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The New Zealand Railways Magazine is on sale through the principal booksellers, or may be obtained post-free for 6/- per annum.
Employees of the Railway Department are invited to forward news items or articles bearing on railway affairs. The aim of contributors should be to supply interesting topical material tending generally towards the betterment of the service.
In all cases where the Administration makes announcements through the medium of this journal the fact will be clearly indicated.
The Department does not identify itself with any opinions which may be expressed in other portions of the publication, whether appearing over the author's name or under a nom de plume.
Short stories, poetry, pen-and-ink sketches, etc., are invited from the general public upon New Zealand subjects.
Payment for short paragraphs will be made at 2d. a line. Successful contributors will be expected to send in clippings from the Magazine for assessment of the payment due to them.
The Editor cannot undertake the return of Ms. unless accompanied with a stamped and addressed envelope.
All communications should be addressed to The Editor, New Zealand Railways Magasine, Wellington.
I hereby certify that the publisher's lists and other records disclose that the circulation of the “New Zealand Railways Magazine” has not been less than 20,000 copies each issue since July, 1930.
The Department's accounts show that the sales of the Magazine during the year ended 31st March, 1936, were more than treble those of the previous financial year.
Deputy-Controller and Auditor-General. 26/5/36.
In the time of the present generation there have been only two coronations of moment to the British Empire, those of Edward VII and George V. Edward VIII was proclaimed and reigned as King-Emperor, but abdicated before the details of a crowning ceremony had been fully arranged. The coronation of Queen Victoria took place just a hundred years ago, and of that no one living could have a very clear recollection. Only three coronations in the course of a century is a tribute both to the health and stamina of our “Royal line of Kings” and to the peace, stability, and strength residing in the peoples over whom they have reigned.
The double coronation to take place this month, with the full panoply of State and accompanied by a period of rejoicing and celebration throughout the whole of the British Commonwealth of Nations, will be the most spectacular of all. It is rightly regarded as an occasion for a display calculated to stir romance, instil the love of country, and exhibit to the world at large the unity of thought and steadfastness of outlook amongst all our peoples.
Judged by the best of all tests—experience and results—the system of Government known as a Limited Monarchy has served well the whole British Empire, and it is as firmly established now as at any time in British history.
Our King and Queen carry to their Coronation the love and good wishes of all their peoples and the respect and friendship of the other nations throughout the world.
This issue of the “New Zealand Railways Magazine” has been specially enlarged, both in size and circulation, to carry the story of the Wellington New Station which is to be opened officially on the 19th of next month.
An endeavour has been made in these pages to give some idea of the magnitude of the work involved both in planning and building this huge central depot of the Dominion's railways, so that, when the official opening takes place, there may be in the hands of our readers a dependable reference work, with technical articles written by some of the officers directly concerned in the respective sections of the structure.
Those firms which took a leading part as contractors, sub-contractors and suppliers of material and furnishing for the building, are very fully represented in the advertising pages of this issue. How well their work has been done the station itself reveals. All that the existence of this central depot of Dominion transport means in the future development of the country will not be realised until the whole of the work, including the electrification and duplication of lines involved in the terminal improvements of Wellington, has been completed.
The prestige of the New Zealand Railways, like that of any other organisation, is maintained by the bearing and outlook of the individuals who are on its payroll. It happens that this Department of State, with a staff of over 20,000 members, has in its employ a larger number of persons than any other organisation in the Dominion. Our large scale operation may, however, prove to be an advantage or disadvantage departmentally, according to the measure of interest displayed by members towards their work and the personal service they render to those who do business with the Department.
That the reputation of the Service stands high in the community is proved by the many expressions of appreciation conveyed to me by a public which has had its transport problems handled to its satisfaction. The increasing use that is made of our services throughout the country is also further evidence of that appreciation. To be worth while this reputation has to be maintained, not only day by day, but minute by minute throughout the whole range of Departmental activities, so that it will become permanently associated with the name of the N.Z. Railways and symbolic of its service. Any indifference to the requirements (large or small) of our customers by any individual on the staff lets the reputation down, and it should always be remembered that instances of indifference become deeply rooted owing to the inconvenience and displeasure they may cause. Any effort that indicates a willing desire to serve helps to raise the Department's prestige still further.
I would like every member to feel that, irrespective of the extent and responsibility of the work delegated to him, he has the Department's reputation in his own hands. If he has the right conception of this, and meets his opportunities and obligations to serve in the true spirit, then he is in a position to feel that he is giving security not only to the Department but also to himself.
Then every individual member has his own reputation as a railwayman to consider—both within and outside the Service.
Externally it is dependent upon his attitude towards those outside the Service, who know little of his technical capacity as a railwayman but who judge him, and the organisation for which he works, by his attitude towards them as clients of the Department.
His reputation inside the Service depends upon the quality of the work he performs and this is usually well judged by those who are able to compare his work with that of many others carrying out similar duties. Such comparisons are necessary in weighing up the reputation of members of the staff and great care is exercised to see that fair play all round is secured. Opportunity figures largely in the lives of all, more particularly those associated with the Railway Service. It lies with each member to see these opportunities when they come along and to make the best use of them for the common weal. It is thus that reputations of Railway men are made to the mutual satisfaction of the individual, the organisation and the customer.
General Manager.
For half a century the city of Wellington has had no single station serving all railway lines converging on the Capital. Although it has had, at various times, no less than five stations, the last remaining two will, early next month, give place for the first time to one combined station. Wellington railway history goes back sixty-three years to the opening of the first line from Pipitea Point to Lower Hutt, a distance of eight miles 2 chains, on the 14th April, 1874. At that time for the full distance from Pipitea Point to Mills Foundry on the North side of Waring Taylor Street (the northern limit of an earlier reclamation), the hills met the sea on the line of Lambton Quay and Thorndon Quay. The same year saw the completed reclamation on the site on which the Government Buildings stand.
From Pipitea Point just south of Davis Street the beach reached halfway across the present Thorndon Quay to as far as the foot of Tina-kori Road, from whence a narrow strip of land uplifted in the most recent earth movement on the great fault line marking the north western margin of Wellington Harbour extended as far as Petone. On this strip a narrow road and a single line of railway were constructed, following every indentation of the coast line until the Hutt Valley was reached.
During the next three years reclamation of the area of 49 acres between Lambton Quay and the seaward side of Waterloo Quay was completed for the full distance from the foundry to Pipitea Point making possible the extension of the railway a further 47 chains to Ballance Street. On the site of the existing Railway Head Offices fronting Featherston Street between Whitmore Street and Bunny Street a new station, known as Wellington Station, was opened on the 1st November, 1880, and on the same day the Railway was opened to Masterton, 66 miles away. The station building was 150 feet long and cost £2,294. The export goods shed occupied the site of what was later Cable's Foundry, and just across Waterloo Quay was the Railway Wharf completed in April of the same year, forming with the Queen's Wharf at the end of Grey Street, the total shipping accommodation for the city. Pipitea station remained in the meantime as a stopping place. Three years later proposals were advanced to shift Wellington station northwards to the site of the present Lambton Station, enabling Bunny Street to be carried through to the waterfront at Waterloo Quay. Pipitea Station was closed on September 30th, 1884, and the following year Lambton Station was opened for passengers.
Meanwhile the outlet from Wellington by the West Coast route had been engaging the attention of the Government of the day. In 1879 work had been commenced by day labour on the first five miles (the Johnsonville section) of the Wellington-Foxton railway. It is interesting to note at the present time that in 1880 “unemployed” labour was put on to this work which was stopped the following year on account of lack of funds. The year 1881 saw the formation of the Wellington -Manawatu Railway Company to carry on the abandoned work. Construction was recommenced on the 10th May, 1882, by the Company, who, three years later, declined an offer from the Government to purchase the line. Work was carried on with great expedition, and the line was opened to Longburn, 84 miles, on the 29th November, 1886. The Company's original intention was to bring its trains to the Wellington Station, but no agreement being reached as to the interchange of traffic what was intended to be a temporary station was brought into use on 3rd November, 1886 at Thorndon, and for fifty years the two separate stations, 48 chains apart, have served the Wairarapa and Manawatu routes. The steady growth of Lambton goods yard later rendered it impossible to enlarge the passenger station to enable the Manawatu trains to be brought to Lambton.
An important work in connection with the Wellington-Manawatu Railway Company's enterprise was the first Thorndon reclamation of 30 acres completed in 1884. Of this area approximately two acres were taken up in widening Thorndon Quay to its present width, two acres remained for the Government railway reserve, and an area of 19 acres was vested in the Company under the Thorndon Reclamation Act of 1882 and its 1888 amendment. The remaining area along
Both the Government's and the Company's stations were still a considerable distance from what was then the centre of the city on Te Aro flat, and on the 29th March, 1893, the Government line was extended from its Ballance Street terminus a distance of one mile ten chains, and Te Aro Station was opened. The station was located at the foot of Tory Street with its frontage to Wakefield Street. The line was laid along Customhouse Quay and Jervois Quay, and the speed of trains had to be restricted to eight miles per hour, with a further reduction to four miles per hour past the wharf gates. All trains had to be run empty one way between Te Aro and Lambton, and the railway extension was never very popular. It was at no time used for goods traffic, and the coming of electric trams in June, 1904, soon rendered it superfluous for passenger purposes. It was closed for traffic on the 26th April, 1917, and finally lifted on the 27th March, 1923.
For many years the Wellington-Napier-New Plymouth section was separate from the Auckland system, but the approaching completion of the main trunk line connecting the two systems at last necessitated the taking over by the Government of the Mana-watu Company's line on the 7th December, 1908. The opening of the line from Wellington to Auckland on 15th February, 1909, and the transfer of the Napier traffic from the Wai-rarapa to the Manawatu line to take advantage of the easier grades on the latter route, transferred the greater portion of the traffic from the Lambton Station to the Thorndon Station, further accentuating the disability of having two stations that could not be connected up for passenger traffic. Before a combined station could even be considered, however, the reclamation of further land from the harbour on a larger scale than ever had to be considered in conjunction with the requirements of the Harbour Board. Several years had to be passed in negotiations before the larger reclamation could be instituted by the letting of the contract for the Thorndon wall.
Before passing to a description of the present station it will be well to notice the causes leading to the necessity for further expansion. It seems a great leap from the £2,294 Whitmore Street station of fifty-six years ago to the new Bunny Street station costing one hundred and fifty times as much. Everywhere increased population and increased production followed close upon each successive extension of the railway system throughout the country. Even the most far-seeing statesmen of the early days could not foresee the rapid development of the colony. At wayside stations it was possible almost imperceptibly to increase the railway facilities as required, with stockyards here, passenger accommodation there, siding extension elsewhere, additions to goods sheds somewhere else, each in turn doing its part in increasing production and consequently increasing railway traffic. Early lines constructed for cheapness with sharp curves and steep grades as single lines with crossing stations far apart, quickly became inadequate.
From time to time longer crossing loops, more frequent stations, improved signalling systems, greater locomotive power, easier grades, local duplications of the line and relocation of the worst sections with easier curves suitable for higher speeds increased the carrying capacity of the lines. The principal terminals, too, already extended over
Meanwhile city streets with warehouse buildings had tended to limit the room available for station yard expansion on the landward side, while further reclamation involving new seawalls each time in deeper water than the last made it more than ever necessary to avoid hand-to-mouth projects and consider not only present but future needs in any new proposal. Harbour developments and road access had also to be considered in conjunction with railway facilities.
As early as 1887 the question of straightening the Hutt Railway and widening the road came before the Government, and it continued to be brought up during the next twelve years. On 28th July, 1899, a deputation waited on the Government, following a public meeting at Petone, and on 5th May, 1900, the Wellington Chamber of Commerce wrote to the Minister of Railways urging that the improvements be carried out.
The Hutt Railway and Road Improvement Act, 1903, authorised the further reclamation necessary for the straightening and duplicating of the Wellington-Lower Hutt railway and the construction of a road 80 feet wide alongside. This work was completed in March, 1911, giving an excellent approach both by road and rail from the Wairarapa route. The Manawatu line, however, at this time carrying much the heavier traffic, continued to enter Wellington by the old route. The grade of 1 in 40 uncompensated for curvature, with sharp reverse curves, rising to an elevation of 518 feet between Khandallah and Johnson-ville, rendered the haulage of goods trains slow and costly, while the numerous tunnels made the route uncomfortable for passengers. The location of the line was such that it would not be possible in the event of further yard extension to bring goods trains into the new goods yard without unduly cramping the accommodation available.
These considerations led to the commencement in June, 1927, of the Tawa Flat deviation, bringing the line by a new route on a grade of 1 in 100, compensated for curvature, reduced to 1 in 110 in the shorter tunnel and 1 in 122 in the longer tunnel, with curves of not less than 20 chains radius. The new line was laid out to cross the Hutt Road and railway just south of Nga-hauranga, descending to the Wellington yard level just north of Kaiwarra, thence continuing on the seaward side to Wellington, giving easy access to any new goods yards that might be constructed anywhere between Wellington and Kaiwarra.
It was later decided to electrify this line so as to minimise possible discomfort from smoke in the tunnels which are 61 chains and 2 miles 54 chains long respectively, and provide a fast suburban service to Paekakariki and intermediate stations. This deviation, 8 miles 30 chains long in double track, shortens the distance by two and a half miles, and reduces the climb to 195 feet above sea level. A single track was brought into use for goods purposes on July 22, 1935, and the double track will be brought into operation for all purposes when the new station is opened on the 19th of June this year. It will not be possible, however, to operate the new line immediately by electric traction, as trains will have to enter by a temporary route, not suitable for electrification, until the existing Thorndon Station can be demolished. This cannot be done until the new station is in use.
After the completion of the Wellington-Lower Hutt line in 1911, Railway development at Wellington became dependent on further reclamation in the Thorndon area. A comprehensive reclamation scheme had been prepared in 1908, covering the future needs of both the Harbour Board and the Railway Department. A proposal for a new station combining Lambton and Thorndon was formulated in 1912, but it was not until 24th January, 1922, that an agreement was entered into between the Minister of Railways and the Harbour Board under which an area of 68 1/2 acres was to be reclaimed, the cost of the sea wall to be divided according to the areas to be reclaimed for each party of the agreement, approximately 11 1/2 acres for the Board and 57 acres for the Department. Each party was to pay the cost of its own filling behind the wall. The Department was to meet any claim enforceable by the City Council on account of the closing of Thorndon Esplanade up to the cost of reclaiming an equal area on the seaward side, anything in excess of this to be met by the Harbour Board. By a later agreement after the completion of this work the Department paid the City Council £20,000 and formed a waterfront roadway 60 ft. wide with a level crossing over the new railway tracks—now known as Aotea Quay. As the result of strong representations from various local bodies, however, it was decided to erect an overbridge instead of the level crossing, the Railway Department to contribute £12,000 including the value of land given up, the City Council and other local bodies, £11,000, the Unemployment Fund £10,000, and the Public Works Department £1,000 if required. The bridge and ramps are now under construction.
The Thorndon sea wall was commenced in March, 1923, and finished in September, 1927. A start was made with the filling on 1st August, 1924, the Harbour Board's Dredge, “Whaka-rire,” pumping dredgings from the harbour into the area behind the wall. Two years later the dredge “Kaione,” was hired from the Wanganui Harbour Board to expedite the work. When the filling reached the limit to which silt could be pumped from the sea wall, the filling was completed with material excavated from the tunnels on the Tawa Flat deviation and elsewhere. The reclamation affected the drainage of the Thorndon Quay area necessitating the construction of two large culverts extending from near Thorndon Quay and the Hutt Road respectively to the line of the sea wall.
On the 23rd October, 1929, a contract was let for the goods shed on the older filling and the shed was brought into use on the 13th August, 1931, having previously served as a depot for the reception of refugees from the Hawke's Bay earthquake area. The contract for the erection of the station building was let on the 7th November, 1933, the work to take 3 1/4 years. The foundation stone was laid by his Royal Highness the Duke of Gloucester on the 17th December, 1934, and the completed building is to be opened by His Excellency the Governor-General, Viscount Galway, on 19th June, 1937.
For the purposes of description the station may be divided into the approach lines, goods yard, locomotive depot, passenger yard and station building. On the reduced plan of the general layout it will be seen that Davis Street marks the natural boundary between the goods and passenger yards. Running northwards there are three main lines, one being the Johnsonville line, the other two the up and down main lines. Westward of the main lines provision is made for private siding facilities to business sites fronting Thorndon Quay and Hutt Road and for future car sidings. Three quarters of a mile further north, just south of the new water front road crossing where an overbridge is under construction, the arrival and departure lines to and from the goods yard join the main lines. Immediately beyond this point the two main lines separate into five tracks, a goods line to Kaiwarra yard and the various private sidings on the west or Hutt Road side, an “up” and a “down” Wai-rarapa line in the centre, and an “up” and a “down” Auckland line by way of the new Tawa Flat, deviation on the east or seaward side.
On passing Kaiwarra the Auckland line begins to rise until it crosses the Wairarapa lines and the Hutt Road at an oblique angle by a steel plate girder bridge and enters the first tunnel. The distant junction at the north entrance to the goods yard from the main lines is worked from the main signal box in the passenger yard a few chains south of Davis Street. The junction between the Kaiwarra, Auckland and Wairarapa lines will also be so worked from the day of the opening of the new station and the Tawa Flat deviation.
The goods yard extends along the whole of the seaward side from the distant junction to Davis Street, bounded on the east by Aotea Quay. Along the western side of the goods yard are four arrival roads
In a central position in the goods yard is a shunters' building with lunch room and locker rooms for the shunters, while in a story above, overlooking the whole yard is the Yard Foreman's office. An interlocking frame in this office controls the movements of all trains in the goods yard clear of the main lines. Two wagon weighbridges are provided, one in the sorting and one in the marshalling yard. The goods shed, completed in 1931, close to the junction of Davis Street and Waterloo Quay, is a solid structure of steel and concrete, 500 feet long, with three sidings under cover served by two platforms at floor level of wagons and a covered roadway at rail level. An electric overhead crane of the under-hung jib type runs the full length of the shed and a light mobile crane runs on the platforms and roadway. Lorries can pass through the full length of the shed on the “inward” side, or back up to doors along the full length of the “outwards” side. Immediately to the east is the local delivery yard with six loading and unloading sidings in pairs with wide roadways between. On the west side of the goods shed there is space available for a further shed or covered siding when required. The Goods Office is inside the goods shed at the Davis Street end.
The Locomotive Depot lies between the main lines and the goods yard. Until after the removal of the present Thorndon Station it will not be possible to complete the layout of the locomotive yard, and temporary coaling and sanding facilities have to be used until the site is clear. Separate “in” and “out” roads are provided for steam locomotives, with 70 feet turntable, mechanical ash-handling plant, and water columns between the two roads. The coaling plant, an elevated bin with a coaling chute on each side, will also be erected between the two roads, the wagons of coal being hauled up singly by an electric winch. Eastward of the steam locomotive roads are an “in” and an “out” electric road. Between the coal bin and the shed the sand-drying shed will be located, the sand being elevated by compressed air into over-head bins. Ample inspection pits are provided on all engine roads.
A two storey building just south of the shed has the locomotive store on the ground floor and the Locomotive Foreman's office and bath and locker rooms for the running and repair staff on the upper floor. The engine shed, over an acre in area, is erected in five bays for steam locomotives, electric locomotives, engine repairs, machine shop, and car and wagon repairs. There is access to the shed from both ends. Owing to delays in the arrival of the electric equipment arising out of conditions on the other side of the world, steam traction will have to be retained for longer than was originally intended, so temporary smoke troughs and smoke stacks are being erected in the electric bay.
Southwards from Davis Street the passenger yard extends the full distance to the station building at Bunny Street. The three main lines continue right up to the platforms, but two converging roads crossing them obliquely also connect all platforms to all main lines. The line from the western or suburban platform passes all platform roads, then the main lines, the locomotive roads, the express car shunting road, goods exchange wharf siding, goods yard, and finally the road to rail car shed and turntable. Crossing the yard in the other direction a line meets the arrival platform on the east, then the departure, general, and suburban platform approaches, and crossing the main line continues to a short spur siding for holding and watering engines, and finally to the suburban car shunting road and private sidings on the Thorndon Quay side.
The passenger accommodation consists of three double and one single fronted platforms, giving seven platform fronts shown numbered on the plan of the yard. No. 1 platform is reserved for the Johnsonville multiple unit electric service. Access from this platform to the Johnsonville line is clear of all train movements to and from the other platforms. A crossover at the centre of the platform permits the departure of one unit while another is at the platform or arriving. Platforms 2 and 3 are for suburban, and No. 4 for general use. Nos. 5 and 6 are the main departure platforms, exactly opposite the main entrance to the building. No. 7 is the main arrival platform, with taxi road alongside. Trains can be shunted
The arrival platform is 20 feet 10 inches wide and 900 feet long; the departure platform is 29 feet 2 inches wide and 900 feet in length. The remaining platforms are 20 feet 10 inches wide and 640 feet long. All platforms are completely roofed over. On either side of the express car sidings are buildings for the use of the sleeping-car staff and the car-cleaning and car-shunting staff respectively. Each building contains suitable meal rooms, bath and locker rooms for the staff, as well as the necessary stores and work-rooms. A steam boiler with a reticulation through the car yard and extending to the platforms provides steam for car heating as well as for cleaning and drying purposes. A siding is provided handy to the arrival platform with covered loading bank for loading and discharging mail vans.
The number of lines crossing Davis Street, together with their spacing and the number of train movements, render it impossible to retain Davis Street for road traffic. A foot-bridge is being constructed, however, giving access by ramps from Thorndon Quay to Waterloo Quay. Davis Street was originally the access to the old Thorndon Esplanade. As the wharves gradually extended northwards from the original railway wharf at Bunny Street, the Bunny Street access became less convenient for road traffic crossing from the Hutt Road, and Davis Street came into use as a more direct access to the wharves by this route. With the completion of the road overbridge on Aotea Quay an even more direct route will be available, and Davis Street will be finally closed except for pedestrian traffic over the new footbridge.
A two-story brick building, facing Waterloo Quay, just north of the main building, contains the Head Office garage, and also a social hall, committee room and library for the various Railway Societies.
Most interesting of all is the station building itself; the situation is ideal, set back from Bunny Street, its two sides fronting Featherston Street and Waterloo Quay. Tramway access is available on Featherston Street, and here is the main suburban entrance. On Waterloo Quay, handy to the wharves and the main entrance road to the city, but clear of passenger traffic, are the entrances for parcel and luggage business.
The building is of attractive design with base of coloured granite, exterior walls of brick and roof of Spanish mission tiles. Eight massive columns reaching to four stories high support the portico protecting the main entrance from the weather, while bronze cantilevered verandahs over each entrance enable taxis to be reached without discomfort in all weathers. The frontage extends for the full distance from Featherston Street to Waterloo Quay, with the station entrance at the centre and office entrances towards each end. The building is five stories high on the three main fronts, with two extra stories along the north wall facing the platforms. The foreground on all three streets is laid out in lawns and shrubberies, harmonising with the architecture of the building.
The main structural members of the station building are of steel encased in concrete and supported on groups of reinforced concrete piles. The whole of the structural steel work and reinforcing was designed by Mr. Peter Holgate, structural engineer. The bricks used in the outer walls are of carefully selected tints and of a special design with slots through which pass vertical rods reinforcing the brickwork and binding it to the structural members. Where the heavy girders supporting the upper floors intersect the vertical lines of the window groups the wall surface is ingeniously treated with a terra cotta pattern in purple and green with a white chevron pattern repeating the vertical
The whole of the ground floor is used for station purposes, and the whole of the upper floors, except part of the first and the sixth, for office purposes. The lay-out of the station may be followed with the aid of the plan. Taxi roads lead to the covered main entrance, where rooms for the use of “red-cap” porters and taximen are located on either side. Within is a spacious and lofty booking hall. The floor is of terrazzo, with brass edgings, the lower walls of Whangarei marble, the upper walls of tinted plaster work. The arched roof is of fibrous plaster in deep panels of pleasing colours. Immediately on the right on entering are the ticket windows, on the extreme right is the reservations and inquiry counter, and opposite the ticket windows is the checked luggage counter. On the left centre is the train directory, while the stationmaster's office is immediately to the left of the entrance. At the extreme left is the dining room, the walls of marble brightened with numerous mirrors, the pillars of marble with bronze bases and capitals. Beyond is the kitchen, replete with all modern equipment for expeditious service.
Opposite the main entrance of the booking hall is the lobby leading to the concourse which runs parallel with the main front and opens on to all platforms. Excellent lighting is provided from the arched roof. At the Feathers-ton Street end is the suburban entrance, with the emergency booking office for race traffic on the one side and newspaper stall, barber's saloon and baths on the other. Fronting on a short platform opening on the north wall are public and staff lavatories, traffic stores and lamp room. Along the north wall on each side of the entrance to the suburban platforms are a group of telephone booths and a Post Office. On each side of the entrance to the main departure platform are the fruitstall and bookstall. The luggage room is at the extreme end of the concourse and extends through to Waterloo Quay where lorries may load and unload. On the side of the concourse adjacent to the main building are placed the Coaching Foreman's office and guards' and porters' rooms and the staff entrance to the kitchen. Next come the cafeteria, the general waiting room, the concourse entrance to the dining room and the ladies' waiting room with hospital, lavatories and bathrooms upstairs.
On either side of the lobby connecting the main booking hall with the concourse are a stairway to the upper office floors and a lift to the offices, staff rest rooms and children's nursery on the roof. Beyond the lobby the checked luggage office also opens on the concourse. Outside the concourse on the northern side a covered truck-way facilitates the carriage of luggage to and from all platforms without disturbing passengers waiting in the concourse.
The concourse is neatly finished in tiles and tinted plaster. A train directory is placed near the Featherston Street entrance. There is also an electric “informator” in the concourse and in the booking hall, supplying information as to railway matters, while loud-speakers suitably placed, will convey announcements as to trains and entertain waiting passengers with radio programmes between whiles.
Along the Featherston Street frontage there is an office and waiting room for the Road Motor Service. There is also an ambulance room with all necessary appliances for use in dealing with casualties.
A feature new to railway stations in this country is the provision of a crÁche and playroom for children, enabling mothers from suburban stations to come to town to do their shopping and for a small charge leave their children under proper care at the station. The elevator in the booking hall leads to the fifth floor and from thence a single flight of stairs leads to the roof where a sleeping room for babies, a playroom for older children and an outdoor playground are provided. The walls have friezes of attractive designs and the rooms are provided with toys of all kinds. A kindergarten nurse is in attendance and a kitchen is equipped for the preparation of simple meals. The nursery should prove a decided boon to mothers who would like to come to town but find young children too much of a problem.
The building as now completed is considerably larger than was originally planned and described in the December, 1934, number of this magazine on the occasion of the laying of the foundation stone. With the gradual recovery of railway business the staff had to be appreciably increased and it became apparent that the building
Entering by the office entrance near the Featherston Street corner, a lift and stairway lead to the offices above. The Traffic Manager's staff occupy the whole of this end of the first floor, the Traffic Manager in the corner, with the Assistant Traffic Manager, inquiries and traffic clerks along the Bunny Street frontage, and the Business Agent, staff room, telegraph operators and telephone exchange, wagon supply, train control and train running offices extending along the Featherston Street frontage. In the exchange the operators connect all offices with the public exchange and the principal offices with the railway wires connecting all stations in the North Island. The train control office, equipped with loudspeaker instead of the usual telephones, is in touch by an independent wire with all stations from Wellington to Marton.
