Ohakune

The land around Ohakune belongs to the story of Ngāti Rangi and neighbouring iwi, whose relationship with Ruapehu goes back many generations and who lived along the rivers and forest tracks of the mountain's southern side. The modern town began in the early 1890s where the Mangawhero and Mangateitei rivers meet, on the road from Raetihi to Taumarunui, and the railway made it: the North Island Main Trunk line reached Ohakune in March 1908 and was completed in November that year, and a second settlement grew around the station at what became Ohakune Junction.

Timber came first. The rimu and beech forests of the Waimarino district were milled and carried out by rail, and from 1909 to the late 1920s sawmilling paid the town's wages. As the bush was cleared, the volcanic soils turned out to suit vegetables, and market gardening took over, much of it worked by Chinese gardeners who leased the cleared land: carrots above all, with swedes, parsnips and potatoes, sent to markets around the country. By 1941 the district was reported to grow almost half of the North Island's vegetables, and the town's giant carrot celebrates that trade.

The third phase was snow. Skiers had used Ruapehu since the 1910s, mostly on the northern side, but the opening of a ski area at Tūroa on the mountain's south-western slopes in 1978 turned Ohakune into a winter resort, with lodges, bars and holiday houses. The eruptions of 1995 and 1996 closed all three ski fields on the mountain and cost the region dearly; the fields' operator was liquidated in 2023 and Tūroa passed to a new owner. Walking and mountain biking, and the reopened Old Coach Road, have built up a second, quieter season.

Ohakune has two personalities in a single year. Through the winter it is a ski town: hire shops open early, buses run up the Mountain Road, and the Junction fills with people in ski gear who eat and drink late. Seasonal workers arrive from around New Zealand and overseas, and events such as the Mardi Gras draw large crowds for a night. Once the lifts stop, the town returns to a quiet farming and forestry community of a few streets, where most people know each other and the school and sports clubs are the centre of social life.

Ruapehu itself shapes local identity and custom. For Ngāti Rangi the mountain is an ancestor rather than scenery, and visitors are asked to treat the summit and crater area as sacred. The iwi has been closely involved in the management of Tongariro National Park, and its settlement with the Crown recognised that relationship. Māori place names and marae, at Rangataua and nearby, remain part of the district's fabric.

The carrot is the town's own joke and emblem, celebrated with a carnival, a sculpture and a great deal of merchandise. Rugby, hunting, fishing and gardening fill much of the rest of the year, and the annual rhythm of snow, then planting, then harvest, is still the way people describe their calendar.

Ohakune has fewer than two thousand residents — roughly 1,350 in the town itself — and the wider Waimarino district, including Raetihi and Rangataua, adds a few thousand more. Winter visitors can multiply that figure many times over on a busy weekend, which is why the town has more accommodation, restaurants and bars than a settlement of its size would otherwise support.

Work is seasonal in two directions. Market gardening and forestry employ people through the warmer months, with planting, harvesting and packing on the flats around town and logging trucks on the highways; the ski season brings work in lift operations, hospitality, retail and hire shops. Many households combine the two, and some depend on the mountain opening at all, so a poor snow year is felt across the district.

Daily life is practical: school buses on long rural routes, the supermarket and the medical centre in town, and longer trips to Taumarunui, Whanganui or Palmerston North for hospital care and larger shopping. Holiday houses owned by city families sit empty much of the year, which lifts property prices and squeezes rentals for local workers — a familiar problem in New Zealand resort towns. Cold, damp housing, the cost of heating and the uncertainty around the ski fields' future are recurring concerns.

Vegetables are the local speciality, and they are grown rather than cooked into any famous dish. Carrots are the emblem, but the paddocks also produce swedes, parsnips, potatoes, brussels sprouts and other cold-weather crops, sold at farm gates and roadside stalls and trucked to supermarkets nationwide. Summer visitors often take home a sack of whatever has just been lifted.

Eating out follows the snow. In winter the town supports pizza places, pubs, cafés, burger joints and a few more ambitious restaurants, mostly around Clyde Street and the Junction, serving the sort of food skiers want: big plates, soups and stews, roast dinners, venison and beef, and beer from New Zealand craft breweries. Mulled wine and hot chocolate appear on blackboards, and the bakery's pies and filled rolls are a standard mountain lunch. In the off season the choice narrows sharply and some kitchens close for weeks.

Wild food is part of the local table. Red deer and pigs are hunted in the surrounding forests, and trout are taken from the Mangawhero and other rivers in the season, and both appear at home rather than in restaurants. Elsewhere the fare is standard New Zealand: flat whites in the morning, fish and chips wrapped in paper, lamb on a Sunday, and pavlova or hokey pokey ice cream to finish.