The last bush fire on the South Block

item details

NameThe last bush fire on the South Block

ProductionLeslie Adkin; photographer; 20 February 1905; Levin

Classificationgelatin dry plate negatives, black-and-white negatives

Materialsphotographic gelatin, sheet glass, silver, photographic plates

Materials Summarygelatin glass negative

Techniquesblack-and-white photography

DimensionsOverall: 107mm (width), 82mm (height)

Registration NumberA.005847

Credit lineGift of G. L. Adkin family estate, 1964

Overview

This extract originally appeared in New Zealand Photography Collected: 175 Years of Photography in Aotearoa (Te Papa Press, 2025) on page 102.

In a single decade, from 1890 to 1900, 27 percent of New Zealand’s existing forest was cleared, mostly by fire, and much in the lower North Island. This included the Adkin family farm near Levin. Here we see one of their last lowland parts being fired in what Leslie Adkin recorded as a ‘splendid burn’.1 As a labourer on his father’s farm, he spent many back-breaking hours ‘logging up’ — dragging all the unburnt logs into piles for further burning; and ‘stumping’ — helping to dig up and burn the tree stumps that remained.

1 George Leslie Adkin diary, January 1905–December 1905, 20 February 1905 entry, Te Papa, CA000245/001/0001.