Review: NZ’s small towns are gone but not forgotten

High Hopes and Big Dreams 165 New Zealand Small Towns in Their Twilight by Peter Janssen and Elizabeth Anderson. Photo / Supplied

Many New Zealanders have spent at least part of their lives in small towns. Some of us even dream of returning to one in search of a quieter life. Founded on ambition, optimism and dreams, these communities spread like a patchwork across the country; places to linger in or pass through without a backward glance.

Peter Janssen and Elizabeth Anderson take readers on a journey through familiar and unfamiliar small places, some with a clear identity, an enduring sense of community and a past symbolised by an imposing Edwardian Post Office, a stylish hotel facade or a railway platform where nobody waits for the long-vanished train. Then there are towns like Tokatea on the Coromandel Peninsula, which have vanished without trace, leaving no evidence of a once bustling community fuelled by some of the region’s richest gold mines. At Lyell, on the West Coast, a scattering of mossy gravestones in the bush and a name on the map are all that remain of another boom town.

But other communities stubbornly refuse to die as they prospect new opportunities for tourism or tap a nostalgia for less-frenetic lifestyles. The gold, timber and coal may have gone, fire, flood and earthquake have taken their toll, but these places endure.

The book provides a succinctly informative background without any literary flourishes, but its real strength lies in a profusion of evocative archive and contemporary illustrations, which paint a vivid collective portrait of settlements that chart the ebb and flow of Māori and Pākehā history.

It’s a quietly poignant journey to be taken at a leisurely pace.