Sometimes town icons outlast what they are celebrating. Or even the town. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, or perhaps this once a Lemon & Paeroa soft drink, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.
This is really a story of how towns rise and fall. Yes the drink from there still exists but not from Paeroa. The gold is gone, the railway is gone, the river is no longer navigable so the port is gone. The icon of the towns former signature product is still there and this is a stamp set of town icons. Not of thriving towns.
Todays stamp is issue A442, a 40 cent stamp issued by New Zealand on October 7th, 1998. It was a 10 stamp issue of town icons all in the same denomination. It was also available as a souvenir sheet. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 45 cents. The souvenir sheet is worth $4.50.
The towns area was occupied by Maori tribes when it was first explored by Captain James Heard while in the employ of the for profit New Zealand Company in 1826. Around 1870, the area saw a gold rush and prospectors bought the land from the Maori. Captain Beard had also bought the land from the Maori but I guess the natives attitude was use it or lose it. The height of the towns prosperity came when the Bank of New Zealand set up a gold refinery. It was never a big town but even the railway came.
The Lemon & Paeroa drink was a soft drink consisting of lemon juice and the local carbonated mineral water beginning in 1907. The ad slogan was “World Famous,… in New Zealand”. The drink is a common mixer in New Zealand pubs with the American whiskey based liqueur, Southern Comfort. Around the time of the stamp there was a ad campaign showing the bottle statue on the stamp with a homespun rendering of the local population.
The town is now ready for a new boost. The gold ran out, the refinery closed and the trainline shuttered. Lemon & Paeroa sold out to Coca Cola and is now bottled at their bottlers no longer using the local water. The town’s population is below 4000 and heavily Maori. Perhaps if a new use for the area is proposed, the Maori will again entertain offers.
Well my soft drink is empty and I am curious to try that Southern Comfort concoction my next time in New Zealand. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.