Several flax mills operated in the [Muhunoa East] district. The earliest of these was situated at Muhunoa West Road in the late “eighties”.
Two mills were operated by Messrs. Swainson and Bevan at the Kuku, where the Dairy Factory stands [2007 view of location on the right], the other on the south side of the Waikawa river just over the bridge on the Main Road [as shown on the left].
Loads of flax were transported to the mills drawn by a traction engine [possibly the one shown on the left], which was a great attraction to the school children, and it could be heard coming a mile away, and was a familiar sight on the road.
The moaning sound of the machinery during the scutching process of dressing the flax was a familiar sound in the district in the 1890s, and the early part of this century when many hundreds of tons of flax were processed.
These local mills are now a thing of the past the flax swamps having been drained and the land given over to pasture for dairying and sheep farming.
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