Hawksbury, New Zealand facts for kids

Hawksbury, also known as Cherry Farm (and sometimes erroneously as "Evansdale"), is a small residential and industrial area in New Zealand, located beside State Highway 1 between Dunedin and Waikouaiti.

Hawksbury today

Hawksbury has a looped network of curving streets in a typical post-war "public works" plan. There were a number of small hospital residential buildings known as "villas": some have been converted and modernised as houses and many others demolished.

There are also shops, a post office, library and school, all of which are unused. The former hospital chapel is used regularly by a local Christian group. There is also a museum explaining the Christian creation story.

Larger multi-storey office and accommodation buildings have been developed as low-cost rental housing.

Moana Gow Pool, a swimming pool remaining from the hospital days, serves the surrounding areas of Waikouaiti, Karitane and Blueskin Bay. (This should not be confused with the olympic-sized pool in Dunedin with a similar name.)

Hawksbury's main business and attraction to passing traffic is the Evansdale Cheese factory and shop, which relocated here from Evansdale when it outgrew its old premises.

There is a local Kyokushin Karate club that runs in Hawksbury Hall with members from the surrounding areas of Waikouaiti, Palmerston, Karitane and Macraes.

Place names

The name Hawksbury, often misspelled Hawkesbury, was an early English name for the settlement at Waikouaiti, and is still applied to the Hawksbury Lagoon and several businesses there. The developers of Hawksbury probably changed the name from Cherry Farm because of the social stigma attached to the psychiatric hospital. The area's association with mental health care is maintained in the name of the Hawksbury Community Living Trust. The cheese factory's prominent signage here sometimes leads to Hawksbury being erroneously referred to as Evansdale.

The nearby Matanaka Farm, which contains New Zealand's oldest surviving farm buildings, was first settled by the Australian whaler Johnny Jones in 1840. Cherry Farm is named for Captain Cherry, the master of one of Jones's ships.

Images for kids

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  Former hospital building in 2008