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Social Studies Online

• Your local Historical Society archives;
• Heritage Trails for your local area;
• Wise's New Zealand Index (can usually be found in Libraries or second hand bookshops);
• Wise's Guides (rare but you should be able to get photocopied pages for your local area);
• old maps;
• local histories;
• oral histories;
• interviews with longtime residents;
• local museum displays;
• school archives;
• local newspaper archives.

Students, in pairs or small groups:

1. identify the different industries and other economic activities that were found in their local area.
2. list occupations that would have existed in those industries.
3. discuss how many of these jobs would have been seen as: women's work? men's work?
4. identify the industries, and the jobs that have disappeared and no longer exist today.
5. identify the industries, and the jobs that have changed so much that they are almost unrecognisable today.

Some examples:
According to the Wises' NZ Index of 1945 the old township of Onehunga (Auckland) had two banks, post, telegraph and money order office; the port did a good trade in shipping, timber, manufactured goods and agricultural products; and it supported a large number of businesses and industries - woollen mill, tanneries, sawmills and chemical manure works.

Taumaranui (King Country), on the Main Trunk Line had post, money order and telegraph office; banks, newspaper, hospital, resident doctors; boarding houses; brick and tile works, timber milling; good shooting and fishing; fortnightly sittings of the S.M. (Magistrates) Court.

Waimate (Canterbury) was in the centre of a splendid agricultural and pastoral area; the strawberry and raspberry culture was an important industry; there were several good hotels and private boarding houses, two banks, daily newspaper, post, telegraph and money order office; monthly sittings of the S.M. Court.