The Rivers
The Rivers Rule Our Region
The rivers that wind their way through our region have decided the course of our story — firstly by shaping the land and secondly by their influence on the way that man has used the resources of the area.
Ours is a region of deep gorges and bluffs in the high hills that border it to the north and east and of a wide flat plain stretching from there out to a fringe of sand dunes and the sea.
Since people have lived in Manawatu they have thought about how the rivers have changed our region — the Maori legend of the giant totara tree that thrashed its way through the Manawatu Gorge is a version of how our land was formed. At Terrace End, Palmerston there are gravel seams where the Manawatu River once ran — and this terrace and the one that runs alongside the road to Ashhurst are evidence of how the river has, over centuries, carved itself a deeper and deeper pathway through the land. Further north, at Kimbolton or Rangiwahia, the deep gorges and terraces formed by the Oroua River are awesome evidence of the changes moving water can bring about over time.
The winding Manawatu River on the plains has also changed the landscape — even within the lifetime of the present generation. Along the length of the river numerous ox-bow lagoons have formed. Named for the shape of the yoke worn by oxen when pulling wagons, these gently curving wetland areas are blocked off curves of the original course of the river. In Palmerston North city the Hokowhitu Lagoon is an example of an ox-bow lagoon, and originally, before a city drainage system was built, there were other lagoons. As you travel through the broad sweeping dip that curves round from Park to Botanical Road, you are in the former Awatapu Lagoon, the corner of College and Albert Streets was the site of another lagoon called Te Ngutu ( the beak), and a favourite picnic spot of 19th century Palmerstonians was the Awapuni Lagoon — situated between Maxwell’s Line and Shirriff’s Road.
Travel anywhere in Manawatu and the effects of the river can be seen. Man’s attempts to control the river are always in evidence. The high stopbanks of the Manawatu River form a barrier from Palmerston North to the sea, and one of the outstanding engineering projects of the 20th century is the Moutoa sluicegates and floodway near Shannon. Designed by Paul Evans, Chief Engineer to the Manawatu Catchment Board and built in 1959-62 the project is recognized as one of New Zealand’s key flood control structures. Three hundred square kilometres of rural land along with flood-prone areas of Palmerston North are included in this scheme.
Draining the land and protecting it from flood damage goes back much further than the era of the Moutoa project. Farmers began digging drains from the 1880s in an attempt to make the boggy areas of their land more productive. It was such drainage schemes that made the flax swamps of Manawatu flourish!! Linton, Opiki, Kairanga and Rangiotu — all are intersected by deep drains.
The hard manual labour of digging drains by hand was eased from the early 20th century and people still talk about the big floating dredge that was bought by the Makerua Drainage Board in 1922, to dig deep drains in the Linton- Makerua area. The machine was capable of moving 30,000 cubic yards of material in a month — within a decade the farmland of the district was transformed.