by The city of Whangamōmona, New Zealand’s only self -declared “Republic”, stands on a lonely motorway section that meanders through the north island, which has thought of with its own limits and its own passports.
At the beginning of this year, it organized its two-year anniversary and presidential election, in which the locals participated in old-fashioned carnival delights: racing sheep, whip and swimming in tanks with eels.
The “elections” are openly manipulated and earlier winners are a goat and a poodle. The winner is presented with a presidential chain, which is shaped by beer bottle tops and the tusks of boar.
President John Herlihy has had the role for eight years. He says his children, grandchildren and friends have pushed him in and it keeps him busy.
Whangamōmona has a handful of buildings, including a pub, a handicraft business and a small school. However, there are challenges because the eccentric city is a growing number of tourists and the pressure to improve their Internet availability to which some residents would prefer without living.
“How many visitors can we deal with? We are equipped, ”says Herlihy.
Forgotten world road
Whangamōmona’s journey to a republic began in 1989 when a reform process of the local government rewinded the boundaries of the district and district councils. The reforms meant that the city was more part of the Manawatū Whanganui region as Taranaki-and the residents were not happy.
“Someone said why we don’t … form our own patch. And that has developed into the formation of a republic, ”says Neil Volzke, Mayor of Stratford. Stratford is about an hour away, the next big city of Whangamōmona.
“They chose a president and declared themselves the republic. It is a mockery of the entire system. But it caught people’s imagination: Here is this tiny, rural community that gives the bureaucracy the middle finger. “
The residents of the Republic pay the Stratford District Council and parts of its environmental administration under the Manawatū Whanganui Council. The city increases revenue from the sale of goods and passes to visitors for $ 5 and is looking for funding to support the day of the republic.
Whangamōmona is on the narrow State Highway 43, which is known as a forgotten World Highway, one of the most remote streets in the country. Along the street over the street, the land of rich milk pastures changes to gentle hills, to steep cattle land and thickets of the local bush, which include the tiny settlement of Whangamōmona. The boundaries are delimited by signage.
Parts of the forgotten motorway in the forgotten world have recently been sealed. The road was excavated by early European settlers who lay the rails to have cut cattle and passengers through gorges and once busy cities and tunnels from the days of the coal mining of the region into the ground. When the passenger train made its last stop in the early 1980s, an economic lifeline disappeared together with the population.
Today Whangamōmona and the surroundings are estimated to accommodate 150 residents, but it is difficult to get a precise figure because some locals fill out the census. There is no business for basic deliveries such as bread and internet connection is marginal.
According to Volzke, the locals tried to combat the installation of the mobile phone cover.
“They loved to see the moment, pull out their phone to the tourists and discovered no service.”
“There are some real characters. Some are four or five generation-deep farmers, others are contractors such as fences. There are transients, others try to escape the system and the authority who can live outside the network in alternative lifestyles, ”he says.
“It is old New Zealand”
Tourism has created some tensions between tourist collar in the city to keep the place alive and maintain its independent lifestyle. Herlihy complains about the sealing of the old street.
“I wanted it to be the way it was. But there was an advance for the Council’s tourism, ”he says.
According to Herlihy, there is a cult status for the place, especially among international visitors.
“In summer it becomes impossible to find a table in the hotel.”
In the Whangamōmona hotel, visitors can buy Whangamōmona passes or receive a formal stamp in their own, which provides the municipality of NZ $ 15,000 annually and contributes to maintaining the handful of buildings.
Vicki Pratt has had the hotel for 11 years and is now for sale. Pratt says the hotel is “iconic” and “warm” and realizes that there has never been a fight in the bar. The hotel recently received mobile reporting, but is still mainly without WiFi, with some bags outside.
“Before that, everyone had to mix and mix like the old days. If I had my way, I would block the entire Internet in this area. “
The hotel was operated on as a hospital during the influenza from 1918. The guests have reported ghost sightings, including the street workers born in 1879 Joseph Lewandowski and their portrait Pratt to represent the difficulties of the early residents.
“But people here are the salt of the earth – it is an old New Zealand. You always pay it forward. When someone collapses on the side of the road, if someone goes away, the municipality will chop firewood or shear their sheep. “
A certain kind of person is needed to live here. Even after 20 odd years, it is not considered a local.
“People are greeted, but they have to show that they have something to contribute”.
“I love the seclusion – I could have been born in another century. I like that you have to try to make your purchases. “Haskell lives 19 km on the highway and says that Whangamōmona is now too busy for her.
“It is a close knitting community, albeit in different ways. We are all pretty different and convinced. This place represents freedom to do what I want. “
