The Rise and Fall of New Zealand's Most Remote Timber Town: Minginui

At the end of a hundred-kilometre dirt road into the Whirinaki Valley stood a village the New Zealand government built, staffed almost entirely with Māori workers, and then left to fend for itself once the trees ran out. Minginui had streets named after the very podocarps that paid for them, nearly a hundred houses, and a mill that once processed some of the finest native timber on earth. So how does a government build a town, staff it with the people whose forest it is cutting, and then abandon them when the work is done? In this video: • How the New Zealand Forest Service built a model timber village at Minginui • Why the Whirinaki Valley's ancient podocarp forest made the village possible • The sustained-yield policy that was meant to keep the mill running forever • The bitter 1978–79 conflict between conservationists and millworkers over Whirinaki • The 1984 decision to protect the forest and the mill closures that followed • How Ngāti Whare took back the village and built a native plant nursery to revive it Chapters: 0:00 A village at road's end 2:37 Ngāti Whare and the forest 4:14 Building the model village 6:41 The sustained-yield promise 9:06 The conservation battle 10:41 Felling comes to an end 14:15 A village in limbo 15:50 Finding a new purpose Sources: • Ngāti Whare Claims Settlement Act • Department of Conservation report • Te Ara, the online encyclopaedia of New Zealand • University of Otago report • Radio New Zealand Disputed: one source names Carter Holt sawmills as the employer that left in 1988, while another names Minginui Sawmills Ltd as closing its mill that year. Still there today: Minginui is one hundred kilometres from Rotorua on an unsealed road. It is still there. If you enjoy deep dives into new zealand's forgotten towns, subscribing helps more people find stories like this one. Images: • Rimu Forest: Archives New Zealand, CC BY 2.0 (Archives New Zealand Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga) • Agriculture - Forestry - Sawmills: R. Anderson., CC BY 2.0 (Archives New Zealand Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga) • Port Craig: Timber Mill, School & Settlement Site - Conserva: Egerton, Rachael - Historic & Cultural Heritage Technical Adviser (DOC, CC BY 4.0 (Central and Western Murihiku Southland Archive) • Minginui and Te Whaiti, Whakatane District, Bay of Plenty Re: CC BY 4.0 (Alexander Turnbull Library) #NewZealand #Minginui #NZHistory #Whirinaki #ForestryHistory