Other formats

    TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 7, Issue 4 (August 1, 1932)

Pictures of New Zealand Life

page 41

Pictures of New Zealand Life

The Fossickers.

There's gold in the mountains and silver in the mine,” says the old song. This depression of ours has turned attention to those hidden hoards of raw wealth, and likely auriferous areas are being combed more assiduously than they have been for many a year. Prospectors are panning-off riverbed stuff in hundreds of places in the South Island; dredges are winning steady returns from the heavy black sands; and there are high hopes once more of lifting fortunes from the golden Kawarau. In the North, the Coromandel Peninsula is being re-explored; there is considered to be plenty of gold there still, along the great bush ranges from Cape Colville to Te Aroha.

Another region, but one which has not yet been proven to hold payable gold, that is receiving some exploratory attention, is the rough, much-forested country between the western shores of Lake Taupo and the basin of the Upper Wanganui at Taumarunui. Traces of gold were obtained long ago in the Pungapunga Creek and other streams, and I have heard from the Maoris at Taumarunui that a small nugget of gold was found in the 'seventies in the Pungapunga or thereabouts, and was worn by a chief's wife around her neck. Such stories were often heard in past years in the Tuhua country, as that region is usually called by the Maoris. A few years ago a small syndicate from Napier set to work prospecting the creeks on the west side of the great lake, but apparently it failed to strike it rich. Still, there is a belief among many old hands that there will some day be a great golden-quartz discovery in among the mountains of Tuhua. Let us keep on hoping. Every little helps!

The Rare White Bird.

Recently a white heron, the beautiful bird called by the Maoris the kotuku, was seen fishing for its daily food in the Awapuni lagoon, near Palmerston. The kotuku is the most graceful of our native birds, but it is unfortunately very seldom seen, and when it is, as often as not, some gunman takes a shot at it and pleads that he took it for a swan or a barndoor chook, or something. One was shot on the coast of Westland some years ago by a youth who didn't know what it was or that it was protected by law.

It is a curious fact about the kotuku that wherever it is seen it is alone; a pair of herons is never seen. It is a solitary rover, page 42 winging its lonely way from swamp to swamp or lake to lake in quest of good fishing waters. It covers long distances in its flights. Several years ago one was reported in the Tauranga district. Then it disappeared, and a few days later the Maoris at Rotorua were greatly pleased and excited by the visit of a kotuku, which was seen daily perched on an old punt on the lake shore at Ohinemutu, intently watching the waters for fish. Most probably it was the same heron which Tauranga had seen.

Te kotuku rerenga tahi” is a favourite proverbial saying of the Maoris applied to the white heron, and it is a complimentary term often used when welcoming a distinguished visitor; it is usually given as “bird of a single flight,” or, in other words, a guest seen only once in a lifetime. However, it would be more accurate, I think, to give it the interpretation “the lone-flying white heron,” in reference to its solitary habit. It flies alone and fishes alone.

A profound pity it is that such lovely creatures are dying out of our land, with the gradual diminution of their feeding grounds and the inevitable usurping of their old free domains by the pushing and impertinent imported birds and the ravages of destroying animals of the stoat and weasel kind.

Self-denial.

All the world should be told that touching story of the Otago Scot who presented an untouched bottle of prime old whisky to a Dunedin Museum. Never in all my experience of Scots, English, Jews and Scandy-hoovians have I heard of such an example of self-denying frugality. A Scotsman who could preserve a bottle of his national beverage uncorked for the period of nearly a lifetime must surely be a bird more rare than that rara avis I have just mentioned, the kotuku!

Discussing this strange, indeed unparalleled case with an acquaintance who is an authority on wet goods, we jointly wondered, in the first place, why such care to preserve what is usually regarded as intended to be consumed at the first opportunity? “Why,” asked my friend, “what was the matter with it?”

That, indeed, is the question Isaac and Moses as well as Sandy and Hector and the McTavish will ask. But dark doubts are apt to obtrude themselves. Is it whisky? Or is it cold tea or mildly coloured water? Is there a tragic shock in store for the first Otago burglar who raids that Museum in search of the so-well-advertised presentation bottle? We await further exciting news from Dunedin.

At the Rail-End.

Taneatua, at the terminus of the Bay of Plenty railway line, calls for attention this coming summer, all being well, as a pleasuring centre, aside from its importance as a business town. For one thing, it lies near the entrance to one of the great passes into the Urewera Country, the Whakatane Gorge. It is a wonderful change from the far-stretching plains of grass and maize to ride up that range-walled valley, crossing and recrossing the broad shallow river, and every now and again passing into the cool and scented forest. Two days' easy ride, camping on the way in one of the clearings, such as the old Urewera village at Waikariwhenua, takes one into Ruatahuna, and another leisurely day to Maungapohatu, made famous as the headquarters of the prophet Rua. That is one of the byways in from the plains at Ruatoki, the large Maori settlement just beyond Taneatua; and there are others. By the way, it is a tempting sight, the big trout lying in the sun-warmed shallows at the Whakatane gravelly fords. Of course, you always see them when you haven't got your rod! But the lads and lasses of the kainga don't trouble about orthodox tackle or the opening of the season. They get their trout in eel-baskets.

Whakatane port, in the other direction, a half-hour run from Taneatua station, is really the most interesting little town along the Bay of Plenty, with its bold rampart of dark-grey cliff walling in the flat on which the place is built, and its tall Pohaturoa rock standing sentry at the entrance like a gigantic policeman directing the traffic right and left. It is a curious place to explore, the top of that wall, where the great pohutukawa trees grow in the trenches of ancient fortifications, the castles of old-time page 43 tribes. Up inland, again, there is a particularly pretty—and exceedingly crooked—driving road on towards Ohiwa and Opotiki, through the Wainui-te-whara Valley, a wooded gorge ablaze with flowers in the season of bush blossoms. The usual traffic route from Taneatua station to Opotiki leaves the plain by way of the Waimana Valley, but this Wainui Road, which cuts into the hills by a narrow little pass three miles or so from Whakatane town, is worth the travelling for the variety of its bush and hill scenery. In fact, should one visit Opotiki from the rail-head, it is a wise plan to make a round trip of it over the Whakatane-Ohiwa section, going one way and returning the other.

Sails Linger.

The extension of railways and roads during the last few years has inevitably put many of our coast-trading steamers out of business. Better communications
Station Gardens In Canterbury. (Photo. Courtesy, “Christchurch Press.”) Members of the Railway staff at Rangiora laying out new flower beds in readiness for the station gardens competition next year.

Station Gardens In Canterbury.
(Photo. Courtesy, “Christchurch Press.”)
Members of the Railway staff at Rangiora laying out new flower beds in readiness for the station gardens competition next year.

by land have reduced passenger traffic by water to a minimum; that is a necessary process in the development of the country. The North Auckland railway is a case in point. There still remains, however, a useful field for cargo-carrying small craft, and here comes in the advantage of the auxiliary screw scow type of vessel to many of the ports and bays and tidal rivers which the railway does not touch. It is a pleasure to see the oil-engined centreboard schooners and ketches working in and out of Wellington Harbour. In these vessels the fine art of handling canvas is happily preserved; the seamanly accomplishment is not to be left entirely to the yachts. Half-a-dozen or so of the traders of this class still traverse Cook Strait, making their passages in the open sea mostly under sail. One has watched with admiration the Echo and the Kohi beating in through Wellington Heads against a nor'-wester, the engine aiding the sails. Long may such hardy little craft tramp the Strait.
page 44