Cronadun Memories
Cronadun is a small village located in the West Coast region of New Zealand's South Island. It is situated on the east bank of the Inangahua River, near its junction with Boatmans Creek. SH 69 and the Stillwater–Westport Line railway pass through the village
Name
Sometimes recorded as Cronaden and Cronadon, the locality was named by three brothers – Timothy, John, and Dominic Gallagher – after their home in County Donegal. Crough na dun (Irish:Cró na Doinne) means "hill of the fort", and Anglicised is Cronadun.
History
In 1901 Cronadun had a population of 39, with a hotel, post office, store, and telephone bureau.
Railway
For a few years, Cronadun was the terminus of the Stillwater–Westport Line as construction progressed from Reefton alongside the Inangahua River towards the Buller Gorge. Cronadun became the terminus in 1908, and the next section to Inangahua Junction opened in 1914.
Cronadun District
From Wikipedia
By Alan Hunt
2013
Cronadun once had it all – a pub, a store, a hall, school, church, post office and railway station with jobs in the district in gold and coal mines, sawmills and on farms and the railway. One of the earliest dairy factories on the Coast was in Cronadun. Today, the station is still there, empty and getting derelict, the shop and the school have been converted to houses, the hall went to Reefton in 1975 and the rest are history.
The first gold discovery in the Inangahua area was in a small tributary of Boatmans Creek in 1866, by a party led by John Redman. Boatmans got its name because Redman's party landed there, waiting for a flood to go down before continuing up the Inangahua River. Within 2 months there were at least a thousand gold-seekers in the area.
The area, all the way up the valley, was known as Boatman's Creek until January 1873 when a Mr. Gallagher opened a Post Office in his store on the corner of Boatman's Road and the Westport-Reefton road. He changed the name to Cronadun after his home village in Ireland.
The pub soon followed and the village prospered. In 1907 the two-teacher school had 60 pupils enrolled. The railway from Reefton was opened in 1907 and Cronadun was the end of the line until 1914 when the Inangahua Junction section was opened.
The last sawmill closed in 1963 and with better roads, trucks and cars, most of the population moved into Reefton.
Phillip Capper Photo Collection
Early morning overfly of a friend's house (used to be the village store), Cronadun, Inanagahua Valley 1977 In a Cessna 182
en route Cronadun to Nelson. At the top of the shot are the remains of the Cronadun pub, which had burned down a
few weeks previously
Cronadun, is situated on the east bank of the Inangahua River. There were some important sluicing gold diggings in the triangle formed by Larry Creek, the Inangahua River and the edge of the Reefton Hills, the population in the 1870s was large. In February 1873, a sub- post office was opened at Mr Gallagher's store in Cronadun for the convenience of miners. It was estimated that in March 1880 there was a total population of 370 - 270 Europeans and 100 Chinese at Cronadun, Capleston and Larry's Creek in the Inagahua County. A daily coach took passengers between Reefton and Cronadun.
Mary Gallagher Crowley Memory:
1871 - 1904, Dad (John Gallagher) ran the Store and the Hotel and the Post Office was attached.
On one side of the store were groceries. It was a very big store. On the other side was a drapery,
and in the back a great big glass case had shoes and boots and gumboots. Out the back was a
sitting room, and then beside that was an office. We had commercial rooms for accommodation
and they were for special people. Sir Robert Stout used to come and visit, and a Mr Longbeam
and Dick Seddon. They stayed and went fishing with Dad. They would sit on a bough in the orchard
and eat the fruit when it was ripe. Dad used to take a lot of stores up to the mines on horseback.
It was on the top of a hill. You couldn't take a trap up there, only the packhorses - we had eight packhorses -
they used to carry sheets pf iron up Victoria Range. The sheets or iron were used to build the huts.
Carol McMahon Drawing
–Phillip Capper