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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 5, Issue 5 (September 1, 1930)

Pictures of New Zealand Life

page 29

Pictures of New Zealand Life

The Resignation

A veteran settler of the Waikato was recounting some of his early-days experiences. He tackled all sorts of jobs, from bullock-driving to storekeeping, in the rough old times just after the Maori wars. Among other duties, when he was running a small store in a just-started township before he took up farming, he was asked to conduct the post office, salary, say £10 per annum. The mail was not heavy, and the post office didn't take up much room. It consisted of an old candle-box, with a lid hinged on. Town headquarters, however, had an idea that Taki-takihoewaka P.O. was an important institution, and the postmaster received numerous official memos. of instructions and requests for returns and so forth. As he used these communications to light his pipe and his fire, headquarters began to get annoyed, and sent up an official to inspect and report. The officer arrived in a “please explain” mood, and demanded to know this and that and why and wherefore.

The postmaster wasted no time arguing with his high-and-mightiness. “Here's your blanky stamps,” he said, slamming down a sheet of them. “Here's your blinking punch”—the cancelling stamp. “Tell your boss I've resigned! And here goes the blanky post office!“—and taking the candle-box to the door he delivered a mighty kick and sent it flying into the creek that ran a few yards in front of the store.

They have a smart new post office now in that settlement—it's a town to-day. When it was opened, the local dignitaries said a lot about the noble pioneers who laid the foundations of this flourishing centre, but not a word about the pioneer post office that met a watery grave.

The Best Timber Tree.

Sometimes it is claimed that America has the world's biggest trees. But if we take timber content as the test, New Zealand's kauri leads the world. The great eucalyptus trees of Australia are much loftier, so are many of the sequoia of California, which also are often somewhat thicker through than the kauri, but as has been pointed out by that great forester, the late Sir David Hutchins, neither of them carry their thickness up like the kauri. It is the shape of our famous tree that gives it its unprecedented volume of timber. The bole has little or no taper; page 30 there is no waste in buttressed base, as in so many trees, and it is often thicker at the top of the bole just below where the first branches come out than it is at the ground. Gigantic columns of wood, there is nothing like them in the forests of America. The bulk of commercial timber in the biggest recorded kauri was rather more than twice the bulk of timber in the largest “big tree” of the Calaveras groves, according to official records.

Our kauri, what is left of it, is a precious possession, but it should be more
The Largest Electrically-Operated Dredge in the Southern Hemisphere. The Golden Terrace Goldmining Company's Electric Dredge on the Shotover River, Queens-town, South Island. (The materials used in the construction of the dredge were transported to the site by the Railway Department.)

The Largest Electrically-Operated Dredge in the Southern Hemisphere.
The Golden Terrace Goldmining Company's Electric Dredge on the Shotover River, Queens-town, South Island. (The materials used in the construction of the dredge were transported to the site by the Railway Department.)

totara posts (projecting above the water in the shallows) that once supported the locally famous storehouse of Korokai. This store, the Maoris tell me, was a pataka richly carved. It was the larder in which Korokai kept his supply of human flesh, for he was a cannibal of cannibals, and his pataka-kai-tangata was seldom empty. It was tapu through and through, for none but Korokai and his chieftain friends could draw upon it, and the flesh of man was sacred food, say the Maoris. Korokai was the great chief of Rotorua a than a tree museum, as some have called it. There is every reason why an effort should be made to regenerate the kauri and increase the forests, for future generations of New Zealanders. Kauri really grows about twice as fast as the principal European timber trees; and just as the English Government once grew oak for the navy we should grow our best timber for those who are to come after us.

The Maori Meat Safe.

The foreshore of Ohinemutu, Lake Rotorua, is thick with memories and relics of the past. It is a place of curious old tales of primitive Maoridom. On the north-east shore of Muruika Point, in rear of the Church of St. Faith, there are still to be seen three of the moss-encrusted hundred years ago. His favourite dish was man or woman—and when there were no wars a slave would be killed for his delectation. Usually, however, the carved pataka held many taha or calabashes filled with the preserved flesh of war victims. Korokai's dwelling, a carved house called “Matapihi,” stood just behind the present site of the church. The space occupied by this lakeward-looking home is still to be traced on the grassy point. Now the white man's church bell sends its call across land and lake, and the wild doings of Muruika when the fierce tattooed men feasted on long-pig cooked in the “fires of Ngatoro-i-Rangi” —the hot springs—are but a misty memory.

page 31

Voice of Spring.

