Ghost Towns of New Zealand

Inscription inside.

Broken brick chimneys, creaking weatherboards and wind whistling through the gaps in weary old wayside shacks is about all there is left from our own Wild West days. These decaying remnants are a faint monument to the times when our European ancestors marched relentlessly across the countryside, leaving in their wake scarred landscapes, destroyed forests and faded memories that testify to this country's earlier richness in timber, minerals and gum. This book tells the tale, from the pioneering pillage of whales, gold, kauri, coal and gum, to the final decline and death of what once were prospering industries. It recreates the vigorous boom days of tent towns which sprang up overnight in response to whispered rumours and which disappeared just as mysteriously. It revives the atmosphere of the lawless pleasure-pots with too many pubs and newspapers, but which at least offered temporary respite from a day bent double down a mine shaft, or monotonously scraping gum. It also tells of the shipbuilding and railhead towns, the flaxtowns and those that defy categorisation - all of which are no more...