Spectrum was a long-running weekly radio documentary series which captured the essence of New Zealand from 1972 to 2016. Alwyn Owen and Jack Perkins produced the series for many years, creating a valuable library of New Zealand oral history.
This episode presents a picture of Glen Massey, a former coal mining settlement near Ngāruawāhia in the Waikato region.
With the sounds of rain, birds and a dog whining in the background, Jack Perkins describes his first impression of an unlikely, anachronistic township that has fallen into decline. He recalls the down-at-heel houses, a rotting church and large, shabby hall, the remains of a fire station, a derelict store and rusty, abandoned cars. He goes on to give a history of the town, supported by recordings of his interviews with people from the district.
It was coal that built Glen Massey. The man who discovered the seam was an ancestor of local farmer, Tiger Thompson. He talks about how his grandfather found the coal while looking for timber and named the place after Prime Minister Bill (William) Massey. This was around 1912. Mining got underway a year or so later with Waipa Railway and Collieries Ltd. The company built huts for the single miners and, as families began to arrive, issued loans to cover the costs of timber so they could build their own homes.
Alex McKay [?] recalls a closely-knit community made up of three main groups – people who were originally from Cumberland and Northumberland, England, and those from Fife on the east coast of Scotland. Farmers and miners worked together to fund and build the hall in 1915, and a railway was built to transport coal and passengers to Ngāruawāhia.
Jack Perkins interviewed former miner Jordy Smith at his home in Glen Massey. Desperate to get away from Scotland and start a new life, Jordy landed in New Zealand in 1927. Over tea and cakes made by his hospitable wife Elsie, he recalls mine accidents that left two boys dead. The overworked Waipa mine soon shut down, its closure coinciding with the first shadows of the Depression. A second company – the Wilton Collieries Company - had been formed in 1929 but it crashed badly and Jordy couldn’t find work. Wilton Collieries Ltd formed in 1934 and mining resumed, but a change had come over the Glen Massey community.
By the time the Waipa had closed, many of the original miners that had come up from the West Coast were elderly men, or some of them had died and their widows and families were there. There was an influx of Scots folk and, according to Alex McKay, these newcomers didn’t always fit in. In addition, the older farmers had mostly passed on or moved away and the younger generation didn’t have the close ties that their parents had had with the miners. The end of the Depression years saw the great rise of the labour movement and this too drove a wedge between the farming and mining communities.
In 1944 the state took over the Wilton Colllieries. A couple of years later, rehab farmers began to move on to the surrounding blocks of land. Then in 1958, the Wilton mine closed down. The railway tracks were lifted and other mines in the Waikato absorbed the men in from Glenn Massey. The vacuum was filled by an influx of workers, mainly from the Horotiu meat works near Hamilton; a largely transient population.
Doug Bovill [?], a farmer who has lived there for more than ten years, has noticed the run-down condition of houses and its changing population – people only staying for three or four months at a time. Rates and house prices are extraordinarily cheap but, as Andy Anderson points out, most of the amenities - football field, bowling green, croquet lawn, tennis courts – have gone. The dilapidated hall, once common ground for miners and farmers, has not been used in over a year.
Three groups make up Glen Massey today – the farmers, the elderly retired miners, and the working population who travel daily to Horotiu or Hamilton. There is virtually no contact between any of these groups. Mrs Abbott feels the loss of community; she used to know everybody but the newcomers tend to keep to themselves; she finds it very lonely at times.
The last vestige of community can be found at the Buffalo Lodge (the unofficial watering hole known as The Buffs) and the school. Run by head teacher Malcolm Pitkeathly, the local school is a cohesive force with three teachers, one teacher aide and 59 pupils. The children, when asked, can see the positives of living in a small town but this inevitably changes as they grow up.
Mrs Timms, a Māori woman with four children and a part-time job cleaning the school, believes that Glen Massey is a wonderful place to raise kids. Pat Hedges has the last word. She used to keep the store until it closed three years ago and is aware of the lack of community life and the division between miners, farmers and villagers. She believes that lack of communication is the tragedy of our age; we all get so caught up in our own lives that we have little to spare for other people. And this is typified in the town of Glen Massey.