There’s a kind of sad beauty about places like this. The town had a small pub doing little business where we bought a fried cod for lunch, and a closed community hall.  There were a few scrubby houses, but mostly derelict buildings.  The shop in the upper picture had lost any identification, but the one in the lower picture was once a proud clothes outfitters, which has now forever shut its doors and is closed up with rusting steel plates.

It wasn’t till I read up on the town that I realised what an interesting history it had.  Originally it was a goldrush town, then it became a gold refining town for the miners between Invercargill and the port of Riverton.  Later it refined platinum.  Shale rock had been found in the area, and a large area excavated for a shale plant, producing good quality oil but not sustainable.  It developed an extensive flax-producing business using the native flax plants, then coal was found and it became a mining town.  Finally all these industries were overtaken or failed, and it became a farming community which dwindled with the conglomeration of the farms and reduction in labour to its present ghost-like self.