Mosgiel
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Mosgiel (population 10,000) is a suburb of Dunedin in Otago, New Zealand, located 15 kilometres southwest of the city centre. Although it has had this status since the re-organisation of local government in 1989, many people still think of it as a separate town. This is an ongoing argument between citizens of the town.
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 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.
Legend and early history
The site of Mosgiel figures in Maori 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, are mentioned in connection with the area. Maungatua, the large hill to the west of the plain, was a huge wave which struck the Takitimu throwing overboard Aonui who became a pillar on the Tokomairiro Beach. By another account Aonui was 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 was wrecked 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 show the Taieri Plain was known to some of the earliest Polynesian settlers in the south.
W.R. Kirk repeated the later story of a taniwha, or 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. The associations of this story are Kati Mamoe, ('Ngati Mamoe' in modern standard Maori) of the late 17th or early 18th century and the taniwha's name was Matamata. According to tradition this period also saw the occupation of the kaik, or 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 hill which became the name of 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 his report was unfavourable. In 1844 Edward Shortland noticed Maori were running pigs on the landward slopes of Saddle Hill, 'Makamaka' as he recorded the hill's Maori name. Charles Kettle surveyed the plain and coastal hills for the Otago Association in 1846 and 47. 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 Maori track from Kaikorai Valley and settled on Saddle Hill in a whare, a Maori 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. There was a large stand of native bush nearby. The richness of the land and the proximity of the main south road, more or less following the route of an old Maori track, led to early close rural settlement.
The 1861 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 parallelled by a railway with a branch to the west in 1877. The Mosgiel Town District was declared in 1882 and a Borough Council constituted in 1885. The town grew to be 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 of rural tastes. Horse breeding and racing flourished.
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 2 there was some thought Mosgiel might industrialise extensively, like the Hutt Valley but expansion was 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 was 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. In recent decades the hills above the plain have seen some division into 'lifestyle' blocks. The 2003 completion of the Fairfield bypass shortened the commute by the southern motorway to the city.
Today, Mosgiel's main source of income comes from many sources, such as tourism, local shops, cafes and bars, clothing, water treatment, education, etc. [[Citing sources citation needed]]
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 had been his life's work to communicate. It was the same view, though seen from a greater distance, which had inspired Charles Kettle in the 1840s.
In 1953 the young Ralph Hotere, later to beome 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".
Also despite Mosgiel's recent urbanisation and rapid growth in population, it is still considered by some to be a "hole" One reason may be because it relies on Dunedin for much of it's export and tourism and other facilities, and does not have enough facilities of it's own to completely fulfill it's citizens wants. Like a larger skate/bikepark, a movie theatre, a 'hot topic' store, and other things. recently though it has received the "Aurora cafe", which looks more modern than other shops, as well as plans for a larger playground. [[Citing sources citation needed]]
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.
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