Totara North Murals

At Totara North, last time I visited I drove past the local museum and stopped to admire these murals painted on various buildings.

 Painted by artist Chris Wilkie who joined up with local Bruce Sanderson, they illustrate the area's history such as the Lane and Brown timber mill.

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The local Kauri milling industry which employed many settlers to cut down trees - apparently the man in this man is Bruce's dad, an Augustus Earle lithograph of early Maori in their Kainga (home) near the beach. 

Bruce's great great grandmother Te Waka Heremaia from Rawhiti is also featured. 

A bit more information about this little town: Totara North is a small settlement on the northern side of Whangaroa Harbour. It is home to around two hundred close-knit residents and has a primary school with 38 pupils, a community hall and gardens, The Gum Store bar and cafe, a now derelict timber mill, a wharf, a shed for crayfish processing and a boat ramp. 

The steep bush-clad hills of this northern side of the harbour tumble almost all the way into the sea and offer little flat land on which a town could grow, but prior to the 1990's when the last privately-owned kauri trees were milled, Totara North's proximity to the sea, the kauri trees and kauri gum fields, allowed it to exploit its nearby kauri forests and to become a thriving and prosperous community and a hub of commercial activity and enterprise in Northland. (information taken from from Whangaroa.co.nz)

Linking up with Mural Monday.