It will soon be time for that glad sound to the bird-lover and the country rover, and to many a town-dweller as well, the first song of the shining cuckoo, the pipi-wharauroa. Since time immemorial this little messenger of the new year has been flying to and for across the ocean on its annual migrations, and its arrival in New Zealand has been the signal for the Maori to plant the kumara. Its call ending in a long-drawn high-whistling “tio-o” is peculiarly the shining cuckoo's cry; it can never be mistaken for the note of any other bird.

Unlike most of our other native birds, the pipi-wharauroa is no shy shunner of towns and farms. Wherever there is an inviting grove of trees with promise of food—how hateful those fruitless funeral-like pinus insignus plantations!—there the shining cuckoo's “kui, kui,” and its cheery “tio-o” may be heard some time or other in the summer. I have heard it in the bluegum plantation alongside the Rotorua railway station.

Old Whalers’ Bay

A picturesque little coast town with landscape features all its own is Kaikoura.
A Typical Everyday Scene on the New Zealand Railways. (Photo, W. W. Stewart.) A long freight train passing through Paekakariki station, Wellington Province.

A Typical Everyday Scene on the New Zealand Railways.
(Photo, W. W. Stewart.)
A long freight train passing through Paekakariki station, Wellington Province.

No other town in New Zealand is like it. Some day—perhaps—the South Island Main Trunk line will run through it; for the present you must depend on car to reach it unless you like knocking about in a little coastal steamer. The nook in Kaikoura that has most charms for me is South Bay, a mile or so away from the business town; it is the whaling-station bay. There is a little Maori village there, on the sandy point called Te Hiku o te Waero—“The End of the Tail.” One day, on the beach, I watched the operations at the modern whaling works, where a pakeha party of men was boiling down a recent catch. A thousand pounds worth of bone—curious black slab-like stuff, frayed in hairy filaments at the edges—was stacked on the shore to dry; it came from that now rare species the “right” whale.

Near by there were relics of an older day. An ancient wooden capstan stood on the beach; once upon a time a dozen men would walk the long capstan pole round—it was a great single bar—and haul the whale up high and dry.

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New Zealand Railways Maintenane Men at Work Along the Line Eminent British authorities who have inspected the railway tracks in New Zealand have reported that transtandard of maintenance observed in this country is not surpassed anywhere in the world. The above illustrations depict the activities of the men whose efficient work has done much to earn the above tribut and given the New Zealand Railways their unique safety record of over 100 million passengers carried during the past four years without one fatality. The illustrations shew:—(1) (2) (3) (4) track relaying operasons; (5) getting correct gauge measurement; (6) drilling a rail; (7) lunch time; (8) (9) (12) ballasting the line; (10) (11) taking levels; (13) taking a sight; (14) removing a rail on Paremata bridge; (15) ceveying rails by trolley; (16) removing an old rail; (17) lifting and packing operations. (Rly. Publicity Photos.)

New Zealand Railways Maintenane Men at Work Along the Line
Eminent British authorities who have inspected the railway tracks in New Zealand have reported that transtandard of maintenance observed in this country is not surpassed anywhere in the world. The above illustrations depict the activities of the men whose efficient work has done much to earn the above tribut and given the New Zealand Railways their unique safety record of over 100 million passengers carried during the past four years without one fatality. The illustrations shew:—(1) (2) (3) (4) track relaying operasons; (5) getting correct gauge measurement; (6) drilling a rail; (7) lunch time; (8) (9) (12) ballasting the line; (10) (11) taking levels; (13) taking a sight; (14) removing a rail on Paremata bridge; (15) ceveying rails by trolley; (16) removing an old rail; (17) lifting and packing operations. (Rly. Publicity Photos.)

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