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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 6, Issue 5 (November 2, 1931)

Pictures of New Zealand Life

page 41

Pictures of New Zealand Life

The Old Adventurers.

Some of the hardy old pioneers of the West Coast survive to tell of their moving ‘scapes by flood and forest in the brave days of the gold rushes. Away down the surf-bound coast at Okuru, two hundred miles south of Hokitika, lives the daddy of them all to-day, the venerable Sam Fiddian. He has been there for sixty-four years. It is just about as far out of the world as one can get in New Zealand; down there where the only road from the north is a horse track, where no one ever sees a motor car, where the only ship seen is a small vessel from Hokitika or the Grey three or four times in the year.

Sam Fiddian arrived at Okuru, which is just to the south of that formidable snowy river the Haast, in the year 1867, in an open boat, all the way from Riverton, in Southland. There were thirteen others in the boat, which was only 28 feet long; they were all young fellows, eager for the great adventure of the day—gold-digging on the Westland Coast. Their voyage round the rugged south-west corner of New Zealand was a series of thrilling escapes, knocking about in gales of wind, running under a close-reefed sail for shelter in one or other of the Sounds. Chalky Inlet was one of their havens, many-islanded Dusky Sound another. It was eight weeks before they were off the entrance to the Haast River, where they intended to land, but it was so rough that they had to get ashore at Okuru. Most of the crew who had shared those perils made their way up north to the big diggings from Bruce Bay to the Grey, but Sam Fiddian dropped anchor for good in bushy Okura, and did not wander more. He had had all the adventure he wanted.

Good Hunting.

They may talk of their deer-stalking and its spell for the hunter, but there is considerably more excitement for the sportsman in the chase of the wild boar. Witness an episode in the Taranaki bush the other day, on the head waters of the Patea River, when the quarry of a party of settlers was a big porker which, when killed, was found to be nine feet long and weighed nearly a quarter of a ton. That monster, which it took many bullets to kill, was a veritable king of the wilds.

The strenuous exercise and thrill at the end of it, with always the chance of a nasty mishap, there is nothing in these parts to page 42 equal a brisk pig hunt in the fern hills or the bush.

On one long-ago backblocks tramp we were in the heart of the great forest that then extended for nearly a hundred miles between where the North Island Main Trunk railway now goes and the Taranaki outsettlement of Stratford. Our Maori companion, with his two pig-dogs started a pig-hunt in the thick timber alongside a creek. The boar was brought to bay against a big rimu tree, and he took the aggressive, charging each of us in turn. One of the party just escaped a jab from the tusker by shinning up a slender ponga fern tree. It broke with his weight, when he was yelling advice to one of his mates, and the next moment the tree and occupant were down on top of the old boar and the two pig-dogs. One of the dogs had the grunter by an ear, the other was attacking him in the rear, and the merry hunters were dodging about trying to get a shot or a whack at him with an axe. The row we all made in that bush may be imagined.

At last one clever sportsman, aiming a blow at the pig with the axe, chopped off the poor dog's nose and part of its jaw instead of the pig's snout. We had to put it out of its misery with a shot. The other dog bolted in horror, and we saw it no more. The pig was killed, but he was such a tough old boar that he added nothing to our commissariat. The sum total was that we were deprived of two good dogs for the rest of the expedition, and the sorrowing Maori owner had to be compensated. We certainly had all the excitement we craved that day.

The Lost Terraces.

Have the White and Pink Terraces, which formed the great scenic glory of our thermal regions, been lost irretrievably and for ever, or is there some faint hope that they may yet be unearthed, or unwatered, for the delight of all who tour our Geyserland? The topic has been debated of late by many who know Geyserland well, and some who don't.

