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Head of Dusky Sound, South Island, New Zealand
The New Zealand Railways Magazine is on sale through the principal book-sellers, 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.
All communications should be addressed to The Editor, New Zealand Railways Magazine, 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.
Deputy-Controller and Auditor-General.
25/3/35.
Mr. J. W. Davidson, C.M.G., M.Inst.T., Chairman of the State Transport Board and Commissioner for Railways, Queensland, was in New Zealand last month on a semi-official visit. During his brief stay in Wellington, Mr. G. H. Mackley, General Manager of Railways, invited his executive officers to meet Mr. Davidson at a social gathering in the city. The meeting was a very happy one and was particularly interesting to several officers who had previously come into contact officially with Mr. Davidson in Brisbane.
The Queensland Railways cover over 6,000 miles of territory (approximately twice the mileage of the N.Z. Railways), and as the gauge is the same as that in New Zealand and the volume of traffic is very similar, there is much of mutual interest, from a railway viewpoint, between the two countries.
Mr. Davidson proved a most interesting and entertaining guest, with a charming personality. Having already travelled extensively in the South Island he was ready to discuss technical points in railway practice from the angle of a friendly, observant expert, and his comments, punctuated by some excellent stories in Illustration, were keenly appreciated by the officers present.
He was greatly struck by the excellence of the permanent way, and had many nice things to say about the high quality of service experienced during his tour, which was undertaken primarily for health reasons.
Mr. Davidson was looking forward eagerly to his North Island tour as he desired to make personal comparisons between the two Islands, as seen by the tourist. Incidentally, he considered that there was a good opening for increased reciprocal travel between New Zealand and Queensland. The climate of Queensland is at its best in the winter months, and being much warmer than New Zealand, should prove particularly attractive at that time to New Zealanders, whereas the more temperate summer climate of New Zealand would be very acceptable to visiting Queenslanders. The development of tourist traffic along Queensland's “Sunshine Route” has been one of the Important features of Australian travel in recent years.
Tauranga's Place In The Sun: Told By The Camera.
The waterfront at Tauranga, North Island, New Zealand, showing Mt. Maunganui in the background.
(Rly. Publicity photos.)
The Strand, Tauranga's business area.
Mount Maunganui (1,000ft.) guards the entrance to Tauranga Harbour much as Rangitoto guards the entrance to Waltemata, and looks down on ample depth of water. The harbour extends for many miles at varying depths, and the service by railway and road is such that Tauranga is marked out for eminence. It is the stepping stone to or from the Bay of Plenty and the pumice hinterland. Its proximity to the Rotorua and Taupo wonderland, and its own peculiar virtues of climate, kindly to man and plant life, make Tauranga a key point on the holiday map. Historic, sunny, sheltered, fruitful—a fisherman's paradise.
The day may come when mankind will reach the optimum of human advancement. Take the matter of speed. Nature has set the pace for all the major movements that affect us. The earth rolls on at a steady pace, the sun observes time in all his seasons, eclipses come and go with a well-regulated consistency over huge spans of years. Heart-beats, in health and normal conditions, keep to a time schedule with meticulous regularity. The optimum speed appears to have been reached in all these things.
But the question “How fast should a man go?” has not yet been settled. Campbell and his motor-makers spent a year and much money to raise the land speed maximum by 4 miles after waiting for weeks until Nature provided a sandy speedway suitable for the purpose. The British railways push their steam trains to a triumph of a sustained 12 miles at over 100 miles per hour. Airmen, cyclists, swimmers,
All this is helping to give quicker perception to those of the present generation. “Look-out, jump in time or take a toss” is the pedestrian's rule of the road when the wild bull road-hogs are running riot.
And this, with suitable variations, is the rule of life for the speedsters. So present-day man manages to live where his remote ancestor would die a thousand deaths.
