ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned to tell the story of three key contributors to the history of New Zealand sʼ communal experiments. All are precursors of those we visit in later chapters, but without these experiments, those of today would not exist in the way they do. The first is the now largely forgotten community of Beeville, which was founded sometime in the 1920s or early 1930s and which lasted for over 40 years as a secular community. This extraordinary community has been influential in many ways on New Zealandʼs communal history. It is the direct forerunner of one of the country sʼ best-known communities, Wilderland, and inspired many others. It also challenges the conventions of much of the scholarship on intentional communities. The second is James K. Baxter, the New Zealand poet who founded three communities and whose work remains an important influence in the communal movement today. The third is the Ohu Movement, in which the national government sponsored the foundation of intentional communities. The story of this extraordinary experiment tells us much about the dreams and reality of ʻtop-down ʼutopianism.
