A Day at the Flax Mill

Explore Southland's once prosperous flax industry with a visit to the Templeton Flax Mill Heritage Museum — the only authentically restored flax mill operating in New Zealand.

Riverton, a fishing port and small seaside town on the southern-most coast of mainland New Zealand, is the centre of Southland's once prosperous flax industry  and home to the Templeton Flax Mill Heritage Museum, the only authentically-restored flax mill operating in New Zealand and now formally recognised as a Category I historic place by the New Zealand Historic Places Trust.

New Zealand flax, or harakeke  as it is called in Māori, is one of the country's most distinctive native plants and for Māori it was the most important thing to them after food. Māori had plaited and woven flax for centuries, and in the late 1700s they showed Europeans how to prepare flax to make rope and other useful items.

This led to a booming trade in flax fibre. With the invention of the flax stripper in the 1860s came the development of the flax milling industry, an important part of the New Zealand economy that is until the 1970s, when synthetic fibres became more popular, and flax mills around the country ceased production.

The Templeton Flax Mill is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. It was established in 1911 and was one of 44 mills in Southland working to supply rope, wool packs and baling twine around New Zealand.

Your visit to the Templeton Flax Mill Museum can be either a self-guided tour or, with 24 hours' notice, can include a working demonstration of the mill in action.

During the demonstration you will learn about the importance of flax to Māori, and appreciate what sheer hard work the "flaxies" employed at the mill endured, from cutting and bundling the flax, to feeding the stripper (the machine that strips away the non-fibrous flax to release the strands of fibre, making a loud shrieking noise in the process), to washing the fibre, to operating the fibre refining scutching machine, to packing the fibre into bales.

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  Monday — Friday: 8.30am — 4.30pm Saturday — Sunday: 1pm — 3.30pm.|Southland|Culture & Heritage|Food & Wine

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