Dannevirke Scandinavian Club
The Danes in the Seventy-Mile-Bush
An article based on Selwyn Nikoliason’s article prepared for the 1997 Dannevirke Scandinavian Gathering, with additions by Val Burr. Postcards from Val’s collection. Click on thumbnail for larger view and caption.
To understand the settlement of the Seventy-Mile Bush, in the Southern Hawkes Bay (now Tararua District) area of New Zealand, we have to go back to its first settlers who arrived in the 1840s. These people, mostly comfortably off English and Scottish settlers, established sheep stations on large tracts of land near the Coast. Communication with inland areas was very difficult at this time, and these settlers had to rely on coastal shipping services for their supplies. A few of the more venturesome established stations inland, including Captain Hamilton of Mangatoro, Messrs Knight & Cowper of Kaitoke Station, and the Gaisfords of Oringi Station.
The vast area of bush westward to the Ruahine Ranges was about forty miles wide and seventy miles long, and this became the source of the name ‘Seventy-Mile-Bush’. The only access through it was by river or along tracks used for centuries by the Maori people who lived in or passed through the area. Politicians, such as Julius Vogel, considered that this bush should be cleared for farming as a means to improve the country’s difficult financial situation, and that a road and railway network should be established there too. This, though, would require the work of many more settlers than were then available or willing to go to such a remote, inhospitable, mosquito-infested area. The result was the Immigration and Public Works Scheme of the 1870s, otherwise known as the Vogel Scheme.
The New Zealand Government considered British settlers for the area, and also Canadians, but concluded that immigrants from the Scandinavian countries of Norway and Sweden, which were heavily forested, would be preferable. However, more migrants were needed than could be obtained from those two countries, and therefore recruiting also took place in Denmark.
The Danes did not feel safe after the defeat of Demark by Prussia in 1864, and disliked being under Prussian rule. Certainly, this influenced the decision of Bishop Ditlev Monrad, their Prime Minister at the time of Denmark’s defeat, to migrate with his family to New Zealand. The Monrad family settled on a newly surveyed property at Karere, near Palmerston North, in Manawatu, where they proved to be conscientious workers and good settlers.
The Bishop returned to Denmark in 1869, but left his grown children to run the property. In 1870, when recruiting of Danes for New Zealand began, the Monrad family was influential through their example and perhaps more directly. Certainly, the Bishop’s son Viggo, who then lived at Karere, suggested means to assist the establishment of a Scandinavian community. These were views that the authorities respected and were influenced by.
Assisted Danish migration to New Zealand began in 1870 with the departure on 3 December from Gravesend, of the ship England. The almost 80 Scandinavians (Danes and Swedes) aboard this ship were bound for settlement at Palmerston North, where on 10 April 1871, they joined the first shipment of Norwegians who reached the township a month earlier. They were followed in 1872 by a second mixed contingent again aboard the England, and another on the Halcione, which brought Danes. They settled at Mauriceville, in Southern Wairarapa at the lowest point of the Seventy-Mile-Bush.
A few weeks later, on 15 September, the Ballarat arrived at Napier with the first 79 Danes bound for the Norsewood-Dannevirke area. Seven hours later, the better-known Høvding arrived at Napier for the first time carrying 354 Norwegians bound for the same destinations. Other ships that brought Danes for the district included the Queen of the North (1874), Inverene (1874), Fritz Reuter (1875) and the Friederberg (1875). Meanwhile Norwegians and Swedes also flowed into the district on these and other ships.
The settlers were offered cheap land and work to tide them over. However they were shocked by the enormous size of the trees that had to be felled they could begin sowing grass seed and – eventually- productively farming their land. Immigration conditions required that the men work four days each week on the Government’s road construction work. The remainder of the week they spent clearing their own sections and trying to make things more comfortable for their families.
Most settlers managed to build slab huts with two or three rooms on their sections before too long. Known by the Maori word ‘whare’, these huts consisted of slabs of wood split from a straight-grained log. These slabs had one end buried in the ground and the top end fastened to a long sapling. The roof was thatched with fern or any other suitable material. The fireplace at one end was made of clay, and was very large to enable it to take very big logs. The windows were covered with pieces of oiled canvas, as was the outer door. Furniture consisted of a rough table, with anything that could be adapted as chairs. The beds consisted of two long saplings suspended on stakes, with canvas stretched between them. Mattresses consisted of fern fronds.
Cooking was done on a ‘camp oven’, a large cast iron pot on legs, with a heavy lid that had a deep hollow around the edge. The food was cooked in the camp oven, which, in turn, was placed on the red embers of the open fire. More embers were placed on the top of the lid. The women became very good at this type of cooking, and bread made this way was particularly nice. Billies and big oval boilers also hung from a chain suspended from an iron bar that, in turn, was built into the chimney.
These conditions lasted until the land was cleared. When the settlers’ financial situations improved, they built better houses. These had such luxuries as wood ranges with hot water jackets, running water and sinks. Despite all their initial difficulties, their conditions perhaps were far better than they might have been had they remained in their homeland.