The Manawatū Journal of History 2023 is the answer to your Christmas present dilemmas

Northcote Hospital in Grey St, circa 1940. Photo / Manawatū Heritage

The Manawatū Journal of History

Issue 19

Published by Manawatū Journal of History Inc

Reviewed by Judith Lacy

Who or what is Northcote Office Park named for?

What happened to the priest who turned up drunk on his first day of work?

The answers to these questions and many fascinating pieces of information can be found in this year’s Manawatū Journal of History.

This is a pearler of an intro: “For over a hundred years a mounted emperor penguin has stood majestically in a glass case in the hallway at the Ōpiki homestead.”

Clive Akers unravels the connection between his grandfather, Hugh Akers, and Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton, and provides an insight into Akers the farmer, family man and philanthropist.

At the end of the article, I almost felt like I had met Hugh.

We learn Akers was among the first in Palmerston North to own a motorcar, winning a reversing competition at the 1909 A&P Show.

The article is packed with informative photos and glimpses into how farming has changed over the decades.

The state of New Zealand’s health system is much lamented today. Russell Poole’s article on the founder of Northcote Hospital, Emmarah Freeman, provides some perspective.

Poole’s opening sentence states that in the first decades of Pākehā settlement, you couldn’t go to hospital in Palmerston North. Instead, you had to travel to Whanganui.

Northcote’s most celebrated patient was Governor of New Zealand Lord Plunket, who was in the hospital with pneumonia when news of the death of his boss, King Edward VII, arrived. Into Plunket’s room, officials streamed weaving black armbands.

Peter Lineham concludes his two-part series on religious beginnings in Palmerston North with a look at early clergy and revivalist religion.

We learn Methodist ministers in the new circuit were mostly young and unmarried, making them cheaper since they didn’t need a parsonage. “They were moved every year or two before their weaknesses became apparent.”

The Anglican church had a run of bad appointments which Lineham suggests Bishop Octavius Hadfield, imperious and confident, may have been in part the author of his own misfortunes.

The cover photo of the Manawatū Journal of History 2023 is the whare built on the Akers' farm at Ōpiki. It housed swaggers who passed by looking for a meal and bed for the night in return for work.

Naturally, I was fascinated by Dorothy Pilkington’s Read All About It! A brief look back at Feilding’s newspapers.

Pilkington started her career as a reporter at the Feilding Herald and is in a staff photo taken in the early 1980s.

Each section on a different paper cleverly begins with the masthead. We learn some of the papers had unwieldy names such as Feilding Star Kiwitea & Oroua Counties Gazette.

I love Margaret Tennant’s writing style and this time she shares a piece of her family history - Āpiti farmer Harry Miller. There is even a “calico cat in a canvas bag”.

Tennant’s academic background shines through in her observations.

Harry’s memoirs “lyrically extolled the quiet and beauty of the bush, while spending pages describing its destruction”.

Simon Johnson explores the history of Feilding’s town halls while Michael Roche details how Bledisloe Park came to be created.

In my review of last year’s journal, I wrote it would benefit from mini-biographies of the writers. I was delighted to see they are included in this issue.

The articles are well written, absorbing and read like they belong in the same journal. They are complemented by a good number of photographs.

Some of the text reproductions would benefit from being redone as the originals are hard to decipher.

Manawatū is fortunate to have so many historians beavering away capturing days gone by.

The journal costs $25.

Email manawatujournalsales@inspire.net.nz.