Some day, doubtless, it will be possible to work out just what is the optimum speed for man — in each of the means of conveyance — consistent with the dictates of commonsense so admirably summed up in the formula of the New Zealand Railways—“Safety, Comfort, Economy.” And when this is known, either good sense or sumptuary law must make it so. But, as Kipling said,
The keen interest in railways, the desire for more technical experiment, the activity with which facts relating to railway advancement are received by all classes of the community, young and old alike, the wonderful things that are being done to conserve fuel, increase steaming efficiency, produce smoother and faster running, add to the amenities of train travelling and supplement the facilities for freight handling—all these are signs that the optimum of railway advancement has not yet been reached. And while that interest is there, this Magazine will continue to devote some space to those things which make for the lure of the rail — the romance of locomotives individually and in the mass, and some of the technical details that appeal so much to the machinery-minded boys of to-day.
In going ahead, the world has gone well past the time when philosophical statements and arguments could hold public interest — “cut it short” is the most constant demand, because understanding is so quick. We may even reach the stage where speech becomes unnecessary (as it already is in some forms of perfected team work), when we all know as much as everyone else, act equally wisely, and naturally think the same way about everything. Meanwhile, however, there is much “going ahead” to be done; and New Zealand, the railways and this Magazine are all busy doing it.
I Have been much impressed in recent months by the wide range of subjects upon which users of the railways have written to the Department in expressing thanks for some service rendered. It is good to know that the staff, in general, gives pleasing service, and there is much evidence of a genuinely friendly spirit amongst the public when so many take the trouble to add to their verbal thanks a written acknowledgment upon the subject.
Some of the letters express surprise and pleasure to find that the Department carries out work for the public of a kind which has been ordinary practice for a number of years. Such matters as the comprehensive nature of the Department's through booking system, luggage checking to overseas vessels, special luggage concessions for overseas visitors, and seat and sleeper reservations from any station for principal trains, are not yet fully known to the public despite very extensive publicity. Naturally there have been many extensions of service during the last decade, consistent with the general advance in the amenities of transport, and the Department has been well in the van in providing services and adopting new practices likely to be appreciated by its patrons. Those who have, in the past, perhaps only occasionally come in contact with the railways, would not easily keep abreast of the improvements. In this regard, members of the railway staff and of allied road or steamer services can do much to support the Department's advertising by telling those with whom they come into contact some of the facts regarding railway services.
It has been said that British railways have had a kind of traditional reluctance to make their good deeds known. This may be true, but there need be no reluctance about making the good services which the Department offers to the public as widely known as possible, and I trust that the staff will still further aid the management in this work, which is, after all, the most likely way to increase the traffic upon which the stability of the whole railway system depends.
Palmerston North—the World's Model Country Town.
Palmerston North's Charming Setting for Business.
Top: Railway Centre (left). Ross & Co. and Park (right).
Centre: Portion of Collinson & Cunningham's (left). Kiwi Bacon Factory (right).
Bottom: Beside the Club Hotel (left). H. L. Young Ltd.—printery (right).
“My ankle is all right again, but I shall stay on here till the end of the month. I've seen enough geysers, snow, and scenery and things, and this is the most surprising place. I've been absolutely whirling. The life is amazing and it doesn't seem like a country town at all. The shops are wonderful with all the latest things. My dear, I saw the twin of my mulberry marocain, forests of smart undies and new model hats, the book-shops have the latest books and all the magazines, and there are half a dozen good hotels. Between five and six is as busy as anywhere I have been on the planet and the lounges just as full of bright young things and glasses and trays and everything. Imagine it! I saw ‘Wind and Rain’ and ‘Ten Minutes Alibi’ at the local theatre last week. They go off to London here as if it were next door. Half the people you meet are either just back or going next month … there are two golf links, loads of tennis and croquet lawns and lovely parks, complete with gadgets, as Bill calls them, an enormous racecourse, and several within half an hour. The houses are more modern than ours, and I heard a woman ringing her daughter up in London on her birthday. I haven't been bored a minute … there seems no time… . By the way … .”
