Exploring Gwen Dodgshun’s old home on Peach Island is a step back in time. Her memories of growing up in the 1950s, living with the river and working on the orchards, evokes a connection to land, water and community that we only feel echoes of today.
Gwen’s ancestors bought land in 1854 from John Hort. Horticulture came to be the mainstay of the local economy over the generations, with tobacco, hops, pears, gooseberries, plums, melons, asparagus and of course, peaches being cultivated on the river gravels. Much of the produce was sold to Kirkpatrick’s canning factory in Nelson.
Orchard workers would meet at the ‘Time Shed’ at 8am, ready for a day pruning or picking. Their job was to fill the 50lb boxes, labelled with a ‘K’ (which doubled as chairs at smoko). Gwen and her siblings didn’t get to play much after school, as they were often grading peaches. “We also had to carry the groceries from the mailbox to home and the bread was always chewed by us hungry kids.”
Getting to school could be hard work, involving a walk through paddocks, down a bank, through a swamp and over the ford. Then a twisty, turny bus ride on a dirt road. When the river was in flood, Gwen recalls riding on the mud guard or perching on the hydraulics of her father’s tractor. Some days were impassable, leaving Peach Island residents marooned.
Following the 1877 flood, the Peach Island Bridge was washed out and the river changed to its present course, scouring a deeper channel. The 1957 flood was Gwen’s most memorable – Peach Island residents were ordered by the Police to evacuate. They rode on a trailer along the stopbank to a waiting dingy and rowed over the Shaggery Stream. Gwen’s father later said the journey over the stopbank was like driving on jelly.
Access to Motueka was via a cable, rope and 3 cages suspended over the river. A manila rope was used to control the speed of the descent and then attached to the cable with a hook to keep it above the reach of the river. “The down bit was easy, but you had to stop in the middle and re-hook to haul your way up,” recalls Gwen. Eventually the contraptions became flood damaged and obsolete.
The concrete ford onto the island was known as ‘The Splash’. When outflow from the Shaggery submerged it, they would use the swingbridge. Although forbidden from playing on it, the kids couldn’t resist jumping to make it bounce.
Gwen’s interest in the river stemmed from living in tandem with its ebbs and flows. Gwen highlights a 1986 publication by the Motueka Catchment Control Scheme which states: “The scheme is designed to improve the watercourses of the Motueka Catchment by stabilising their banks to prevent bank erosion; by keeping fairways clear; and by reducing, through good soil conservation, the amount of spoil washed into the channels.”
It seems the Motueka Catchment Collective is coming full circle.