Mosgiel
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Mosgiel (population 10,000), a suburb of Dunedin in Otago, New Zealand, lies 15 kilometres southwest of the Dunedin city centre. Although the area has had this status since the re-organisation of local government in 1989, many people still think of it as a separate town. The citizens of the town/suburb continue to debate the issue.
Mosgiel stands at the north-eastern extremity of the Taieri Plains. The Silver Stream, a tributary of the Taieri River, runs through its north end. The town celebrates its location, calling itself "The pearl of the plains".
Mosgiel takes its name from Mossgiel in Ayrshire, the farm of poet Robert Burns, the uncle of the co-founder (1848) of the Otago settlement, the Reverend Thomas Burns.
Between Mosgiel and the city centre of Dunedin stand the rugged Three Mile Hill and Scroggs Hill, which form part of the crater wall of a long-extinct volcano, the crater of which has become Otago Harbour. To the south of the town lies one of the many volcanic peaks that formed part of the volcano, Saddle Hill, a prominent landmark, visible from a considerable distance and notable for its distinctive shape. Kinmont Park nestles at the foot of the hill: this recent housing subdivision forms Mosgiel's own largest suburb.
The State Highway 1 motorway, upgraded in 2003, links Mosgiel with the Dunedin city centre, 15 kilometres to the northeast. State Highway 87 starts at a junction with State Highway 1 at the southeastern edge of Mosgiel, the first part of the highway comprising the main street of Mosgiel, Gordon Road.
Mosgiel's economy until recent years focussed on the production of wool products, and many older New Zealanders still associate the word "Mosgiel" with the former Mosgiel Woollen Mills. The town forms an important service-centre for the farming community on the Taieri Plains, and hosts one of New Zealand's largest agricultural research institutes, Invermay.
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[edit] Legend and early history
The site of Mosgiel figures in Māori legend, but surrounding features of the Taieri Plain and adjacent hills have older associations. Of the canoes of South Island migratory legend the fourth and fifth, Takitimu and Arai Te Uru, get mentioned in connection with the area. Maungatua, the large hill to the west of the plain, represents a huge wave which struck the Takitimu, throwing overboard Aonui, who became a pillar on the Tokomairiro Beach. Another account makes Aonui a female survivor of the wreck of the Arai Te Uru canoe, built by Kahui Tipua who had arrived earlier but sent this vessel to the Polynesian homeland Hawaiki to get kumara. On its return the canoe suffered shipwreck at Shag Point in North Otago, but its survivors quested about the land in search of supplies. If they didn't get back before dawn they turned into natural landscape features, Aonui's fate. These ancient traditions suggest that some of the earliest Polynesian settlers in the south knew the Taieri Plain.
W.R. Kirk repeated the later story of a taniwha (water-monster), the 'familiar spirit or guardian of Te Rakitaounere (also given as Te Rakitauneke) a famous chief and warrior' who lost his master about the Dunedin hills, slithered down the Silverstream 'Whaka-ehu' and 'lay down and left a hollow Te Konika o te Matamata' on the site of Mosgiel. He wriggled down the Taieri, making its tortuous course, and when he died became the seaboard hills, including Saddle Hill. This story has associations with Kati Mamoe, ('Ngati Mamoe' in modern standard Māori) of the late 17th or early 18th century, and the taniwha had the name Matamata. According to tradition this period also saw the occupation of the kaik (unfortified settlement) near modern Henley - called 'Tai-ari' like the river - and on the hill above it a pa, or fortified settlement, called Omoua. Tukiauau built a pa called Whakaraupuka on the west side of Lake Waihola and his rival, Tuwiriroa, came down from Lake Wakatipu and built one at Taieri Mouth on the coast. Whakaraupuka was soon abandoned, but the Taiari settlement at Henley endured into modern times.
In February 1770 James Cook described the saddle-shaped hill which became known as Saddle Hill, the landmark east of Mosgiel. The Weller brothers of the Otago whaling station on Otago Harbour (modern Otakou) sent a Mr. Dalziel to inspect the Taieri Plain for a Scottish settlement in 1839, but he gave an unfavorable report. In 1844 Edward Shortland noticed Māori running pigs on the landward slopes of Saddle Hill, 'Makamaka' as he recorded the hill's Māori name. Charles Kettle surveyed the plain and coastal hills for the Otago Association in 1846 and 1847. He also climbed the westward hills and saw the raised land beyond, the nearest approach of the Central Otago plateau to the sea, which he correctly identified as fine pastoral country.
