Even the prisoners are leaving Ohura

A deserted street in the tiny town of Ohura. Picture / Amos Chapple

A solitary Coca-Cola sign on the footpath of a little town nestled against the rugged King Country hills signals the last commercial venture in a main street abandoned, where the shop windows offer nothing but your reflection.

This is Ohura, 35km off State Highway 4, heading towards Taumarunui. Even the people who make their homes in this town, part of Ruapehu District, say it is "dead".

Their opinion is backed by a survey released by KPMG this week which shows that in the past 12 months Ruapehu has lost 3.5 per cent of its population, making it the biggest "loser of people" in the country.

Ohura was once a bustling little town famous for coal mining. It had a high school, farming stores, markets - even a picture theatre.

Now it is famous for its prison and even that will close in November.

A Cosmopolitan Club, a dairy and a primary school will be all that is left, but residents say even the dairy may be under threat after years of making money from prisoners using it to stock up on cigarettes and supplies.

The survey says 500 people have moved out of Ruapehu District in the 12 months to June last year.

Ruapehu Mayor Sue Morris disputes the figures, saying people are moving into the district from overseas and the bigger cities.

She says school rolls are not dropping. The district is moving ahead.

"We've got people coming into the area. The houses are being sold. You're lucky if you can get a house."

Mayor Morris says coal mining is set to take off again in Ohura with an Australian company seeking resource consents.

But residents in the town are dubious. "It's just dead," says Ohura resident and fire chief Gary Holmes.

"Even Taumarunui, that's dying I reckon. They've lost the [meat] works [Affco]. All the railways have gone, shops are empty. It's quite amazing. It is dying."

Ruapehu District encompasses Taumarunui to Waiouru, and borders Te Kuiti.

Mr Holmes has lived in Ohura all his life, 50 years. He has struggled to maintain the volunteer fire brigade - essential when it takes a brigade from Taumarunui an hour to get to Ohura - and the district's ambulance service.

He says the closure of the prison will not affect Ohura any more, because people have already gone, the older folk moving to centres where health care is available and they don't have to wait for the doctor to visit every Monday.

"She's a ghost town all right," says resident Rob Craw.

"There is still the farming community, but the town is dead."

Bruce Stevenson has lived in Ohura since 1987, when his wife, Doreen, and children Bonny and Holly took over a house earmarked for demolition and made it into their home.

It's Government centralising things which is emptying small rural towns, he says.

A tui twitters in a nearby camellia bush and Mr Stevenson says, "See, you can hear the birds. There's no traffic noise. It's peaceful."

He has no plans to move.

Sandra MacKenzie and her husband, Trevor, moved here seven years ago, when the Affco freezing works in Taumarunui closed and he was made redundant.

He started up as a prison officer at Ohura Prison; now that's closing.

"We have a freehold house here. It cost us $5000. What are we going to do?" Sandra MacKenzie asks.

About 16km back towards Taumarunui is Matiere - once another little service town. All that remains there is the cosmopolitan club.

Jim Hepi and his wife, Edith, have lived there for 16 years, their horses tethered on the roadside opposite a derelict shop with broken car bodies.

Standing beside the four pigs he hunted that morning in the Ohura valley, Mr Hepi says he is a "rural" sort of guy and that he would live nowhere else. It is sad to see the smaller towns die out, he says, but when the businesses go there is no reason for people to stay.

Ruapehu's opposite, the fastest-growing area in New Zealand, is Queenstown, says the KPMG survey. There, the population grew 7.2 per cent.

The survey also predicts that Christchurch will take over from Wellington as New Zealand's second-biggest city by 2007.