Report on the rural branch line

Abstract

European settlement in New Zealand developed around a number of sites, chosen mainly because of their access to navigable water. Early trading and administrative links were as much with other countries as with other parts of New Zealand; the infant settlements were, in effect, a series of colonies distributed around the North and South Islands. W.B. Sutch, Directions in Industrial Growth, Department of Geography, Victoria University of Wellington, 1965, pages 4-5. From the original towns people moved into the hinterlands. In the 1860's, railway construction facilitated the spread of settlement, as short lines spread inward to tap bush and farmland; in later decades, these railways joined others from contiguous provinces to form links which were the first step toward national - or at least Island - unity.