Philippa Stevenson: Struggling mill town starts fightback

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A never-say-die element is thriving in Tokoroa.

Out-of-towners fairly universally associate the South Waikato town only with the Carter Holt Harvey Kinleith timber mill, and the bad news of serial lay-offs.

Plenty of Toke locals do as well. The town's mood is described as very despondent, with an expectation of more bad news.

Some came just last week when small local trucking companies lost mill contracts and larger ones had their work cut.

Inevitably, unemployment is up, the idle are up to no good and the young, especially, are leaving town. Between 1996 and 2001, Tokoroa's population dropped by nearly 7 per cent. It's now around 15,000.

But an astounding number of residents are determined to look on the bright side - to see the advantages of the town's nearness to central North Island bush, lakes and rivers where they and visitors can hunt, fish, ski, sail, ride and rally.

They are just as determined to change things about their town to lift the despair of their less sunny neighbours.

In June last year, after six months of consultation, the South Waikato District Council launched a draft economic development strategy. Its aims were to attract new business, including tourism, capitalise on the nearness of the Waikato River, improve the infrastructure of the region (which includes Putaruru, Tirau and Arapuni) and - perhaps most challengingly - do something about its image.

Now the glowing words of the strategy are being hardened into practical initiatives. Some of them, according to economic development manager Noel Ferguson, could be regarded as "reasonably radical".

The first test will come with their outing at a series of public meetings starting in Tokoroa next month. Ferguson's revealing nothing until locals have a look-see, but at least some plans will revolve around the Government-funded cyber community trial - a project to get people computer and internet savvy, which also is being run in Southland and Otara.

While the council paints the big picture others are tackling Tokoroa's problems in different ways.

In August, the Tokoroa Organic Produce Co-operative launched a dream of turning the mill town into an organic oasis.

Six weeks ago, after a series of public meetings, the South Waikato Ratepayers and Residents Association was formed. Tokoroa's first citizens group intends being a community umbrella organisation with a hotline to the council.

Citizens Advice Bureau president Doreen Parry ran the meetings to canvass people's concerns. The top bother was graffiti.

Parry is now secretary of the residents association's eight- member committee. It's head, Florance Trickey, is eager to get down to business on everything from attracting retiring Aucklanders to Tokoroa's $70,000 houses to voicing community views.

Just two weeks ago yet another initiative began targeting the urban scourge - graffiti.

Wendy Cook, manager of the pool and pokey machine club, Pockets 8 Ball, is putting some of the gaming money back into Tokoroa by funding a service to bust the graffiti and spruce up parts of the town.

District councillor Jenny Shattock, who also runs community function organising group Tangs (Tokoroa a naturally growing success), is fielding calls from those without the machines or money to mow lawns, paint fences, spray weeds or remove graffiti.

A few years back another effort to put Tokoroa in a new light was spectacularly successful but short-lived.

In 1998, the first of a hoped-for series of 40 totem-type "talking poles" raised the ire of some locals and then Christian Heritage Party leader Graham Capill when it depicted Tane holding an erect penis to symbolise the seeds of life.

In the furore that followed, in which Capill lodged a complaint with the police, who rejected it, the curious flocked to Tokoroa.

However, some of the early poles, including the controversial one, had not been treated adequately and they began to rot. Before anything could be done for the Tane pole it was burned down last year. Mysteriously, locals say.

Tokoroa now has 11 surviving poles, eight more are under way and another eight are expected to emerge from an international symposium, Pole Art of the World, being held in the town next year.

Tane will not be replaced because, says Jenny Shattock in an unintended pun, it "olarised the community".

But it certainly put Tokoroa on the map.

Die-hard community spirit can do much. Could more lewd logs give Tokoroa the lift it's desperate for?

* Email Philippa Stevenson