It is contended by some well qualified to judge that the lowering of Rotomahana's level by 120 feet or so, by means of cutting a channel through the ash and mud deposit to Lake Tarawera, might reveal one at any rate of the beautiful terrace formations. Explorations made immediately after the Tarawera eruption and the blowing out of the original bed of Rotomahana seemed to show that the Terraces had gone. This probably was the fate of the White Terraces, but there is some reason for the theory that the Pink terraces, so renowned for the exquisite delicacy of their colouring, may not have been shattered to fragments but may have been covered with mud and ash, which the unwatering of the hill face below the Hape-o-toroa range may reveal.

Certainly there seems to be a case in favour of the simple and inexpensive engineering work suggested. By making a cut which will restore the old Kaiwaka channel, the pre-eruption outlet of Rotomahana, the level of that lake would be lowered by considerably over a hundred feet, and would still leave it more than four hundred feet deep. The release of the great weight of water from the active thermal area along the Pink Terrace side of the lake would stimulate geyser action there and make the place intensely interesting for travellers. The experiment at any rate would do no harm, and it is worth the trying.

To Our Artists.

Lord Bledisloe has been counselling New Zealand landscape painters to pay more devotion to the fine dramatic features of our scenery–the forests, fiords, lakes and mountains. His suggestions are fitting and needful. Too many of our artists fritter away their energies, paint and canvas on subjects not worth a second glance. They are dazzled, a few of them, by the freakish foolishness of cubism, which permits an artist to dispense with accuracy of drawing and colouring and to perpetrate in all solemnity the infantile efforts we proudly produced when our parents gave us our first sixpenny box of paints. We have some artists who refuse to take refuge in this sort of lazy-man's picture-making, and who try to reproduce something of the real colour and form of our landscape glories. But they are all too few.

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Another notable deficiency in our art exhibitions concerns our national history. Not one of our artists of to-day ventures to depict the stirring and inspiring episodes in New Zealand's story. What a wonderful field is there for really great pictures! Subjects come crowding to the mind. And how New Zealanders, and visitors from beyond our shores, would welcome the sight of a painting or a drawing that indicated a spirit of artistic research and an appreciation of the nobility of theme that so many chapters of our history hold. The material is there in endless variety; the brains and the brush are needed to interpret it.

“No Good to Our Bush.”

A veteran North Island sawmiller, who has had to do with the bush all his life, was discussing with me the other day the importance of the inter-relation of forest and native bird life. “Birds,” he said, “are absolutely necessary to the life of our indigenous trees; they destroy immense quantities of insects and grubs which are injurious to the timbers. And anything which interferes with the birds interferes also with the trees. There is the opossum; though it is protected for the sake of its skin it is absolutely no
A Charming Holiday Resort In The Sunny Northland. (Rly. Publicity photo.) Picturesque Russell, twenty miles by launch from the rail terminal at Opua, Bay of Islands, New Zealand.

A Charming Holiday Resort In The Sunny Northland.
(Rly. Publicity photo.)
Picturesque Russell, twenty miles by launch from the rail terminal at Opua, Bay of Islands, New Zealand.

good to our bush. It eats the young leaves and the berries on which the birds depend for their food, and it also interferes with the nests and eats the eggs and nestlings when it gets the chance. It should not be tolerated any more than the stoat or the weasel; it should never have been introduced.”

From a Grateful Parent

How a possible fatality was averted through the promptitude of one of the Department's bus drivers, is told in the following letter of appreciation sent by Mr. Geo. Eyton, Wellington, to the General Manager of Railways, Mr. H. H. Sterling:–

“My son, Phil. Eyton, met with an accident on 12th September, while competing in the 50-mile road cycling championship. He was injured through coming in contact with one of the Railway Department's buses—driven, I am told, by Mr. W. Platt. Well, Sir, I wish to convey, through you, to Mr. Platt, my compliments and congratulations for his skilful and clever driving, for from what those who saw the accident informed me, had not Mr. Platt been exceptionally alert in handling the bus in the emergency, my boy would have been killed. I wish, therefore, to express thanks to Mr. Platt and to compliment the Department in having so capable a driver in its employ.”

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