This is an authentic document. It reflects the surprise that anyone from older lands feels on finding what sort of place Palmerston North turns out to be when actually visited and examined. The letter, naturally, trails off into personal matters, and I propose to tell in the next few columns what the writer might have said if she had gone into some detail and treated the topic at a little length.
New Zealand
, owing partly to its configuration (notably in its possession of many harbours and natural centres) but still more to wise early development policies, has largely escaped the ravening evils of centralisation. This has led to its possession of dozens of country boroughs whose amenities of life are quite equal to those of our large cities. The extent of this phenomenon is unique in the world.
For instance, when a farmer or business man sells out in New South Wales, he naturally gravitates to Sydney. In New Zealand he stays in the district, builds a good home, and proceeds to spend his leisure with the folks he already knows in and about the bowling green, the clubs or whatnot.
There are small towns in the world with the same sort of general standards of material well-being as Palmerston North, but they are holiday resorts or stopping-off places for sight-seers. Even these, however, lack many of the excellences of our town.
I am taking Palmerston North as the finest example of the claim that we have the best country towns in the world, because it is nothing else. It is simply a farming centre, largely living upon the distribution of goods to a large agrarian and pastoral population. It has no hot springs, ski-ing or big game-fishing. Its local industries and its trading organisations are the springs of its existence.
I am not going to weary you with figures about gasworks, abattoirs, electric light and power, drainage, sewerage, and the other highly efficient municipal undertakings. The telephone is almost universal in every house, and Queenstown or Russell can be rung in a matter of minutes. The transport system is by motor buses, a large, modern and imposing fleet covering the whole town area. In the light of modern developments, Palmerston North has been fortunate in avoiding the electric tram installations possessed by many smaller New Zealand towns. The hospitals, public and private, are up-to-date and of world standard efficiency.
These, interesting and marvellous as they may be, are commonplaces of New Zealand's surpassing standard of material comfort. It is as well, though, to remember with pride that many or most of them are lacking in much larger cities in U.S.A., England and elsewhere.
What I want to stress here is that this profusion of the amenities of life richly endows the provincial centres of New Zealand.
Let us consider the place.
Palmerston North is flat, and its streets are straight and at right angles. Its pioneers, with the splendid vision of their day, left the huge “Square” as a “lung” for the city in the making. For many a year, it was a paddock with four sides of straggling buildings of varying heights and gaps like missing teeth in a boxer's jaw. To-day it is a thing of beauty, with
Boys' High School, Palmerston North.
The fortunate folk who dwell here have the remarkable combination of all the advantages of country and urban life.
Let us do the town and imagine spending a month in it with nothing to do but amuse oneself.
A supply of reading matter is assured. Not only is there a good municipal library, but a number of private ones in genuinely up-to-date bookshops, one of which could take its place with the good ones of the larger cities of other lands. All the English magazines, the weeklies of every description, most of the American and many foreign magazines are stocked. The New Zealander, according to A. P. Herbert, is the greatest reader in the world of the more serious literary and topical review type of weekly or monthly.
The general talk in club and home will be good. In this connection, let it be always remembered that such is the wide incidence of travel nowadays that Palmerston North is nearer to London than a town of its size in Shropshire. No day in the year sees less than fifteen thousand New Zealanders in London, and Palmerston North will have more than its proportionate quota.
Its two daily papers are on the full cable service and their readers are fully informed on world affairs. This country newspaper excellence was an everlasting source of wonder to A.P.H. who commented freely to the writer on the fact that whenever the train stopped, “a newspaper came aboard, well written on all topics and all the happenings of the day before in Czechoslovakia or Ireland.”
There will be no sign of provincialism, except the best sort of local pride, and I have flouted this by not describing the place as a city. We live, as it were, at the small end of the telescope, looking out, and are profoundly interested in international doings.