Knowing exactly at all times the whereabouts of all trains on this length of line, marking them on a chart before him as they move from station to station, the Train Control Officer is able, whenever for any reason a train cannot keep its schedule times, to rearrange its crossings with other trains to the best advantage. On reaching Marton trains on the Main Trunk line come under the control of the operator at Ohakune who in turn directs them as far as Frankton where they come under the control of the Auckland office. In the train running office the permanent time-tables are prepared and special trains planned as required, with the aid of large diagrams on which trains are represented by lines intersecting at points corresponding to stations and times. The work to be done by trains at stations is also planned in this office.
On the second floor the Signal and Electrical Engineer is located, his Assistant Engineers and draftsmen, facing Bunny Street, the chief clerk, clerks and records, the electrical gear for the exchange below, technical and inspecting officers, and laboratories and test room extending northwards. At the end of the Featherston Street frontage are the Manager of the Outdoor Advertising Branch with offices for his salesmen, clerks and artists.
The third floor contains the library at the corner, and eastwards the Law Officer and his assistant, a conference room and various stores. On this floor (and the one above) the southern corridor leads above the main entrance, reaching to the Suggestions and Inventions Committee room and Refreshment Branch at the Waterloo Quay end. By gangways over the roof of the booking hall communication is also established with the corridor serving the offices fronting the north wall.
Northwards from the library are the offices of the Commercial Manager and his staff. Central on this wing, and extending half-way along the north wall are the staff division, divided into employment, staff and section clerks, and Staff Superintendent and his assistants. At the extreme north end are the mechanician's workshop and the head office of the Road Motor Services.
The whole of this end of the fourth floor is taken up by the Chief Accountant, Assistant Chief Accountant, and their staff and records. In a large room on the north side are the Power's machines used for freight accounting, checking of returns from stations and the compilation of various statistics dealing with such matters as classes of goods conveyed, average haul, and revenue per ton mile.
(Continued on page 97.)
To most people the new station at Wellington appears a large and imposing building equipped with platforms by means of which people may reach the trains. Few people will realise that within the station building is installed a complete electric power supply and telephone equipment and in the station yard a complete interlocking system.
A description of the various phases of this equipment will be of interest and may start with a consideration of the power supply as the whole station depends upon this for its operation.
The electric power supply for the Wellington yard, taken from the Wellington City Council at 11,000 volts, is brought into a main power house (see illustration) and from there distributed at 11,000 volts to the main building, locomotive sheds and goods sheds. This distribution is carried out by means of a ring main so that should a failure of the cables occur an alternative supply can be given to these buildings.
Another of our illustrations shows the substation (in the station building) from which the power is supplied to the various services in this building. The 11,000 volts supply is here transformed to 400/230 volts and distributed by means of. 400 volt ironclad switchgear and armoured cables to subboards situated throughout the building.
In addition to the ring main supply previously described, the 11,000 volts supply is transformed to 3,300 volts in the main power house for the purpose of feeding the signalling installation throughout the yard, to Upper Hutt on one line and Tawa Flat on the other. As it is essential for safe operation of traffic that this supply shall not be subject to failure in any possible way, a standby plant driven by a petrol engine is installed in the power house so that in the contingency of the Council's supply failing, this plant can be brought into use at a few minutes' notice and keep the safety appliances working.
The main supply from the City Council is also supplied by means of a ring main so that if a failure occurs on one side of the supply power can still be maintained through the other.
The electrical equipment in the station building includes electric lighting, cooking and Refreshment Branch requirements, driving calculating machines for the Chief Accountant's Branch, some radiators for heating, and driving the motors for circulating hot water for the heating system. Other services include the automatic telephone exchange and lifts, of which there are four for passengers, one for goods and three service lifts.
The lighting of the building was carefully studied and designed to avoid shadows, in conformity with modern practice. In drawing offices the lighting is totally indirect, the ceilings and walls being used as the reflecting medium. In other offices the lighting fittings are totally enclosed so as to obtain a diffused light. The switching
There are over 50 motors used in the building, varying in size from a fraction of a horse power up to 10 horse power capacity, the total installed load under this heading, including radiators, being 1,200 horse power.
Electric clocks have been installed in all offices, in the various public rooms of the building and on the platforms. These clocks are electrically driven from a master clock situated in the telephone exchange and provision is made that should power fail, the accuracy of the clocks is maintained. The dials of the two outdoor clocks (one facing Featherston and the other Bunny Street) are internally illuminated. The lighting is controlled by an electric eye which automatically switches on the dial lights when daylight fails.
In the automatic telephone exchange, arrangements are made whereby any person requiring the Railways Department in Wellington dials the number 47-800. The calls end on a manual board at which five operators are seated. Immediately a call is received, an operator answers and connects the call through to the person or office wanted. Calls from the offices outwards are made direct to the Post and Telegraph Department's exchange. In addition to public calls dialled from the various offices, it is arranged that each office may call any other office in the building, or through the operator on the manual board can be connected via the Railway trunk lines to any station in the North Island.
(Our illustrations show the manual board and the automatic exchange).
As an adjunct to the telephone exchange, provision is made for what is known as a watchman's service. A watchman going the rounds of the offices must, from 30 different positions, dial a certain number. This number goes through the automatic exchange and records on a chart the time and the office from which the call is made. A fire alarm service is also provided whereby from numerous locations in the building a fire alarm number may be dialled, which call automatically connects up with the Wellington City Council Fire Brigade. Each group of offices is equipped with call bells and indicators to suit the various requirements.
Loud speakers will be located on the platforms and in different rooms of the station building and by this means passengers will be given information concerning the departure and arrival of trains. It will also be possible to provide broadcast music in waiting and dining rooms and to advertise activities of the Department as necessary.
The District Traffic Manager's office, situated on the first floor of the main building, controls the running of trains in the Wellington area and in these offices is installed the train control system. From the control room the movement of all trains between Wellington and Marton and Wellington and Napier is guided by telephonic reports and plotted on train running charts by the Train Control Officer.
This officer arranges the various train crossings and supervises the running of trains so as to avoid delays to traffic. The equipment in this office consists of a selecting device whereby the officer can select any station at will. A loud speaker enables any station in the district to speak to the Control Officer without the necessity for that officer using a telephone receiver.
It is intended as a further development of the communication services to install teleprinters in this office. These instruments are really electric typewriters which are installed at each end of a telephone line. Letters typed on a machine in Wellington will be reproduced as letters on the machines at other stations. The first installation of these instruments will work between Wellington, Wanganui and Auckland.
The new Wellington yard is about two miles in extent and, with the exception of a few signals and points in the goods yards, is wholly controlled from one main signal cabin. It will be appreciated that to control a yard of this length and size from one main cabin involves a very complicated electrical system in order to ensure that trains pass safely through their respective routes and only to lines which are clear. The signalling is operated by electric power and it has already been mentioned that every care is taken to ensure that the power supply shall be entirely reliable under all conditions.
The main signal cabin, where the electric interlocking machine consisting of 127 levers is installed, is situated about a-quarter of a mile north of the station building in close proximity to the main substation. The signals are those known as the three-position, colour-light type and give the well-known red, yellow and green indications to drivers. The points are operated by motors which are connected to the relative levers in the interlocking machine.
Situated above the interlocking machine is an illuminated diagram whereon the positions of trains in the various parts of the yard are indicated by lights. The signalman is thus aware at all times what parts of the yard are occupied and where trains are moving, There are approximately 80 indicating lights installed in this diagram and the signalman can work quite safely with this and does not require to see the actual trains themselves. Behind each of the levers are small indicating lamps which tell the signalman whether the lever is free to be pulled and whether the mechanism which it controls has responded to the movement of the lever.
The interlocking between signals and points is effected electrically and it is only after all the necessary conditions are complied with to ensure the safe passage of a train that the indicating light behind the lever will show free and indicate that the lever can be pulled. Unless this light shows, the lever is locked and cannot be moved from its normal position.
Trains moving through the yard put the signals to “Danger” behind them independently of the signalman and it is impossible for the signalman to allow a train to proceed on to a section of line which is already occupied.
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It has been mentioned that the points are operated by electric motors. There are 70 of these machines in the yard and the points are moved by them in approximately three seconds. While a train is passing through a pair of points the power to the motor is cut
What is known as electric detection is employed as an additional safeguard, the sequence of conditions when a train is signalled being, firstly, that the road must be clear, secondly, that all the points must be in the correct position and, thirdly, that the signalman pulls the correct lever.
Should any of the conditions not have been complied with, it is not possible for the lever to be pulled and, further, if any of the points are at all out of adjustment then the signal will not go to clear as the electric power to operate it passes through contacts on the particular pair of points over which it applies. An inside view of the signal cabin showing the interlocking machine and levers is the subject of one of our illustrations. In this the illuminated diagram can be clearly seen, as can also the indicating lights behind the levers.
In this short article it has been possible to give only the broadest out line of the electrical equipment which has been installed in the new station and yard, but it is hoped that there may be some added interest for those who look at the fine and imposing facade of the new building to know that it is the home of many interesting pieces of apparatus, representing the latest achievements in many phases of engineering.
Their Majesties King George VI and Queen Elizabeth (then Duke and Duchess of York) on the footplate of the Southern Railway Iocomotive” Lord Nelson,” at Ashford, Kent.
Everywhere throughout A the world the toast: “Gentlemen, The King!” is now being honoured. His Majesty King George VI, of whom His Grace the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury remarked: “He has made the welfare of industrial workers his special care and study,” rightly may look upon railway folk at Home and overseas as among the most loyal and most devoted of subjects. Railway managements in every corner of the wide-spread British Commonwealth officially celebrate the Coronation of King George and his gracious consort; Queen Elizabeth, on May 12, and stations and offices carry a wealth of decoration suitable to the historic occasion.
Their Majesties The King and Queen, and, indeed, all the Royal Family, are very good friends of the railways. For short-distance travel, our Royal House naturally make extensive use of road motor transport. When it comes to long-distance travel, however, preference almost invariably is given to the railway as a means of movement. It has several times been the privilege of the New Zealand Railways to convey members of the Royal House over their system, while at Home a special Royal Train is always kept in readiness for immediate use at the Wolverton Carriage Shops of the London, Midland and Scottish line.
Unlike Queen Victoria, who disliked travelling at high speed, King George V liked to journey by rail at the normal high speeds of his day. The same normality applies to our present ruler, King George VI, whose Coronation we now celebrate. In the ordinary course of things, no attempt at record breaking is made when planning the schedules for the Royal Train. Now and again, however, some really fast running has been registered, notably on the Great Western line between London and Plymouth.
A red-letter run was made in July, 1903, when, as Prince and Princess of Wales, King George V and Queen Mary toured the Duchy of Cornwall. On this occasion the 245 3/4 miles between Paddington and Plymouth were scheduled to be covered in 4 hours 30 minutes, or fifteen minutes faster than the previous record journey made by King Edward VII in the previous year, in the opposite direction. The Royal Train consisted of five coaches, hauled by the 4-4-0 locomotive “City of Bath.” Leaving Paddington at 10.40 a.m., and running non-stop to Plymouth, via Bristol, it actually accomplished the journey in 3 hours 53 minutes.
In the course of his railway journeys, King George VI, like his beloved father, invariably evinces the greatest interest in the practical side of railway working. Thousands of railwaymen of all ranks have been engaged in conversation with His Majesty in his search for informtion regarding railway affairs, and King George VI is one of the easiest passengers in the world to please, being appreciative of every little act of courtesy, and never failing to bestow a kindly word of praise upon those concerned directly or indirectly with the operation of the Royal Train.
On several occasion our Kings have actually taken charge on the footplate of the engine drawing the Royal Train. There was that memorable experience, on April 28, 1924, when King George V and Queen Mary visited Swindon Locomotive Works. On the return journey, both the King and Queen mounted the footplate, and His Majesty started the locomotive (No. 4082, “Windsor Castle”) and drove it from the Locomotive Works to the Station. The engine to-day carries on each side of the cab a suitable brass plate recording this occurrence. As Duke and Duchess of York, our present Majesties inspected the Southern Railway Works at Ashford, on October 20, 1926. They viewed with pleasure the new Southern locomotive “Lord Nelson”—at that time the newest and most powerful locomotive
Journeys between London and Scotland are among the most important of the long-distance runs made by the Royal Train. Both the East and West Coast Routes are used on occasion. Normally the trip from London to Balmoral is made by the West Coast Route out of Euston Station. Built as long ago as 1900, in the Wolverton shops of the London and North Western (now L. M. and S.) Railway, the Royal Train always stands in readiness for a “journey at Wolverton. Twenty coaches are available for forming the train, these all being painted outside in the old L. and N. W. colours—lower panels in carmine lake, and upper panels in white, with lining of gold leaf. As a general rule, only ten of the available vehicles are selected to form the Royal Train, these ten coaches weighing approximately 370 tons. Two of the carriages are special saloons for the personal use of Their-Majesties, and these carry on the lower outside panels the Royal Coat-of-Arms, and the insignia of the various Orders of Chivalry, such as St. George, The Garter, St. Andrew and St. Patrick, these all being exquisitely hand-painted. The cornice mouldings are ornamented with an oak-leaf design and gilded; while the headstock ends are carved with lions' heads, gilded, and all the door handles are gold-plated. Replacing the conventional step-boards, there are provided leather-covered folding-steps extending to ground level.
Highly-polished teak double doors give access to a square vestibule at each end of the Royal saloons. In the case of the King's saloon, the forward entrance leads to the smoking-room, finished in fiddle-back mahogany. An arm-chair, covered in apple-green Morocco leather, stands in each corner of the smoking-room, while on each side is a table of the beautiful fiddle-back mahogany. Normally, this is the saloon in which both the King and Queen sit during their journeys. Only when night travel is involved, it is usual to attach the Queen's private saloon to the train.
Adjoining the smoking saloon is the day compartment, where the furniture coverings include imitation Jacobean tapestry patterned with quaint figures upon a cream ground, and a selection of green silk rep coverings which were personally chosen by Queen Mary. In the King's day compartment—largely devoted to office affairs en route—there is a special desk for His Majesty, where there are handled the messages brought to the train by King's Messengers at the various stopping-points. Connecting with this compartment is His Majesty's sleeping saloon, furnished with a silver-plated bed and satinwood dressing-table. Adjoining the bedroom is the bathroom, and a compartment for the sergeant footman attending upon His Majesty.
The Queen's saloon corresponds largely to the King's, but the interior colour scheme is in blue. A noteworthy feature is that all the interior equipment is arranged in duplicate—two writing-tables, two easy-chairs, and so on. This is explained by the fact that the carriage was originally designed for Queen Alexandra, who was always accompanied on her travels by Princess Victoria. The furniture is of satinwood, the walls are finished in white enamel, and the decorations are Georgian. The bedroom furniture is covered in blue silk brocade, and a pink marble wash-stand is a feature of the adjoining bathroom.
Behind the Royal saloons is marshalled the dining-car, with the kitchen end trailing. The car is of standard design, and the food is cooked by specially selected members of the railway catering staff. The complete train, including the locomotive cab, is linked up by an elaborate system of telephones. In addition to the ordinary train staff, the Royal train carries a special staff drawn from the carriage and wagon department, to act as train attendants and be available in case of emergency. Two skilled telegraphists also are included. A first-class corridor brake van, marshalled next to the locomotive, accommodates the train staff. The King, it may be remarked, only uses the special train when this is essential, many journeys being made in an ordinary reserved coach attached to the regular expresses. Incidentally, Their Majesties do not, as is sometimes supposed, travel free by railway. A charge is made to the Royal Household for the service, just as is done in the case of a private individual requiring special accommodation.
Quiet efficiency and dignity are the key-notes of Royal travel. On all but formal occasions, railwaymen and the public respect Their Majesties desire for reasonable privacy, but on State occasions the railways and railway workers meet to the full every ceremonial demand made upon them. Conveying Royal travellers is a great responsibility, but a great privilege. By one and all the duty is so regarded, and at this historic Coronation season railway folk the world over echo, loyally and with all their hearts, the time-honoured toast: “Gentlemen, The King! Long May He Reign!”
The spelling of the Maori language, which makes the tongue so easy and pleasant to learn, once the vowel values are understood, is a shining example to most of the written forms of the Polynesian languages. The spelling of the tongues of Samoa, Tonga, and Niue is particularly a matter of importance to New Zealanders, for we are constantly reading news items from these places and hearing various names pronounced, or mispronounced. The most notorious example of misspelling in the newspapers is “Pago Pago,” for Pango-pango, the American port on the island of Tutuila. Pangopango is the correct and Maori-like form; it is in fact a Maori name meaning dark, or gloomy, referring to the mountains that tower over the fiord harbour. It is phonetic in form; no one can go astray in its pronunciation. But “Pago Pago” is a travesty of the name, a form ugly as well as misleading. Naturally most people in their excusable ignorance call it “Pay-go-pay-go”; trans-Pacific passengers learn that aboard ship.
We shall be hearing a good deal about Pangopango, now that it is one of the stages on that modern miracle, the Pan-American clipper flight from San Francisco to Auckland. New Zealand would do well to rectify this misuse of a melodious and meaningful name. I was pleased to hear at least one man pronounce it properly; that was the National Broadcast announcer at 2YA. He gave it its rightful form and intonation.
It is strange indeed that this matter of spelling has not been rectified in Samoa and its neighbour countries long ago. The early missionaries blunder in making “g” the arbitrary written form for “nga” could easily be set right. Yet ugly and incorrect spellings like “tagitagi,” and “moega” and “Fagaloa” persist; and the new arrival in Samoa or Tonga cannot but think that the names as spelled look like a barbwire fence. It comes to the stranger as a glad surprise to find that the language is really soft and musical without a suspicion of a sharp “g” in it.
The moment is timely for a change in the official and popular misspelling of the Samoa and Niue tongues. Consistency is called for, throughout Polynesia, seeing that the Maori pronunciation is universal from Tonga to Easter Island. In Rarotonga and other Cook Islands fortunately the correct forms prevail. Imagine “Rarotoga” and “Magaia” and “Aoragi,” on the grotesque principle which gives us “Magiagi” — “Maggie-Aggie!” — in Samoa.
The pioneer missionaries of North New Zealand who translated the Bible into Maori accomplished a literary task which I admire more and more, as I dip into the pages of the “Paipera Tapu.” Perhaps I should take credit for more than a dip, since reading the Maori version is one of my favourite spare-time occupations, or relaxations. The literary beauty and the poetic glory of the English are in no way lost in the Maori. On the contrary, I hold that many Old Testament passages in Maori read more melodiously than our original English. The Psalms of David and the books of Job and Isaiah in particular captured the Maori heart not only for the spiritual thought, the tangi and the consolation, but for the sheer beauty of their rhythmic phrasing. Read aloud or chanted, they please the ear, the Maori ear, where the harder English often falls harsh and clipped. But the Maori must be read aloud to get the full worth of its broad vowel sounds and the accent beat that always falls on just the right syllable.
Such a line as the Prophet's “Woe to Ariel, to Ariel the city where David dwelt,” loses nothing in the Maori: “Aue te mate mo Ariere, mo Ariere mo te pa i noho ai a Rawiri.” Rather it gains in sonorous roll and fervour when a Maori minister reads it as I have heard it read.
I have often admired, too, the linguistic skill and the poetic feeling that made melody out of the most unpromising looking proper names in the Scriptures. The Hebrew names had to be Maorified. An example of name translation in which the translators grappled nobly with the formidable-looking original is this one, taken at random from the Paipera Tapu: Mahere-harara-ha-paha. It is the Maori form given to “Maher-shalal-hash-baz.” The Maori certainly falls softer on the ear.
We all know the powerful singer who invokes “Jee-roo-salem, Jee-roo-salem!” with the long bellow on the “roo.” The Maori gets a less painful effect with his “Hiruharama,” in which the “ha” is the syllable lengthened and stressed.
Had the late Ruatapu Kenana, the priest and prophet of the Urewera, died a generation earlier, his body would not have been sealed up in a concrete vault, pakeha fashion. The old Maori way of cave burial prevailed in his mountain land until a few years ago. The prophet's mortal remains would have been carried up the steep side of Maungapohatu, the sacred Rocky Mountain, at whose foot he was born, and would have been hidden away in a deep cave. The upper parts of the tapu mountain are pitted with caves and fissures in the limestone, and these have for centuries been the last resting places of the Urewera; and particularly of the section of that tribe known as Nga-Potiki (The Children), to which Rua belonged.
In the Rotorua thermal country the bones of the dead were often buried in deep natural pits which had once been geyser wells. In the Government Spa grounds, called Oruawhata by the Maoris, the old chief Kiharoa many years ago showed me an ancient burial cave, under a flat ledge of rocks, and also a certain tapu place that I suppose is quite unknown to the present generation.
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In 1932, Sir William Ellis, of the Alpine Club, London, addressed a gathering of mountaineers in Canterbury. In the course of his address, he said: “You have before you a magnificent opportunity of developing climbing in New Zealand, but you should approach the task with respect and care. The Alpine Club has always stood out for climbing with safety and basing progress on experience. I hope you will not let your vigour over-reach your discretion and so bring discredit on climbing. I wish you good fortune in your pioneer work.” These remarks were made by one who realised the great difference that exists between mountaineering in the European Alps and the Southern Alps of New Zealand. In Europe, all the mountains have been ascended many times, and some of the peaks are dominated by hotels on summits and cols, and alpine railways traverse their ridges.
In the Southern Alps of New Zealand there are no summit hotels, no mountain railways, and many peaks are still unclimbed. New routes exist in a distracting profusion, and, weather permitting, young climbers and old, can blunt their ice-claws on untouched ice falls, and test their agility on virgin rock. Some remote valleys are, as yet, even untrodden—especially in parts of Westland, difficult of access—but these are fast being explored.
In fact, access to the New Zealand mountain valleys is often difficult. It is only in the Arthur's Pass, Hermitage, Fox, Franz Josef and Milford regions, that hotels exist. In other valleys a primitive musterer's hut, or a sturdy alpine hut provides the only accommodation; but the majority of ravines nestle in solitude, only to be disturbed by visiting, parties in search of deer, gold, or mountain climbing.
These difficulties of access entail the perfection of a technique that has to deal with a wider range of subjects than the mere mastery of rope, snow, ice, and rock, with which the European mountaineer is mainly concerned. It is necessary for the New Zealander to acquire merit in the crafts of cooking, river-fording, track finding in untrodden jungle, compass-reading, map-making, and organisation.
Serious accidents in the Southern Alps have been few and far between. This is fortunate, because the difficulties of rescue work are proportionate to the inaccessibility of the country to be traversed. On the European peaks the hordes of inexperienced tourists tend to make mountain accidents frequent and inevitable. In New Zealand the majority of the parties in the ranges possess a self-reliant leader, who, in anticipating trouble, is fitted to meet it with the precision born of foresight. In the latter ranges it is customary for a party making a three weeks' trip not to see any other men after they leave the back-country homestead. There is no one in the valley to observe through a telescope their struggles to gain the summit. If they meet trouble, it behaves them to find their own way out. Therefore, the Southern mountaineers seldom climb “solo.” Climbing in pairs in new country is discouraged by the elders. Three, or four, is a safer number—if less mobile in transit and more unwieldy on difficult climbs.
When any accident occurs one man must set out for the nearest habitation, there to send a message for help. Quick organisation will bring a relief
When a whole party is overdue, the problem of relief assumes more serious proportions. Mountaineering expeditions are usually combined with a transalpine crossing of the Southern Alps from Canterbury or Otago to Westland. The intricate system of high passes on the Main Divide, and saddles on the sub-ranges, make it possible for a party to be bewildered with the variety of routes which it may traverse “over the range.” Would-be rescuers may be more bewildered. Parties overdue in bad weather may be assumed to be held up by flooded rivers. Many a party has turned up safe, with no record of accident or disaster, and yet has been a week late for work. The New Zealand rivers run deep, but belie the proverb, and are never still.
Would-be rescuers must use their initiative in cases of doubt, and their common-sense at all times. It is the unwritten law for the leader of a party that, before he sets forth for the high country, he must leave with his friends in the town a detailed list of the routes, and alternatives, to be followed. Notes as to progress are left in tobacco tins in huts or under bivouac rocks, where ashes will tell the tale of a camp fire. Yet sudden storm or unexpected floods can change the plans of a party on the crest of the Main Divideitself. Early in 1934 a Canterbury Mountaineering Club party had made the first ascent of oft-beleagured Mt. Evans, in Westland. They had traversed the three peaks of the mountain to an arctic benightment on the Red Lion Col and returned to their camp by way of the County and McKenzie Glaciers. It was decided to reach Westland habitation by a first crossing of the Full Moon Saddle of the Bracken Snowfield. A note to that effect was left in a cave camp. The party set out in a snowstorm. The blizzard on the high-level route became worse. The compass had been lost in a previous snow bivouac. Visibility was nil. The Full Moon Saddle could not be found, still less crossed. A forced camp was splayed on the Erewhon Col, and a retreat subsequently made to the Rakaia Valley in Canterbury. Through circumstances beyond their control the climbers had changed their plans. If accident had delayed them, and a relief party ultimately found the note in the cave camp, the latter would have crossed the Full Moon Saddle and sought in vain for their friends. As it happened the party was lucky, and retreated from the trap, having lost only a tent. But it all goes to show the problems that confront rescuers in New Zealand.
So much for theory. It is time to leaven the subject of alpine rescue-work with the spice of fact. Narratives of four relief expeditions are recounted to illustrate the nature of searches, when accidents do occur.
In January, 1932, three school masters on holiday were making what is known as the “Three Pass Trip” from Hokitika to the Bealey, involving crossings of Browning, Whitehorn, and Harman Passes, which under good conditions is a simple trip not requiring any long alpine apprenticeship.
Browning's Pass was crossed without incident. At the Park - Morpet Memorial Hut, in the Wilberforce Valley the three, B. Robbins, H. D. Smith and R. K. Loney, met two experienced men, J. P. Wilson and H. M. Sweney, and received directions as to the remainder of the route over the Whitehorn and Harman Passes. Wilson and Sweney were, at that time, prospecting for gold, although their usual occupation in the back-country is that of climbing mountains and crossing difficult passes.
Robbins and his party duly set out for the Whitehorn Pass and crossed it in drizzling rain and dense fog. Had they been familiar with the route over Harman Pass their way would then have been straight forward. As it was they had no compass and no first-hand knowledge. At dusk they had become lost and had climbed the slopes of Mt. Isobel by mistake. Thinking to retrieve the position, Robbins took a short cut to the Taipo-iti Gorge below which developed into a severe rock climb down waterfalls. He may have avoided the main waterfall, and met disaster when an avalanche snow-bridge gave under his weight and hurtled him into the swollen Taipo-iti Stream. His body was later found near the snowy edge of the stream. Smith died of exhaustion and exposure on the Isobel ridge. Loney sought help, and, on the following day, staggered into the Park-Mor-peth Hut with the news that Smith was dead. Wilson crossed the Whitehorn and Harman Passes that night. His solo trip in the dark was memorable. Descending the Waimakariri River he telephoned from the Bealey for help and searchers immediately left Christ-church for the Carrington Hut.
