else and commute to Eltham to work, and that in turn has hurt the financial viability of retail businesses.
But if Eltham's business area is looking a bit bony these days, the town's soul is still very much there. In fact, it's turning back to its past as the means towards its future. Take Time Out is the mantra now being promoted by the Eltham Business and Professional Association as it encourages visitors to spend time in the village and sample both its history and its wares.
And that includes popping into the little cheese bar on Bridge Street, where there's usually a big selection of Eltham-made cheeses, often at ridiculously low prices. Just why this cheese bar isn't out on the main street, I'll never know. Then again, its almost-hidden location makes it a neat sort of Taranaki secret that's quite appealing, because you have to take time out to find it.
That's the thing about Eltham - you have to take time out there to begin to appreciate it. So how about this: pop into the town and pick up a brochure outlining the histories of all the beautiful old buildings in the central area. Head off on a walking tour of these buildings and, along the way, pop into the cheese bar for some blue vein and the Corrie for a few beers.
Then head down to the Wong for a picnic. And if you're really hungry, set up a barbie and cook a Riverlands steak. That'd be the true spirit of taking time out.
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