New Zealand has lots of landmarks. Oamaru has the carrot, Paeroa the L&P bottle, and Taihape the gumboot. Rakaia and Gore both have giant fish statues – the former a salmon, the latter a trout. Even Geraldine has a giant jersey — all symbols of the produce from each region.
Foxton, in the Horowhenua, has a windmill. Specifically, it is a working, authentic 17th-century Dutch flour smock windmill. And it’s apparently the only working windmill south of the Equator.
Yet, unlike all those other landmarks, the windmill has come out of nowhere. Foxton is not traditionally known for its Dutch culture, windmills, wheat, or flour.
However, a small group of local Dutch immigrants, including Dirk van Til and Jan Langen, got it into their heads in the 1990s to build the most iconic of Dutch structures – the windmill. Not just to celebrate Dutch culture but to prop up a town that was struggling to survive.
The group was called the “Mad Dutchmen” by locals.
It was an affectionate title. According to Jan’s daughter Judy, the council were more than happy to offer them land in the town centre for their project.
And so they began. It took them a decade, but in 2003, the mill officially opened.
It’s hard to comprehend how difficult the task must have been.
The windmill is properly functioning – it actually produces flour. The six or seven stories inside (depending on how you count them) are jam-packed with all sorts of wooden beams and cogs and gears, driven by the enormous sails spinning outside.
The windmill now attracts thousands of visitors annually – especially, unsurprisingly, Dutchfolk. Now, you can buy Dutch goods on the ground floor or head over to the Dutch café to get a croquette or fries with mayo.
And it’s all somewhat serendipitous. Apparently, Foxton is an ideal place for a windmill.
To make flour, you obviously need wind, but if the wind is too strong – say somewhere like Wellington – the sails will spin too fast and grind the grain too fine. Also, with too much wind, all the friction of the wooden parts can actually cause a windmill to set itself on fire.
But to understand all of this, you need a professional miller, or molenaar, to operate such a complex piece of pre-industrial machinery. In the Netherlands, the qualification takes three years.
The last thing local 20-year-old Jamie Henry was expecting during his teenage years was that he would one day become a professional miller – the only one of his kind in the Southern Hemisphere. He always wanted to be a baker, but there weren’t many calls for bakers in Foxton when he left high school, so he applied for the Mayors Taskforce for Jobs programme.
The programme started in Otorohanga about 20 years ago to help local youth find direction in life but has really taken off in the last three years, especially during Covid. When Horowhenua Mayor Bernie Wanden found out Horowhenua was eligible for it, he was immediately on board. It was that programme that helped guide Henry towards the windmill.
Henry loves his job.
Once perhaps a bit shy around people, he now happily explains the inner workings of the mill to its many visitors. He emanates a delightful social air.
He knows the Dutch name for all the parts, and his knowledge of the hundreds of parts of this complicated beast is remarkable. His only helpline for this tremendous machine are millers in the Netherlands, who, because of the difference in time zones, he sometimes has to call in the middle of the night if he hears a weird “bonking” sound.
Henry seems to have some premonition for the changing of the winds.
We’d be talking, and he suddenly headed outside and unhooked the (insert random Dutch word here) from the (insert random Dutch word here) and spun the (insert random Dutch word here) to line up the sails perfectly with the new wind.
Inside, he carefully explained how he had to consider the type of grain, the sound of the stone grinders, and the position of the various rods and levers to make the perfect flour. That’s all on top of taking into account the current speed of the wind, which is ever-changing.
Henry now has the wind at his back, and he’s soaring forth in the most unlikely of careers.
When he finally achieves his dream of starting his own bakery, his intimate knowledge of and passion for flour will undoubtedly make him one of the country’s finest.
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