Wuhoo Timaru - Find Free Fun! - A Journey into Harakeke

Harekeke Flax at Patiti Point Roselyn Fauth 2025

Harekeke Flax at Patiti Point - Roselyn Fauth 2025

It started with a footnote. A flax thesis, a girl from Timaru, and a doctorate in science. I had been writing about Bella MacCallum, the first woman in New Zealand to earn a DSc, when I paused at the title of her research. Phormium with Regard to Its Economic Importance.

Bella studied New Zealand flax not just as a botanist, but as an economic investigator. She explored its cellular structure, its chemistry, and its commercial potential. It made me wonder what else I had overlooked. I thought I knew harakeke. But following the thread of Bella’s story, I looked again.

Harakeke is not flax in the European sense. It is not Linum usitatissimum, the linen plant once grown across the British Isles. Harakeke is a native lily. Māori gave it its name and its place in the landscape. They knew it not only as a fibre plant, but as a living ancestor. A harakeke bush is a whānau. The rito, the central shoot, is the child and must never be cut. The outer leaves are the parents, nurturers and protectors.

Māori did not use only the inner fibre, the muka. They worked with the whole plant. For weaving, for medicine, for building. Cloaks, ropes, fishing nets, baskets and baby carriers were made from carefully harvested harakeke. Its sap was used to soothe wounds and toothaches. Its leaves, boiled, were laid across aching joints.

To weave harakeke was to carry tradition. Weaving was a practical act, but also a sacred one. Each kete, each whāriki, was a story, a connection to the whenua and to those who had come before.

When Europeans arrived, they gave the plant a familiar name. Flax. The fibres looked like something they knew. But what they found here was far stronger.

Captain Cook took samples home in 1769. By the 1790s, flax fibre from Aotearoa was already sought after for its use in ropes and sails. Whalers and traders wanted it. Māori communities provided it, often in exchange for tools, blankets and metal goods.

The Weller brothers, who established trading stations along the southern coastline in the 1830s, built strong commercial relationships with local Māori. The exchange of harakeke, fish, timber and produce opened up new networks of connection across the Tasman Sea.

When told that flax did not grow in England, some Māori chiefs are reported to have asked, “How is it possible to live there without it?”

By the mid-nineteenth century, the flax industry had reached Canterbury. Wetlands once considered unproductive were recognised for their commercial potential. Mills sprang up in Waimate, Winchester, Orari and Temuka. In Timaru, the first oil and tow mill opened in 1867. One of the larger mills, established in 1871, produced 36 tons of fibre per week and employed 25 men.

Government records show the first flax export from Timaru occurred in 1870, with 17 tons shipped out. The peak years followed shortly after. But by the early 1900s, the industry was already in decline. Swamps were drained. Machinery was often unreliable. And synthetic competition would soon change everything.

Bella MacCallum was born into this landscape. Her flax thesis in the early twentieth century arrived just as the last bales were leaving Timaru’s port. In 1906, the final significant shipment of flax fibre left the region.

Flax Milling in the South Canterbury Jubalee History Book 1916

A chapter about flax milling in the 1916 book on South Canterbury Jubilee History.

A Wartime Revival and Eventual Decline

During the Second World War, a new form of flax was planted on a larger scale. This was linen flax, a European crop grown for its use in parachute harnesses and military cloth. Factories were built, including one in Geraldine, supplied by more than 3,000 hectares of flax fields.

But the boom did not last. By the 1950s, only a fraction of the area remained in production. With the end of war, the lifting of tariffs, and the rise of synthetics, the market collapsed. The last factory closed in the 1970s.

While the export trade slowed and machines fell silent, Māori weavers carried on. The knowledge of harvesting, preparing and working with harakeke never left. It was handed down by observation, by practice, by stories shared between generations.

The flax trade, for all its colonial framing, was never only about industry. It was about adaptability. Māori communities engaged with trade in ways that upheld tikanga. Harakeke was harvested with care, in line with seasons and protocols. The wellbeing of the plant and the people were both considered.

The legacy is not just in the objects created, but in the values preserved. Whanaungatanga. Kaitiakitanga. Manaakitanga. Threads that bind communities to one another and to place.

Flax Milling in the South Canterbury Jubalee History Book 1916 2

A chapter about flax milling in the 1916 book on South Canterbury Jubilee History.

Bella MacCallum saw something remarkable in the fibres of harakeke. She saw potential. She saw structure. She saw strength. She asked scientific questions about a plant that others had overlooked or misunderstood. I wonder if she realised at the time that she was part of a much longer story. A story that began centuries earlier, with weavers and ancestors and a deep-rooted in the land.

Harakeke is not just a plant. It is a taonga. A source of knowledge, resilience and connection. It is woven through the history of South Canterbury and Aotearoa. Through culture, science and trade. Through people like Bella, who dared to look closely.

I began with Bella, and ended up here, standing in front of a harakeke bush, wondering how I had missed all this before.

Harekeke Flax at Patiti Point Roselyn Fauth 2025 detail

A Journey into Harakeke

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