Counting the changes

Two landmarks were notched up by the Mainland in 2007: the population reached a million, and ardent South Islander MIKE CREAN marked 40 years of roaming the highways and backroads of the south. The milestones put him in reflective mood about what's become of the land he loves.

The South Island people- meter rolled over the million mark last October.

Just like a car odometer notching up 100,000km, the milestone has caused a mixture of pride and regret: pride that the Mainland's population has reached a benchmark seven figures, indicating a vibrant and progressive economy. Regret that open spaces are being gobbled up and the environment spoiled by rampant humanity.

A million may be a meaningless number. It is hardly a "giant step for mankind". But great changes have accompanied the inexorable rise to the magic mark. The scale of these changes must have impacted on South Islanders' emotions. The population milestone may sharpen this focus.

When I started driving (or coaxing my recalcitrant Hillman Minx) around South Island roads, in 1967, Mainland residents numbered 800,000, of whom 250,000 lived in Christchurch. Dunedin was New Zealand's fourth-largest city, with 110,000 people.

Census statistics provide further perspective. New Zealand reached its first million in 1908 and its second in 1952. Growth in national population accelerated to three million, then four million, before the South Island could claim one million. The South Island's population as a proportion of New Zealand's dropped from half in 1900 to less than a quarter in 2007.

Former Christchurch mayor and South Island enthusiast Garry Moore says passing the million-people milestone is significant to the South Island psyche and will spark a resurgence in the Mainland.

"I believe we will see the South Island flex its muscles," Moore says.

He predicts quality of life will attract more people to live here, as new technology allows them to run businesses anywhere in the world. This will sharpen political focus on the South Island and prompt its MPs to pull together for the wider region. If they don't, Moore prophesies the birth of a South Island Party in 10 years.

Dunedin historian Erik Olssen says the idea of South Island identity "commands significant emotional appeal" but lacks substance.

"The demographic facts are brutal," Olssen says.

The South Island south of Rakaia is growing more slowly than the rest of New Zealand and is "becoming a small fraction" of the national population.

Canterbury and Otago may feel they can lead the South Island, but Southland and Nelson would never subscribe to their domination. He points to the West Coast and Southland seceding from Canterbury and Otago respectively in the provincial era, and then voting for abolition of provincial government as they felt "they would get more leverage in Wellington".

"There may be a South Island party in 10 years but I bet you dollars to donuts it will go nowhere," Olssen says.

Ngai Tahu leader Tahu Potiki, also of Dunedin, doubts if South Islanders regard the population milestone as significant. "I am not sure if one million people will make a difference. A sense of solidarity for the community of the South Island will come for other reasons, from an economic platform," Potiki says.

Moore and Potiki agree the push to seven figures has been accompanied by enormous changes.

My years of travelling the highways and byways bear this out. As a window on the late 1960s, I recall driving south through the near-desert country of the Mackenzie Basin, pausing for the views at lonely Tekapo and Pukaki villages and at one-horse-township Omarama, then sliding about on the gravel road over the Lindis Pass, and on to sleepy Wanaka. Next day I breathed the scents of wild thyme on barren hillsides where nothing else grew. I slipped into Cromwell, nestled among trees in the fork of the Clutha and Kawarau rivers, then weaved through the Cromwell Gorge, beside the railway line, to emerge on Clyde's old main street.

You cannot do that any more. Tekapo and Omarama are busy tourist towns. Pukaki has sunk beneath the waves of demand for electricity, in the building of dams and canals. Cows, green pasture and rows of trees bloom in the desert, with the help of irrigation. The Lindis is a tarsealed raceway, Wanaka a Queenstown clone. Grape vines march over hillsides where thyme once grew and people stop at wineries for renowned Central Otago reds. Boats skim the hydro lake that has flooded old Cromwell and a new highway sweeps above the gorge and the Clyde dam. The railway has disappeared, replaced from Clyde by a cycle track.

Dams, highways, irrigators and railway relics are signs of change. Tourism, dairying, and wine are its essence.

Christchurch writer Anna Rogers, author of West Coast and Canterbury histories, says areas of the South Island have had to "reinvent or rejuvenate" themselves "as old economic props failed".

Tourism has been a major player in this process. This is most visible on the West Coast. When gold mining declined and logging of native timber ended, "tourism proved a lifeline, as the area exploited its spectacular landscape". Her comment supports images of a Westland emerging from the doldrums of the 1970s and '80s, symbolised in the contrast between a stagnant Hari Hari township, with its abandoned timber mill, and nearby Whataroa, where visitors gather for white-heron-colony tours.

Tourism has exploded. I have struggled to find a park among the cram of campervans and cars at Punakaiki. I have brushed shoulders with walkers from every part of the globe on tracks around Franz Josef and Fox glaciers.

The West Coast is not just tourism. Coal is a high-earning industry once more and the dairy boom has put big money into farmers' pockets.

Rogers says the reinvention and rejuvenation process has been harder in Otago, but notes "the tourism and housing boom in places like Queenstown has been phenomenal". "And in a quiet way Dunedin has attracted notice as a fashion and music centre."

I hesitate to comment on Dunedin, as my description last year of the southern downtown area as a wasteland sparked angry letters. (My positive views – and I have plenty – were dismissed as paternalism.)