By noon on the following day the search parties had located the missing men and brought their bodies back to civilisation, Chester and others bringing the survivor Loney back to the Bealey.
Immediate co-operation of mountaineers had resulted in an expeditious recovery of the dead men, but it had been too late to avert tragedy.
While doing valuable climbing work in new territory at the head of the East Matukituki River, Aspiring region, Otago, a party of New Zealand Alpine Club members met unexpected trouble. S. W. Studholme fell from a glazed snow slope, and descended over a bluff to injure his back on a rock 35 feet below. All this was in the still evening, in country far more inaccessible than the Harman Pass, previously described.
Fortunately the Otago men numbered five, and were strong in their resource. Slowly the injured man was moved to a camp at the head of the valley, while two men dashed down the river and gorge to the Aspinall's homestead where a short-wave wireless set enabled communication to be made with Roland Ellis, of Dunedin, who organised a fully-equipped relief expedition.
Brief extracts from the New Zealand Alpine Journal will explain the difficulties attending the rescue: “The stretcher party moved on shortly after nine o'clock to the hardest work of the relief. After following the boulder-strewn riverbed for about half a mile, the party was compelled to take to the bush, where two men with axes cleared
It is satisfactory to relate that Stud-holme recovered, and owes his life to the efficiency and endurance of those men of the Otago mountains.
In May, 1934, J. Lysaght and B. Mason experienced winter ice conditions on the Whitehorn Pass, Wilberforce-Taipo watershed. While descending the steep Cronin slopes, Lysaght slipped and fell some 500 feet, suffering severe injuries to his arm. Mason had no ice-axe, but hacked his way down to his companion with a hunting knife. Thus began a period critical to the safety of both men.
Lysaght was unable to move, and Mason bound him up in two sleeping-bags and left for the Wilberforce Valley, where no help was available at that time. Mason returned the next day and helped the other down the Cronin Valley, both men lying out in the rain that winter's night. They reached the welcome haven of the Park-Morpeth Hut on the following morning, there to shelter for several days. Mason journeyed down the Wilberforce Valley where he met some Mt. Algidus mus-terers who lent him a pack-horse to enable him to take Lysaght to the nearest homestead, Glenthorne.
When it was known that these two men were overdue, a party left Christ-church and made a speedy trip up the Waimakariri in the dark. The river had to be crossed six times. Five men crossed the Harman and Whitehorn Passes under very bad conditions. No crampons (ice-claws) were available and the leaders had constant step-cutting. The utmost care was taken, the party being roped, and the treacherous ice slope into the Cronin was descended safely. At the Park-Morpeth Hut the relief men learnt of the safety of their friends and made swift travelling down the river to Glenthorne. They had accomplished a winter journey from the Bealey Hotel to Glenthorne Homestead via Harman and Whitehorn Passes in two days, entailing much travel over rough country in the dark, and dangerous ice work. This had been made possible by the topographical knowledge of the searchers who could pick the shortest routes in any conditions.
From this experience it will appear the search parties will face some of the ardours of travel which affect the lost men. The possibilities of accident, the maze of rugged country to be traversed and the heavy packs, all combine to render the search a matter for caution, yet speed which, under winter conditions, are not easy to combine.
On January 23, 1933, Guide Mark Lysons and Miss Ida Corry, a member of the Ladies' Alpine Club, England, made the first ascent of Mt. Goldsmith, 9,532 feet. On the descent Lysons broke his leg in jumping a crevasse. This accident would have been disastrous had not Miss Corry and her guide kept their heads in the most difficult of circumstances. They were far from outside help, and had to rely entirely on their own resources. Miss Corry assisted Lysons by cutting steps, the length of the rope, and belayed (anchored) while he lowered himself, using his ice-axe as a brake. With two ice-axes as crutches Lysons could force a trail over the snow at the foot of the slope. Night set in and made progress even more difficult. After twenty hours the Almer Hut was reached—a ten-mile journey, with a descent of 5,000 feet.
Guide Joe Fluerty happened to be at the Almer Hut. He fixed up Lysons's leg with ski-splints and raced down the Franz Josef Icefall. A doctor was on the glacier and with Guide Jack Pope he hastened up to the Almer Hut. A party of men, led by the famous guides, Alec and Peter
It is fitting to quote the comment of the Editor of the New Zealand Alpine Journal: “Miss Corry's coolness, resource, careful climbing, and endurance, combined with Lysons's pluck are so entirely in accordance with the highest climbing traditions that this episode will always stand out in the annals of New Zealand mountaineering.”
The Southern Alps have their days of calm and delight as well as storm and danger. Those who have travelled in the glaciated fastnesses feel that they will want to return to the mountains, where the charm of new climbing is so securely blended with the spice of adventure. New Zealanders are indeed fortunate to have access to such a variety of mountain travel.
“What quantity of tobacco do you smoke a week?” That was the question put to its readers by a popular Manchester Weekly. Many responded, and from their replies it appeared that cigarette smokers got through from 30 to 300 cigarettes during the seven days; while pipe-smokers consumed from two ounces to a pound of “weed” in the same period. A doctor wrote to the Editor saying he considered the latter quantity excessive. Perhaps it is. But it all depends on the tobacco and the percentage of nicotine in it. Happily Maorilanders don't have to worry about nicotine. Our incomparable New Zealand brands, Cut Plug No. 10 (Bullshead), Cavendish, Navy Cut No. 3 (Bulldog), River-head Gold and Desert Gold, are practically free from the poison, thanks to “toasting.” That magical process (the Manufacturers' own) renders these famous blends safe for even the immoderate smoker. Pure, sweet, fragrant and comforting, money cannot buy better! Their popularity is demon-strated by the ever-increasing demand for them. From one end of the Dominion to the other they are appreciated by smokers everywhere.*
Operating on the roof of Hays Ltd., in Christ-church, is to be found what must undoubtedly be one of the most realistic model railway systems yet displayed in New Zealand.
A first impression is one strangely mixed with rapture and amazement. In all directions beautiful little trains are to be seen rushing over plains, winding into tunnels and twisting round the rugged face of a long range of mountains. The mountains, most realistically produced, form the background of the scene.
Half-way up the face of the mountains is located the mountain railway. Passing over numerous canyons and penetrating the impassable slopes the circuit affords every opportunity for the utilisation of realistic scenic and mechanical effects. Over the tracks passes a splendid streamlined express. This is modelled on one of the famous Union-Pacific trains and is an exact replica. It is lighted inside and as it passes across the track it creates a pretty sight. Flashing signals herald its approach and an accurately lighted track completes the scene.
Accessories always play a most important part in the makeup of a model railway system, and whether they “work” or not they have a great deal of influence on the ultimate effect of the railway. Hays have utilised a maximum of devices, the majority of which do “work.”
Two trains operate on this circuit, an express, and a mixed goods. Here, too, are tunnels and bridges; lights and signals. But more than that, for stations, crossings, towns, farms, road traffic, animals and people all combine to create an impression of realism.
At Lionel City, the chief station on the route, an attractive building houses the railway staff. On the platform is a scene of animated activity, for the “Limited” is due any minute! Already porters are bustling around, people are hurrying to and fro, whilst, outside, a fleet of modern taxis awaits the arrival of the train!
Each of the several stations on the route is artistically finished and situated amidst pretty gardens.
The entire system is lighted with miniature electric lamps and automatic signals accurately indicate and control the flow of traffic. Of especial interest are the level crossings. As the train approaches, flashing lights and ringing bells warn the traffic on the roads. At another an ingenious little signalman comes out from his box, waves his lighted lamp and then returns when the train has passed. Yet another crossing affords a device of particular interest. On the approach of the train a barrier is automatically lowered across the road, thus effectively checking any vehicular traffic over the lines.
All the traffic signals and devices are controlled from the lines by the weight of the approaching and passing trains. A peep behind the scenes does not reveal, as one might fondly expect to find, a hopeless confusion of wires and switches.
Instead, an orderly switchboard comprises four transformers. Of these, one controls the lighting, and each of the others controls one of the trains. From here the trains can be stopped, reversed, or made to shunt. Similarly another button produces from each engine a realistic whistle. The entire mechanical system was erected by Hays Ltd., whilst the scenic effects and artistic decorations were the work of the Dunford Studios.
The trains, which were constructed by the Lionel Company (U.S.A.), are all scale models of well-known American trains. Many of the devices, too, are peculiar to the U.S.A. railroad system. Of unusual interest is one signal which, by means of lights, indicates to a train on one track that another train is approaching on, or has switched over on to a parallel track.
The scenic effects on the plains are both varied and attractive. Of striking appeal is the raging waterfall which, after bounding down the mountain slopes, enters a lake and from there a river leads across the wide plains to the harbour. Ships are in the harbour and at the wharves. Across the lake a mighty suspension bridge carries the “iron horse” and at different other parts of the river bridges of various patterns convey rail or road traffic.
The fertile plains and grassy hills are well stocked with animals. Here and there a farmyard complete with every detail creates an atmosphere of rural peacefulness. Roads are in plenty and carry a large assortment of cars, buses and lorries. Along a country lane a farmer is taking his milk into the nearby city. The numerous bungalows, with their pretty gardens, are dotted here and there. Trees and bush flourish on the plains and up into the hills. The entire colour scheme is one of natural simplicity and a charming effect has been achieved.
At the rear of Lionel City station is the power house. This imposing structure supplies electricity for the entire district. Radiating from its walls high-tension power lines convey the heavy wires across plains and over mountains in marked similarity to the power lines of the Waitaki hydroelectric scheme.
A typical L. M. and S. Caravan Coach.
Streamlined passenger locomotives, capable of unusually high speeds, are a feature of the locomotive-building plans of the Home railways for the current year. In all, the present programme provides for the building of some 512 new steam locomotives mostly in the railways' own shops. The exceptionally speedy six-hour service between London and Edinburgh, on the London and North Eastern Railway—to which reference was made in these Letters two months ago—is to be maintained by giant streamlined “Pacific” engines, constructed in the Doncaster shops. These follow the general lines of the famous “Silver Jubilee” locomotives, introduced last year—three-cylinder simple expansion, with boiler pressure of 250 lb. per square inch. The first completed engine has been named “Golden Eagle,” and the next four locomotives of the same class are being christened respectively “Falcon,” “Merlin,” “King-fisher” and “Kestrel.”
For London, Midland and Scottish express service, there are being constructed five new locomotives of the “Princess Royal” type. It was a locomotive of this class which set up a new world's record some time ago on the London-Glasgow route, covering the 401 1/2 miles between Euston Station, London, and Glasgow in 5 hours 53 minutes, and the return trip in 5 hours 44 minutes. The Great Western authorities still pin their faith to the “Castle” type of fast passenger loco-motive—a type which has earned fame in daily service on the “Cheltenham Flyer,” Britain's fastest daily start-to-stop express. Some 25 new engines of this class are being built in the Swindon shops.
The high-speed services in operation, and contemplated, at Home, make big demands upon permanent way and signalling. The majority of our trunk routes were constructed three-quarters of a century or so ago, when high speeds such as we now know them were unknown. Thus, one big task to be tackled has been the reduction of steep grades and the easing of curves. For main-line use, the four group lines employ 95 lb. British standard bullhead rails in 60 feet lengths, these resting on cast-iron chairs each weighing 46 lbs., with 24 sleepers to each rail length. On sharp curves additional sleepers are provided. On the Great Western, a through bolt is utilised for securing the chairs to the sleepers. On the other three groups, three screws are employed. In recent times, a limited mileage of track has been laid with 100 lb. rails, and steel sleepers also have been introduced here and there. The difficulty with these, however, is that they interfere with track-circuiting. Considering the age of most Home main-lines, and the difficulties to be faced in the way of overhead bridges with tight clearances, congested city tracks, and so on, it is really remarkable how well permanent-way engineers have met the new demands made by high-speed running.
Record passenger bookings will be the order of the day this summer on all the group systems, for the Coronation festivities will draw to London visitors from far and wide. In addition to Coronation travel, an unusually heavy holiday business is anticipated. A big success last year was achieved by the letting-out of camping or caravan coaches. Spare passenger carriages were equipped as holiday head-quarters, and placed at popular holiday centres, were let out for party use. Because of the heavy demand, the London, Midland and Scottish Company this year has augmented its stock
Parcels traffic proves a most remunerative business on the Home railways. Last year, nearly 89,000,000 small parcels were carried by passenger train service over the four group lines. Special parcels offices are maintained at all railway stations, while in practically every centre of importance there are one or more suitably situated town offices where parcel business is handled. A feature of the parcels service is the elaborate collection and delivery organisation established by the railways. Not only in the big centres, but also in the rural areas, there are daily collection and delivery services for parcels, maintained by motor vehicles of all kinds, varying from light motor-cars to heavy lorries. Collection and delivery is included in the conveyance rates, and within reasonable distance of railhead collection and delivery is virtually a gratuitous service. In the Birmingham area, for example, the free collection and delivery zone actually covers an area of about 45 square miles. There are one or two express companies, as our American friends call them, interested to a certain extent in the handling of parcels traffic. Broadly speaking, however, the express company, and its continental equivalent the “spediteur,” are non-existent in Britain, so efficient has the railway parcels service itself become.
British contractors have recently taken a prominent part in an important continental electrification scheme. This is the conversion to electric traction of the Warsaw suburban lines of the Polish State Railways, undertaken mainly by the English Electric Company, and the Metropolitan-Vickers Electrical Export Company. The complete scheme covers the electrification of the Warsaw railway junction and suburban tracks radiating from the centre of the city to Otwock, Zyrardow, and Minsk. It involves about 150 miles of main-line and 30 miles of sidings. Overhead transmission is employed, with current at 3,000 volts, D.C. For hauling fast passenger services and freight trains, six 2,200 h.p. electric locomotives are employed. These each weigh 78 tons, and are of the B + B type, having four driving axles, each equipped with a 550 h.p., 1,500 volt motor arranged two in series. The control is of the electro-pneumatic unit-switch type. Ordinary passenger services are maintained by multiple-unit trains, each consisting of one motor car and two trailers. The motor car has four coach-ventilated motors of 200 h.p., 1,500 volts, two being connected in permanent series. A second driving position is provided on the rear trailer car, this being articulated with the non-driving trailer by a common bogie. The railways of Poland, although not so well-known as some systems, form a most important means of communication in eastern Europe.
Railwaymen the world over are rightly famous for their wise indulgence in all kinds of healthy and interesting hobbies. A most fascinating spare-time pursuit attracting many is the collection of foreign postage stamps. Recently a splendid collection of postage stamps featuring railway subjects came to my notice. Mexico was one of the first countries to depict railway scenes on its stamps. As long ago as 1895, Mexico issued a set of stamps depicting various methods of handling mails, and included a train view in the series. Uruguay next gave us a locomotive picture on its stamps, while Honduras produced a complete set of stamps showing a typical steam locomotive of the early type. In 1901, to celebrate the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, U.S.A., there was issued a special stamp depicting an express passenger train. Ecuador and Guatemala have also issued many railway stamps. Some years ago, Belgium produced parcel post stamps bearing a locomotive design. In 1922 Russia introduced a postage stamp carrying a picture of a train emerging from a tunnel. Especially interesting was the special set of four stamps issued in Egypt, to celebrate the holding in Cairo in 1933 of the International Railway Congress. Each of these stamps depicted a steam locomotive working at various times on the Egyptian State Railways.
I cannot imagine a more prosaic title than the “Wellington Railway Station,” but the collection of everyday syllables will speedily stand for a mental image that is far from the commonplace or the workaday world. It is a common and monotonous charge against New Zealand and New Zealanders, that we, as a young nation, are obsessed with utilitarian and materialistic ideas. We are credited with sublime scenery; “Rugged Grandeur,” “Weird Thermal Regions,” “Nature's Wildest Wonderland” go cheek by jowl with such mildly satirical headlines as “The Empire's Dairy Farm” “The Land of Opportunity” and “A Motor to Every Five Inhabitants.” No sparkling praise comes our way for fountains, statues, or architecture.
If it were possible to imagine the return to this earth of John Ruskin, I can believe that if he read many modern commentaries on New Zealand he would expect to feel, as he did on his first trip to Scotland, “there was a peculiar painfulness in its scenery caused by the non-manifestation of the powers of human art.”
He pointed out that similar sights and scenes in Switzerland were softened and given a warmer beauty through the presence everywhere of the work of man. I am afraid that criticism of New Zealand's art of building goes farther and deeper than the observations of the great Victorian writer on art. It is not so long ago that a writer of a very different type, Miss Vicki Baum, commented on the old-fashioned drab and uninteresting buildings in our city streets, and on the apparent dislike of sun and air shown by the designers of our dwellings. She voiced the gibe that they seemed to be mainly planned to protect suburban carpets.
It is possible to combat generalisations of this severity about our houses. Our provincial capitals and our cities have a plentiful supply of decorative and artistic homes which provide comfort, as well as ample access to our flooding sunlight.
In the cities, notably in the last few years in Wellington, imposing business buildings have arisen which are lovely to the eye, brightly but harmoniously tinted, and modern in design.
It is a matter of historical development that Wellington should have been under the disability of two main terminal stations, neither of them modern, and placed far apart. It is a matter of another facet of history that there has been a delay so lengthy in putting the remedial plan of a new structure into operation.
However, the time has arrived. The opening ceremonies are close at hand and a new era dawns for the travelling public who use the terminal station of the capital city.
The new Wellington Station is therefore more important than at first appears. It is the ranking achievement of New Zealanders in the investiture with beauty of a building created for industrial purposes. Moreover, it is a building devoted solely to one industry, Transport — the business of the largest of the Departments of State, the New Zealand Railways Department. Two striking peaks have been reached in the matter of railway stations, but the new Wellington Station is the Mount Cook of them all; in fact, to run the risk of over-straining the metaphor, it is a mountain range, by comparison with its brethren in New Zealand. It is firstly much the largest building of any kind that has been erected in the Dominion; it will house in its six tremendous floors, the population of a town, the majority of the executive personnel of our country's largest industrial undertaking. Put baldly, it is a combination of Head Office and Terminal Depot, it is Base Headquarters and the capital city's railway station combined.
It follows therefore that there must be two separate and individual stories in this article; one will be about the building as a railway station for the use of the travelling public; the other will be about that portion of this mighty edifice which is the spacious home of so many working fellow countrymen.
By way of being practical, let us take a glance first at the platforms. It is difficult for any of us to imagine a platform as anything but a commonplace, slightly melancholy - looking practical instrument. However, imagination has been used here. In our picture you will see that the roofs slope inwards towards a central runaway gutter. This finally exorcises the bogey of raindrips. The stormiest night will not prevent the ceremony of “seeing Auntie off” being performed in the dry. The main departure platform is 900 feet long and 29 feet wide, and the arrival platform is slightly narrower but of the same length. The first novel and sound idea that struck me was that there is a central aisle for the luggage trucks and carriers. This will at any rate lessen the general noise for those hearty warning shouts will not be necessary and passengers' movements will not have to be so athletic. There are two fine platforms for suburban traffic and for country trains, race trains and general. These are both nearly two hundred yards long, and like the others, armed with loud speakers and clocks. The arrival platform, by the way has generous access to the wide arterial Waterloo Quay route, and the luggage dock is handy on the way out. In Featherston Street is the entrance to the suburban platforms and there is an emergency booking office on the right.
This disposes of the practical outdoor machine for the coming and going of passengers and their luggage, and perhaps this section seems queerly placed in a story on the art values of the new station. However, one final test of artistic values is efficiency, and the platforms have attained this without ugliness. In fact they have a simple and airy dignity of their own, and no dingy walls and comfort-wrecking seats disfigure their long, clean pathways.
Here, let us return to the constituent elements of the main structure.
Measurements are almost useless for the purpose of giving any idea of the grandeur of this building. The eight great pillars, each with a diameter of five feet, make a colonnade 123 feet long and this is only one third, approximately, of the total frontage, which runs all the way from Featherston Street to Waterloo Quay. The Greeks understood the immeasurable effect on the imagination of mighty pillars. They greet the eye with the same impression of stately strength as the grove of forest giants from which they were first copied in stone.
In the middle of these is the noble entrance, but before going inside the first great hall of this Temple of Transport, we should notice the colouring of the outer walls. Here is no grey or uniform brown of building stone, but a many tinted kaleidoscopic panorama of ornamental brickwork, warm, rich and eye-filling. By the way, the brickwork, all made by New Zealand hands and brains, is on a reinforced system evolved for earthquake resisting purposes in Japan; for that matter the whole building is entirely earthquake - resisting throughout every foot.
The joy of brickwork is that its colours improve with age and are fadeless for all time.
The splendid facade fronts a spacious area of lawn, shrubbery and a parquetry of ornamental tiles, and wide pavements. The grounds and the frontage will be floodlit with one of the most modern installations in the world. When the whole scene is bathed
This very important work was entrusted to Messrs. A. & T. Burt, Ltd., the well-known Heating, Electrical and General Engineers. It is of interest to note that the system is the largest yet installed in the Dominion, and in consequence, called for two very powerful heating boilers; in fact, the largest ever constructed by the Beeston Boiler Co., Ltd., Notts, England, who manufacture no less than 20,000 tons of boilers and radiators annually.
These two boilers are required to generate hot water at a temperature of 180° F., and of sufficient quantity to ensure efficient results being obtained from 430 radiators located throughout this large building.
The boilers are erected side by side in a special boiler house in the basement, and are each fired with English “Urquhart” Oil Burners, supplied and installed by Messrs. J. F. Hargrave, Ltd., who specialise in Oil Burning equipment. Each boiler is fitted with two burners; one burner will act as a pilot, while the second will automatically operate, according to the demand on the boiler.
The oil is atomised by means of air at 5 lbs. pressure. The air is supplied by three air compressors, fitted with silencers, and the compressors are so coupled that in the event of any one air compressor failing, the others can carry the load.
One thousand gallons of fuel oil are stored in underground tanks, which are filled from bulk delivery waggons as required.
The solution to artistic harmony between heating and decoration was solved by the introduction of Convector Heaters, all of which were manufactured by the Heating Contractors who have, during past years, made a close study in their development, keeping in mind always the need that not only is efficiency required, but conformity with decoration.
The heating elements in these Convector radiators are constructed of copper gilled tubes, housed in sheetmetal cases of artistic design, and of compact dimensions, dignified and unobtrusive in appearance.
Harmony between heating and design has been carried further in all the panelled rooms, by concealing the heating elements within the walls, introducing in this way, not only efficiency, but economy, cleanliness, and dependability.
These radiators, unlike the standard type, definitely cause an air circulation within the rooms, and overcome the possibility of hot and cold spots being present, as is often found with these standard type radiators.
Some idea of the vastness of this scheme will be realised when it is recalled that over 20,000 feet of galvanised pipes are installed, ranging in size from 6 inch to 1/2 inch internal diameter.
The heated water is propelled through these pipes by the use of two English Worthington Simpson centrifugal pumps, each rotated by a 10 h.p. Crompton Parkinson British motor, with Texrope drives and flexible couplings complete.
Each of these pumps is capable of delivering 700 gals, of water per minute against a head of 60 feet. Should, through a power failure or other cause, these pumps cease to work, the pipe work is so arranged that natural circulation is introduced, and at no time will the occupants of the offices be without comfortable heat.
The scheme generally, has been well designed, and is the last word in Heating.
Messrs. A. & T. Burt, Ltd., were further entrusted with the Ventilation of the Kitchen and the Waiting Room.
Kitchen Ventilation:
This system is of the exhausting type, and the unit employed is a No. 6 “Progressive” fan, driven by a 5 h.p. Crompton Parkinson motor, and Texrope drive, and will give ten changes of air per hour in the kitchen.
The advantage of the exhausting system is that all fumes from the cooling ranges are immediately drawn away from the kitchen preventing air contamination in the restaurant, and adjacent rooms.
Waiting Room Ventilation:
This also is an exhaust system, and the unit is a No. 4 “Progressive” Multivane fan, driven by a 1 h.p. Crompton Parkinson motor and Texrope drive.
Refrigeration—Cool Rooms for Restaurant:
For use in connection with the Station Restaurant, there are two cool rooms for the storage of meat, fish, and other perishable goods.
The unit for these rooms is a No. 3A water-cooled Condenser type, manufactured by Messrs. L. Sterne & Co., Glasgow, and installed by their New Zealand agents, Messrs. A. & T. Burt, Ltd.
The room evaporators are manufactured in their Wellington works, and are of the copper finned tube type, arranged for fan air circulation. The whole system is fully automatic, maintaining an even temperature in the rooms, at all times, and under all conditions.
in gold and rose lights, departure by night trains will have a new setting altogether for New Zealand eyes. By the way, the order that included this floodlighting was the largest single order of its kind ever received from any part of the world by the G.E.C., Britain's mightiest electrical organisation.
There will be many a gasp of wonder when this first great hall is entered for the first time. With the insistence on the practical which characterises all railway nomenclature, this lofty crosswise fane is called the “Ticket Lobby.” Its towering walls contain decorative windows and the faraway ceiling is a patterned arch of surpassing loveliness. I would like to say at once that, throughout the whole building, up to the last stairway to the top storey, there is not one jarring note of colour. Mild browns, gentle green, low toned yellows and creams and soft rose are the main flower hues in this garden of human making. The effect of the mural decoration on the soaring walls and ceiling of the entrance hall is that of cloudy precious stones, glowing but restful.
On the rich floor of this hall (I refuse to call it a “ticket lobby”) is a huge inlaid compass dial and many a traveller will pause to locate the North or the West. I suppose the original name was conferred to remind us that all the conveniences for making a trip are here. There are conveniently situated offices all about, a room, for the taxi drivers, one for the “redcaps,” an interview room, reservation and bookink offices, and offices for the station-master and his staff. Over to the right a forest of neat steel shelving shows the extensive checked luggage and parcels areas.
The next hall is called the “Concourse.” This is the circulating area for the whole station and has many of the features of a small town; barbers shop with bathrooms and dressing rooms; fruit and soft drink shops; a row of telephone booths; and a Post Office all complete.
The fine dining room opens from the concourse and general waiting room. There is a large refreshment booth and these are served by a nest of rooms dealing with washing up, sandwich making and a dozen other things, all equipped with marvels of intricate labour-saving devices.
An easy stairway from the concourse gives access to the exquisitely fitted up ladies' restrooms, toilet, a hospital, and a trip in the lift will find on the top floor a well furnished nursery opening out on a flat roof play area amply protected by wire netting. From here as from so many of the windows in the building there is a view which banishes for ever the idea that Wellington is without great beauty.
The experience of arriving at Wellington or leaving the capital city is going to take new shape in the minds of all railway users. It will be a minor voyage through a happy land of enchantment. Always, however, the blazonry of lofty ceiling, the host of colours in wall and window, and the giant sweeping curves of arches in hall and concourse, all work together to give entire restfulness.