The drapery establishments would adorn any large city. As well as dozens of smaller ones, speciality shops and so forth, there are three palatial emporiums of city dimensions. Many a girl having bought the latest thing in London, finds that it has raced her to Palmerston North by an earlier steamer. What Americans call the “hardware store” is in evidence, modern and capacious and richly stocked. Commercial temples of real grandeur, house establishments devoted to all the recognised lines to fill the buyer's needs.
The petrol station is ubiquitous, the motor depots are as enormous as one would expect from the fact that this town and district has a car to every six and a-half inhabitants, the second highest average in the world, beating some of the States in the Union.
The scale of the businesses enables that no fee is levied for shopping locally. As we say here, the “prices are right.”
The hotels, and there are many, are capacious, modern and comfortable. One is owned by the oldest continuous holder of a license in the British Empire, as far as can be ascertained from the London Council of the L.V.A. In passing, let me say, that a widely travelled American visitor has just stated to the writer that the standard of the country town hotel in New Zealand is definitely the highest in the world. It is time that the bunk about the backwardness of our hotels for tourists should be refuted. I see that Vicki Baum says she had to wait in a queue for her bath in Auckland. I do not know where she dwelt, but another couple of shillings a day would have given her a room with bath in most hostelries anywhere in New Zealand.
As would be expected from a district containing one of the richest growing land areas of the world, the food is perfection. One hotel grows all its food, from pork to parsnips, on its own farm.
There is a plentitude of imposing and beautiful private homes. We have a
Aorangi Nursing Home, Palmerston North.
The rich soil makes gardening easy and every cottage has its blaze of colour.
The public gardens, notably in the Square and the Esplanade, are everlastingly beautiful. Who has not heard of the Cherry Tree Avenue, which is such a Dominion sight in a country of countless garden wonders, that excursion trains are run to it in the flowering season.
The schools, from the noble Massey College to the smaller primary establishments, are artistic, and something must be said of two superb churches. Owing to the rapid growth of ivy and Virginia creeper, and the luxuriance of lawn growth, buildings of this type soon wear an air of age and time-garnered beauty.
The general recreational facilities in Palmerston North are adequate to all tastes and to anyone's need. It is possible for the complete idler to live a fully rounded life of pleasurable activities without leaving the town.
Consider the local Opera House. Here in this farming centre, thousands of miles, and two oceans away from the world's cultural capitals, Pavlova has danced, Kubelik and Heifitz have played, Galli Curci has sung, Sybil Thorndike has given them “St. Joan,” just to take a few recent names at random. A legion of the great names of music and drama have been billed on its walls from Sousa's Band to H. B. Irving's “Hamlet,” from Jean Gerardy to Wilkie Bard.
This is the sort of fact that at one bound lifts Palmerston North into a different world category from any English or American town of its size.
There are two golf links, at least, and one of our pictures shows the ravishing beauty of one of them.
Bowling greens, tennis and croquet lawns, are in profusion. There seems to be one in every second street and many of them are large enough to carry national tournaments.
We show in our illustrations the bath of the free primary public school at Hokowhitu. This lovely scene cannot be matched. It is not the only one, of course, there being many school and public swimming baths in the town.
Be reminded that all these playing grounds, including the golf links, are within easy walking distance of the town and I want to emphasize the word “walking.” Fees are so low as to make the visitor gasp, and being of Scotch extraction, I want to point out that this low cost of recreation is one of the manifest advantages of life in our provincial centres.
Palmerston North is a railway centre (twenty-five leave it every day).
As is so seldom stressed in this country, transport is most convenient, serviceable and efficient. You can lunch at Palmerston North and breakfast in Christchurch next day. Half a day's journey takes one from Palmerston North to Wellington, Napier, New Plymouth or Te Kuiti. You can get a telegram on the train from Auckland, and change your destination from Dunedin to New Plymouth with only a delay of an hour or so.
As the roads are paved in every direction, motor travelling is luxurious and easy.
The Awapuni racecourse is a surprise. Commodious grandstands, fine gardens, and an array of old and noble English trees, make it a racegoers' paradise.
