Mangakino defies expectations
Alistair Bone with the red couch and the Waikato 100 multimedia team went to Mangakino yesterday and found a town getting back on its feet.
Mangakino is not really supposed to be at all. It was made out of the 1940s dust for workers to live in as they finished the Maraetai 1 dam.
The master modernist, Austrian designer Ernst Plischke, was around at the time. Lauded before and after his time in New Zealand, he was largely marginalised here but still managed to secure the contract to plan the town. The workers did Maraetai and Atiamuri and Ohakuri too, filling up the place to a peak of about 5000 people in the 1950s.
It’s hung on. But if you look just at the numbers they don’t seem too good. A census is supposed to happen every five years, but 2011’s was postponed because of Christchurch’s earthquake. So the latest figures are from 2006. They show a town going down the gurgler.
There were just over 1000 people in the town in 2006 – a deathly 20 per cent less than 2001. Way more people than average had no qualifications and the workforce was massively skewed towards low-paid labouring jobs. There was double the usual Waikato rate of one-parent households. Plischke’s original concept was to have a trafficfree town centre, but good luck with that in New Zealand.
The main street runs right past a tidy line of shops, full-stopped by a library/ council outpost that used to be the cinema, and a basketball court. Two of the shops look empty.
The laundry takes up about half the space allocated to it, leaving enough bare carpet for a small cafe. Looking at the numbers and first impressions, you’d drive around it without stopping, but that would be a mistake. After a couple of hours on the ground, the census feels like it was taken in another town.
Consider the real estate place. The most expensive house in the window goes for $355,000. Most are around $130,000. You can get three bedrooms and two garages on a large leasehold section for $45,000 if you have time to give some TLC. It’s affordable, despite a boom when the land was privatised and sold on in 2002.
It’s quiet when we get there, but locals say it goes nuts after 3.30pm when the kids get out of school and throng the basketball court and everyone comes out to mingle. And then there’s long weekends and holidays.
Many of the houses are owned by outof-towners, who use or rent them out on the breaks. The real estate agent swears they’re booked solid. There may have been a bit of resentment when rather emotionally distant holidaymakers started making their presence felt, but the town seems to be surfing it now.
The wakeboarders have an annual meet here, rowers have used the lake for ages, the new cycle trail is a hit. For the last few years, nouveau-hippies have performed their Kiwiburn art fest just outside the town. The double dam bike challenge sounds like 45km of S and M but apparently packs them in.
Peter Koole’s paddleboat races around the lake with live music and an open bar. Mangakino District Club ran the annual pig hunt last weekend. Kids aren’t left out; they hunt rabbits, possums and eels. The mix of orienteering and hunting will continue at Queen’s Birthday with the pub’s Big Three contest, where entrants must nail a pig, a deer and a trout.
People act like it’s Queenstown – Jade Pedersen is back from uni in Wellington with a fresh business degree and plans to open her cafe – Hui Hut – in a vacant store in October. The council is offering millions for local initiatives. There’s optimism, wisdom and strength everywhere in the Waikato, but it’s unusual to find it all together in one place.
We were, perhaps, lucky. We dropped by a council outreach outlining plans for the town.
There were involved people in droves. There were free sausages. Once, in another story, I called the place ‘‘dumpy’’ and never heard the end of it. This time round we talked to: Same-sex couple Jo Handley and Nenge Uebach, who married and settled down here. Area schoolkid Greer Eagle. Charlene Campbell, who runs the health centre.
Businesswoman Jade Pedersen, on her plans.
Hinehuirangi Dick, who is the fourth generation bearer of a name that means girl who meets the sky.
These interviews and lots more are available in full and uncut on the Waikato Times site: waikatotimes.co.nz