The very nature of this building has enabled those who planned it to escape adherence to classic severity. Its shining distinction is that, on the other hand, they have avoided garishness and meretricious brilliance.
The entrance to the Head Office floors is to the left of the facade. Here the objectives are far different from those which dictated the design of the station itself.
The tour is a constant reminder that the railway transport system is a matter of profound and practical scientific knowledge. Its bias is towards engineering, but it takes in its orbit almost every avenue of human ingenuity and every branch of man's technical craftsmanship. I am one of those folk whose attempt at a library shelf always results in the thing behaving evilly if it has to bear one extra book and so perhaps my everlasting amazement at the work of mechanical wizardry is greater than usual. I was shown the neat little file lifts that run up and down from the main records room, delivering the wanted bundle of documents in a few seconds; I was told that there were 23 miles of cable, 8 miles of conduit and 300 units of G.E.C. iron-clad switch gear. The figures of steel furniture (all made in the Railway Workshops), the dimensions of record rooms, the numbers of filing shelves, and so on are astronomical.
But certain definite and inescapable impressions remain etched in my memory. First of all, is the feeling of airiness, white light, and spaciousness in all those rooms which are devoted to drawing, designing or the keeping of records. Their colossal size is, of course, imposing; but the lasting impression that remains is that of the combination of slender steel divisions, wide window panes, clear glass and quiet tones in wall and ceiling. Edmund Bruke argued with force that no building could partake of the sublime unless it was pervaded in gloom, wrapped in the majesty of darkness and the colours should be “black, brown or deep purple, and the like.” This modern building of ours converts the eminent orator into a plain fibber, I will not weary readers with a long detailed directory of the streets and avenues in this miniature city but we will take a brief tour. The arrangement is logical and designed with a forethought that amounts to wizardry.
On the first floor are the Transportation Branch, with Train Control and Train Running and staffs, the District Traffic Manager, and over in the other wing, are the Locomotive drawing office, Designing Engineer, the Locomotive Superintendent and the Superintendent of the Workshops and the Comptroller of Stores. Next up is a floor which carries the signwriting and Advertising Branch, draughting room, Afforestation officer, Railways Land Office and the big Signals and Electrical Department.
Here are the nerve centres of the telephone equipment, one of the major marvels of the building. There are 400 telephones with 500 lines, electrical clocks throughout, and many loud speakers. I have commented before on the extreme modernity and distinctive nature of the New Zealand Railways telephone system. For instance, out of the Wellington centre proceed two direct lines to Auckland, four to Palmerston North, one to Wanganui, one to Woodville and two to the world outside.
Shorn of technical terms, the Department has a self-contained talking system of complete efficiency. It is provided with the latest uncanny “step up” devices where the machine makes its own selection of a disengaged wire. Amplification is possible to meet the needs of lines that are growing busier and to increase the possibilities of prompt connections. The exchange attendants are provided with the means of readily answering the usual enquiries and in cases of difficulty they promptly switch through to the proper source. Outwards and inwards facilities are so ample that in practice the only reason a connection is not possible is that an actual talk is in progress.
On the third floor are the Road Services, the Library (selectively situated in the corner facing the Parliamentary Buildings), the Law officer, the Conference and Suggestions and Inventions Rooms, and the Refreshments Branch. The rest of the floor is occupied by the record room of very large dimensions. On this floor also dwell the Commercial Manager and his staff.
However, the Olympian storey is the fourth. Here the General Manager and his staff are placed with the Transportation Superintendent at the city end. The whole of the front and left portion is occupied by the Accountancy Division with its mammoth array of records, its large staff, its multitude of calculating and sorting machines, and all the complex structure which is needed for the proper accounting and financial control of the far flung operations of New Zealand's greatest business undertaking.
By way of contrast, in between is placed the Publicity Department where (inter alia) this magazine is edited and planned, and a hundred and one of the publicist activities necessary to the whole Transport organisation are carried on.
On the fifth floor are the staff social hall, the splendid tea room for women, rest rooms and the whole range of offices, dark rooms and other essentials for the photographic staff. Still higher up are the nursery, the railway correspondence school and sleeping and other rooms.
Throughout the whole building are evidences of care for the comfort of every human unit in this huge army of New Zealand citizen workers. There is the universal beauty of lamp and light fittings and the master comfort of treading on soundless and pliant floor coverings. Rest rooms, tastefully tiled toilet rooms and lavatories, enclosed cupboards for wash basins and so on as in a modern flat, and all modern amenities are in plenty to make working conditions easy and working hours pleasurable.
However, my own opinion is that though these material comforts are important and have their own meaning and influence in providing happiness, far more vital in the forwarding of the ideals of human progress, is the ceaseless working of the effect of the dignity and beauty of the building itself. (Continued on page 57.)
A Latin writer of centuries ago said that beauty of life derived only from beauty of life surroundings. Ruskin said that no craftsman could be capable of beautiful invention who did not live daily in the midst of beauty. There is no need for the continuance of the tradition that we should tread our daily round in a dingy and saddening environment. Work will always contain elements of drudgery, hours of weariness and boredom, sickness of heart and soul, and times of the wildest desire to escape its tyranny.
The mere magnitude of the new Wellington Railway Station will fill beholders with wonder; its warm and tender beauty will satisfy and delight tens of thousands; it is the greatest achievement of its type in the history of the work of New Zealand hands and brains; it ranks in modernity of design and equipment with the best in the whole world; it has culled ideas and material from all parts of the globe; it has already evolved its own personality, a building which is distinctively a temple of industry, a proper fane to express in pillared stone and glowing brick the glory and romance of steel and steam; it has even traces of a national character in its delicately indicated Maori outlines in mural decorations; it stands as the greatest single edifice erected for any purpose in our country.
I would still like to say, however, that its larger and increasing purpose will yet be far different. Dean Inge said recently that “the notion that a town must be a blot on the landscape is quite modern.” Montaigne said “The want of goods is easily repaid, but the poverty of souls is irreparable.”
The gesture made by this last and greatest work of building should be interpreted by our New Zealand fellowship of men and women in this way; here is the exemplar of what is needed to invest both work and leisure with dignity and beauty; here is an industrial hive of gargantuan proportions which nevertheless is a matchless spectacle of softly bright colour, of symmetry, harmony and comfort; here the day's work will absorb from the loveliness all around, solace and joy, satisfaction and mental health.
The new Wellington Railway Station is an expression of the ordered grace which should be implicit in the working hours and the playing time of every human being in a land like New Zealand where Nature's gifts are of prodigal richness. It is a symbol that the days of irrational and escapable misery are passing and that we are on the march to the happy human brotherhood that is the right of everyone born under the sun.
Anything that will extend our knowledge and understanding of that always magnetic and lovable soul Robert Louis Stevenson is to be welcomed. It is therefore of particular interest, not solely a literary interest, to know that the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington has lately acquired a letter signed by him which had not previously seen publication. This letter came to light from the Gisborne district, where several of the recipient's relatives live. It is addressed to Ben Hird, one of the three Island traders to whom R.L.S. dedicated his “Island Nights' Entertainments”—a story for each of them. For me there was a special and particular interest in that discovery by our great treasure-house of Pacific Islands literature, for it renewed memories of the days when we used to see something of those Island friends in Auckland, and on too rare occasions of Stevenson himself.
Those were only fleeting visits, unfortunately, for the man of Vailima was only passing through by steamer on each occasion. His longest visit to Auckland was in 1890, in the South Sea trading steamer Janet Nicoll, it was in that vessel that he made the acquaintance of the three shipmates whose names are so familiar to readers of his books, though not one reader in a hundred thousand could have any inkling of who or what they were.
Early in February of 1890, soon after the then forest - covered site of Vailima had been bought and orders given to clear it for a home, Stevenson and his wife and Mr. Lloyd Osbourne, his stepson, left Apia for Sydney. It was the much-travelled and greatly - suffering novelist's intention to visit England, but fate disposed otherwise. He caught a cold in Sydney, and there was nothing for it but to take to the tropics again on a lung-strengthening or at any rate lung-easing cruise. Mrs. Stevenson heard of a trading steamer about to leave on a long voyage among the Pacific Islands. After much trouble she persuaded the charterers of the steamer, the great South Sea trading firm of Henderson and Macfarlane, to take them as passengers.
The vessel was going on a business cruise, with one of the characters, Mr. Harry Henderson, on board, inspecting the nrm's stations throughout the mid-Pacific, and passengers were not at first welcome. But the Stevensons' immediately won the hearts of the Janet Nicoll; and it was the saving of the sick man's life; at any rate he was a comparatively well man in a few weeks.
The great maritime strike of 1890, which affected all Australian and New Zealand shipping, was on when the Janet Nicoll was preparing to leave Sydney for Auckland, and there was some difficulty in getting a crew. She got away at last, with a scratch crew, a Sydney mixture, some white, most of them South Sea Islanders. Here come in my own memories of the ship with her six passengers and the non-union crew. I was at that time a youthful member of the staff of the “Auckland Star,” learning the ropes of the news-gathering trade, with the waterfront and the shipping for my daily round. An always-interesting and often exciting field in those times, when ships were smaller and more numerous than they are to-day, and when deep-sea arrivals always held the charm of the unexpected.
I went aboard the Janet Nicoll when she arrived. She was an iron screw-steamer of some six hundred tons, square-rigged on her foremast; every steamer carried some sail in those days. There was trouble about the inexperienced crew; most of whom were “black” in a labour union sense. Two or three men, white hands in the stokehold, came to the “Star” office to complain about the inefficiency of the others; they mentioned, among other matters, that the chief officer had to lay aloft himself and go out on the foretopsail yard to furl sail because there were no deckhands who would venture up when it blew hard.
The men made a long statement which I took down; it was sworn to by them before a Justice of the Peace and published; and the chartering firm made a reply to it next day. But there were all manner of shipping troubles then which had to be got over in some way or another; ships must sail, with any kind of crew they could get. The Janet's hands were right enough, once the ship got away and the officers got them into sailorly shape. They were Line Islanders, and better hands in a surf-boat than Europeans.
She got away, she visited more than thirty islands on that cruise, as far up as the low-lying Gilberts and Marshalls, where one island is very much like another. It was now, after leaving Auckland and getting shaken down on board, that the Stevensons' party came to know their commerce-chasing shipmates. Of the six, but one is still living, Lloyd Osbourne.
The managing owner, or part owner, Harry Henderson, became a trusty
But Ben Hird was the most stimulating figure. He was a very great favourite among all the Island people, white and brown, whom he met on his long cruises in schooners, brigantines and steamers under the famous Circular Saw house flag.
Stevenson's letter now in the Turnbull Library was addressed to Ben Hird in May, 1893, from Vailima. It was dictated to Isobel Strong, his adopted daughter, and signed by him. He mentioned that “something is already out in England in which you are directly interested…. The book is called ‘Island Nights’ Entertainments,' and is dedicated to three rather decent fellows—Harry Henderson, Jack Buckland, and B—, but you will find it on the flyleaf. They are all people anyway for whom I entertain a particular esteem—and Be—there, I'm letting it slip again—is not the least.”
R.L.S. was expecting and hoping Hird would visit Apia. “For months I hung on to my last bottle of good whisky for Ben Hird.”
“You are expected,” he added, “to sing ‘Afton Water,’ and to tell the latest story of Tin Jack with all details on the verandah of Vailima.”
“Tin Jack” Buckland was a merry-hearted young fellow who was never likely to grow old. He came to a tragic end on Christmas Island, killed while handling explosives in the customary free-and-easy way of the Island. Ben Hird died when on a trading cruise in his firm's steamer among the Line Islands and was buried on the coral atoll of Funafuti. The last of the cheery trio, Harry Henderson, died in Melbourne in 1926.
I am inclined to the belief that Ben Hird was the original of London Dodd, the narrator of so much comedy and tragedy in “The Wrecker.” True, he was not a smallish man, as the author described him in the introductory chapter, where Dodd comes in in the trading schooner from Auckland that arrived at Tai-o-hae, the French port of entry in the Marquesas. But he was the bearded supercargo with a pleasing flow of conversation, and he was “an old, salted trader,” an accurate enough description of Mr. B. Hird.
A reference to one Tierney in the Stevenson letter to Hird is cryptic to most readers without some explanation. Stevenson wrote:“…. I was very sorry to hear about poor old Tierney, but I trust he is all on the mend and jolly again, like others of that vast clan of one-handed calenders, the sons of kings, who people the Line Islands.”
The allusion is to a Captain Tierney, a trader who lived on Apaiang, in the Gilbert Islands. As far as my memory serves me, he was reported in Auckland to have blown one of his hands off, or shattered it, when killing fish with dynamite. A rather common mishap in the Islands, holding the explosive a second too long before throwing it into the water, Evidently Hird had reported the accident to Stevenson, who had visited Captain Tierney on Apaiang in 1889, when he was cruising in the schooner Equator.
Though we saw something of the Stevensons on that visit to Auckland in 1890, it was not until three years later that I met and talked with R.L.S. himself. That ever-treasured experience and privilege was on board the mailsteamer Mariposa, at Auckland on February the 24th, 1893. Stevenson was on his way from Samoa to Sydney; it was the year before his death, and he was indeed dying then. He looked pale and ill, as he sat there in the saloon; he was waiting for Sir George Grey to call for him, and I had the chance of a talk with him about his books and the always troubled politics of Samoa.
That pale, romantic figure is plain in the mind's eye, after all those years. Romantic is an ill-used adjective, yet I feel it is the right word here. His deep emotional eyes, with a humorous kindly glint, his lank black hair, rather long and rather damp-looking, his slender waxy-white hands, were features that do not pass from memory. Stevenson's eyes, the eyes of a poet and a lover of humanity, seemed Polynesian eyes too, the liquid, eyes of the golden brown folk.
He was worn and tired, but he was very kind to his young interviewer, and talked freely enough about the triangular political squabbles in Samoa, where affairs were rapidly approaching the periodical crisis. “Things are just about as bad as they can be,” he said. “Every day deepens my belief that annexation by some one Power would be the best thing that can happen to the Islands. This divided control is a curse.” The two head officials appointed by the Powers, were a curse also, I gathered. “There is no money in the Treasury at Apia. Not a salary has been paid for the last four months, either to the Municipal magistrate (Mr. Cooper, an Auckland man), or to the other officers or police— in fact, the only men who have got their salaries are the two Europeans— one is a Swedish judge—sent out by the Powers to run the farce of a Government.”
I think that at the moment I was more concerned to get Stevenson's views about Samoa, present and future, than to ask about his books. He was expecting to be deported by the Germans. But when we passed on to writing topics, he told me about his latest job of work, as he called it. It was, he said, to be called “The Schooner Farallone;” it had been tentatively titled “The Pearl Fisher.” This was the book that, as it developed, was eventually published as “The Ebb Tide.”
Sir George Grey was a great and heroic figure in Stevenson's eyes. The
I recall also that some of the mailsteamer passengers professed, we heard, that they were shocked because Mrs. Stevenson went about the deck barefooted. So did Stevenson himself sometimes in warm weather, but it was excused in him as an eccentricity of genius; in his wife it was Bohemianism run to excess. It is amusing to recall to-day the stifling propriety of the young Nineties. That was in a mail steamer, where passengers dressed with the utmost regard for the Respectabilities. It was different when they travelled in their own chartered schooner, and in the easy-going South Sea tramp Janet Nicoll, where everyone, from the Captain down, often went barefooted in the tropics.
By the way, writing again of the Janet Nicoll, Mrs. Stevenson made a curious blunder in her book on the cruise. She misspelled the steamer's name as Janet Nichol on the title-page and all through the book, a curious example of carelessness or want of observation.
Stevenson had one more sea cruise after that. He visited Honolulu, where he was down with fever, and Mrs. Stevenson went up to nurse him and take him home. In October he noted in one of his letters: “I am being busted here by party named Hutchinson. Seems good.” This brief reference is to Mr. Allen Hutchinson, the sculptor, whose bust of Stevenson was exhibited in London in 1895. Hutchinson came to Auckland a little later, and we saw a good deal of him there and at Rotorua, where he was making busts and plaques of Maori types. A gifted man, a stalwart Englishman, he had little encouragement in New Zealand, though his work was exceptionally good. He returned to America; I heard from him from time to time. He settled in San Diego, California, where he was British Consular Agent. Some of his Maori casts are in the Partridge collection, in the Auckland Art Gallery.
Will Lawson has achieved something remarkable, and I use the word advisedly. Although past the half century in years, he had not until two years ago written a novel. Verse in plenty, much of it of fine craftsmanship, he had written, while his distinguished prose may be found in leading journals at home and abroad; He had also written travel and scenic books. Only during the last couple of years have we realised his worth as a novel writer. In that time he has written three full length novels each with an historical background. First we had “The Laughing Buccaneer,” a South Sea yarn with Bully Hayes dominating the scene. Then came “When Cobb & Co., Was King,” which is already regarded as a national Australian novel. And now, best of all, revealing the sure touch of the matured novelist and occasional glimpses of the soul of the poet, is “Old Man Murray.” This book is remarkable because it is so sure and thorough. One would imagine that Will Lawson had had the splash of the paddle boats ringing in his ear for the past half century. The art of the writer makes the reader live through the fine story he tells of love and adventure on the River Murray. The hero, Captain Ted, reminds me of Lawson himself. This novel will not only find great favour in Australia and New Zealand, but I think should be a success in an English edition and probably more so in America.
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I think it was E. W. Hornung who created the original gentleman cracksman in “Raffles.” Since then other writers have attempted more or less successful successors to that likeable gentleman burglar of many years ago. Two recent novels from England perpetuate the romance of the courteous cultured cracksman with what I anticipate will be the rapturous approval of thousands of readers. First we have “The Cat Climbs,” by C A. Torrant (Martin Seeker), where a diminutive bespectacled accountant, Peter Dean, embarks on a career of crime with the “laudable object” of devoting the proceeds for the advancement and improvement of the modern young man. Peter allows himself a liberal commission from his nocturnal pilfermgs. Really I should not say pilferings for anything short of a hundred thousand or two does not interest him. He gathers around him a small trustworthy gang and works with great intelligence and success. The story is ingenious and is crammed with breathtaking thrills. Indeed it is so plausibly told that my only concern is that its influence may be a harmful one. The other modern Raffles is “John Jeremy-Cracksman,” by Jeffrey Montague (Phillip Allan). Here we meet another cultured burglar, again a possibly dangerous acquaintance for some people, because his criminal exploits are so easily accomplished and with pseudo honesty. John Jeremy has a charming young lady as his accomplice. Their joint efforts to outwit the schemes of another criminal organisation, The League of Five, make for much of the excitement of the novel. Messrs. Whitcombe and Tombs are the New Zealand distributors of both books.
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That the inspiration of New Zealand Authors' Week still survives is evident in the publication by the boys of Form 4A, Wellington College, of a small typescript magazine appropriately entitled “Through the Greenstone Door.” The editorial committee composed of T. McNicol, P. A. Mitchell, G. A. Albert and J. Dunkley confesses in a foreword that their effort was inspired by Authors' Week. In story, verse and article the boys have produced a magazine of distinct merit. I will watch with interest this year for the appearance of No. 2 of the magazine.
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An attractive handbook has been published by the Natal Technical College. Beautifully printed and illustrated on high quality paper with an elaborate index system, the publication is surely a model for scholastic institutions.
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Fostered by Dr. Butchers, who is in charge of the Correspondence School of the Education Department, is a scheme to publish an anthology of junior verse. The idea is to select the best of the poetry that has appeared in “The Postman,” the annual magazine of the Correspondence School, and publish it in book form. To make the anthology thoroughly representative of New Zealand I would suggest that the promoters might extend the order of reference to all the school journals published in this country. The scheme is an excellent one to encourage literary effort in the Dominion.
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There was a large gathering of members of the P.E.N. recently to do honour to Miss Eileen Duggan over the distinction of O.B.E. conferred on her earlier in the year. Among those present was the Hon. Peter Fraser whose speech for the occasion was unique in that he proved to those present that a successful politician may have a true appreciation and deep understanding of literature and art. His was no casual compliment to a writer of genius. He knew, possibly
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Donald Cowie's book, “New Zealand From Within,” has arrived and already has been marked as one of the most interesting and instructive studies of New Zealand. He has discussed us exhaustively from our golf to our gastronomy, from our Reserve Bank to our William Goodfellow, and from our extinct moas to our almost extinct birth rate. It is all done with such amazing and mostly inoffensive candour. His judgments are largely sound, although they are occasionally based on extremes, but always, as we read, we must admit his honesty, and at times we glimpse his introspectiveness. He deals with our past and our future (“bound up with overseas markets and population”), our individuality (“already characteristically New Zealand”), our defences (“we are completely defenceless”), our sport (racing and not Rugby is our “national religion”), our earthquakes (“there are really no earthquakes in New Zealand”), our newspapers (“if you want to write for a living in New Zealand you had better take a dose of strychnine and get it over quickly”), and our first year of Labour Government. In fact there is hardly a stone that this energetic young writer has left unturned in this country. Of course we will not all agree with his findings, and we certainly will not agree with his strictures on our New Zealand woman. He admits that he is rude in this respect and does not expect to be forgiven. Although he is a fine big handsome-looking fellow and admittedly clever, I do not think the average young New Zealand woman would take kindly to Mr. Cowie which I think just explains why he has turned misogynist as far as our womenfolk are concerned. This is the only serious flaw in an otherwise well balanced and interesting analysis of our own country.
“The Valley of the Sky,” by Tarlton Rayment (Angus & Robertson, Sydney) is the British Empire winner in the All Nations Prize Novel Competition. Last month I reviewed the chief winner in this world-wide competition, and without hesitation I consider that Rayment's novel is superior even to the other, as fine as it is. The Australian prize winner I would almost place on a level with that greatest of all Australian novels “All That Swagger.” Tarlton is an artist in word pictures. He paints the Australian abo in the warm appealing colours of love of humanity. The hero of his story, Angus McAllen, is a lovable Scots pioneer who carves out his destiny in the back country of Australia and also in the hearts of his beloved black-fellows.
“The Mussolini Murder Plot,” by Bernard Newman (Hutchinson, London; Whitcombe & Tombs New Zealand agents) is a selection of the Crimes-book Society. To my mind it is a rather irresponsible flight of fancy on the part of the author, and if international law permits has a nest of libel actions in its pages, that is if Mussolini cares to proceed against the author or publisher. Newman has built other novels around the names of leading world figures, but none so provocative as this. “Suppose Mussolini had been killed on the first day of the Abyssinian war! He very nearly was,”— so the book begins. The story will certainly entertain many people, but it may also sow in the minds of some dangerous thoughts and ideas, also a totally false conception of Mussolini.
“The Fortunes of Captain Blood,” by Rafael Sabatini (Hutchinson, London; Whitcombe & Tombs New Zealand agents) justifies the bookseller flooding his window with copies of the book with the big selling announcement “Another Sabatini!” Yes, Sabatini still has his hold on the general public as one of the world's best sellers. This latest book of the adventures of that most agreeable buccaneer, Captain Peter Blood, is quite as exciting and just as readable as the earlier chronicles. The new book is a series of episodes on the career of this swashbuckling hero, the best being “The Dragon's Jaw.”
Douglas Stewart, the young New Zealand poet whose “Green Lions” I reviewed in last issue of this magazine, is leaving shortly for England.
Professors Shelley and Sewell and Mr. John Barr, Auckland librarian, have been elected members of the P.E.N.
Suffering from three complaints—disordered kidneys, sciatica, and rheumatism, how could this man be anything else but always tired and ill? Yet, he tells us in his letter, that in four weeks, Kruschen Salts brought about “a complete transformation.” This is what he writes:–
“Up to a month or so ago, I had suffered continually from kidney disorder, sciatica, rheumatism, and generally felt off colour. I was constantly tired, and under medical supervision. I tried many remedies I had seen advertised, but without effect until I gave Kruschen Salts a trial. In four weeks, Kruschen has brought about a complete transformation. I have a healthy appetite and once more feel that it is good to be alive.”—S.V.N.
Constant tiredness nearly always results when the kidneys are disordered. And it is quite common for kidney disorder to be accompanied by the pains of sciatica and rheumatism, as happened in this case. The kidneys are the niters of the human machine. Their duty is to expel certain poisonous wastes from the system. If the kidneys become sluggish, these impurities find their way into the bloodstream. Soon poisons are accumulating in the system, uric acid crystals begin to form, and the seed of half-a-dozen common ailments is sown.
The scientific combination of salts in Kruschen quickly coaxes the kidneys back to healthy, normal action. As an immediate result, the sufferer experiences relief from those dragging back pains. Then the uric acid crystals are dissolved and passed out of the body through the natural channels—and life becomes a joy again.
Kruschen Salts is obtainable at all Chemists and Stores at 2/6 per bottle.
The Rt. Hon. the Prime Minister's literary companion on his journey to the Old Country was a copy of that great Australian novel “All That Swagger.”
Stuart Perry, whose caricature appears in this issue, is now busy on a murder mystery novel.
There is further talk of establishing a literary monthly in New Zealand. To be an enduring effort I am satisfied that such an undertaking would have to be supported by Government subsidy. There is not sufficient population or advertising revenue in this country to make such a journal a financial success.
While the first Dunedinite was saying proudly to the rest of the carriage, “This is about where the view begins— you'd better look, you've never seen anything like this before,” and the second Dunedinite echoed, “Ah, wonderful view, it is,” the train pulled up.
So I didn't see the view. The first Dunedinite, sitting like Mephistopheles, still murmured about the superiority of this hillside scenery to anywhere else in New Zealand, till I suppressed him with a petulant, “Oh, it's just like Wellington.”
Confidentially, Dunedin isn't just like Wellington; hardly like it at all. They both have wild hills and wildish sea, but the towns have grown up so differently. Wellington is a queerly attractive city of red-roofed wooden houses, hanging on by their eyebrows to precipices. Dunedin is a city of fine old stone houses, ancient cottages (some with lilac bushes growing taller than their tumbledown roofs), and the Town Belt coming down to meet the streets halfway. It is, after all, unlike the rest of New Zealand—not because of that view, the country is overloaded with views; but because its atmosphere and individual characterization are quietly, defiantly apart. I suppose it's that drop of Scotch in Dunedin veins.
It is a city of hospitality, but there's more of home life about it than cabaret. It has cable-trams, very broad in the beam, like ancient market-women with ample behinds, scaling up its It eights to bits of the Town Belt, ticked off as Jubilee Park and so forth. It has a large and handsome stone house, “Littlebourne,” which was left to it by the late Sir John Roberts. My suggestion that “Littlebourne” should be used as a home for indigent poets and artists, who would probably add quite a deal of local colour before they tore one another's eyes out, was very coldly received. Nobody seemed to think much of poets and artists as a scenic feature. However, Dunedin has put up a whacking great memorial (stone again) to the memory of one of New Zealand's first poets, Thomas Bracken. There on a hillside he reposes, with verses from “Not Understood” carved on his monument, and hill winds blowing cool around him, with a scent of roses running wild to make them the sweeter. Dunedinites seem not quite sure whether Thomas Bracken was a good poet or not; at the Early Settlers' Association museum, though, I was given a copy of “Not Understood, and Other Poems,” and thought Bracken was treated more friendly-like by his compatriots and ex-fellow citizens than the average poet. And that is a good thing; for if he did write “Not Understood,” he also wrote some fine verse about Te Rauparaha.
