Harry arrived in 1953. He talked about the old days. ‘A peculiar thing happened,’ he said. ‘New Zealand decided to build two new cities. Holyoake’s government. One city was to be built somewhere in the South Island and one here. Right here in Wainuiomata! It was going to be built in Moores Valley – there’s a lot of land out there, acres and acres of flat land – and it was going to be called Fitzroy. I saw the plans. Hospitals, movie theatres, the whole works! I thought it was fantastic. But it never happened. It arrived out of the blue, and it died very suddenly…’
O lost city of Fitzroy – named no doubt after Captain Robert Fitzroy, New Zealand’s second governor, who took charge of the new colony in 1843. Christian and liberal, he had the best of intentions but arrived in the worst of times. He had few troops to combat the rampaging Te Rauparaha or that dedicated axeman Hone Heke; more damagingly, he dared to slow the progress of laissez-faire European settlement. He was burned in effigy, mocked in bad verse, and finally sacked. The humiliation pinched the tender nerves of this gloomy depressive. He put himself out of his misery in the bathroom of his home in Crystal Palace, London, locking the door and cutting his throat while the maid prepared breakfast.
His legacy in New Zealand is here and there – Fitzroy Beach in New Plymouth, Governor Fitzroy Place in downtown Auckland, Fitzroy Bay in Wellington – but not in Wainuiomata, the city that never was, with its hospital and movie theatres and the whole works. There still are acres of vacant land in Moores Valley. From a ridge, you look over mud and fern and gorse, unpretty and good for nothing; on a cold dismal day a horse stood stock-still with a long face, and New Zealand birdlife showed itself in the raucous presence of Australian spur-winged plovers.
O folly of naming a city after a suicide. Even as a minor subplot, though, the strange episode conformed to the apparent wider theme of Wainuiomata: promise unfulfilled.
A visit to Harry Martin’s house revealed a sad souvenir. He kept it in his study among other bits and pieces – an African face mask, a carving of a giraffe. The desk nameplate, about the size of a blackboard duster, read HIS WORSHIP THE MAYOR HJ MARTIN. It was only in use for a year, when Harry was the first and only mayor in Wainuiomata’s history.
Harry unearthed a November 9, 1988 copy of a defunct weekly newspaper, The Wainuiomata Advertiser. The front page headline said WAINUIOMATA STANDS ALONE. After more than twenty years of agitating for independence from Lower Hutt, Wainuiomata had finally been granted status as a borough. The newspaper reported on a public meeting where the matter had been put to the vote. One person had voted against independence and said, ‘With the attitude that is shown here tonight I will be moving away as soon as possible.’ Everyone applauded. For sale in the classifieds: a piano, a wringer washing machine and a Remington rifle.
Harry unearthed a fat ring binder stuffed with green pages, the minutes of the Wainuiomata County Town Committee from 1968. It was evidence of how long Wainuioimata had fought the war for independence. Harry was quoted as saying, ‘The future of Wainuiomata is going to be decided by the people of Wainuioimata.’ And he’d scribbled an angry note: ‘It seems incredible but the chairman stated under questioning that he agreed Wainuiomata must become a borough at some time in the future – but he would not allow this to appear in the minutes, and continues to publicly argue against Wainuiomata’s claim to independence!’
Many of the green pages contained records of earnest discussions about hydatids and ragwort. The committee met at eight p.m. on Mondays. All those Monday evenings, the cold winter nights, the lovely summer twilight – and there sat the selfless servants, with Harry continually burning for the freedom of Wainuiomata. He said, ‘It was the priority: we needed to take control of our own destiny. Wainuiomata grew very, very quickly. We couldn’t develop the land fast enough. The population grew by a thousand, two thousand a year for many years. We actually projected a population of 81,000 by the year 2000. We were well on the way to bigger things.’
The boom years rolled on. The bust years got in on the act. Calls and petitions for independence continued to be ignored. Harry unearthed a December 20, 1982 copy of another defunct Wainuiomata newspaper, The Weekly Courier. Harry, then chairman of the district community council, had penned a rather lachrymose Xmas message. ‘It is with some dismay that I write … It was your council’s expectation that … we would by now have been a borough, or perhaps a city.’
Almost as an aside, he also wrote, ‘The past has produced many strains on the lifestyle and aspirations of our residents, many more are now jobless and it is with much uneasiness that many people face 1983.’ Advertisements for Farmers in Wainuiomata Mall featured cool Xmas presents such as CHiPs pedal cars for $51.50 (‘blowmoulded plastic with sure-grip wheels’), and a Sanyo transistor radio with watchstrap ($17.95, or $1.80 deposit and 37 cents weekly layby).
Major industries closed down. Population growth stalled. When independence finally arrived in 1988 was it too late to do any good? ‘Wainuiomata would have grown,’ argued Harry. ‘We’d
