Port Craig was the name given to the mill and settlement that was the centrepiece of an ambitious and technologically advanced logging and milling operation by the Marlborough Timber Company between 1916 and the late 1920s.
Early History of Waitutu
The Waitutu area was sporadically visited by Maori, attracted by the rich kai moana and the birdlife inland. Archaeological sites along the coast, some in and around Sand Hill Point, reveal the use Maori made of the area. Two adzes dating from prior to 1769 were reportedly found during an excavation in 1940 of the foundations of one of the mill houses. There were tracks that provided access to places west such as the Wairaurahiri River and beyond.
A portion of the Waitutu native forest was granted to named Maori under the South Island Landless Natives Act 1906 (SILNA). SILNA provided for the allocation of about 57,000 hectares of land, throughout the South Island, to more than 4000 named Maori who were identified as having insufficient land to support them. The major tracts were in the Rowallan Alton and West Rowallan blocks (western Southland). The Waitangi Tribunal records that ‘SILNA was an attempt to address the plight of those Ngai Tahu (Kai Tahu) who had been rendered landless or nearly so by the Crown’s failure to prevent that from occurring as a result of its various land purchases in the South Island in the 1840s and 1850s.The SILNA land was granted as an economic resource to named individuals and their heirs and assigns forever. It was and is ‘absolutely inalienable’. Ecologist and forester Nora Devoe says that when they were granted the ‘SILNA lands were among the least valuable lands in New Zealand.’ Devoe writes that the Crown intended the lands to be farmed, but that the lands were mostly unsuitable for farming and most SILNA land (including the Rowallan Blocks) in 2008 remains unoccupied. Ultimately the SILNA land grants led to further grievances, recognised by the Waitangi Tribunal in their 1999 Ngai Tahu report.
Around the time the SILNA lands were being granted, the forestry industry was vital to New Zealand’s development. Environmental historian Graeme Wynn writes that nineteenth century New Zealand as a ‘wooden world’ – citizens’ ‘very existence rested upon the forest’s bounty.’ Without the bush New Zealand ‘could not have developed as it did.’ Millers were, Wynn writes, ‘the prime movers of change,’ and mills left their mark on the landscape. Two years after the Act was passed, the government granted cutting rights over the SILNA land in what became known as the Port Craig area. Research has not clarified the relationship between SILNA landowners and the parties that obtained cutting rights. One unreferenced source indicates that logging of the SILNA land did provide some income to owners from the timber.
Marlborough Timber Company
The cutting rights to the SILNA land in Port Craig were granted to the Marlborough Timber Company, which was one of the many business concerns of Dan Reese (1879-1958) and his brother Tom, who founded the building firm of Reese Brothers in 1907. The MTC was the brothers’ most profitable business. It had begun operations in the Opouri Valley in Marlborough in 1908. By 1914 the MTC was on the lookout for new stands to mill. It was also interested in expanding the capabilities of the New Zealand industry by introducing American and Canadian sawmilling plant and logging equipment into the New Zealand industry. To do this, MTC needed large forests with high yielding trees to sustain the scale and efficiency of the new technology.
The man who convinced the company directors of the merits of this departure from existing sawmilling techniques was John Craig, the manager of the Marlborough operation and a successful West Coast miller. Craig was sent to America in 1915 to investigate new milling techniques. During a two week reconnaissance in 1916, Craig convinced Dan Reese of the viability of a site west of Tuatapere at Te Waewae Bay in Southland. When the government granted cutting rights over the SILNA land, MTC took up the option on 1600 hectares of coastal forest at Mussel Beach, the nearest safe site in the area to build a wharf.
Establishing Port Craig Sawmill and Settlement
Port Craig Sawmill was a pioneering venture. The scale and modern technology used at Port Craig was unlike anything attempted before. When technology of this nature was used again in New Zealand, roughly 20 years later, it was employed on exotic plantings. It was not until the 1950s that comparable technology was introduced in two State-run mills in the 1950s - the Conical Hills State sawmill in Southland and the Waipa State sawmill used similar technology.