There are tuis and bellbirds closer down to the main streets of Dunedin city than in any other city in the Dominion. This you understand when you see how near the Town Belt lies. The Gardens are within five minutes of the main street, and out of George Street, where the trams rattle along, one passes straight into Cosy Dell, rangioras, elderberries and supplejacks arching over the narrow bit of road. Dunedin people, also, are very nice to birds. One garden, belonging to a well-known resident, has bright-coloured scarlet and orange affairs, like artificial capsicum pods, filled with honey that the long-billed tuis can quaff, without competition from the thrushes and starlings.
I stayed there two months, and watched the great umbrella of the weeping elm planted by Knox Church turn slowly from lifeless grey to green. Then it budded full, and came out in a soft whisk of leaves, saying “Summer” with every confidence. There are thousands of these old English (or Scottish?) pioneers, waving their high green hats at one another from street to street. The deep pink crab apples, which I hadn't seen before in anything like such profusion, massed the little Shakespeare garden with a blur of colour, between red and rose, and higher up, people made daily pilgrimages to the Rhododendron Dell. This is a specialty, rhododendrons and azaleas being collected from all parts of the globe able to do a garden well, and the result is little trees of apricot, butter-colour, bright yellow, rose, salmon, dawn-pink, scarlet—all the rich and rare colours you can think of, and blossom so thickly that one can hardly see the branches.
If you didn't like the weight and pressure of old traditions, Dunedin might oppress you. It is a place very
Behind glass, in the Early Settlers' Association Museum, is the huge ball of string which one pioneer had saved all her life days, with her pious words, “Waste Not, Want Not.” There are tiny, unopened packages of sweets, brought out in the First Ship, and, believe it or not, an unopened bottle of perfectly good Scotch, which travelled to New Zealand in the same distinguished vessel. Spinning-wheels, clocks, old bits of china, old meerschaum pipes, the things the first comers made, loved and lived with, are all stored up and neatly documented, while the walls are covered from roof to ceiling with pictured pioneers, the gentlemen very stern and whiskered, the ladies very demure.
And I was allowed to play the barrelrgan It was a device not for frivolity, but for Sabbath afternoons, its entire repertoire being hymn-tunes. The old gentleman in the smoking cap informed me that one of the people who played it was “our former King”—now, the Duke of Windsor. With a proper sense of humility I turned the handle, and the old tune sounded as good as new. Journals and records of the pioneers are also very fully kept in Dunedin, more so than anywhere else; and, rightly, without any regard to their literary value, but as a simple narrative of the vanished world that moved about them. There is very little Dunedin can't unearth about Dunedin, by looking up its own records.
All the same, though this continuity of past and present produces a homeliness, I could understand why one Dunedinite liked the stone quarries better than anything else in the city. The hard, new rattle of stone, leaping clean and blue from dents pickaxed out in the hills, had about it a sort of promise for the future. Something hadn't stopped happening, it was still in progress, or about to happen differently, with a rattle and clatter of falling stones. I think the young are more impatient for their youth under the shadow of old trees and old houses than in other surroundings; and I think, too, that they are right. They have their own miracles to produce, their own city to pattern.
One steps into odd things, such as the pavement-steps which for no visible reason break the surface of little streets wandering aimlessly along to nowhere; children in the evening playing hopscotch, with big white bases drawn on the pavements, and one goes down among them by low pavementsteps which don't happen anywhere else. And a few miles out, towards Kuri Bush, clay huts press their yellow against the sides of old cliffs, and soon the sea is hoary with a fine flying mane of spray. You come into good surfing beaches, and hear how the early Dunedin Exhibition, years and years ago, left that queer old iron-roofed pavilion stranded by the wayside; and Jo-Jo, the dog-faced boy, used to delight the childhood of small boys who are middle-aged men now.
Larnach's Castle is another queer Dunedin story. Every city has somebody or other's Folly, but in spite of its fallen years and estate, Larnach's Castle apparently still impresses Dunedin enough to retain its proper title. There's another Dunedin castle, Cargill's, which has been turned into a tea-room; but I didn't visit it. Lar nach's I saw on a pouring wet day, when one was only aware of over weening branches, putting their heads together across the drive. Then the castle, grey stone, with battlements, livery stables, long flat lawns and flower-beds that would have been brilliant with just a kiss of the sun; it cost £200,000 to build, so I was told, and you can have it now for £5,000— another ideal home for indigent poets.
In spite of its strange and tragic story—beginning with a romance, taking in a great ballroom, music and floating frocks, ending with a suicide— Larnach's has never been presented with a family ghost; and yet you couldn't imagine a building better adapted to the comfort and convenience of the same. Its great spiral staircase, twisting up three stories, ends in a little stair by which one can climb out to the battlements. From the roof, the flower-beds look uncommonly flat and small. Some of its glories—the black marble bath, which cost hundreds, the carved ceilings, one of which took twelve years to complete, and really is magnificent workmanship—are still in place, and much has been restored in atmosphere, since, after a period of utter desolation, it was taken over by Mr. and Mrs. Jackson-Purdy, who use it as a setting for antiques, and have taken a lot of trouble over its repair. For a while, it was used as part of a mental hospital, and some of the plateglass windows didn't come of too well. Rather than remove the glass—which couldn't be replaced without very heavy expense—the present tenants have used deep-coloured cartoons of historical figures to hide the cracked parts. Of course, if the castle were in old Scotland, the home of castles,
We ate afternoon tea—in itself a noble pile, with lots of cream and strawberry jam—toasting our shanks by a blazing log fire in the castle ballroom, where now most of the antiques congregate, from Chelsea poodles to the musical box. The latter, for some obscure reason, I can't get out of my mind. It had a gilt face and several little tunes, sung in a sweet, tinkly voice, like a child singing in a fairytale; and possibly because I hate over loud radios and blaring gramophones so very much, I have made up my mind that one day I'm going to adopt the Larnach's Castle musical box, or one just like it. You could get fond of it, as of the cricket on your hearth. Nice people, crickets.
In Dunedin, when the need for change or entertainment comes into your head, either you talk, or else you get into a car, and see more Dunedin; hills with a few waifs and strays from clematis-season still blowing white stars across them, and byre walls, low built of old red stones, guarding sheep and cattle with a trusty, staunch air which is worth all the wire fences in the world. The landscape spins out to Mosgiel, where there are large woollen mills, and across to Saddle Hill, one of the points named by Captain Cook.
There was an older capital once, laid out at Waikouaiti. A Maori settlement lay down at the Heads, under the amiable presidency of a chief named Bloody Jack. Whalers were the oldest and hardest customers and a missionary's life was not a happy one, as I discovered by reading some of the plaints of a gentleman stationed there before there was any such thing as Dunedin City. He didn't like the Maoris, but had them badly on his conscience; I thought, “One day that could be turned into a story, and called Sad Sea'.” On the other hand, another early record tells of the surprising appearance across the seawaves of the Catholic Bishop Pompallier, wearing his full robes, and standing on a little blue boat.
Of their buildings Dunedin people are proud, and rightly so, though they have the critical faculty well developed, and a knack of hitting themselves off in a phrase. The Cathedral, they say, was the work of an architect; First Church the work of an artist. And they are particularly proud of their statue of Bobbie Burns.
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“All great men have carved their names in the north…. Welcome to the great north.” So ran part of the kindly note of welcome which we found pushed under the door of our new abode, at the end of our long, dusty trail from the south. If taken seriously, the statement might reasonably be challenged by our southern compatriots, but only those who are definitely inferior are resentful of an assumption of superiority on the part of another, and the south can afford to smile. Her soils, too, bear the eternal imprint of men and women whose names shall be immortal in the annals of the land, and secure in that knowledge, she accepts, philosophically, such a statement as introduces this article, bracketing it with such others as “the winterless north” and “the Queen City” as the harmless conceit of a people naturally proud of their native soil. And the north has produced some great men, enoughto exucse, if not to justify, the boast of our proud northerner, for this is the country that bred those brave old warriors, Hone Heke, Hongi Hika and Tamati Waka Nene, the last named having, in addition to his native daring, the qualities of honour, gentleness and justice which go to make the truly great. This is the province that moulded also, and with stern shaping, such men as Samuel Marsden and that other great Samuel—Leigh—and their worthy lieutenants, King, Hall and Williams, men whose names glow with ever more brilliant lustre as their lives of sacrifice, devotion and privation are more thoroughly appreciated.
Redolent with fragrant memories of these men is this northern land, and we feel that we must tread softly, as on hallowed ground, the paths which their weary feet pressed so long ago, and where they so often “trod the winepress” of sorrow and bitter disappointment. It is a thrilling experience to walk with Marsden—through the medium of his “Letters and Journals,” with its quaint spelling of the Maori names—over this soil which is ever blessed to his memory. The very names themselves have a magic sound: Korroaddica (Kororareka), Wytangee (Waitangi), Kidi Kidi (Kerikeri), Shokee Hanga (Hokianga), and Cowa Cowa (Kawakawa). The last named place is mentioned in his Journal at least twenty times, and earns further distinction from the fact that it supplied the timber—kahikatea—for the building of the first mission station. He appears to have been much impressed with its splendid forests—how sorrowfully now would he regard the
denuded hills!—and frequently refers to “that noble pine, the Kowree”— (quaintest spelling of all). Every sod and stone in this district seems to bear an impress of the great missioner; here is the place where he slept at night, after his long tramp from Thames, wrapped only in his great-coat, between rows of savage cannibals, “nor felt the slightest sign of fear”; here is the very spot where he was handed the first grains of wheat grown in the district by the proud Maori husbandman; here is the great Maori pa from which he viewed in prayerful wonder the promised land, and as we walk over the memorable scenes, the wraiths of the past rise up, and we seem to hear the warning injunction, “Take thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.” A very fine memorial to Marsden's ministry in the north is the lych-gate to the old church at Waimate. It is a beautiful structure, of hewn stone, but to us, singularly inappropriate. “Lych,” or “Lich,” is the old Saxon word for corpse, and the covered gate was where the bier was laid while the pall-bearers rested before conveying it to the grave. Surely any memorial to him should
Rich in purely secular historical associations, also, is this part of the province, providing a happy hunting-ground for the student eager for knowledge of old New Zealand. Incidents of old Maori life and the lives of the early settlers, stirring tales of the Maori war and other stories unrecorded in any text-book, most of them probably quite authentic, are revealed in visits to native villages and talks to the oldest white settlers. How the old eyes light up as we exhibit interest in the cradle-days of British settlement in New Zealand, and how we thrill as we are guided over the ancient battlefields, where the brown patriots took their last despairing stand against the conquering alien! Ruapekapeka! Okaihau! Ohaewai! Hear those liquid syllables flow from the lips of an old Maori, watch the kindling eye and the unconscious warrior-like gestures, and catch a little of the spirit of those old savages who resisted so bravely and so desperately the doom of Maori dominion. On the battlefield of Ohaewai we sit under the same puriri trees round which raged one of the fiercest conflicts of the war. The man still lives who, as a boy, cut down the famous tree in which a ball from the English had conspicuously lodged. He rubs the seat of his trousers reminiscently, and says he still tingles at the memory of the parental displeasure that his sacrilegious act provoked. One wonders what became of that cannon ball. We climb the hill up which Colonel Despard led his troops, and down which he was forced to retreat before Heke's victorious warriors, who were under command of the great chief, Kawiti. It is said that Kawiti's widow—or perhaps we should say one of his widows—still lives, at the great age of 104, quite close to the scene of the famous battle. She, too, for those who follow the Maori tongue, can unroll the folded canvas of the past and present it again, clear and glowing as the imperishable colours of her own old kahu huruhuru. Tragedy and comedy, selfishness and sacrifice, love and hate, all played their part in the winning of New Zealand for civilized settlement. We, white New Zealand born, can scarcely be expected to feel regret for a conquest that gave us for heritage such a pleasant land, but the very fact that we realise that our title was established “by right of conquest” should make us more fully conscious of our duty to our native race, that noble people who were dispossessed of their native soil that we might be “native born.”
It is a beautiful country, this northern province, not with the rugged majestic grandeur of the south, but with a dreamy, voluptuous loveliness that soothes rather than stimulates, and calls its exiles, we are told, from the farthest corners of the globe. No mighty peaks tower from its rolling ranges, yet it lacks not many glorious hills, benignly imposing, lying fold upon fold, a giant shirring of the earth, billowing away in soft, green waves as far as the eye may follow. A wonderful land, too, for a beneficent nature has showered her gifts upon it in no mean measure. A copious rainfall, aided by warm and genial temperatures, induces a rich growth of vegetation, which compensates in a large degree for some extent of barren land—land that has been short-sight-edly denuded of its protecting forests, and since, by successive floods, has been swept bare of its productive soil.
To those familiar with the southern climate, with its more normal seasonal activity, the vagaries of nature in this northern clime are amusing and somewhat bewildering. The “Last Rose of Summer” is never left blooming alone here, for with a hundred companions she defies song and season alike until a ruthless spring-pruning brings her to a violent end. Then imagine ripe blackberries in June; spring bulbs of all descriptions flowering cheek-by-jowl with autumn dahlias and chrysanthemums; apple-blossoms side by side with the matured fruit, and grass ankle-deep in mid-winter.
But with all the possibilities of such a climate properly exploited, with good roads giving access to places remote from the railway, and with its fine rivers and waterfalls harnessed to supply water, light and power to all its people, what might not such a country become? Already its citrus fruits are competing successfully in the world's keenest markets, and its passion-pulp industry is flourishing apace, but even in these directions its resources are imperfectly developed. Its roading system is, probably, its greatest drawback. A day's drive over its tortuous tracks, potholed and corrugated to the nth degree, is a nightmare to the driver and destruction to his car. In the meantime the north stands, halfway to prosperity, waiting for the “man of vision” who will break down the barriers that bar its way to progress.
But of its beauty of scenery, its wealth of romantic history, and the unaffected charm and kindliness of its people, the “half has never been told.” Some day, maybe, there will arise from its soil a poet—a very genius of poetic expression, who will feel a burning fervour—a mastering passion of love for his native land. He will sound the deeps of his mother-earth; its essence will seep into his soul, and from his lips its spirit will pour out in a flood of music—exquisite, melodious, majestic—and the glorious tale of the north will be told in glorious song.
Mataura, busy little industrial town, eight miles south of Gore, in Eastern Southland, is mildly jubilant over its centenary celebrations. Nearly 100 years ago, the old kaika at Tuturau, close to the town, happened to be the scene of a clash between the Ngai-Tahu and Ngati-Tama tribes.
That fight was of Dominion-wide importance for several reasons. In the first place it marked the end of inter-island tribal warfare which had been actively participated in by bloody Te Rauparaha, a chief whose name will go down in history as a warrior endowed with a good deal of ability as a leader and strategist. Native intelligence combined with a certain shrewd cunning quickly brought him to the forefront of his tribe, the Ngati-Toa, which originally inhabited the country to the north of New Plymouth.
It was Te Rauparaha who conceived the idea of extending his realms further to the south that he might make contact with the whaling vessels and slowly accumulate, by a process of barter, sufficient arms and ammunition to satisfy his ambitions.
Te Puoho, one of the central figures in connection with the Tuturau centenary, upon whom the mantle of seniority in his tribe (the Ngati-Tama) had descended following the death of the other principal chiefs in one or other of the numerous battles with the fighting Waikato people and tribes to the north, came to associate himself with Te Rauparaha. Between them they subjected their neighbours, led strong tauas (war-parties) into south Taranaki and eventually secured the coast line as far away as Wellington.
TeIt was not long before Te Rua-paraha was preparing to put into execution plans for further conquests. Thus about 1828 we find him afloat with a powerful party, with Nelson and Marlborough as his objective. The subj ection o f the more or less peaceful tribes inhabiting those localities provides a bloody chapter in New Zealand's history. The immensely superior arms of the invaders resulted in a “slaughter of the innocents.”
TeAbout this time Te Puoho, who by virtue of his resourcefulness and general ability as a leader had aspired to the rank of right-hand supporter to Te Rauparaha, had struck a discordant note with his own people. He was reluctant to accept the dictates of the dominant Te Rauparaha and was anxious to put into effect a scheme of settlement and sub-division of his lands. This his tribe strongly resented so he determined to prosecute a quest for new territory.
TeIt so happened that he conceived the idea of marching overland to capture Murihiku (Southland). The fact that he actually accomplished this amazing journey—even though it spelled “journey's end” for him—demands special consideration. It has since been described as being the longest overland march by a taua in Maori tradition.
Those who have even the most casual acquaintance with the rugged regions of Westland, the dense bush, innumerable torrents and rivers flowing swiftly seawards from the ice-fields of the Southern Alps, towering cliffs and treacherous swamps—will realise some of the difficulties which confronted Te Puoho and his dauntless band of approximately 100 warriors, to say nothing of the few women (including two of the leader's wives) who accompanied them.
But still worse obstacles were to come. The trek across the mountain barrier, by way of what is now known as Haast Pass, into Otago took toll of the endurance, tenacity, courage and skill of Te Puoho and his men and it was a gaunt and hungry taua which emerged on the shores of Lake Wanaka. Still it continued, pressing into service prisoners captured en route as guides.
Through the barren lands of Otago Central, the Kawarau Gorge, the Nevis Valley and the Mataura Valley the warriors travelled, ultimately coming to peaceful Tuturau much frequented food supply depot of the Ngai-Tahu tribe, of Murihiku, with headquarters on the island fortress of Ruapuke. The kaika and its inhabitants, with the exception of one youth named Rakitapu, who slipped quietly into cover on seeing the stealthy approach of the strange taua, fell into the hands of Te Puoho after a short skirmish.
Blissfully unconscious of Rakitapu scurrying as fast as he was able south to the coast to give the alarm, Te Puoho settled down for a well-earned rest and a little feasting on the new potatoes and assorted stocks of preserved foods accumulated by the prisoners.
Rakitapu's news caused the greatest consternation in the south. Ruapuke was in a ferment. Careful watch had been kept by sea to guard against the approach of a hostile force, more particularly the warriors of Te Rauparaha who had sacked the regions as far south as Banks Peninsula. None had the remotest idea that fertile Murihiku would be invaded by land. Feverish preparations took place on the island, while a war party was got together.
It says much for the courage and daring of the southerners that there was no shirking the call to arms to repel a foe whose numerical strength was unknown.
Following the traditional incantations, songs of defiance, hakas, etc., the taua launched a fleet of canoes in the dawn and paddled out into the open sea to cross to the mainland, at Fortrose. That night camp was made up the Mataura river where the tohunga (priest), by the light of the camp fires, foretold the fate of the expedition. In tense silence he called upon the heart of Te Puoho to appear. Before the astonished gaze of the warriors the vital organ, bright with drops of blood, hung suspended. The omen was favourable. At daybreak the next day Tuturau was surrounded and in the surprise attack Te Puoho, descendant of Tio-Tio, a member of the Tokomaru canoe, which came to New Zealand about 1350, was slain by a musket ball fired by Topi-Patuki.
As a general experience in securing first news for daily papers, there is a story behind the objective sometimes even more thrilling than the scoop itself. Every live wire on a newspaper staff lives day and night in eagerness for items that will beat the other paper—with an eagerness as keen as the cricketer for his century or the footballer for his try. There is no vocation in modern days that offers the same amount of thrills that is provided in the pursuit of news on a city paper. It is not a case of the daily round and common task—it is a life of the unexpected for the writer who is keen on his job and who is down on the book for all the things that matter in the emergencies of the city. Every star reporter on every daily paper could tell stories behind scoops that would make fiction go hide her face for lack of imagination against actuality. Of course, some of these behind-the-scoop stories can never be told—not even when the doors are closed; and New Zealand's newspapermen are perhaps the world's best and most reliable keepers of secrets.
My own most exciting, dangerous and most disappointing misadventure occurred just thirty-four years ago and had to do with the arrival from England of Lord Plunket (whose lady mothered the fine institution bearing her name to-day) to take over the Governorship of New Zealand. Mr. Charles Earle, C.M.G. (now head of the “Dominion,” then a sub-editor of the “Evening Post”) had set the main -by scooping the arrival of a previous Governor. A prince of scoopists, C.E. had accomplished the impossible in securing an interview for publication with his Exclusiveness. Therefore, when Lord Plunket was due to arrive off Worser Bay in the liner “Gothic,” Editor Gresley Lukin gave instructions that his Excellency be interviewed for the “Evening Post.”
“But it isn't done,” said the chief reporter, Mr. Jack Gibbons. “Earle did it!” rumbled the big Australian; and in relaying the order to me overnight, Jack said: “There's no comeback to that, Tom.”
It takes the fathers and grandfathers of Wellington to remember the exceedingly crude, rough and lonely conditions of Worser Bay and its neighbourhood in the mid-winter of 1904. I failed to get a permit from the Health Department to accompany on board the little Duco, the port health officer, Dr. Pollen, a very genial official, but one who had explicit instructions not to facilitate the enterprises of “those devils of the press.” The department put a curb on enterprise.
My troubles began, after a trip across Miramar and Seatoun in an express from Newtown in a rain storm. At 8 a.m., when trudging over the hill to Worser Bay, the sun was shining for a brief spasm, when the top of the hill overlooking the bay was reached. The Heads were in the distance and there in the middle foreground lay the handsome liner gaily decorated from stem to stern with bunting all dressed up to go to town.
Standing on the shore looking across the intervening stretch of water I found my problem anything but solved. How to get out to that ship? “Yes,” said one of the few residents of the seaside resort that was to become so popular, “you'll get a boat down at the shed. Come with me and I'll fix you. I was thinking of going out to the ‘Gothic’ myself.” But the boat was gone! “I'll go home to breakfast,” said the local. “You go and ask the fishermen to take you out.”
Johnny the Greek, who had been at the bay seemingly from the time of the whalers, did not like the idea of taking a boat out in the breakers that rolled in like they roll at Bondi. Anyway, that boat drawn up on the beach was too heavy for him to handle—“an' you no help!” as he looked contemptuously at my lean phiz, with my figure swathed in a heavy rain-laden overcoat, muffler round my throat, gloves on hands and a big brolly under my arm. That ancient Greek was a man of discernment as well as experience.
Plodding along towards Karaka Bay in search of a crew generally and of Friend Resident particularly, I met another local busily engaged in splitting rocks with which to pave the muddy places leading to his seaside cottage. Had he seen a man in gum boots and a hurry? Certainly. That was Wyatt, the keeper of the store just round the corner. “You're a newspaper chap, eh. Well, I'm a footballer, see. (A hint at a controversy raging in the papers). I don't like the papers just now, though I must admit the ‘Evening Post’ has been fair on this rough clay question. But, Lord! it would be fun to see the fellows who write down us footballers dumped into the sea. Oh, nothing personal— I wish you better luck than that if you're really going off to the' Gothic.' I'll watch your progress.” (I'll say right here that he got an eyeful.)
When Mr. Wyatt had finished his breakfast and reached the beach again a boat was seen making its way to Worser Bay. It was the missing dinghy, with a crew of three boys. As the boat came bumping through the
“Don't let her get broadside on, now!” they yelled in chorus. But the warning was too late for the landlubber, who slipped and floundered as the boat swung round into the trough and shipped quite two loads of wave, at the same time unshipping the scribe before the Pharisees, including the footballer. As another breaker visitor from Bondi came rolling along the watery way the Rugby chap yelled: “Jump!” And I did—into the broiling sea; overcoat, gloves, umbrella and muffler.
The assemblage had been mysteriously augmented by two young athletes in club jerseys and “en masse” they gleefully hauled me out of a predicament that was very wet, indeed. “You had enough?” asked the storekeeper. “Not nearly. I've got a job to do—get me out to that ship before she loses me!”
The dinghy was hauled ashore, dewatered, and the voyage was made with nothing more inconvenient than another heavy shower of rain. From the boat to the Duco, thence up the gangway to the deck of the liner, where my card brought the Governor's aide-de-camp, Captain Braithwaite.
Could he secure for me a personal interview with his Excellency? He returned with the message: His Excellency's regrets, but he was busy with private secretary Waterfield. They were going through a mass of official papers which required attention before the “Gothic” reached Wellington. And that was that. The scoop had failed!
But there was no failure for the “Evening Post.” An oil launch standing by took me to the city with particulars of the notabilities on board I had gleaned, with notes on the passage and items about the Plunket family. Thus the “Evening Post's” readers got ahead of the morning paper, then the “New Zealand Times.” In addition, I wrote a column article on “Seeking an Interview—the Misadventures of a Journalist,” which the editor classed as “full of human interest and atmosphere”—and sent me home to get dry, which was my best reward.
Shortly afterwards I was introduced at a public function to Governor Plunket by his A.D.C., as “the reporter who was tipped into the sea, you know, sir, when you would not give him an interview for the ‘Evening Post.”’
“And a jolly good job you didn't get that interview young man,” said his Excellency with a grin as he shook hands—“for that article you wrote was a dashed sight more interesting and entertaining than any interview I could have given you. And I got a jolly good laugh out of it, eh, Braithwaite!”
Ever suffer from that depressing complaint known as “the blues?” But, of course, you do. It gets us all now and again. You know the symptoms? You feel as cheap as fourpence ha-penny; can't rouse yourself or take an interest in anything. Everything seems to go dead wrong, and the game of life not worth the candle! Now when you feel like that it is time to see what tobacco can do for you. A quiet smoke has been known to work wonders. There's much virtue in ‘baccy. Fill up with a bit of something really choice—it must be good if it's to do you good. And, come to that, there's nothing choicer than “toasted”: the real toasted mind, not some rotten imitation. Buy any of the following and you'll get the genuine article: Cut Plug No. 10 (Bullshead), Cavendish, Navy Cut No. 3 (Bulldog), Riverhead Gold and Desert Gold. They all contain “the cheer germ.” Under their beneficient influence sorrow is softened, black care flies away. As gloom-dispellers, they're worth a guinea an ounce!*
Fifty-one years ago there was trouble on the Wangaehu bank, one of those steep grades near Wanganui which the recent decision to straighten the line in that locality will eliminate.
But fifty-one years ago the grade was as steep as it is to-day and the locomotives available were not comparable with the “K's” and “Ab's” to which the modern train traveller on the New Zealand Railways is accustomed.
Railway Head Office records have an entry “Accident to train on Wangaehu Grade—20th June, 1885,” but the papers relative thereto have long since faded into oblivion. One man, however, Mr Tim Troy, of the Commercial Hotel at Woodville, has good cause to recollect vividly what took place on that occasion.
The date and the place coincide with one of Tim's most dramatic reminiscences, for he tells of how in his youth he stopped a runaway train on the Wangaehu Hill near Wanganui and collected £100 and a promise of a job on the railways for life from the Premier, John Ballance.
“On the steep grade,” said Tim, “the train ran out of sand, which is used to lend grip to the rails, and the engine-driver, fireman and guard all left their positions to replenish the supply.”
