Bainham is a settlement in the

Tasman District Tasman District () is a local government district in the northwest of the South Island of New Zealand. It borders the Canterbury Region, West Coast Region, Marlborough Region and Nelson City. It is administered by the Tasman District Council ...

of New Zealand. Originally called Riverdale, it is located inland from

Golden Bay Golden Bay may refer to: * Golden Bay / Mohua Golden Bay / Mohua is a large shallow bay in New Zealand's Tasman District, near the northern tip of the South Island. An arm of the Tasman Sea, the bay lies northwest of Tasman Bay / Te Tai-o-Aore ...

, southwest of Collingwood. Located in the Aorere valley, Bainham is situated on the northwestern side of the

Aorere River The Aorere River is in the Tasman District of the South Island of New Zealand that flows from headwaters in the alpine regions of the Kahurangi National Park. It has a catchment area of , representing around 11% of the total area of Kahurangi N ...

. The settlement was originally called Riverdale, but when a post office was established there in 1896, a name change was required to avoid confusion with similarly named places, including Riversdale in Southland and Riverdale in Gisborne. The chosen name, Bainham, is a

portmanteau In linguistics, a blend—also known as a blend word, lexical blend, or portmanteau—is a word formed by combining the meanings, and parts of the sounds, of two or more words together.

of the surnames of two of the first European families to settle in the area, Bain and Graham. A telegraph office opened at Bainham in 1898. In 1906, the population of Bainham was over 100, with the main activities in the area being dairy farming, gold mining in the Quartz Ranges, further up the Aorere River, and timber milling. A new combined post office and general store was built in 1928 by the local postmaster, Edward Bates Langford. He leased part of the building to the Post Office and Telegraph Department to provide postal services, while using the remainder as a store. Langford's granddaughter, Lorna Langford, took over as postmistress in 1952 and the running of the general store in 1954. She ran the businesses until retiring in 2009. Lorna Langford died in 2020. The building was accorded historic place category 2 listing by

Heritage New Zealand Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga (initially the National Historic Places Trust and then, from 1963 to 2014, the New Zealand Historic Places Trust; in ) is a Crown entity that advocates for the protection of Archaeology of New Zealand, ancest ...

in 1990, and has become a tourist attraction in its own right. Bainham is the nearest settlement to the northern end of the

Heaphy Track The Heaphy Track is a popular Tramping in New Zealand, tramping and mountain biking track in the north west of the South Island of New Zealand. It is located within the Kahurangi National Park and classified as one of New Zealand's ten New Ze ...

, to the southwest, and is a gateway to the

Kahurangi National Park Kahurangi National Park is a national park in the northwest of the South Island of New Zealand. It is the second largest of the thirteen national parks of New Zealand. It was gazetted in 1996 and covers , ranging from the Buller River near Murc ...

References

Further reading