Rogers says history has been cleverly used as a tourist drawcard with the Otago Central Rail Trail, Oamaru's whitestone precinct and Christchurch's cultural area.

Invercargill historian John Hall- Jones says improvements to Southland's coastal road and its designation as the Southern Scenic Route have brought tourists to the region. Residents from the Catlins to Tuatapere have geared up for the influx, offering B&B accommodation, forming co-operatives to market arts and crafts, opening local museums.

This mobilisation of local people for the cause of tourism is common throughout the South Island. I continue to be amazed at the volume of tourist traffic in out-of-the-way spots, from deepest Southland to lushest Golden Bay.

The main street in orderly Motueka is gridlocked most of the summer. The quiet refreshment stop that was Kaikoura in my youth has been transformed by Whale Watch. Streams of visitors are enthralled by St Bathans gold town, which I declared dead when I moved away in 1977. Humble Geraldine, Murchison and Arthurs Pass have had makeovers so travellers will break their journeys there. Te Anau has blossomed from the frontier town I first knew to an attractive destination and activities centre. Hall-Jones says most of Fiordland's tramping tracks are booked out ahead of time.

In Marlborough, wine and tourism go together. The wine trails have grown out of a revolution in land use there. As a child, I knew Marlborough's hills as burnished by drought, studded with thistle stalks and burdened by a few panting sheep under a relentless sun. Now grape vines weave a web over the landscape. Much the same has happened, on a smaller scale, at Waipara and in the Kawarau-Cromwell areas.

Hall-Jones says tourism has worked with education and dairy farming to reinvigorate Southland. The impact of Invercargill Mayor Tim Shadbolt in attracting young people to study at the Southern Institute of Technology is now widely recognised, he says.

"Invercargill just chugs away in its quiet way, except for the many more young people there, with coffee shops spilling out on the streets. It's nice. There is more openness about the city," Hall-Jones says.

On my last visit to Invercargill, I had to double-check it was not Dunedin. The central city hummed with an energy that only massed student life can generate. It was nothing like the staid shops and empty streets of previous visits.

Conversions of sheep and cropping farms to dairying have played a big part in Southland's prosperity. The same applies up the eastern side of the island, from Oamaru to Christchurch. The loss of tree plantations, the sprawl of giant irrigators and the slow march of herds to milking herald the biggest change in landscape since Europeans settled here.

Conservationists see this as a threat to waterways and groundwater. I notice many rivers and streams are lower than they were 20 years ago. I continually hear anglers complain the fishing is not what it used to be.

To farmers on country that cannot be irrigated, the outlook is bleak. Wool and lamb returns are poor. Many farmers are sick of "working for nothing". They have diversified to deer, ostriches, alpacas, or moved to land suitable for dairying. Reductions in lamb numbers have caused job losses in the frozen-meat industry.

Some people warn the South Island is putting too many eggs in the tourism, dairying and wine baskets. Rising fuel prices and moves to cut carbon emissions are causing concern in tourism circles. However, dairying interests I have talked to are confident in the long-term prosperity of the industry. Winemakers say Marlborough and New Zealand are recognised labels in the wine world, but "cowboy" operators causing a drop in quality could jeopardise exports.

Another major trend is urbanisation. Christchurch is swelling at the expense of some rural towns and of Dunedin and Invercargill. Census figures show Christchurch's population grew by 40 per cent, from 250,000 to 350,000, in the last 40 years, while Dunedin's went up by less than 10%, from 110,000 to 120,000.

Christchurch's burgeoning status as the South Island's powerhouse has boosted the nearby areas of Rangiora, Kaiapoi and Rolleston, and their environs. Ashburton has bucked the trend of northern migration, through industrial development, and Queenstown through tourism. Nelson has capitalised on its geography to become almost a separate state, as much inclined towards Wellington as Christchurch.

Potiki, who moved back to Dunedin from Christchurch last year, has noticed the drift to Christchurch and the growing gap between it and the rest of the South Island. He says migration to Christchurch is positive, as southerners would choose Auckland or Sydney if they did not see Christchurch as a main centre.

However, he worries that Christchurch's growth and cosmopolitanism are eroding its sense of South Island solidarity. Many residents have not been there long, so an idea of "deep- rootedness" is missing.

The opposite applies further south – "In the past six months I have spent much time in Otago and Southland and I have been a little surprised, and also reassured, by how much of the old South Island feeling is still there. It is deep-rooted. People still do their own stuff there. They are more independent of the city. They have strong community networks."

Potiki says South Island identity is partly fuelled by grievance over preferential treatment of the North Island by successive governments.

"Some resentment is valid," he says, citing Southland as a prime contributor to national productivity that receives little in government resources.

Shadbolt's outrage over polytechnic funding, and the support he has gained in Southland, are an example of this.

South Island identity is not entirely grounded in negative feelings. Christchurch writer Rogers senses a positive phenomenon – "based on the kinder, cheaper, less-harried lifestyle of the South Island, as compared, most notably, with Auckland".

"Not to be underestimated, either, perhaps, is the emotional punch of the myth of the Southern Man. And, of course, the rugby is better down here," she adds.

- © Fairfax NZ News