The picture of these three anxious trainmen, digging into the bank alongside the line to provide sand for the greasy rails and slipping wheels while the train snorted slowly and unsteadily upward, must be contrasted with their look of amazement when the train suddenly started to run back at the bend. “Tim” guessed the trouble, screwed down all the brakes he could lay hands on and thus prevented a smash. Needless to say for his exploit on this occasion Mr. Tim Troy was heralded as a hero.
A mechant addressing a debtor Remarked in the course of his lebtor
That he chose to suppose
A man knose what he ose
And the sooner he pays it the bebtor.
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Traffic Manager: “Did you put ‘Handle With Care’ and ‘This Side Up’ on all the boxes to go by freight?”
Pat (new shipping clerk): “Oi did, sur. An' for fear they did not see it on the top, Oi printed it on the bottom, too.”
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It was at a fashionable wedding. The bridegroom's father was a well-known company director, and an enormously rich man, though “near.”
The bridegroom, however, was notoriously impecunious. His sole means of support seemed to be borrowing money from his friends.
But he boldly repeated his part of the marriage service, and exclaimed loudly, “With all my worldly goods I thee endow.”
Whereupon his father said in a stage whisper that could be heard distinctly all over the church: “Good Lord!
There goes his bicycle!”
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Mrs. A.: “‘Ow did yer old man break ‘is front teeth?”
Mrs. B.: “Tryin' to drink out of a bottle we'en ‘e wus on top of a motorbus.”
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Salesman: “This fire-fighting apparatus will be in use in 50 years' time.”
Elderly Lady: “But in 50 years I shall not be here.”
Salesman, misunderstanding: “But, madame, it is so light and convenient that you could carry it anywhere with you.”
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“A fortnight ago you gave me a plaster to get rid of my rheumatism.”
“Yes.”
“Now I want something to get rid of the plaster.”
A small boy at the Christmas party had been eating steadily for an alarming length of time. When he asked for another helping, his mother spoke to him earnestly.
“Willie,” she said, “I'm quite serious. If you take another helping of turkey, you'll burst.”
Willie listened, alarm spreading over his features. He hesitated, and gazed at the turkey. Finally he sat erect, a study of heroic resolution.
“All right, then,” said he, “give me another helping and stand clear.”
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A well-known actor was appearing in a play in which a thunderstorm played an important part. One night in the middle of a speech he was interrupted by a terrific peal.
The annoyed actor looked up into the flies and said: “That came in the wrong place.”
And the angry stage-hand replied: “Oh, did it? Well, it came from ‘eaven.”
“What is the ‘Irony of Fate,’ dad?”
“Well, my boy, if your great uncle Alfred, who has only one tooth in his head, gets toothache through biting the one three-penny bit in the Christmas pudding that would be it.”
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An old lady was going down a coalmine for the first time. As the cage descended she noticed how she and the rest of the party were dependent upon a single rope to which it was attached.
“Do you think it's quite safe?” she asked a miner as she glanced at the rope.
“Safe as the bank,” returned the miner. “There's nothing to be afraid of. These ropes are guaranteed to last 12 months, and this one ain't due to be renewed till to-morrow.”
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A foreign pianist was engaged to act as accompanist to an aspiring amateur singer. The latter had bounding ambition, but her technique was faulty. This defect became manifest at the first rehearsal.
After the poor woman had flatted and flatted until she had flatted practically all of her notes, the accompanist waved her to silence.
“Madam,” he said, mournfully, “it is no use. I gif up der chob. I blay der black keys, I blay der white keys—und always you sing in der cracks!”
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“Yes,” he said, “I was left without father or mother at the age of eight months, and ever since I've had to battle along for myself.”
“And how did you manage to support yourself at eight months?”
“Oh, I crawled to a baby show and won first prize.”
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The scene was a riding school.
“Have you ever ridden a horse?” said the sergeant.
“No, sergeant,” replied the recruit.
“Well, here's the very animal for you. He's never been ridden, so you two can start level.”
The trappers, back-woodsmen, and settlers along the Fort George-Athabasca rail-road affectionately christened her the Roaring Sal. Affectionately, because in that mighty loneliness the train was a link with civilization.
The Indians, sombre-eyed, and accepting the paleface and all his works without comment, watched her tearing out of the night, and named her “Running Fire.”
Men of the great woods set their watches by her, and judged the hour of the night by the scream of her siren. Lonely trappers, hungering for the sound of a human voice, and when the madness of isolation was upon them, made long trips in, just to see her flash by. One might be lucky enough to receive a wave from someone, a woman, maybe, then he would go back more pleased than if the white dawn had brought him a dozen black foxes in his traps.
Once more, during one of the wildest winters the North West had ever known, the Sal was running late. And this time she was late—just eleven hours behind schedule when she pulled into Sandusky.
A station man, muffled to the eyes in a fur coat, met driver Le Fresne as he stepped down from his engine. “Hullo, Frensy! Just beginning to think you'd decided to wait till summer.”
But Le Fresne was in no mood for joking. In addition to punching the storm for three hundred odd miles, he had the misfortune to blow a gasket in his engine.
Le Fresne turned up the collar of his overalls and tucked his ears up under the band of his cap.
“What's ahead?”
The station man grinned.
“A railroad…. somewhere under the snow. And dead silence. No word for more than twelve hours. Wires down, apparently.”
“Better hold her here,” Le Fresne said eagerly. “Can't go on in this.”
The icy wind screamed down from the back of the Big Horn, tore up the fallen snow, reinforcing its own whirling battalions until all was a wild slather of white.
“Last word from headquarters was to bring her through.”
Le Fresne moved into the shelter of the huge loco.
The passengers dozed in the warm cars, secure from the howling blizzard without, while the men from the roundhouse wrestled with the hot cylinder, packed her, tightened her, and pronounced her O.K. Then they coupled her up again and sent her on her way.
They drove her hard along the stretches between the bending pines, where they knew there would be little danger from landslides or washouts, and where the line was comparatively free from snow. The veteran, Le Fresne, perched high on his seat, one knarled hand on the regulator, the other at frequent intervals dashing the snow from his goggles.
The fireman, a big-boned youth with Indian blood in him, glanced up at the gauge, then across at the speed-indicator. The needle was steady on seventy. The great loco, lifting to her steam. A wild pace! A wild night! But, in the crossing of continents, high speed was a necessity. And Le Fresne knew what he was doing, as well as he knew the road. For twenty years he had ridden the rails, with never a single mishap.
He drew in his cold-blistered face and yelled across at his fireman:
“Where's the hottest place in the world, Charley?”
The fireman smiled with a flash of white teeth and shook his head.
“I don't know either, Charley. But that's where I'm goin' to live when they hand me my pension.”
In the deep ravines with their ten-thousand-feet ramparts on either side, night came down on them like a blanket. Tricky bends, below which the Great Bear roared like its namesake, had to be negotiated carefully. But the Sal thundered on, tossing the miles behind her, in contemptuous disregard of the white fury of the night.
* * *
Into the same wild blizzard rode Monsieur Pierre Lamonte, a king whose crown was his parka-hood; Pierre of the mighty heart.
Indian children chased him when he and his team—the finest dog-team in the whole North West—came swinging through the settlements. The old women crossed themselves and invoked a blessing upon him, saying: “There surely goes a man!” The mounties doffed their hats to him.
Pierre it was who drove his team two hundred miles through a blinding storm to bring a doctor to a sick woman, and who, when the doctor said a return journey was-impossible, seized him, bound him to the sled and brought him back.
Pierre it was who was always poor, for he gave away all he had. It was
Pierre loved his fellows, he loved his wild North West, but he loved his dogs the most.
The big French Canadian stood swaying on the racing sled. On—on—on, crashing through the whirling wall of white, burning a trail that only Pierre could follow.
“Ho! Ho! Ho! Igloo… Klondike…Marie…!”
Half buried in a snow hummock one minute, racing across the level flats the next. Dodging spinneys of pine and fir. Pierre, sweating even in the intense cold, toiling, fighting, yet revelling in the battle.
“Aie-ya! Aie-ya! Aie-ya! Klondike, you ole son-of-a-gun, c'mon, now! Show ‘em how!”
Pierre, running beside the sled, ramming home the gee-pole, swinging her round the bends. Back on the sled again. The dogs, straining at the draglines, too intent on their job, even to yelp.
“Aie-ya! Aie-ya! Aie-ya!”
Down into the valley where the great pines bent before the blast. The sled hurling the snow behind it. Singing runners. Thongs of reindeer hide as tight as bow-strings. Heading for the railroad, and on beyond.
Pierre's long whip flashed out ahead. The lash writhed and snapped, an inch from the furry hides. And Pierre laughed aloud and thought how his dogs must be laughing at him… and his whip, for they had never known its sting. Yet he made longer and faster trips than any other runner, and he always got there.
“He do travel” they said of him in the settlements. “And he do love them dogs.”
Which was no more than the truth. In return for his love, kindness and devotion, they gave him service—such service.
A shout of triumph burst from Pierre as they crossed the railroad just north of Moose Falls. For seven miles he would follow the line, then camp for the night in the shelter of the Moose Jaw. At dawn he would be on his way, cutting straight across the great barrens, to pick up the railroad again at Mohican Lake, and to deliver the mails.
Suddenly the sled tilted sharply and went over, tossing Pierre out into the soft snow. The dogs halted, looking back at him, their red tongues hanging out and their sides heaving, as though laughing at their master's predicament.
As Pierre arose he knew what had caused the upset. Wire beneath the snow, the wire of the railway telegraph. He righted the sled, called to the dogs and drove on.
Six miles further on, as they rounded the bend of the Moose Jaw, Pierre jerked his team to a standstill and stood staring. For a full forty yards the line was piled high with earth and stones. A few shattered tree trunks stuck out from the debris.
Pierre ran forward, fighting against the wind.
It must have happened hours ago, for the creek which had apparently undermined the wall, was a solid block of ice. Pierre looked up at the sky. The light was dying, and night would come very suddenly.
“By gar!” he ejaculated. “I wonder if they know.” Then he remembered the wire of the telegraph.
Shut off as it was by the bend, even in daylight a driver would have difficulty in pulling up in time. In the darkness, and on such a night, never a hope. They would be round the bend and into it in a flash.
Pierre walked up and down, clapping his mittens together, and thinking aloud, as men of the great barrens will.
“Which way she come, I dunno. But if she come east, den she smash …. one sure t'ing. An' no tail back…”
He visualised the country that lay behind—mountains, ravines, river and forest, through which no runner had ever sawn a trail. The country ahead was just barren flats, clear, all the way to Mohican Lake; but Mohican was a long way off.
“But if she comes west… den it all depends. Now, don't you let your commonsense say it can't be done, or you're beaten already. It can be done, an' by dam you'll do it!”
He hurried to the sled and yelled to the resting huskies. He scooped a hole and cached the furs, retaining only the two bags of mail, his few provisions and his rifle. Then he cracked his whip and leapt to the sled as it darted away.
“Igloo … Klondike … Marie! Mush on!”
A hard day's trail behind them, yet they went at it with a will. Heads down, slugging into it, straining at the draglines, chopping the snow from their flying heels, their fierce eyes glinting redly in the coming dusk. And Pierre, yelling above the storm, urging them on.
“Aie-ya! Aie-ya! Aie-ya!”
Night came, and still the snow—like the storm King's phantom army. Down from the Arctic tundras, and ice-bound Hudson Bay; screaming south, countless ghostly army corps.
It shut Pierre in, so that he could scarcely see the dogs. The snow gathered and froze on his stubble of beard. He had no idea, of course, when the train would be due at Mohican, there might not even be one. All running could have possibly been suspended. But there might be a train.
It was that thought that drove Pierre on. He urged his team to greater efforts, holding the trail by his own uncanny skill.
His heart went out to his dogs. He was sobbing for very love of them—gallant brutes, every one. He talked to them, promised them long rest, pleaded with them for just a little more speed.
They came to the railroad again. The last lap. Pierre drove as he had never driven before. The snow flew from the singing runners. The wind, colder since the snow had ceased, tore past his face. It was dead level going now, and Mohican almost in sight.
They were skimming across the long plateau. The railroad was below. Mohican, only half an hour away.
Oh, but he would have a tale to tell them in Mohican to-night. A little bragging about these dogs would be excusable. He would buy a bottle of wine—two bottles.
He thrust his hand beneath his parka, then burst into laughter. He had forgotten. Oh, well, the wine could wait. That poor old squaw woman had needed the money so badly…
Merciful Father…! What was that…? A red glare on the sky ahead!
Then there was a train. And that train had left Mohican.
Pierre drove on, thinking desperately. To stop the train was an impossibility. Then what…?
He swung sharply to the left, driving hell-for-leather down from the plateau. The train was lessening the distance between them at every second. Like a fiery arrow streaming out of the night.
Pierre raised his whip, brought it down, every ounce of his strength behind the blow. The dogs yelped in agony and leapt clear from the snow.
Pierre raised a tortured face to the stars.
“My dogs … My God… forgive me!”
The train was almost upon him, its blazing eye blinding him. He raised his whip again, and three times the brutal lash fell. Only that last great effort of the dogs made the plan possible. And he had judged the time to a split second.
He swerved suddenly; drove straight into the track of the flying loco.
* * *
Le Fresne grabbed for the levers.
“God…. we've hit something!”
Something whizzed over the loco., rolled from the tender and lay kicking away its life on the steel floor… a dog.
They pulled up and walked back, and there they found the French Canadian. It was a long time before they could get a coherent explanation from him, he was so busy peering here and there, searching in the darkness.
Marie alone, of all the team, was alive, but mangled. Pierre found his rifle and knelt down beside her. She whined pitifully, nosing into the breast of his parka. He stroked her pretty head, felt for her pounding heart against the rifle-muzzle, and pressed the trigger.
* * *
Pierre still races across the great North West, but in one of the Union's mail-vans. He is, perhaps, the busiest man on the train. But, when the mail is all sorted and sealed up in the different bags, he has his moments of leisure. Then a sad, faraway look will come into his eyes, and you will know he is thinking of Igloo, Klondike, Marie, and all the rest.
“Do I know history?” said Mr. Goof. “I am history. I make it. Why, bless your dates and doubts, I can make bigger and better history in five minutes than the whole pack of kings and queens and jacks and aces have dealt in five hundred years. Don't tell me that you've never read Goof's Historical Feats And Counterfeits, Goof's Readied Records, A Spoof With Goof and Goofy Glimpses at the Unknown. Why, you'd never believe what I can tell you. I am oh fake with history in all its rumifications, natural and unnatural, straight and distorted, on the level and over the odds, ancient and immoderate.”
“But is not history a record of fact, Mr. Goof?”
“A figment for fact! Fact is a fallacy,” cried Mr. Goof. “Veracity is the root of all dullness, and illusion is the spice of knowledge; the slickness of the hand-out deceives the I, and it's never too late to amend. History to-day is too old-fashioned. It lacks enterprise. It's not original. But I have got the Holly-wood on it. All my facts are founded on fiction. My history is exclusive. It's so improbable that you can't help believing it.
“Haven't you observed that, as soon as a thing seems likely, nobody wants to hear about it? But when it's utterly unbelievable everybody wants to believe it? In the words of Ana-know-us, we strain at a snack and swallow a mangle. If I tell you that Noah put to sea in the Ark you merely say, “Yeah; saw it at the pictures.” But if I assure you that the Ark put to sea in Noah your interest is immediately whetted—soaked, in fact. When you hear the old story of how Henry VIII made a slip-knot of the marriage tie, you merely think of him as The Marry Monarch, the king who played Crown and Anchor without the anchor, the monarch who approached matrimony rather as a hobby than a hubby, history's most persistent widower. But when I tell you that, to Hen, women were the fear sex, and that he stayed single and kept his old mother, you are carried away by my tour de farce.
“It's the unexpected that always should happen. If you are told that a man fell out of a seventh-storey window to the footpath you accept it as a natural thing to do these days. But if you are assured that a man fell from the footpath to a seventh-storey window you are amazed, amused and incredulously credulous. Now just imagine what a dull world it would be if we were all the victims of truth. Fishing, golfing and horse-racing would die of perfidious anaemia. And how would novelists make an honest living with nothing to fall back on except dull truth? As things are, the broken-hearted heroine twangs ‘the heart bowed down’ on your soul-strings when she sobs to her playboy spouserino, ‘Oh, Basil, why did you have to do-hoo this thing to me. Something has di-hied in my heart.’ To make such a passage conform to the vicissitudes of fact she would have to snap, ‘You miserable little lounge-hound; I'll break your head-lights if I see you lamping that skinny little permanent-waver again. Believe me, Basil-boy, there'll be something limp found on your doorstep if you don't mind your sequeeze and cues.’ No sir; it would never do to reproach art with the stain of certitude—or words to that effect. And who'd go to the pictures if they weren't so durned unnatural that they make reality look as colourless as a blameless life. What would be the use of them if they didn't make you feel what a devil you could be if only you could be a devil? My objection to history is that it hasn't moved with the times. William the Conk, frinstance, did his stuff at Hastings in ten-sixty-six and not a thing has been done about it since. Can you imagine anything more monotonous?
“Every thing has been improved except history. If man had remained content with Nature's economics, how could we have progressed to our present stage of enlightened anxiety? No sir, it's high time history was brought up-to-date, like breakfast foods, movie morals, scientific slaughter and child welfare; and I'm the man to do it. They have revised the prayer book, the dictionary, the cookery book, the domesday book, and the bookmaker's chart; but what have they done about modernising history? The antiquated stuff they put across is a disgrace to progress. Now, take Christopher Columbus. What have the continuity writers done about him? Christopher Columbus discovered America? Nothing of the kind. America discovered Christopher Columbus. I got the exclusive low-down on the whole hocus. Chris was cruising within cracker-throw of the Gulf of Mexico when he was hailed by the yacht of I. Makit Snappy, the ten-way lipstick king who made his fortune out of a kiss-confection that you can use for chewing, flavouring salads, colouring your lips or your lamps, mending motor tyres, gingering up cocktails, shining your shoes or dying your hair. He was tickled to death by Christopher's cute little cocktail cabaret, and offered him half a million dollars for it as a gooing concern. For years it was moored off Florida and known as ‘Chris's.’ Yes, sir, Columbus may not have discovered America, but he discovered a lot of things and died of boot-and-leg disease in the year 99 per cent. O.P.
“And take the Great Fire of London. It's a burning shame the way the possibilities of the conflagration have been neglected. No news value, no highlights, no hot headlines! Just burnt out embers preserved for posterity. But believe me, boy, I have warmed it up. Got it straight from Guy Fawkes before he took the job as
chief of the Los Angeles Fire Department. ‘Twas Iva B. Squint of Squinties Unlimited who thought of it. Competition in the movie world was so keen that newsreel men had to shoot things before they happened to keep ahead of the times. Iva B. Squint got the notion that if he could set London alight he could make a hit by calling it the burning of Rome with Hannibal and Pharoah playing the bagpipes on an elephant in the foreground. So he offered Guy Fawkes half a million dollars and the leading part in The Midnight Follies of 1666 to get it lit up. It went like a house on fire, or at least it would have if Oliver Flick hadn't sneaked in, shot the fire, and, with the help of Helen of Troy, George Washington, Nell Gwynn, Titus Oates, the Dolly sisters, and the Iron Duke, produced it as Hot Babies.
“And to get closer to home, my researches in the realms of subterfuge prove delusively that New Zealand was discovered by a Dutch towing company—probably the one that tugged Wellington's floating dock from old England. Mind you, I am not decrying Maui's fishing feat in pulling up New Zealand on a string. After all, the Maoris didn't have the educational advantages offered by Professors Ananias and Jonah; and I could have told them a thing or six m'self. I have it on the most unauthentic authority that the Dutch found New Zealand floating about the Antarctic while they were towing up icebergs for the Chilean ice-cream industry. Thinking that it would come in handy for filling up the Zuider Zee, which was Holland's chief farming problem on account of its entire lack of land, they took it in tow. But they hadn't gone far when they ran into a snifter, or a cold schnapps as it is called in the Dutch. So they anchored New Zealand while they went home for a couple of Flying Dutchmen to help them out. While they were away it broke into three pieces. And I might say that no one need fear the few little quivers we get at times, for it's only the anchors dragging a mite. When Abel Tasman got back to plant the national cheese and thus claim New Zealand for Holland he found that it was inhabited by Polly Nesian and her family who looked as though they were not so fond of cheese. So Tasman sailed home to his old Dutch. He was tough but the Maoris didn't look fussy. I could give you a heap more hocustorical facts that would surprise you. Why,” said Mr. Goof, “I even surprise m'self at times.”
Ruin is apt to result when strange animals are released in New Zealand on the assumption that they will behave just as they do in their natural habitat. The latest example of this has been proved officially at least and at last; the weasel, the ferret, the stoat and the mongoose—arch enemies of rabbits—in New Zealand have refused to work overtime according to calculations. So New Zealand's rural areas are cursed with millions of rabbits and the expensive little thieves imported to catch the rabbits.
About 50 years ago weasels, ferrets and stoats were imported at high cost by the Governments and given statutory protection. All protection has now been removed and the “friends” have become official enemies of native birds, domestic animals and the State. Sometimes in batches of hundreds, members of the ferret family were purchased to prey on swarms of rabbits whose ancestors were released by stray callers very early in New Zealand's European history and afterwards imported.
Members of the ferret family are supposed to prey upon rabbits. They do, when it suits them. They are rather like the family man whose tastes range between pork, mutton, beef, venison, fish and turtle. In New Zealand there have been other and daintier morsels for the ferret who, with his nasty little relatives, has made a change, preferring feathered creatures for food. Native birds, domestic fowls, and countless eggs have been destroyed “by the ferret and his relatives. The fact that the protection they and the common cat enjoyed under the Rabbit Nuisance. Act has been removed may mean little difference, but at least the law is with their hunters.
In 1838 the first definite notice of rabbits in New Zealand was made in the Journal of the voyage of the Venus, which stated, “there are still to be found some rabbits imported from New South Wales.” In 1844 rabbits existed between the mouth of the Clutha and Mataura. They were introduced into Nelson in 1865, and were observed to be running wild about Te Kuiti in 1857.
Not only have rabbits eaten crops sufficient to feed thousands of sheep, but they destroyed the land. Several districts are overrun with rabbits and several other districts have grave fears of invasion. Reports from South Tara-naki indicate that hordes are advancing from the King Country. Several years ago there were no rabbits to be seen about Patea and the country inland from Stratford. Now they are encroaching on the outskirts of good dairying land north of Patea and eastward of Hawera. Rabbit barriers have been kept on bridges, notably at Mokau, but reliable observers state that rabbits can and do swim wide rivers.
The menace was recognised fifty years ago. The ferret was introduced by the Canterbury Acclimatisation Society in 1867, but apparently those imported were not then liberated. In 1883 the rabbit inspector recommended introduction of stoats and weasels. In July, 1883, the Agent-General in London had made 32 shipments of ferrets, totalling 1,217 animals in 15 months. Only 178 were landed, but the cost was £953! Of 241 purchased in Melbourne, 198 were landed at a cost of £224. Thus the total number landed was 376 and the cost £1,177—or £3/2/7 per head!
“A substantial bonus” was offered in the same year to anyone who would introduce a certain number of stoats and weasels in healthy condition. In about a year things happened. Nearly 4,000 ferrets were turned out—3,041 in Marlborough alone, and about 400 on Crown lands in Otago. The rest were sold apparently to private individuals. An agent was sent abroad to procure stoats and weasels.
In 1885, 185 weasels and 50 stoats were received from London, 67 being released on Lake Wanaka where they did succeed, at first, in reducing the rabbits. Twenty-eight weasels and six stoats were liberated at Lake Waka-tipu; fifteen weasels near Waiau River, in Southland; eight stoats at Ashburton, and the rest were sold in Wellington, Christchurch and Dun-edin. Further lots were introduced subsequently, all probably guaranteed harmless.
Approximately 3,000,000 rabbits, worth £70,000, and 8,000,000 skins worth £115,000 were exported in 1921. In 1930 rabbit skins exported exceeded seven millions and in successive years the total has grown to 13,000,000 in 1934.
The task now is to catch the myriads of rabbits, and also the ferrets, weasels, stoats, mongoose and wild cats which acclimatisation societies and past Governments misjudged. All now are pests, and must be caught. The most provocative word is “How?” and the best advice. “Don't do it any more!”
Some of our attractive routes of travel in New Zealand are a kind of interrogation mark to travellers. The tourist passes along them so swiftly, in the present-day rush to get everywhere with the least possible delay, that there is scarcely time to do more than take a flying glimpse of the scenery as the car whirls past. The stories and the romance and adventure of the land traversed are a sealed book to the wayfarer who goes gliding and hurtling along the highways. The train traveller on most routes is better off, for there are railway publications giving the kind of information that invests landscapes with added interest. The Urewera Country is one of those places of which the quick-travel tourist retains but a confused memory of in-and-out curves and elbows along the ranges and through the all encompassing bush. To know such a land intimately, you must travel at least some of it on your feet or on horseback or on pushbike.
A road new to pleasure-travellers, although really a very ancient route, is that through the Maruia Valley between the east and west sides of the South Island. The Maruia—long noted for its hot mineral springs—and the Lewis Saddle traverse, were convenient, if hazardous ways of travel from the Buller and Grey regions through the mountains to the Mani-rauhea (“Plain of the Shining-Tussock”)—now Hanmer Plain—and so into North Canterbury. The earliest tourists were swag-carrying parties of pounamu or greenstone getters and raiding warriors, in the long ago, through a jumble of mountains and cliff and defile, with here and there a flat valley.
The wildest part of the ancient track through the Upper Maruia was Te Kopi-o-Kai-Tangata, otherwise “Cannibal Gorge.” The gloomy glory of the mountains which wall in the Upper Maruia made strong impression on some of the early English travellers through those parts from the Canterbury and Marlborough side of the Island. One pioneer who passed that way from the cattle and sheep country on the Upper Waiau-ua—the period was the mid-Sixties—described the watershed country as very wild and beautiful, particularly at the Kopi-o-Kai-Tangata. The mountains rose into heights of over six thousand feet, the rugged valley was in places not more than a quarter of a mile in width. When the river was swollen by heavy rains and by the melting of the snow on the Spencer Ranges, the defile was a scene of terrific uproar and tossing foam; the torrent for miles made a sound like Niagara, plunging down over masses of rock in a series of cataracts.
The name Maruia means sheltered, shady, as a valley deep in the hills.
The treasured pounamu was the chief cause of the olden wars between East and West, but it is also handed down as history that the pursuit of wekas and eel-fishing at the heads of the rivers here led to many fights. Besides Ngati-Wairangi, there was Ngati-Tumatakokiri, an ancient tribe of the Buller and Nelson country, that disputed possession of the Maruia Valley and thereabouts with the Ngai-Tahu from Kaiapoi and Kaikoura.
Some people have surmised that the great cannibal conqueror Te Raupa-raha, once made an expedition through the Maruia, but this is not a fact. Rauparaha may have contemplated raiding the West Coast for greenstone, but he secured it in another way by attacking the Ngai-Tahu in Canterbury and Marlborough in 1830 and carrying off their accumulated hoards.
