Daily Photo – Ranfurly

It was mid to late afternoon when I came into Ranfurly. The sun was beginning to slip down the sky, casting a long golden light across the Maniototo Plains. I was on my way to Waipiata, but Ranfurly was sitting there in the middle of the landscape looking quietly self-assured, so I decided to make a small detour. Like most New Zealand small towns, Ranfurly seemed to be quietly going about its business while the outer world went hurriedly by.

The Maniototo had been vast and open all afternoon, a place where the sky seemed to take up more space than land. Coming into Ranfurly felt a little like stepping into a pocket of civilization after so much emptiness, if only for a microsecond – a modest town on the edge of a timeless land supporting a surprising amount of character.

Putting its ruralness aside, the first thing I always notice about Ranfurly is the art deco. It’s everywhere: shopfronts, corners, the old post office. Ranfurly owes this quirk to a run of fires in the 1930s, which had cleared much of the main street and forced the town to rebuild. While other places might have chosen a more practical, no-nonsense approach to reestablishing the town, Ranfurly went in a slightly different and quite unexpected direction by giving itself a touch of Hollywood glamour.

The result is a main street with clean lines and curved corners, pastel colours and cheerful facades – the sort of place where you half-expect to find Clark Gable leaning against a doorway in the tearooms. If tourists stopped and asked him for directions he would be able to turn and say, “frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn! Further down the street outside the pub they could have Humphrey Bogart telling people “The problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world” while Gene Kelly could appear every time it rains, singing and dancing – twirling an umbrella.

Of course, all of this isn’t so. Like most New Zealand towns, Ranfurly is built on farming, family, and a strong sense of community. But the art deco architecture gives it a twist – a kind of unexpected pride that sets it apart from its neighbours. You come for the wide landscapes and sharp light of Central Otago, and somehow leave remembering a town that chose style as well as substance. But what really tickled me was the thought that, out here on Maniototo Plains, a town had decided not only to exist but to do so with a certain amount of pizzazz, as if to say, “yes, the sheep are important, but have you seen our curves and pastel trims?”