Following the arrival of the Association's settlers at Dunedin in 1848, a Scots shepherd, Jaffray, brought his wife and dogs along the Māori track from Kaikorai Valley and settled on Saddle Hill in a whare, a Māori-style house, in 1849, establishing the first European farmstead in the district. In the same year the Reverend Thomas Burns, spiritual leader of the Association's settlement, selected the land which would become Mosgiel.
In the mid 1850s his son Arthur Burns settled on some of the land. A large stand of native bush stood nearby. The richness of the land and the proximity of the main south road, more or less following the route of an old Māori track, led to early close rural settlement.
The 1861 Otago gold rush saw the development of a road — leading west to the interior — which intersected the site. Arthur Burns's establishment of a woollen mill in 1871 brought the settlement of workers in cottages. 1875 saw the north-south road paralleled by a railway, with a branch to the west constructed in 1877. The authorities declared the Mosgiel Town District in 1882 and constituted a Borough Council in 1885. The town grew and became the most substantial in the district. The surrounding plain became a sort of Home County to Dunedin, a place of prosperous farms and the large houses of successful businessmen with rural tastes. Horse-breeding and racing flourished.
[edit] Mosgiel in the twentieth century
The significance of the area for communications grew in the 20th century when the proximity of the plain's flat land to Dunedin saw the establishment of the Taieri Aerodrome, just north of Mosgiel, in the late 1920s and the development of Momona Airport, now Dunedin International Airport, further south on the plain in 1962.
After World War II some expected Mosgiel might industrialise extensively, like the Hutt Valley, but expansion remained limited. The bankruptcy of the woollen mill in 1980 and its eventual closure has not been offset by other industrial developments. In 1989 the borough amalgamated into an enlarged Dunedin city, probably not a choice its own citizens would have made.
The late 20th century's increasingly ageing New Zealand population has seen the expansion of housing for the elderly, with several retirement villages and communities located in the vicinity. In recent decades the hills above the plain have seen some division into 'lifestyle' blocks. The 2003 completion of the Fairfield bypass shortened commuting time via the southern motorway (part of State Highway 1) to the city centre.
Today, Mosgiel's income comes from many sources, such as local shops, cafes and bars, as well as the town remaining an important service centre for the surrounding farming community.
[edit] Points of interest
R.A. Lawson's east Taieri Presbyterian Church, 1870 stands near the Mosgiel turnoff to State Highway 1.
H.F. Hardy's 1870s and 1880s buildings for the Mosgiel Woollen Mill stand in Factory Road, Mosgiel.
In 1936, while still a schoolboy, the artist Colin McCahon on a family outing driving from the seaboard over the coastal hills and looking across the Taieri Plain towards Central Otago, had what he described as a 'vision', seeing a pre-Biblical 'landscape of splendour order and peace' which, he said, it became his life's work to communicate. The same view, though seen from a greater distance, had inspired Charles Kettle in the 1840s.
In 1953 the young Ralph Hotere, later to become one of New Zealand's best-regarded artists, qualified as a pilot on Tiger Moths at the Taieri Aerodrome Training School, Mosgiel.
Mosgiel's town sign forms an unusual feature. Modelled on the famous Hollywood Sign, the seven letters of the Mosgiel sign perch on a hillside at the northeastern edge of the town, close to State Highway 1. Because of this sign locals occasionally jokingly refer to the town as "Mollywood".
Despite Mosgiel's recent urbanisation and rapid growth in population, some of Mosgiel's younger population consider it a "hole" — Mosgiel is home to a large population of conservative elderly, and because it relies on Dunedin for much of its export, tourism and other facilities.
Recently though, Mosgiel has seen the opening or refurbishment of cafes and bars aimed towards a younger market, as well as plans for a larger playground[1].
[edit] References
- Anderson, A. (1998) The Welcome of Strangers Dunedin, NZ: University of Otago Press. ISBN 1-877133-41-8pb.
- Kerr, E & Trewby, M. (2000) A Chronology of Ralph Hotere in Ralph Hotere Black Light Wellington & Dunedin, NZ: Te Papa Press & Dunedin Public Art Gallery. ISBN 0-909010-69-2.
- Kirk, W.R. (1985) Pulse of the Plain: a History of Mosgiel Otago, NZ: Mosgiel Borough Council. ISBN 0-9597755-0-1.
- McCahon, C. (1966) Beginnings Christchurch, N.Z.: Landfall, Caxton Press.
- http://www.cityofdunedin.com/city/?MIvalObj=consult_mosgielplaygrndsnews1&MItypeObj=application/pdf&ext=.pdf#page=2