A giant of a warrior, named Tahuru, who is said to have been nearly eight feet high—he must have been a terrific figure in battle—was the leader of one of the last conquering expeditions by this pass from the east. Tahuru and his sons, Tarapuhi and Wereta Tainui, were among those who sold the West Coast to the Government for £300 in gold in 1860. It was over a century ago that Tuhuru captured the West Coasters—their headquarters pa was on the Ahaura River.
The Kopi-o-Kai-Tangata appears to have derived the name from repeated acts of man-eating in its gloomy recesses. The fugitives from Ahaura, on the Grey, were finally extinguished in the gorge itself, and the victors halted there and made earth-ovens and feasted on the bodies. Long afterwards, in the times of peace, the skulls and scattered bones whitened the ground at the camping-place, and that was how the gorge came to be called the Kopi of the Man-Eating.
It is also said that when the returning victorious war-parties were delayed by floods or otherwise in this hard country and found birds scarce, they would kill some of their slaves and cook them for food.
“Come, little ones!” Called Ripeka gently. “I have had my dinner, and now you shall have yours. I have boiled potatoes for you, in a tin. Back! Back! Longsnouted one! You grow too fat, and your brothers grow too thin.”
Ripeka seated herself on the only dry spot available—a low mound built by hand in the midst of a swamp—and idly threw the warm, sweet fodder to her grunting, struggling herd. She herself had helped to carry baskets of soil from Te Pa-a-te-Kapu, a fortified hill nearby, to form this comfortable feeding ground, and had patted the sides firm with her capable hands.
She was a daughter of Te Kaho, a rangatira of the Urewera or Tuhoe tribe, and had married a son of the Ngati-Pukekos, who were a prosperous people, averse to war, and loyal to the pakeha Government.
“Greedy one!” said Ripeka, rapping a bristling head. “No more for you to-day.”
As she deftly plied her stick, her mind was full of anxious thoughts. These were unsettled times, with Te Kooti making trouble again. She knew he was back at Ruatoki, her old home, after his unsuccessful warring in Poverty Bay districts. She thought of her brother, Tupara, young and strong, eager for battle. Would he be swayed by the magnetic influence of the fanatical leader? She thought of her sister Rora who had married too, and was living in the home pa, nine miles away. Was she safe and happy? But it was for news of Tupara her heart hungered. Tupara, who had always loved her so dearly, who had treated her, in those old days, as a lover might have done. They were not far away, those happy, peaceful days, when they had laughed, and played and quarrelled by the banks of the Whakatane River, but they seemed remote because of the shadow of war. Te Kooti, that clever, desperate warrior, would be certain to turn his avaricious eyes upon the riches of these well watered plains, with their wheat crops, their flourmill, and their cattle. He would organize a band from among her father's tribe, and raid the Ngati-Pukekos. She, Ripeka, would become a “taha-rua,” one belonging to two enemy peoples. Perhaps Tupara would even meet her husband in battle! Her heart sickened at the thought.
Before Long-snouted One had finished rooting about for the last piece of potato, Ripeka was disturbed from her troubled dreamings by the sound of approaching footsteps. She leapt to her feet, realising in a flash that her fears were already being confirmed. These men, coming swiftly and quietly round the bend were the vanguard of the Tuhoe force, marching in single file to the attack. She saw Eru Peka, the half caste in the lead, and Maka-rini te Waru, the ugly, light-haired man who had married her sister. And then came Tupara, her own Tupara, who loved her. Tall, splendid, every inch a warrior. In the midst of her fear rose pride of him, and joy at seeing him.
He caught sight of her, and immediately his eyes told her what she had forgotten. Anyone met with on the road to an attack must be killed at once, or bad luck would attend the venture. Ripeka remembered, and covering her dark head with her shawl, sat down again on her fenced island among her pigs.
Tupara pled for her life, and Maka-rini urged Peka to let her go free. “No, no!” said the others. “She is a ‘taha-rua,’ and how can we know she will be loyal to us? How do we know that she may not, even before this, have learned our secrets, and betrayed us to the enemy?”
“We will ask Te Kooti,” declared the malicious half caste leader. “He shall decide her fate. Remain here, brothers, until I return to you.”
He hurried away, and put the case before the Hauhau fanatic. Te Kooti wore a pointed, soft black hat, to distinguish himself from his followers, and had two revolvers at his belt. He deliberated a moment.
“The flying fish is cut off by the bows of the canoe,” he quoted. “Let her be slain by her relatives Te Tupara and Makarini te Waru.”
His answer rejoiced the cruel heart of Peka, and he hastened back to the waiting band, and pronounced the death sentence.
“Kill her,” he said, “and feed her to her own pigs.”
He determined, that, in the event of their refusal, he would slay her with his own hand, and then tomahawk them for their disobedience.
Tupara and Makarini advanced towards the girl.
“Must I, her brother, take her life?” mourned Tupara. “She is young, she is beautiful, and I would give my life to save her. Her voice is as sweet as the voice of the riro-riro, and I must silence it. How can I do this thing? I will stand back, and let Makarini strike her.”
Ripeka raised her head, and stood at a command from Peka. Tupara took her to him, and pressed his face to hers, and the slow tears fell from his closed eyes.
“Farewell, my sister, the companion of my childhood. Farewell!” Ripeka threw her arms about him and wept. “If I must die, O my brother, let it be by your hand. Do not let any other touch me.”
Tupara understood. His torn heart registered a vow that her death should be swift and sure.
“Is it not better,” he thought, in a moment of time, “is it not better that my hand should deal the blow, than that someone else should perhaps slay her less swiftly, and give her needless pain? Better that one of her own family should kill her, than that murderer Eru Peka should be able to boast of having slain a chieftainess of the Tuhoe tribe.”
“Be swift, my brother,” whispered the girl.
“Close your eyes, Ripeka,” said Tupara, drawing his weapon from his belt of flax. His patu; an edged club of polished okewa stone, sharpened for the heads of his enemies; to be used now, first of all, on the lovely form of his sister!
He lifted the club, and struck her, with all his strength and all his love. She fell without a cry.
“March on,” ordered Eru Peka, and Tupara turned, and fell into line, as the little company moved forward once more.
Still living in Lyttelton is an old lady, Mrs. D. Williams, who as a little girl cut the ribbon of the first railway line in New Zealand, the Christchurch to Ferrymead (now Heathcote) line in 1863. Her father was captain of the ship which brought the train, or part of it, out to the colony, and the old lady recalls how when she cut the ribbon she was afraid the train would be let loose to run over her.
This railway whose gauge was 5 feet 3 inches was later sold to the South Australian Government, but some of it was lost in the wreck of the Hydrabad on the Otaki beach.
Many years later Mrs. Williams rode as a guest of honour on the first train drawn by an electric engine from Christchurch to Lyttelton.
Besides having played her part in New Zealand's railway history her sons served in both the Boer and Great Wars.—D.D.
In the early half of the nineteenth century it was customary for vessels visiting New Zealand to make their landfall at the Cascades (South Island); those three gleaming ribands of water being so distinctive as to preclude any danger of confusion in the similarity of landscape.
During this period a French barque, carrying, in addition to a general cargo, a considerable amount of specie, arrived off the Cascades. Her crew had mutinied and the five survivors of the well-contested battle took to the beach, carrying with them in many trips the gold which formed the most valuable part of the loot.
Transport and roads being alike nonexistent, left them with no alternative but to bury the swag in a cave and pursue a painful and perilous journey to Greymouth by way of the beaches. Sodden with the continuous crossing of flooded and treacherous rivers, lumpy with the bites of mosquitoes by night and sand-flies by day, and staggering on the verge of exhaustion from a diet whose basis was shellfish, four of them ultimately reached civilisation. One of the party, unable to stand the hardships of the trail had fallen sick and taken shelter in the pa of some friendly natives. He was the lucky one, his companions being apprehended and handed over to the captain of a French warship, who incontinently hanged the lot of them.
The sole survivor of the gang later reached white men's dwellings and settled down in the district where Westport now stands. His honesty may be taken as read: his poverty was indubitable, inasmuch as he was never able to save enough money for the charter of a vessel to pick up the hidden loot. Dying, he handed over to his son a map with the necessary bearings marked on it, showing the locality of the mutineer's bullion.
Ridicule provided an even more exasperating handicap to the son than poverty had proved to the father, for the West Coast miners to whom he went with his tale had gold enough and troubles enough of their own without fitting out an expedition to salve a hypothetical hoard which might well have existed only in the rum-inspired romances of the old mutineer. The tale gradually assumed the proportion of a legend and the Coasters refused to regard it as anything else. When it was mentioned they laughed, bought the mentioner a drink—and let it go at that.
It was left to the city whose residents spend the Saturday afternoons but keep the Sabbath, to outfit a party which left Dunedin and landing at Jackson's Bay made a strenuous but futile effort to locate the treasure. The rusted remnants of their equipment may still be seen scattered about where they were abandoned.
In the immediate vicinity of the alleged “plant” the tradition still persists. Ask Arawata Bill, that lean old devotee of pick and gold-pan, and he will assure you with more or less lurid emphasis that the gold is there, that he has been within measurable distance of it, but—that tragic tantalising word!
Ask the Nolans or the Crons and they will laugh the idea to scorn— but curiously enough, with a note of belief underlying the laughter. True or false the “Frenchman's Gold” is one of the accepted legends of South Westland.
Is it worth looking for? Who knows?
Stairways from this floor lead respectively to a flat roof along the south side (where an excellent view is obtained of the city and surroundings) and to the staff tea and social rooms on the west and north sides.
The main office entrance, however, is the one near the Waterloo Quay side. Here the office of the Chief Messenger and the mail room are on the right while on the left a stairway and two lifts serve the floors above. On the first floor the Comptroller of Stores and his staff occupy the eastern half of the main front and the Mechanical and Workshops' Branch spread over the remainder. The Superintendent of Workshops and his production staff front Waterloo Quay and further on are the Locomotive Superintendent, Chief Clerk and Locomotive Drawing Office. The drawing office has natural light on three sides. Facing the station on the western side of this wing are the Locomotive Designing Engineer, Office Engineer, inspecting officers and records.
Along the north wall are the Electric Traction Engineer and staff and the typistes' room and rest room. On all floors similarly a small rest room is located handy to the typistes' room.
The second floor accommodates the Land Officer and his staff fronting Bunny Street with the Afforestation Officer just round the corner. The Chief Engineer's Branch occupies the whole Waterloo Quay wing on this floor, the Assistant Chief Engineer, Chief Engineer, Designing Engineer and Assistant Designing Engineer face the harbour, the drawing office occupies the north end and continuing round the station side are the plan room and the offices of the Inspecting Engineer, Chief Clerk and clerical staff. The District Engineer and staff occupy the site along the north wall overlooking the concourse roof.
On the third floor the Refreshment Branch and the Suggestions and Inventions Committee room extend along the south side and the General Manager's records and the General Manager's typistes occupy the balance of this floor on this side of the building.
The fourth floor has the General Manager's suite and the Transportation and Publicity Branches. Fronting Waterloo Quay is a large room for deputations and conferences, then the First Assistant General Manager's office and that of the General Manager's secretary. The General Manager's office is along the northern front with a waiting room adjoining and an office for his personal clerk. The Second Assistant General Manager's office is close at hand on the western wall facing the platforms, and further back on the same side are the Chief Clerk and the Secretarial Branch. The offices of the Publicity manager and his staff, including the staff of the magazine, are along the north wall, and the Transportation Superintendent and his staff on the south-east corner.
On the fifth floor is the photographic and plan printing department, with photostat room, dark rooms and helio-printing room. Outside is a flat roof over the General manager's suite and a plant nursery for the Afforestation Officer is being placed in this roof.
The sixth floor, in addition to the chldren's nursery already mentioned, contains the offices of the Correspondence School, which carries on the instruction of the clerical staff of all branches. Twice yearly examinations test them in the progress made.
A corridor through the latter offices gives access to a flat roof which will undoubtedly be visited by many for the view it affords over the railway yards, the city, the harbour and the Hutt Valley, all fenced about with hills.
The following is a list of the contractors, sub-contractors and firms associated with the building and equipment of the new station whose advertisements appear in this issue.
The contractors were the Fletcher Construction Co. of Wellington.
Nearly two million bricks used in the structure were made by the Amalgamated Brick and Pipe Co., Wellington.
The cement for the mammoth building was supplied by Wilsons (N.Z.) Portland Cement Ltd.
The structural steel was supplied, fabricated and erected by William Cable and Co. Ltd., Kaiwarra.
John Chambers and Son Ltd., Wellington, were responsible for the corrugated asbestos used in the building.
The plumbing work was carried out under the personal supervision of W. A. Chenery, Newmarket, Auckland.
The British General Electric Co., Ltd., Wellington, installed the exchange equipment, electric light fittings, etc.
The Enfield Cable Works (A/sia) Ltd., Wellington, supplied electric cables and copper wire, etc., for the electrification.
Richardson, McCabe and Co., Ltd., supplied electric cable, switchgear, etc.
James Gibson, of 32 Allen Street, Wellington, attended to the electric light and power for the station.
The sand and screenings for the constructional work were supplied by River Shingle and Sand Ltd., Kelvin Chambers, Wellington.
For the first time in New Zealand the ingenious weighing scales manufactured by J. W. Wood Ltd., Christ-church, will be seen in operation at the new station.
The glazed dado tiling, one of the most artistic touches in the station, came from H. and R. Johnson Ltd., England (N.Z. Rep., J. L. Garrard, Wellington).
Electrical Communications Ltd., Wellington, played an important part in the installation of their Interhouse Telephone system.
J. Tait Ltd., Stone Craftsmen, of Christchurch, supplied the Hanmer Marble.
The Scoullar Co., Ltd., Wellington, was selected to supply the blinds and curtains for the windows.
W. and T. Avery (N.Z.) Ltd., supplied the Auto-Precision Dial Scales, of which 24 are in use at the station and goods yards in Wellington and Auckland.
Cable, wire, steel structures, etc., were supplied by Samuel Brown Ltd.
Paints for the building were supplied by Lewis Berger and Sons (N.Z.) Ltd.
Equipment for the hairdressing saloon was provided by Van Staveren Bros., Ltd., Wellington.
The artistic Carrara ceilings were done by the Carrara Ceiling Co., Ltd., Wellington.
The heating of the station was entrusted to A. and T. Burt Ltd. The same firm was also responsible for the kitchen and waiting room ventilation and the cool rooms for the station restaurant.
Crittall Metal Windows (N.Z.) Ltd., supplied the bronze doors and the steel windows.
The Neuchatel Asphalte Co. provided the Trinidad Bitumen for the platforms and for the station approaches. Also mastic asphalte for the floors, flat roofs, etc.
The Waygood-Otis Lifts were supplied by Waygood-Otis (N.Z.) Ltd.
Sheffield Silversmiths Ltd., Auckland, supplied E.P. Ware for the refreshment rooms.
Asea Electric (N.Z.) Ltd., supplied various electrical equipment.
The platform announcing system was installed by Collier and Beale Ltd., Wellington.
Dish washing machines, etc., for the refreshment rooms were supplied by N.Z. Hobart-Berkel Supplies Ltd.
Briscoe Mills and Co., Ltd., supplied the roof tiling, plaster, and metal roller shutters.
Carpets were successfully tendered for by Andrews and Clark of Auckland.
The largest contract of its kind ever carried out in New Zealand was represented in sound deadening felt overlaid with silencing linoleum supplied by Winstone Ltd.
Redpath and Sons Ltd., supplied rubber flooring for the building.
A. Reyrolle and Co., Ltd., supplied extensive switchgear, etc., for the electrification system.
The Westinghouse Power Frame of 127 levers, also other signalling apparatus, was installed by the Westing-house Brake and Signal Co., Ltd. (N.Z. Representative, 10 Woodward Street, Wellington).
These incidents are complete in themselves, but the characters are all related.
When the body of Pat Lauder was found in the signal cabin, the super - detective, Impskill Lloyd, deduced the possible causes of death as: (1) Drowning, (2) burning, (3) a kick (or a punch as good as a kick), (4) poison, (5) a stab, (6) strangling, (7) fear, (8) heart disease, (9) electrocution, (10) a fall, (11) a motor smash, and (12) starvation.
[Preceding instalments have given the thrilling adventures of Lloyd, his chauffeur (Gillespie), Police Constable Fanning, and others in trying to find a passable explanation of the mystery. The search for a 13th clue has so far proved in vain.]
“Forty-hour week!” groused Police Constable Fanning. “My weeks have seemed like 400 hours or years each since some infernal fool or fools murdered Pat Lauder. I wish the thugs had been cannibals and had scoffed the body, bones and all. Then there wouldn't have been this disturbance of the peace which is the birthright of the police.”
He was sitting at a table in his cosy cottage, sadly scanning a list of his troubles. He began to bang his helmet on the table.
A door softly opened, and a bantering voice was heard. P.C. Fanning looked around and saw a smile of broad and deep amusement on the face of Gillespie. The harassed man threw the ruins of his headgear at the visitor.
“I'll need a much bigger helmet if I have to do much more thinking,” said the constable gloomily.
“Thinking?”
“Well, the next best thing. I've had 49 head-aches and 27 tummy-aches on this Lauder case.”
“Now, now, constable, they wouldn't all be due to the Lauder case,” laughed “Gill.”
“Perhaps not. I blame the bushraiding cases for some of them. Those blackguards in the bush can't brew or distil the stuff that the old hands turned out long ago. I got a friend to sneak an expert into the gang, but the poor devil fell into a gully and died on us. But let's get back to the less important business.
“I was quoting some figures. There are some more. I've had 37 backaches, 17 spasms, and 19 bad colds; I've missed 25 breakfasts and 59 dinners. I've been on 111 false clues. I've made 83 wrong arrests; at least the court said they were wrong, but they looked right to me. I think it would have been better for the country if all the men I rounded up had been sent to work for the King. I've had 101 reprimands and 77 threats of the sack. And trousers and tunics! I've enough torn tronsers and tunics to start a flock-mill. I do love New Zealand, but I wish it wouldn't grow so much barbed-wire. Scars! you should see—–”
“Please don't let us go into all that,” interrupted Gillespie. “If you will go wandering about at night without mother you must expect to flounder into something. Don't blame the barbed wire too much. You'd have had the sack long ago if it hadn't been for me. I thought you were one of Lloyd's gang, and I persuaded the Commissioner to keep you on. We've had you trailed in the hope that you would help us to land accomplices, but we've only wasted time. We really owe an apology to the gang.”
“Gang? Lloyd's gang?” gaped Fanning. D'you mean to say—”
“Yes,” said Gillespie in a tone of certainty and finality. “I've nearly enough evidence to show up Lloyd as a more clever prince of crime than any one ever imagined by Conan Doyle, Gilbert Chesterton, Edgar Wallace and the smaller ink-wasters. Lloyd's as smart as they're made or nearly so. He'll be up to my class when he has read a few more of my books.”
“So he's not a numbskull, after all,” murmured the much-astonished constable. “Here's another headache coming. Your story beats the professor's.
“Professor? What professor?” asked the puzzled Gillespie.
“Didn't I tell you? Well, a professor of psychology—or ‘psy’ something or other, but it might have been
“An economist could have told a better story,” commented Gillespie, dismissing the professor with a puff and wave of his cigarette.
The constable's brow was deeply corrugated by rocketing thought and bewilderment. “This chauffeur racket—chauffeur to the chief of the gang,” he gurgled.
Gillespie looked at him pityingly. “Hasn't it struck you yet that I worked a confidence trick on the masterful Lloyd?” he asked. “Hasn't it dawned on you that I must be in the secret service of the police? It's too long a story to tell why I first began to suspect Lloyd as a new kind of Jekyll-and-Hyde.”
“Playing hide and seek,” interjected the constable.
“Not bad for you,” resumed Gillespie. “I knew—”
“But the libel's on you—the pots, the pints, buckets,” gasped the constable. “The reports of those terrible liars have made you a kind of St. Pewter.”
“Yes,” laughed Gillespie. “I encouraged 'em. It was all an illusion. Those pewters were only stage properties. You know the old saying: ‘The quickness of the hand deceives the eye.’ I used to shift my stuff into other fellows' vessels. You didn't see it. How could you? I'm a past-president of the Magicians Monastery. It was a part I played to delude the Lloyd.”
“Couldn't I do something about the liars?” pleaded the constable. “I've had so many misses that I'd like to be sure of a win.”
“Let 'em lie in their own layer of stupid stucco,” answered Gillespie. “Let's get back to Lloyd.”
“Yes, sound the Lloyd tocsin. We've tried to hear too many dumb-bells,” said the constable.
Gillespie deigned no reply to this cheap stuff. “I could cheerfully hang Lloyd to any kind of tree,” he went on, “and yet I have to admire him for his almost superhuman subtlety. He began as a straight-out detective, and had some sensational successes, as the Press might say. Then he began to see opportunities of mixing it—and that was where I came in. Out of 167 applicants I got this job as chauffeur. He hadn't the least notion that I was destined to destroy him.”
The constable reached for some medicine. “I hope my head will stand all this,” he said. “What about Lauder's body? How did it all happen? Twelve deaths for one man, weren't they?”
Gillespie lit another cigarette and laughed. “I haven't clewed up the whole thing yet,” he said, “but I think I know what happened. If I may be allowed to use that very popular word ‘major,’ Lloyd schemed a major operation for the police. He had no grudge against Pat Lauder. It merely happened that Pat Lauder was handy and served a turn. Lloyd felt that a complicated murder would keep the police so busy that he and his gang would have easy opportunities for many kinds of crime. I suppose you have noticed that the normal burglary figures have been multiplied by ten since Lauder was murdered.”
“Now that you say it, I do remember something,” replied the constable. “But, going back to Lauder's body, how—”
“Oh, yes, the twelve causes of death you were about to say,” Gillespie cut in. “It seemed baffling, but it was all very simple to anybody in the know. It was a novelty in New Zealand, but I remember a much more extensive case in Paris—twenty-four possible causes of death. It was one of my big cases. We unearthed a fiendish gang of scientists, medical men and technicians who could do more queerness to the human body than the toughest of all-in wrestlers could imagine.
“I must go back to that word ‘major.’ The Lauder case has become a major problem for the Government. You moan about your little tally of headaches and spasms. What about the headaches and spasms of the Commissioner? Economists have calculated that the thought and talk given to the Lauder mystery have reduced industrial efficiency by at least 10 per cent. Even the output of butterfat has been affected.”
“Butterfat!” exclaimed the constable. “I know that cows are educated, but I don't believe they read the papers or listen to the radio.”
Gillespie sighed. “I suppose I'll have to explain again,” he said. “Cows are sensitive beasts. When hand-spankers or machine-minders were thinking more of mystery mullock than milk what are the poor cows to do? What would you do if you were a cow?”
“I wonder what Mussolini or Hitler would do,” mused the constable.
“Let us be serious, please,” replied Gillespie.
“That chap Lloyd. What about his last exploit when he fell down a chimney into a nest of crooks?” asked the constable.
“Stage-managed,” replied Gillespie. “It was a ruse in the hope that I'd be misled. He'd begun to suspect that I wasn't what I seemed to be. That's why I'm here to-night. The curtain's rising for the last act. My chauffeur job for. Lloyd has run its course.”
“Do you think you'll be able to get him?”
“I'll head him, or tail him, into his own hide-out. It's been a long way to Tipperary, but we're nearly there. I've a good mind to let you see the finish.”
“Will it be safe?”
“Safer than your sallies by night among the barbed wire and brambles.”
“All right; I'm well insured. Anyhow, what does it matter? No other world could be worse than this civilised one.”
Gillespie was not listening to the constable's philosophy. “What's all this medicine for?” he asked, with a glance at the varied stock.”
“Some of it's for the aches and pains caused by the Lauder hunts in bad weather.”
“We'll have some of the other,” said “Gill,” selecting a bottle of good promise. Fanning looked for some sleight of hand which would raise a laugh against him, but his guest felt that he had earned a right to a real uplift.
* * *
A week later P.C. Fanning was again sitting at his table, writing some new figures on his list of mishaps. It was a cold, wet, blustery nigt. “I'll bet some fool will lure me out to-night on a false scent,” he thought. At that moment the door opened and Gillespie walked in. “Get ready,” he said in a tone which commanded obedience. “I've a car outside. We'll land Lloyd to-night. I've a disguise for you and another for myself. We'll impersonate two members of the gang. Now, let me get busy with that fat face of yours.”
In a few moments Fanning looked a better subject for police action than any of the 83 suspects whom he had arrested, and Gillespie made himself look like nothing else on earth except the man he was impersonating.
“What kind of noises will we make?” asked the constable.
“Use your own voice, just as it is. It's one of those queer coincidences that the journalists like to find. That's why I've picked you for to-night's adventure. If the chap you're supposed to be heard you, he'd think he was talking to himself. My case is easy; I can mimic any voice.”
“Firearms?”
“No—except a flask.”
In ten minutes they were speeding on a very dark road. “Lloyd has a house a few miles from Hamilton,” said Gillespie. “He uses several houses, but this is the one he'll be using tonight. We'll trail him to it. I've managed to get a stranglehold on one of his gang, a criminal known to his pals as Puggy Pete. I caught him housebreaking, and let him go on condition that he kept me posted about Lloyd's movements. Puggy Pete will be with Lloyd about 11 o'clock tonight, on the way to the hide-out. We'll park our car in a handy place, meet them and stroll along with them.”
Various things in this narrative puzzaled Fanning. He was just about to ask a few questions when Gillespie checked him. “I know what you're thinking,” he said. “I'll answer the questions later on. I've special reasons for working this way. I wish to find some very important incriminating evidence in that house.”
They ran the car into a side-street, stepped out, and strolled to the main road. Presently they saw the dim outlines of two figures, and soon these were recognised by Gillespie as Lloyd and Puggy Pete. Even the constable felt sure about the saturine features of Lloyd.
“Good night, boys! Coming along?” said Lloyd.
“Yes,” replied Gillespie.
In a few minutes they crossed the threshold of a handsome house, about 25 yards back from the street line. They entered a very comfortable room. “Sit down. Help yourselves,” said Lloyd, indicating cigarettes, cigars and drinks. “I'll feel better without this”—and he began removing the artistic make-up which had made a lieutenant look like the chief.
“Thought you had Lloyd?” laughed the impersonator.
“We'll have you anyway,” roared Gillespie.
“Some day, perhaps,” grinned the criminal. He kicked a switch—and the two raiders instantaneously lost consciousess. It was not a killing charge of electricity, but it was enough. The criminals were safe in their thick rubber-soled shoes.
In came the real Lloyd. “You've done your jobs well, boys,” he said. “We've had a lot of fun with Gillespie lately, and we'll have some more before we leave for a safer land.” He gazed at Gillespie more in whimsical amusement than in a mood of vengeance. “They'll be all right after a while,” he went on. “But we must give them souvenirs. We'll tattoo them. I've a Maori friend, an expert artist, in the next room. We won't do much to the constable. He's harmless enough. We'll put a few scrolls and a caricature of myself on his dome. But we must make a proper job of Gillespie. We'll make him look like a big chief of the old times. He'll have as many tangles of lines on his face as one of the modern poems.”
