Country Towns Feel Their Oats
(Written for "The Listener") URRENT controversy in the daily press a few weeks ago concerned the bogey of drift from rural areas to the cities. Fears were" awakened; that our national life would become top-heavy, in other words, that New Zealand’s cities would be supporting, in a few years’ time, a far greater population than the country towns and districts. That our commercial structure which relies basically on the land would collapse. Country centres were stepping backwards, or so we were led to believe. Nothing could be further from actual fact. Country towns, with populations of anything between 600 and four or five thousand are for the first time in more than 20 years really beginning to feel their oats. They are to-day fast becoming bigger and better. Although there is still a drift to the city, and of course there always will be, there is a drift the other way now as well. Why the sudden coming of city dwelers into rural centres? The facts are at
present still a little hazy. Some csia with the idea that housing is easier to find in such towns as Kaikohe or Te Awamutu. In this they are wrong. Houses in the country, as in the city, are pitifully few. But there is definitely a certain something about the free and easy life of a rural centre. Dress is not so formal, people take a more friendly interest in you from the start, and although everyone knows his neighbour’s business, there is nothing malicious about the neighbourly gossip. And when you walk down Main Street you call most of the people that you meet by their first name. There is something very warm and friendly about the whole atmosphere of country town life. But whether or not this is the reason for the sudden rejuvenation of country towns is hard to say. There is a definite rejuvenation, however, and it has come about only since 1939. It is still going on too. But the reason? I really don’t fully understand.
N.B.
Livingston
(Kaikohe).
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 386, 15 November 1946, Page 21
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346Country Towns Feel Their Oats New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 386, 15 November 1946, Page 21
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