Abandoned Land: Ahu Ahu
A collection of photographs documenting settlement in the lower Ahu Ahu Valley from the end of Ahu Ahu Valley Road to the Whanganui River. This land is presently administered by the Department of Conservation.
The Ahu Ahu Valley represents on a small scale the history of large areas of abandoned hill country in the central North Island. The presence of the Ahu Ahu Ohu is an unusual feature which provides interest and depth and confirms the inherent unsuitability of the land for settlement.
The images are loosely arranged into four groups: The environment, the pioneers, the Edgecumbes, the Ahu Ahu Ohu.
European settlement in the Ahu Ahu Valley began about 1905. By the early 1940s all the settlers in the lower valley had abandoned their farms and left.
The Edgecumbe family began to graze sheep at Te Tuhi Landing around 1970, but eventually they gave up, and about 2000 they sold their land to the Department of Conservation.
In 1975 a group of young people founded a community, Ahu Ahu Ohu on abandonded land in the valley. By 2000, like the pioneer settlers before them, all the Ohu residents had left.
No one is living in the area now.
© John Steele Photography