The Maori was called in, and he began his task with deft hands.
(To be continued.)
I Would like to visit the city of the plains just now. There is a certain time of year when autumn flaunts there, when leaffall has begun, but the willows and poplars edging the Avon cling to their shreds of gold and russet, when parks and gardens glow with the last flame of the expiring season. Not so in our Northern evergreen cities, where summer merges imperceptibly into grey-green winter. Therefore, I would go south for the carnival of leaves.
* * *
To think of seasonal fashions usually switches the mind easily to nature's seasonal change, but the return switch is more difficult. In fashion's autumn colour schemes there is not even the usual yellow to red and brown suggested by nature. This year the fashion houses have insisted on being very civilized, very formal. They prosecute the “coronation” motif.
* * *
Gold and rust are here, but with no particular reference to leaf-change. The gold is hard and metallic. Rust just . happens to arrive in new tonings. Brown is present because, when colours bewilder us, we can conservatively and artistically ally them with brown, a little brown for accent, or brown as a rich background.
* * *
New colour schemes are inclined to startle. Maroon, cerise, magenta are allied surprisingly with other shades. A cerise tunic frock is girdled in blue—quite startling until the eye has become accustomed to it.
In day frocks colour is added particularly at the neck and waist. High necklines may have turnover points revealing a contrast lining colour; slots may hold a startling bow or a soft strip of fur; a very full bodice may be looped and slotted with a strip of contrast. Sashes, girdles or belts are usually aggressive in ornamentation or basic colour. They define slim waists and seem to accentuate the flare' of a swing skirt.
I noticed one tunic whose flare was increased by unpressed pleats. The simplest swing skirt is cut in four pieces with seams at mid-front and back. This type of skirt lends itself to the raised waistline rising to a point in front. Such a skirt may be belted or fitted to a princess silhouette.
Sleeves are definitely squared or pointed at the shoulder line, but taper to a slim-fitting wrist.
* * *
Skirts are up, but not as far up as a few young persons on our streets seem to imagine. The smart length is about fourteen inches from the ground. It probably is correct that when the cost of materials, for instances woollens, rises, the couturiers encourage abbreviation of frocks for economy's sake. Silks have not followed the shortening trend in wool frocks, as evening skirts flare round the ankles or are briefly trained. The flare may be stiffened by a band of contrast material or by cording.
* * *
Evening materials are gorgeous—and expensive. Most gowns feature a combination of two materials or two colours. Mauve velvet has twisted shoulder straps of purple velvet and a purple velvet sash. The accompanying cape is of purple lined with mauve. Mauve and cyclamen combine in a draped satin model.
Taffeta or lacquered satin lend themselves to full-skirted styles. A lime green peacock's eye taffeta has a corsage drape, softly bowed in front, of pale yellow. The yellow motif is repeated in an appliqued band and bow on the skirt a foot from the hem.
* * *
Lace hangs beautifully. One of the loveliest frocks I have seen was of shadow lace touched with gold.
Shoulders and backs are displayed by the new season's evening gowns, but dinner frocks and cocktail suits have sleeves and high necklines.
The latest bolero for evening wear may be so brief that it consists merely of sleeves, a narrow strip of material at the back and wide revers in front.
For so long we have been accustomed to the slender goddesses of the fashion magazines with their impossible proportions—quite seven feet high, most of them, according to width, and with aristocratic hands that, lifted to the face, would cover only half of it. (My own plebeian appendages reach from hair-line to chin.)
None of us, even the slimmest, ever hoped to look like a drawing in a fashion magazine. But now one of the big pattern houses is featuring actual photograhps of girls wearing model gowns. One has an uncomfortable feeling at first that these girls are dumpy. But no! Having jettisoned our notions of a fashion drawing, we realize that the models are perfectly proportioned, and further, that we can now aspire, if we think such things important, to looking like a fashion-plate ourselves.
Mary and John have been married for ten years. Their home is a place
These little things which outsiders can observe are a sign of the private happy relationship between these two. One knows that from the first days of marriage each has given to the other a warm understanding and with that a respect for the privacy of another personality.
No matter how great the love between them, no two people can ever be one. There comes a point where ideas differ. At this stage lies danger. The submission of one to the other may smooth things over for the time, but resentment must grow on the one side because ideas are brushed aside by the partner, and on the other a slight feeling develops either of shame that the more forceful will is triumphing over the loved one or of scorn that the mate has so little individuality. Henceforward understanding diminishes.
But for theG pair who respect each other, a divergence of ideas means no loss of mutual understanding. They recognise each other as persons and are happy and proud that, even while holding each to a different point of view, they can yet retain perfect sympathy. It is a delightful feeling, compound of intellectual pride and human understanding.
In the petty affairs of life, John and Mary, by respecting each other's privacy, retain their admiration for each other. Letters, if handed over to the other one to read, are accepted with thanks; letters folded and returned to the envelope are regarded without curiosity.
In their personal relationships there is no prudery but much consideration.
Mary appreciates John's gentleness and has a fund of tenderness for him. If either wishes to be alone the other respects the wish. In matters of the toilet John is not expected to stand by to admire while Mary washes her ears, or Mary while John cuts his toe-nails.
In all their dealings with each other, there is the realisation of what one person owes to the other. No individual, no matter how beloved, has the right to interfere with another. A respect for the personality of the mate is the basis of love in marriage.
All New Zealanders are greatly concerned about the odd cases of infantile paralysis that crop up from time to time. We think that everything is going along nicely—the schools reopen and the parents lose their fear of the disease affecting their little ones. This, however, does not last long. A fresh case breaks out, the schools are again closed, and the restrictions also tightened up again in regard to children being allowed in any crowded buildings. What happens to the children then? Possibly the mother takes them out for the day—beach or playground perhaps—and one sees a band of happy youngsters enjoying their prolonged freedom from school. However, coming home may be quite a different story. One of the children seems very tired and irritable. At night he has a high temperature, and this, together with frequent attacks of vomiting, terrifies the parents into thinking that it is another case of infantile paralysis, and it has come to their home. The doctor is hastily called in, and he diagnoses the complaint as sunstroke or even paralysis.
Looking back on one's childhood, one remembers the restrictions imposed with respect to playing in the sunshine in the middle of the day, and the slogan ruling our little world during the warm weather was: “Always keep your hat on when playing outside.” How often, too, one was compelled to abandon the most interesting of games to go inside to sleep (with the blinds drawn) during the hottest hour or two of the day. Now we seem to have become sunworshippers, and mothers are very pleased with the brown bodies and limbs of children—and proudly watch them sporting about only clad in bathing suits which are absolutely no protection against the sun's rays.
How often it is the strongest of the family who succumbs to the disease, and it makes us search for any reason why the healthy little girl or boy should suffer, while the more delicate child escapes.
Adults are usually glad to find some shade during the day at the beach—or wherever it may be—while the children are often allowed to roam around—with no protection from the heat—all day, and needless to say it is the most energetic who take full advantage of their freedom from restraint. Even the native races seek shelter during the hottest part of their day. The old slogan may therefore be worthy of remembrance during the hot weather:
“Out of the sun during the hottest hour or two of the day and heads well protected at all times from the sun's rays.”
Passing a schoolground, too, the other day, we noticed a number of children playing about without their hats. We badly wanted to go and put a hat on each child, but, of course, did not have the courage to storm the fortress, and begin our crusade of “Hats on.”
A few hints for the success in the making of scones:
1. The dough must be mixed quickly. 2. Handle the dough as little as possible. 3. Do not use a rolling-pin, but flatten out the dough lightly with the “heel” of the hand. 4. The scones will be much lighter if cut into shapes with a knife dipped in flour, instead of using a cutter. 5. Too much flour on top will make them hard. 6. Sift the flour two or three times before using. 7. The oven must be hot, with a good bottom heat, so that the dough rises
2 breakfast cups flour, 4 small teaspoons baking powder, little butter, pinch salt, sufficient milk to mix to nice consistency.
Fried scones, made with this mixture, are very appetising, served with either butter or syrup.
1 lb. flour, 1 tablespoon sugar, 3 tablespoons golden syrup, 1 teaspoon soda, 1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar, pinch of salt.
Mix with milk, a little butter rubbed into dry ingredients.
3 cups flour, 2 teaspoons baking powder, 1 teaspoon salt, rub 2 tablespoons butter into flour, etc., mix with milk and bake on hot girdle.
Here is an easy way of saving ten shillings on every 20lbs. of soap that you use. The only ingredients required are 5lbs. fat and a two-shilling packet of “Soapsave”—the wonder soap-maker. Add to one gallon water as directed on packet and you have approximately 20lbs. of the finest household soap. It not only lathers easily, but has a special advantage in that it does not harm delicate colours and fabrics in the washing of clothes. It is also pleasantly perfumed. If unable to obtain Soapsave from your local store, send postal note and grocer's name to A. Murdoch & Co., Manufacturing Chemists, Dunedin.
2 breakfast cups flour, 4 ozs. sugar, 4 ozs. butter, 2 teaspoons baking powder, milk to mix, 1/2 lb. dates or sultanas (chopped). Rub butter into flour and add dry ingredients. Mix with milk, put into greased patty tins and bake in quick oven.
Cover 1 cup of dates with hot water and 1 teaspoon of soda and let stand a few hours. Beat 2 tablespoons butter, 1/2 cup brown sugar, 1 egg, 2 cups flour, 1 teaspoon baking powder, and vanilla essence. Bake 1 hour.
2 tablespoons sugar and 1 egg beaten together. Add 1 cup flour, 1/2 teaspoon soda, 1 large teaspoon cream of tartar, 1 cup of milk, small piece of butter put in last. The butter is melted and allowed to cool before adding to the mixture.
The following is a favourite recipe:
1/2 pound sugar, 4 eggs, sift in 12 ozs. flour, 1 teaspoon cream of tartar, 1/2 teaspoon soda, lastly, 1/4 lb. melted butter—cool. Ice with chocolate icing.
Take a good, soft banana, and mash it to a pulp with a fork. Then add about a-third as much apricot jam. Mix together and spread this on well-buttered slices of bread.
Hats are quite an expensive item, so it should be our aim to keep them smart and new looking as long as possible. Of course we know that the brim should be kept off the shelf if it is to retain its original line, but after we have had the hat for a little while, we are apt to toss it carelessly aside and no consideration given to the effect on the hat of our action.
Here is ah idea for a useful and inexpensive stand: Make a roll of cardboard about six or seven inches long and pin it securely into position with paper clips. Then stand your hat on the roll and it will be out of harm's way.
Much waste is incurred in cases where bottles have once been opened and then recorked with corks which do not fit sufficiently well to keep the bottle airtight and prevent evaporation. To remedy this, melt a candle and let the hotmelted wax cover the cork and the neck of the bottle where the cork fits in. This will prevent any waste.
To keep a mattress in good condition, turn it from end to end every other day, and from side to side on alternate days.
I have solved the problem. I have the perfect solution to the much vexed question of Christmas presents. It happened this way. I order my copy of the “New Zealand Railways Magazine” annually, but on three occasions about eighteen months ago, I was away from home when the magazine came out. Seeing it on a bookstand, I bought a second copy.
Later, it occurred to me that I should send them to a relation in England. Three copies only were no use, so I continued buying a second copy until the year was up, and finally had them bound. I then retained them until the Christmas mail for England was ready and posted them—or should I say, “It?”
I have just received an acknowledgment—and what an acknowledgment! “What a marvellous idea, and what a wonderful magazine,” writes the recipient. “Nothing equal to the ‘New Zealand Railways Magazine’ as a nationally informative publication exists in England. When we have read it—and we will all read it at least ten times—we will feel that we really know New Zealand. Already the whole family are talking about saving for a trip to your wonderful country. We will feel at home right from the start, particularly on your railways.”
I might mention that this was the cheapest present I have ever sent them, but the other gifts brought merely a perfunctory acknowledgment.
Now people, what about duplicating that order of yours? It is not often you can buy your overseas Christmas presents at sixpence a month and give such genuine pleasure. At the same time, it helps to advertise New Zealand, and is one present your friends will never have duplicated.—C. McB.
It is not generally known that the first steel vessel constructed in the Southern Hemisphere was launched in Wellington Harbour over fifty years ago from the site of Luke's Foundry in Wakefield Street. A commercial house now occupies the site on which the foundry was built. The steel vessel, whose keel was laid in what is now one of the busiest commercial thoroughfares in the Capital City, was the Matai, a single screw steamer of 340 tons register. From keel to bridge the vessel was built by New Zealand workmen, and in 1886, with a full head of steam up, she was launched at Te Aro. The ship was built for the Blackball line, and had accommodation for saloon and second-class passengers. For many years the Matai was on the coastal runs. It was eventually sold to the Union Steam Ship Company, but four years after passing into this company's hands it struck a submerged rock off Gisborne and became a total loss. One life was lost.
Two or three other vessels were built and launched on the same site. One of these boats, the Weka, was launched in 1883, and is still doing service in Napier. Another vessel, the Tuna, was built for a Gisborne firm.
On this site some of the most important engineering work in Wellington was carried out, and on many occasions there were as many as 250 men employed at once.—“D.W.”
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At a meeting of the Oamaru Borough Council, the Mayor (Mr. M. F. E. Cooney) paid a very high public tribute to the manner in which the railway men had carried out the urgent work of protecting the gasworks under very trying, and at times dangerous, conditions. Mr. Cooney said the Railways Department had done splendid work in prosecuting so expe-ditiously and so vigorously the protection of a borough asset. Practically the whole of the stone quarried had been deposited on the foreshore, but further supplies would be made available and the work continued. The Railways Department had given its fullest assistance and co-operation, and the position at the gasworks was now quite satisfactory.
Owing to the serious nature of the encroachment, the Oamaru Borough Council is of the opinion that the permanent protection of the foreshore has become a national question.
—H.E.W.M
During the last few weeks New Zealand sport has suffered severe losses by the deaths of Colonel Campbell and Mr. Dan McKenzie.
Both these men did much to mould the future of Rugby in New Zealand—at a time when to-day's national sport needed the support of men with vision.
Colonel Campbell was a founder of the famed Athletic Football Club (Wellington) and was to have been an honoured guest at its Diamond Jubilee celebrations, held at Easter. He passed away two weeks before this could be achieved.
Mr. McKenzie, well-known as a sporting journalist, in addition to his activities in Rugby and Cricket circles, was respected for his knowledge of rules, and one of his most successful feats was to broadcast the rules of Rugby in such a manner that the everyday citizen could reap some benefit and enjoyment from listening-in. Dry-as-dust rules were treated in the manner which reflected great credit on a veteran sportsman.
Progress was represented by the arrival of the Clipper ship in Auckland last month and day by day distance becomes less and less a bogey for travellers.
It is interesting to read the “Fifty Years Ago” columns in various New Zealand newspapers and then marvel at the progress made. Railway transport has shared in this move with the times and the large number of athletes who travelled by train to the N.Z. Amateur Athletic Association's championship meeting in Auckland are lavish with praise for the comfort of the mode of travelling.
It is a tribute to the comfortable seating arrangements that a small team of ten athletes should travel from Dunedin and win the championship shield against teams—much larger in numbers—the members of which had done little or no travelling. But that is the position. The Otago team travelling almost continuously not only won the shield but one of their members established the best performance at the meeting!
The athlete mentioned in the preceding paragraph as having established the best performance at the N.Z. A.A.A. championship meeting held at Auckland was W. A. C. Pullar, who won the one mile championship in 4 min. 14 4/5 sec.—time only bettered once in New Zealand. Pullar, who has represented New Zealand in Australia as a cross-country runner, has held the 440 yards hurdling championship and the 10,000 metres crosscountry championship in addition to the one mile title he won at Auckland. He is an amazing athlete, and might well add an Empire title to his collection when he competes at the Empire Games next season. With A. R. Wilson, who finished second, less than a yard behind, Pullar set the third fastest second half of a mile race on record among what has been termed the “classic miles,” i.e., the fastest mile races from the time when W. G. George held the world's record in 1886 until the present time!
Youth will have its day! More and more does the axiom strike home. In the Auckland provincial golf championship, played a few weeks ago, R. E. Bell, a lad not yet seventeen years of age, won the championship from the former title-holder, H. D. Brins-den. Golf, of course, is a game for which youth has a definite advantage over age—with one exception, experience. Golf is a game of timing and body balance, and it must be admitted that these virtues are not improveu with the passing of the years. Mental balance, maybe, but body balance, seldom! The co-ordination of mind and muscle, the mental impulse—the speed of which makes the champion—is natural in the care-free days of youth, but dulled as a man grows older, and has his business and domestic worries.
Where youth does suffer by comparison is in the final test where mental balance is needed to stiffen one's morale.
Harry Mangham retains his place as New Zealand's foremost motor-cyclist on a grass track. Competing at Napier Park a few weeks ago he won the New Zealand middleweight championship over seven laps of the racecourse, with an average speed of 62 m.p.h.
Mangham is a worthy successor to “Cannonball” Percy Coleman, who used to “bark” the skin off his knuckles by riding close to the rails about eighteen years ago.
The advent of speedway racing threatened extinction for grass-track racing, but there seems to be a swing toward the sport which flourished in the days immediately following the Great War.
Coleman and Whitehead were stars of the first degree, and those who saw them handling their machines—and the frames were not specially built for racing—will never forget the thrills they supplied.
Slowly but surely wood-chopping as a sport is coming back to popular favour.
It has been stated that popularity of sporting exercises go in a cycle, and this does seem to be so.
A few years ago wood-chopping figured on the programme at nearly every sports gathering outside the
With the return of prosperity, these clubs are beginning to recommence from where they left off, and chopping is due for a boom period.
Quite recently the people at Danne-virke were thrilled by an exhibition of what was termed “Australian chopping.” In this contest the axemen had to cut notches up the side of a tree, insert foot-rests, and on reaching a mark near the top of the tree chop off the top.
The skill needed in fitting the foot-rests and the balance required when near the top makes for an event that is sure to appeal wherever it is staged.
Chopping is one of the big draw-cards at the Sydney Royal Show, and might well be included among New Zealand's Centennial displays.
The tragic death in England of A. E. Relf removes one who had done much to raise the standard of cricket in New Zealand. He toured Australia under the captaincy of “Plum” Warner in 1903–04, and played for England against Australia in 1909.
It was in 1907 that Relf was brought out as a coach by the Auckland Cricket Association, and his first major engagement in New Zealand was in the first Plunket Shield game. Relf scored 157 and took eight Canterbury wickets in that match.
It was as a bowler that Relf did best in New Zealand, but his pupils kept Auckland's flag flying for many years after he finally returned to England in 1910.
A few days after this is written, the South African Rugby footballers will leave their homeland en route for New Zealand.
In New Zealand, “strategists” have been advocating certain changes in New Zealand's style of play to overcome the Springbok mighty forward pack; in South Africa “strategists” have been advocating a lighter forward pack to meet the speedy New Zealand backs! Looks like a battle of tactics before the games commence!
Christchurch must surely hold a unique place among New Zealand cities for the variety and multitude of the Railway Department's excursions organised from that centre. Perhaps the most intriguing type are the Mystery Hikes, which had their birth in a small way during the tramping craze in 1932, and through careful organising and close attention to the needs of tramping enthusiasts, have been built up on a solid foundation, until to-day, they are a recognised sphere of activity in the Railway Department in Christchurch.
These “Mystery Tramping Excursions,” as they are officially termed, have many unique features. Let us follow the routine of a typical tramp. The train leaves Christchurch at say 9 a.m. for an unknown destination (only the district in which the “hike” is to be held is known by the passengers). During the journey a leaflet is distributed to the passengers, advising them of a few necessary particulars about the tramp, and any historical or geographical features, etc., that will be of interest. On the reverse side of this sheet are printed a few songs and perhaps a map of the locality of the “hike.” Then a real Harmonica Band goes through the train from carriage to carriage, and everybody lets themselves go in a real Christchurch community sing, accompanied by the band. On arrival at the destination the driver sounds two long whistles; this is the recognised signal to trampers to detrain, and then the real business for the day commences.
Now is the time to notice the clothes! Girls in shorts, slacks, riding breeches, and skirts, with colours and designs, as the cookery books have it “to taste.” Some wear hobnailed boots, some wear shoes, sandshoes, court shoes, and real tramping shoes. But, what of the men? A little more sober perhaps in their selection of colours. Some seem to vie with each other as to who can wear the oldest clothes and still induce them to keep on; some wear collars and ties, shirts of various hues—and alas on a warm day, some have no shirts at all! But they are out in the sunshine, these people, in the country, freed from the dust and grime and noise of city life, and they are making the most of it. What is more, they all show the benefit of it.
A spirit of camaraderie prevails among this brotherhood. It is easy to pick the beginners with their lack of suitable clothing, attracted on their first tramp perhaps by the glamour of this type, of outing. The stoutest of these make up their minds to come again; others, of the “theatre and chocolate constitutions” feel like giving in, but can't, because as one young man aptly puts it “there is only one way of getting home, and that is to walk.” There is, however, no need to “give in” on a “Mystery Hike,” for different routes are provided to cater for the varying degrees of physical fitness of the trampers, and the “hikers” are always guided by the Railway Department's officials who have mapped out the route some time before the tramp. No one can become lost because more officials bring up the rear of the party, and the train cannot commence the return journey until these men have reached the end of the tramp, and they see that everyone arrives before them.
Facilities for luncheon and afternoon tea are always provided on these “hikes” (the tea being supplied free), the needs of the trampers in the matter of refreshments being an important part of the arrangements.
The success of these tramps depends on the organisation—and they are cer-
Much could be written about many different angles of this “hiking game” not the least of them being the unconscious humour unwittingly provided by some innocent people! Witness the English tourist lady who “could not understand why all those sheep running around loose on the hillsides did not get lost.” The reason was obvious when the lady had to climb through (or over) a rabbit-proof fence! Or the young lady (city-bred) who asked a shepherd “if that lamb he had across his saddle was a wild one or a tame one?”
The wide appeal tramping has made to people generally is exemplified on a “Mystery Hike.” Business men and women (young and old), clerks, typistes, shop assistants, elderly people, children, school teachers, mothers and fathers with their families, tradesmen; all are there, representative of people from all walks of life. One gentleman and his wife both aged 80 years have been on many tramps. Another gentleman of 74 never misses a “Hike.” Children of five years of age demon-trate to their elders how to skip over the country.
And now, a word for the Railway Officer who originally conceived the idea of organising “Mystery Hikes” in Canterbury. Mr. W. A. Croft, of the District Traffic Manager's Office in Christchurch, was the original organiser, and although Mr. Croft was transferred from Christchurch some time ago, and had to sever his connection with tramping, he is still remembered affectionately among hikers as a personal friend. With Mr. Croft's departure Mr. G. E. Mitchell took up the organisation of the outings, and under his direction their popularty was steadily maintained.
A final word of praise is due to the younger members of the Railway staff who have contributed to the success of the “Hikes” by reason of the voluntary assistance they have rendered the organiser both before, and on the day of the excursions. These members, Messrs. C. B. Bailey, A. M. Gibb, and L. C. Evans, have been most enthusiastic in their efforts to make each “Hike” a success, and without their assistance many a tramper would have lost touch with the “main body.” They have been the means of assisting and encouraging those hikers who invariably bring up the rear, and they have acted as the popular official hosts at midday and afternoon tea.
In 1926, the Railway Department re-organised the Ambulance Divisions in the Railway Service throughout the country, and, fostered by the Department, a new era for the Railway Ambulance Services was commenced. In November, 1926, a well-attended meeting was held in the Hillside Workshops, and the Hillside Ambulance Division was re-formed. Mr. W. Connor was elected Superintendent and served in that capacity until December 17th, when he was succeeded by Mr. A. Peters, who filled this position until his retirement on superannuation in 1931. Mr. Joseph Hansen was appointed the first instructor. In May, 1927, the division was officially affiliated with the St. John Ambulance Brigade.
The first public duty of the division was in connection with the visit of H.R.H. The Duke of York (our present King), when between 200 and 300 children were treated in conjunction with the Dunedin Division. During that year the division competed for the first time in competitions at Christchurch, Wellington and Dunedin, securing some notable successes.
The division continued to make steady progress, being especially active in arranging lectures to various organisations including the Referees' Association and Boy Scouts. On December 16th, 1929, the Otago District was honoured by a visit from the Governor-General, Sir Charles Fergusson, who presented the Ambulance Officer, Mr. Joseph Hansen (since deceased) with me Certificate of Serving Brother of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, this honour being rare in New Zealand. Throughout 1929, also, no less than 3,414 cases were treated in the Hillside Workshops.
On May 26th, 1930, Mr. W. F. Ashman was appointed to the position of divisional secretary, a position he filled with distinction until April, 1934, when he resigned. In this year, also, was instituted the Hillside Efficiency Cup Competition. During the year 1931, 400 cases were treated on public duty.
In the Auckland Competitions, which were held during the Easter period of that year, the division won two firsts and one second in five cups for which it competed. In that year, also, Mr. A. Thompson was appointed Superintendent and served for three years in this capacity. The following year the membership showed a definite improvement, a notable event being the presentation to the second Hillside member, Mr. Alfred Peters, of the Certificate of Serving Brother of the Order. Mr. Peters is now the Honorary Secretary of the Otago Centre of the St. John Ambulance Association. In this year, also, the Dunedin Voluntary Blood Transfusion Society was formed, and met with a ready response from this division, sixteen members volunteering their' service and giving twenty-six transfusions throughout the year.
In the New Zealand Championship Competitions at Auckland during Easter of 1935, the Hillside team was most successful, gaining two firsts and three seconds in the five events. In the South Island Championships in Timaru the division won two out of three cups in the competitions.
The year 1936, however, may be regarded as the record year for this division, the membership being forty-eight. The accidents treated during this year were as follows: On public duty, 209; in workshops, privately treated, etc., 2158; removals to hospital, 81. The Hillside group of transfusion donors had also increased to thirty-seven members, giving during the year no less than 64 transfusions. The division was most unfortunate in losing this year the services of two of their most efficient members in Messrs. A. G. A Swanson and W. T. P. Hobby, who were promoted to District Officer and Corps Officer respectively. Mr. W. F. Ashman, for some years Superinted of the Hillside Cadet Division, also left the division being promoted to Cadet Corps Officer.
Messers. Swanson and Hobby were, in October, elected to be Life Members of the division, an honour previously held by only two ohter members in Mr. A. Peters and Mr. R. Milburn, the latter being another of those members giving long and faithful services. At the Auckland Competitions at Easter, the Hillside team was quite outstanding, winning three out of the five cups competed for, against the strongest opposition in New Zealand. This result, coupled with their numerous successes in other competitions and their undoubted efficiency on public duty and elsewhere fully entitles them to be classed as New Zealand's Champion Division. During 1936 alone the division were the winners:—
New Zealand Championship Trophies: The Belworthy Shield, the Intercolonial Cupm the Whangarei Cup, the Gaze Cup, The New Zealand Roller Bandage Championship, and also the Otago and Southland Trophies: P. H. Morey Championship Shield, the otago Novice Cup, the Otago Roller Cup, 1st equal McGeorge Cup, and 1st equal Roller Bandage Individual Championship.