Almost immediately, work began on clearing the bush and building an access road and storage shed. Two months after the directors' visit, timber arrived to build the wharf. By early 1917 the wharf was finished and a 'travelling' steam crane had been delivered for use on the wharf and for the construction of a breakwater on exposed Mussel Bay. Planning was underway for the sawmill and an aerial cableway. Plant and machinery were ordered from the Sumner Iron Works in Everett, Washington State, USA. The MTC shipped one of its two Opouri mills south to cut timber for the construction of the big new mill. A breakwater, workers’ huts and rudimentary roads were completed and the first cuttings for the tramway were underway. From 1917 on the company built a store, cookhouse, social hall, billiard room, library and school, as well as many houses and huts. The mill manager's house, the finest in the settlement, was built on the north-west edge of the plateau. The first school house was erected in 1921, on the shore of the bay itself, hemmed in by stacks of timber as spare room became scarce near the wharf. This unsuitable arrangement only ended with the building of the second Port Craig School building on the plateau above. This building was designed by the Southland Education Board and built by the board's own staff,
Development was affected by tragedy, which struck the company in November 1917, just as the re-erection of the pilot mill was finished. John Craig, the driving force behind the development, drowned, along with launchman Fred Parry. The site at Mussel Beach, was renamed Port Craig in his memory. The impact of Craig’s death was significant. Work went on, but without the zeal and impetus that Craig brought to proceedings. On top of that, John Craig’s brother James was killed after an explosion during the forming of a tramline cutting in October 1918. Despite these tragedies, the mill, which was built by MTC director and Christchurch builder Peter Graham, opened with much fanfare, on 22 September 1921. Construction of the mill itself was overseen by representatives of the Sumner Iron Works, Amos Markey and Dan Wilder.
Tramway and branch lines
While work on the mill, wharf and town was progressed, the other key feature, the tramway, began to push south-west away from Port Craig. The tramway was vital as a means of extracting timber efficiently enough to feed the mill.
Work on the tramway began in 1917 and the route left Port Craig in a south-west direction, roughly parallel to the shore but several hundred metres inland. At Sand Hill Point it turned west and continued its parallel to the coast. When work ended, the main tramway was 14.6 kilometres long, with a further 9.8 kilometres of branch line. The main tramway was built to a very high standard on a 3' 6’ gauge (NZ Railways’ standard).
As with any tramway, maintaining the grade was essential. Most of the ground it was laid on sloped uphill from the beach. Some cuttings were deep but most were not substantial. There were some minor bench cuts and, along with the four deep rivers, there were other stream crossings required too. The majority of the workers, who had only hand tools, horses and explosives to build the tramway, were Irish immigrants.
Maintaining the grade – building the viaducts
While the land being milled by the company was not steep, it was cut by numerous water courses. The four biggest water courses were deep incisions and formidable obstacles. The first, the Peter Burn, was encountered approximately seven kilometres from Port Craig. Not enough historical information exists to establish the exact sequence of viaduct construction. It is almost certain that work on Percy Burn began while Peter Burn (more commonly known as Sand Hill Point, or simply Sand Hill) was also under construction. Edwin Burn and Francis Burn were further to the west and would not have been required immediately. However, Bird states that tramway construction ran ahead of the building of those two viaducts so that timber could be extracted to feed the mill.
The largest and most celebrated of the four viaducts, Percy Burn, was built by the Chester Construction Co. of Invercargill. Work on Percy Burn took over a year and it was completed in 1925. James Bremer, a sawmill hand at Port Craig in 1925, recalled how the viaducts were ‘built in an efficient and tradesman-like way with minimum delay’. However, the work was obviously challenging and the difficulties were reflected in the final cost of the job. Chester’s contract price was about £6,000, but it fell short by some £500. When Chester left the settlement at the end of the contract, he must have known it had reduced his business to bankruptcy.
