Your Place - Raetihi

It's 80 kilometres upstream from Whanganui and just 11 west of it's twin town Ohakune. In 1887 the New Zealand Company purchased the Waimarino block from local iwi and it proved most profitable. In the first 50 years of last century more than 700 million superficial feet of timber were extracted and milled in the area. Logging provided the bulk of employment and, at its peak in 1918, the town's population had grown to 4500. At the 2006 census, just over 1000 people called it home. But, like many of our rural enclaves, it's reinventing itself and fighting the urban and northwards population drift