Life in Te Aroha without Bendon

By GREG DIXON

There's a fine sort of view from Carol Sweeney's front door. Between the tall trees that stand at the edge of her steepish section, nestled on the very toes of Mt Te Aroha, you can spy a slice of the attractive town that bears the peak's name.

In the distance you can glimpse the lush, peaceful dairylands of the Waihou-Piako basin and perhaps even a little of the neighbouring burg of Morrinsville.

It's a fine sort of view all right, yet there's a blight on Sweeney's handsome outlook.

"Every day I go out there," the 52-year-old says, inclining her head towards her front deck, "and I can see that building. I've got to pass it every day. To me it's just devastating."

That building — a squat, ugly affair it has to be said — was the place Sweeney called work for 28 years. It was once a factory for the underwear manufacturer Bendon.

It was a little over six months ago, on November 26 — the day before the general election — that Bendon, the town's last large employer, closed the doors for the final time in Te Aroha.

Despite making a $4.07 million profit before tax last year, the 53-year-old company had decided to pack up its smalls and take the fast boat to Asia. After more than half a century making undies in New Zealand, Bendon declared the country just too expensive as a production base.

Along with Bendon went the 390 jobs its three factories had created for New Zealanders, 98 of those jobs in Te Aroha, a town of just 3500.

"It was like a death," says Sweeney, who was Bendon's longest-serving Te Aroha worker. "I dedicated my life to it and I put everything into it. I thought I was going to be at Bendon for the rest of my life. I always said that I'd die at Bendon, that they'd carry me out."

Instead they pushed her out, and the six months that have followed have been no less devastating for Sweeney.

Money has become a concern despite her redundancy payout. Her 65-year-old husband is retired and now their only income is his pension. But it is the emotional toll that has caused her greater disquiet.

She feels unable to apply for other work. "They just took it all away from me, and it's even affected my health. I feel I've lost a bit of confidence.

"I'm not skilled at anything else — and that's the hardest part. I'm skilled at my job down there," she says, again nodding towards the sight from her front door.

Across the main street and down the hill from that door there's another fine view from the first floor meeting-room at the Matamata-Piako District Council.

The room's windows look across wooden flats that border the slow-moving waters of the Waihou River.

It's a different view and a contrasting outlook from this room. District mayor Hugh Vercoe is upbeat about Te Aroha six months after Bendon quit the town.

Te Aroha has been fortunate, he says, and he has been pleasantly surprised by that.

"Bendon was the remaining large employer in the town. Bendon also employed a lot of people ... you know, the wife would have a secondary job, so therefore it impacted on the husband. The father had a prime job and she was going out to work to pay the mortgage, that sort of thing.

"So that put a lot of pressure on because then [there was the question] do you lose both people to the city?

"We've been fortunate. A lot of them have found jobs packing meat for Wallaces." These jobs were at Waitoa, 5km away.

Bendon was the last to join the closure club in Te Aroha township. The others who once employed large numbers in the town included Inland Revenue, Power New Zealand and the catchment board.

The upshot of this exodus is that Matamata-Piako District Council is now the town's biggest employer.

But Vercoe says there is unskilled and semi-skilled work available at larger businesses in the surrounding district.

There's Wallaces the meat people, the chicken processing company Inghams Enterprises, New Zealand Mushrooms in Morrinsville, and the dairy factory up the road.

And Vercoe believes most former Bendon workers — half of whom travelled to Te Aroha from the surrounding districts — have found work since the closure.

Te Aroha's registered unemployed has not grown formidably in the 12 months from April 1999, according to Work and Income New Zealand. From a workforce of 2000, there were 249 unemployed in April last year compared to 268 in April this year. That is a 7 per cent increase in 12 months.

Some have taken part-time work, but for others that is not an option.

Val Limmer, who worked for Bendon in Te Aroha for 10 years, turned down one offer of part-time work because the hours were too few. "I need three days a week. You need a certain amount a week or you're just best to have none at all, I think."

But because of the widespread homes of about half Bendon's former Te Aroha employees it is not known how many have found work. That most were women may, in any case, mean they will not show up in official figures.

Coral Lucas, a former union delegate for her fellow workers at Bendon Te Aroha, estimates that about 30 out the 98 who lost their jobs have found work, including those who went overseas.

The effect on the town's businesses is hard to define. Initial fears for the town's future have dissipated, says Wayne Heron, chairman of the Te Aroha Business Association.

"I'd hate to say it's pretty much forgotten," Heron says, "but I think there is not the concern there, if you like.

"The town is probably a little bit quieter. I think some of it can be put down to Bendon. The dual-income families have less purchasing power and that has probably filtered through to the town a bit."

Heron says that, as a generalisation, Te Aroha's businesses have noted a drop in revenue over the past couple of months, and some business owners are blaming that on Bendon's exit.

"But I think that even though we maybe feeling the effects of it, it's just sort of like a little bit of a dip and we can actually recover from it."

Debbie Sosich, another former Bendon worker, concurs with the town fathers. "It's not been as dramatic as we feared," she says. But that hardly reflects her experience. The past six months have seen bitter and dramatic change for her.