Jim Kane built Sand Hill, Edwin Burn and Francis Burn Viaducts. Again, the exact date of their construction is not known, although they are unlikely to have been completed before 1926. As with Sand Hill, no specifics on their construction have survived. Each viaduct’s design exhibited a response to the challenges each site required. At Edwin Burn, for instance, a long middle span was required to avoid building concrete foundations in the river. In that case, three horizontal beams (as opposed to the two used on the others) were used to help carry the deck and its load. In general, the difficulties posed by the viaducts were partly a result of their isolation and awkward sites, with steep sided rivers, heavy bush (that had to be cleared), cold and inclement weather, sand flies and, of course, the technological limitations of the day.
Timber extraction
The branch lines allowed for a wider field of extraction, particularly after the arrival, in 1921, of the American-built Lidgerwood log hauler, (the Lidgerwood Overhead Logging Plant or ‘skyline yarder’ or 'cableway skidder') the largest and most sophisticated log hauler employed in New Zealand. The Lidgerwood Machinery Company (LMC) became famous for its winches, scrapers and cranes. The Lidgerwood hauler could sit in one place and haul logs from a distance of 800 metres via a complex, cable-operated overhead system. By moving its main spar, it could operate on a 360 degree spectrum. It could be spectacularly efficient when bringing in multiple logs and could load bogies with ease. For several decades after extraction, it was possible to see the Lidgerwood’s impact from the air, with the lines of timber extraction resembling spokes on a bicycle wheel.
Port Craig: the town
Throughout the 1920s the industrial plant and settlement continued to grow and develop. Apart from the main mill, a huge ramp was built to shift cut timber down from the mill to the beach (plus storage skids for the timber). A third boiler and funnel was added to the mill in 1926. Later, in 1928, an aerial loader was built to get the timber into the ships more efficiently, especially in poor weather. Prior to this loading was done from the wharf to lighters (barges) and then from the lighters to the ships, moored out beyond the breakwater. By the late 1920s, Port Craig Sawmill and Settlement was comprised of a range of structures, directly mill-related or core township buildings and accommodation. Among the significant structures on the beach were the timber storage platforms (on the wharf and beach), breakwater and wharf, and first school. The timber conveyor linked the mill with the beach. On the plateau above were the old and new mills, bake house, cookshop, billiard room, school, store, library, the bush boss's house, the manager's house, carpenter's shop, various married quarters, single men's huts. There were also various tramways, walking tracks and a road.
The beginning of the end
The massive investment in Port Craig’s infrastructure hardly repaid its backers. Despite a capital injection in 1927, the mill still struggled to make money. In 1928, after operating for five years, the Lidgerwood broke down a short distance west of the Percy Burn viaduct. It was decided not to repair it and four smaller haulers were purchased instead to keep the work going. By October 1928, however, the operation had become unsustainable and the Company Directors were forced to close the entire operation immediately. With minimal notice, mill workers and their families were put on ships and taken to Bluff.
A skeletal staff was kept on to maintain the equipment, by Holdings Ltd., a company set up by Sims Cooper to take over the liquidated MTC assets. The mill reopened briefly in January 1930, a response to the Government lifting export restrictions on indigenous timber but shut down permanently in November 1930.
Nevertheless, there were still hopes that the place would be revived. Holdings Ltd stayed on through the Depression. In 1937, Bert Craig, son of the mill’s founder John Craig, inspected the mill and tramway. He found them in a markedly deteriorated condition. To get any sort of return on their investment, Holdings sold the mill and equipment to salvagers, who took away anything of value and demolished the much of the remainder. The wharf was retained but is understood to have been demolished at a later date by the New Zealand Army. A house and the Port Craig School House, which was the property of the Education Department, were also retained. Salvagers removed most of the rail, switches and points of the tramway, but the formation and sleepers were left intact.
Decay and rediscovery
Despite suggestions from some that Port Craig Sawmill and Settlement might rise again, there was no return to sawmilling. Thereafter, and for many decades, the only visitors to the area were trampers and hunters. The School House was passed to the New Zealand Forest Service in 1960 or 1961, and was used as overnight accommodation. The building became the responsibility of the Department of Conservation after its formation in 1987. The viaducts had become a serious maintenance issue by the 1970s. The decks of the viaducts were in such a precarious condition that some had to resort to crossing them on hands and knees.
