Motuaka, New Zealand 🌍

Motuaka (#nz72)

A round up of mills, in the locality of Nelson, mentions a windmill being constructed to work flax dressing machinery. Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume IV, Issue 157, 8 March 1845, Supplement

ACCOUNT OF THE SETTLEMENT OF NELSON
A flour-mill is on the point of completion in the town, in a brick building, the wheel horizontal, on the plan of Baxter and Stirratt's patent, turned by water supplied by a lead (tunneled 44 yards, open 110, and raised on wooden posts 242 yards) from the stream in Brook Street Valley; it has at present only one pair of stones, but has power for three; fall 19 feet. Another flour-mill is being erected by the cottiers in the Rewaka Valley, where there is an abundance of excellent material for stones, from which a pair has been prepared. There are three saw-mills : one in the Motuaka, which cuts 20,000 feet of timber a week; a frame saw-mill in Waimea West, working two saws, and cutting 1,000 feet a day; and a mill in Waimea South, working a circular saw two feet diameter, cutting 100 feet an hour. It has a small flour-mill attached. A flax-mill in Waimea East, of 10-horse water power, is at present unworked. One in the Waimea Road, of 3 or 4-horse power, has been constantly employed; the owner has hackling instruments, and has a greater demand for his whale-line and rope than he can supply; he has lately removed it to a stream of greater power in Suburban North. There is another rope-walk in the town. Some smiths at the Motuaka have been directing their attention for some time to the construction of a machine for dressing flax, and having perfected a model, they are now making the machinery, and a wind-mill to work it. The flax-machines brought out by Messrs. Nattrass and Edwards are put up in the Company's old store at the Haven, and are now at work there; a larger building is to be immediately erected at Auckland Point. We may mention here that several hand-machines for flax have been made; they will not clean more than 6lbs. an hour, even if it be possible to produce that quantity for any number of consecutive hours, while one person is required to gather flax and serve the machine. Whether the wholesale proceedings of Messrs. Nattrass and Edwards will admit of its being profitably dressed by hand remains to be seen; if they should, we do not despair of seeing a machine invented that would be useful at all events for else unemployed hours in cottages.