Before the closure, she and her husband owned the town's only fruit and vegetable shop. Now she's the store manager of the fruit and vegetable shop — for the new owner.

While the business, run by her husband Peter, had been supporting itself, Sosich's Bendon work had supported the home and their two daughters.

"I knew it was going to be very hard," Sosich says. "It depended on whether I got another job. I had high hopes that I would manage to get something."

She didn't, and after two months without wages the couple decided to get out of the business they'd been in for nearly a decade.

"We decided that we'd sell or close, that we'd had enough. Nothing is worth your marriage, your kids, your house.

"I'm bitter that I had to lose my business. But in some ways it's good ... it's so much easier working for someone else, though I do 70 hours a week to make ends meet and my husband's working as well."

But Sosich, who grew up in West Auckland, is happy enough in "this beautiful place" even if she believes the loss of Bendon has changed the town. Trade has dropped, she says, along with some of the good feeling.

"A lot of people out there are struggling. They still haven't found themselves jobs or they're doing lots of part-time work to try to make ends meet. You still feel it. I still see a lot of the Bendon ladies and it's still 'Have you got anything?' And they say, 'No,' or, 'I've got part time.' There's still a lot of anger out there."

But is there a future? Both Heron and Vercoe say yes, and like many a small Kiwi town feeling the pinch of rural decline, they believe Te Aroha's future is in tourism.

And the town is luckier than some. The bush-clad, lifeless volcano that's given the town its name also provides Te Aroha with its chief drawcards.

The mountain offers walks and a wonderful view of the district and, over the hill, of Tauranga Harbour — though the bus service to the top of Mt Te Aroha is now, like the peak, extinct.

From the foot of the mountain springs provide hot mineral waters for the modern and Edwardian baths at the Te Aroha Tourist Domain. The baths, in which the council continues to invest money, already attract 35,000 to 50,000 visitors a year.

But both Vercoe and Heron are marking down the town's tourism performance as a 'could do better.'

"I think tourism is the driver," Heron says. "I think that probably will be it. Hopefully we can enhance what's here and develop the mountain and develop the spa towards tourism."

To that end, a group of interested groups and individuals, including the business association, formed a committee — now an incorporated society called Target Te Aroha — about the time of the Bendon closure, to find how best to improve and sell tourist attractions.

It hopes to hire — with money it is yet to source — two consultants to design a plan of action for the town and, eventually, to take on a coordinator to organise and focus the marketing of the town.

Another group, the Future Te Aroha Trust — which has sprung from, but is separate to, Target Te Aroha — plans to turn the old Bendon factory into a cultural, performing and conference arts centre. It took over the centre this month, for an undisclosed sum.

Money is an inevitable issue in all plans. Both Heron and Vercoe agree that the Government should stump up with some cash — particularly, says Heron, given the town was such a piping political potato during the last election and that tariff reductions were blamed for Bendon's departure.

Heron says the business association has recently written to Deputy Prime Minister Jim Anderton asking him to visit the town and talk about how the town could fit into regional development plans.

There have been plenty of tourism ideas floating around Te Aroha since Bendon closed. One involves having a gondola up the mountain. Another is operating boats up the Waihou River. A third would see a small railway around the base of Mt Te Aroha. A fourth would be a small cinema in a redeveloped Bendon factory.

But six months after Bendon vamoosed, the plans are yet to solidify, Heron says.

"There is a bit of a lack of structure to it at the moment. Tourism will steadily grow without us doing anything, but with a defined structure I think that would increase."

A large part of the problem, according to one source, is small town politics and the egos of some involved. Promotional plans that were supposed to be in place are still undecided, the source says, and although a number of groups and businesses are working on tourism related projects, they are not working together.

Clearly someone or some organisation needs to take the situation in hand, so whose responsibility is it?

"That's a good question," says Heron. "It has to be a joint thing between the council and the community and the business association. I think the community has to own it for it to be majorly successful.

"We've opened it up to the community and that's probably caused a bit of division about different ideas, different directions and how to get there."

There could be another industry catering for retired people, commuters and lifestylers. Vercoe says the town's population is "pretty stable" because those who have left Te Aroha to work elsewhere have been replaced by retired people, mainly from Auckland.

But Te Aroha is also attracting commuters from Hamilton, which is 45 minutes away down State Highway 26, and could also attract lifestylers.

Vercoe is keen to encourage this by opening up farmland around Te Aroha for housing.

"Where council is coming from — and it had the debate recently — is to say, 'Should we continue to say that our top dairy land is sacrosanct and that most of it must produce grass for cows for the dairy factory?'

"We're now saying that 'No, it shouldn't be.' We believe in opening up a subdivision in the area and encouraging people to come and live down here, to have an acre of land and live in the country area.

"Percentage-wise, of all the farmland, it is so small that it wouldn't have an effect on their production. But it will bring people back into the area."

The view from Carol Sweeney's place is not so rosy. She's not so confident about her future and the town's future and believes the town fathers are not doing enough.

"They've done nothing," Sweeney says. "There are shops closing down in town and there is no future for us down there in the town."