Percy Burn was the subject of multiple attempts to burn it down. On one occasion, one pier leg was nearly burnt through, while another attempt on the viaduct’s deck was allegedly undertaken by a disgruntled Forest Service employee, trying to stop anyone from gaining access to the forest beyond the viaduct. The critical state of the viaducts, particularly Percy Burn, became apparent at the same time that the community was waking up to their heritage value and tourism potential. It was not until the 1980s and the awakening of a wider interest in industrial heritage that the viaducts came to be seen in a new light. Oral histories conducted by timber historian Paul Mahoney in the 1980s captured the memories of men who worked at Port Craig Sawmill and Settlement. In 1990, a report was compiled by the New Zealand Historic Places Trust on the history and engineering of the viaducts and, as part of sesquicentennial celebrations, the Institute of Professional Engineers (IPENZ) acknowledged the significance of Percy Burn Viaduct.
Rejuvenation
The New Zealand Historic Places Trust report had an immediate impact. In 1991, DOC arranged for Royal New Zealand Army engineers to do some basic remedial work on Percy Burn. Despite the army’s work, it and the other viaducts still faced collapse. Alarmed at the prospect of losing the viaducts, western Southlanders decided to try to save them. A public meeting at Tuatapere on 28 April 1993 led to the formation of the Port Craig Viaducts Trust. The immediate aim of the Viaducts Trust was to stabilise Percy Burn, the largest and most celebrated of the four viaducts. With the stabilisation work completed, Percy Burn was reopened in a ceremony attended by 170 people.
The next phase of the restoration was the stabilisation of the remaining viaducts. Tenders were initially called in November 1997 and Breen Construction of Wanaka were the preferred tenderers. Sand Hill Point was the first viaduct to receive attention, with only one pier requiring new timber. The most significant issue turned out to be the condition of Edwin Burn which was on the point of collapse. The repairs required were extensive. At Francis Burn, the piers were also in poor condition. At each viaduct, excluding Percy Burn, handrails were added to the upstream side of the decks. All the viaducts received preservation treatment and the entire cost of the project was $227,252. A conservation plan for the viaducts was completed in 2008.
A sustainable use
The obvious attractions of the area’s forests and mountains, and its Maori and European history, spurred a group of locals to form a group dedicated to turning the forest and its landmark to the north, Hump Ridge, into a three-day tramping round trip. In 1999, 46,000 hectares of Waitutu Forest (including the old Port Craig settlement) was added to Fiordland National Park.
Along the way, the route passes over three of the four viaducts. The portion from Edwin Burn to Port Craig was the former tramway and already part of the South Coast Track. When it opened in November 2001, it was New Zealand’s first (and still the only) privately operated walk on public land.
DOC undertook work at Port Craig. It put major features on display and created a small track system between them. Interpretation signs and panels were installed over the 2003-04 summer. The work on the site began much earlier though. Removal of vegetation mound of bricks first began at the time of a 1996 archaeological survey. Clearance took place around the manager's house, the Lidgerwood frame, the old mill boiler, the baker's oven, and the remains of the sorting tables. The wharf crane was excavated from the beach. In 2004 work on the conservation of the various brick structures (baker's oven, old mill boiler, and the chimneys at Daly's (mill manager's) house) was undertaken. The rock wagons, previously in a slip prone area, were moved near the breakwater in September 2004. The Lidgerwood hauler frame was extracted from the earth and place on piles about 2005 or 2006.
During its operation Port Craig sawmill was the most technologically advanced and most productive mill in New Zealand. Today it is an archaeological site - the country's most complete sawmilling complex featuring all stages and aspects of the timber industry. In 2012 Port Craig Sawmill and Settlement Site remains a historic attraction on the South Coast Walk in Fiordland, a rare survivor of the indigenous timber industry.