Its classic races have attracted horses whose names are known the world over. The track is oval and well turfed and the lawns superb.
Within a few miles each way from Palmerston North, too, are the splendid Feilding and Woodville courses, and Marton, where we had the felicity of watching a Royal horseman taking his place in a Bracelet field. Within half an hour, there are also the good little courses of Ashhurst, Bulls, Foxton and Levin.
Swimming bath at the free Primary Public School, Hokowhitu, Palmerston North.
Two pleasing private homes at Palmerston North.
It would be unforgiveable to omit the palatial grounds and buildings of the Manawatu A. and P. Association, one of the great institutions of the Dominion. The Manawatu Show, in its entry figures, its standard of exhibits, its contribution to the progress of farming science and general knowledge is of world importance. In the classes of sheep and cattle suitable to the Dominion, it is safe to assert that nowhere on earth are ever gathered for show purposes, the number of quality exhibits ranged here.
This short article cannot pretend to be an encyclopedia of the town of Palmerston North. Local enthusiasts are welcome to point out the very important items I have missed, including the aerodrome.
I simply repeat that Palmerston North has no peer as a country town, in the civilised world. This large statement is made soberly, and with only the one proviso; if Palmerston North has any rival peers, they exist only in New Zealand.
There is, after all, nothing miraculous about the statement.
The achievement of New Zealand is manifestly only the logical result of the original colonisation system of this “Britain of the South.” It was unique in history. It was planned from the beginning, carefully, thoroughly and systematically.
The settlers were hand-picked. They came here voluntarily to seek their fortunes in a new land offering opportunity to the adventurous and the dreamer of high dreams. There should have been no one among them who did not come from the boldest and best spirits of his particular locality. At any rate, scientific methods of selection, organised supervision, and every device of the best brains in England were employed to ensure that end.
There were sporadic infusions of other nationalities, but they confined themselves happily to Nordic races, particularly the fine array of pioneers from Norway, Sweden, and notably Denmark.
These select folk had a land on which to work their will and realise their dreams, which, of all the earth's surface, was the nearest in configuration, climate, and the nature of its soil, to the Britain they had left.
In the warmer and more plentiful sunshine and the milder air, everything grew a little bigger and better, that was all.
Palmerston North, then, is simply one facet of a British task, faithfully carried out on the best lines of the splendid visions of the founders of New Zealand.
The present year sees Germany celebrating the one-hundredth anniversary of the opening of her first railway. In addition, 1935 marks the hundredth birthday of one of England's leading systems—the Great Western Railway, which forms the third largest of the Home transportation groups. The anniversary of the Paddington undertaking occurs on 31st August and already special plans are being devised for the suitable celebration of the event.
The Great Western was originally incorporated in 1835 for a railway from London to Bristol. By amalgamations and new construction the system gradually grew in extent, until, at the time of the introduction of grouping, it actually possessed the longest mileage of any Home line. Originally built to a gauge of seven feet, the Great Western incorporates such historic systems as the Bristol and Exeter, the South Wales, the West Midland, the South Devon, and the Cornwall Railways. The throughout conversion of the broad gauge tracks to the standard 4ft. 8 1/2in. gauge took place in May, 1892.
Practically the whole of Britain from London to Land's End is served by Great Western trains. The “Cornish Riviera Express” runs over the full length of the system, while other notable main-line services are those between London and South Wales, London and Birmingham, and London and Birkenhead. Known to tourists as the “Shakespeare route,” the Great Western also operates through expresses between London and Stratford-on-Avon. Headquarters of the system are at Paddington Station, London. This terminal has a greater total length of platforms than that of any other station in Britain, except Victoria (Southern Railway). They measure 15,939 feet, or nearly two and three-quarter miles. In addition, there are two platforms, used mainly for parcels business, which measure a further 1,511 feet. The three main departure platforms are each over 1,100 feet in length, while two arrival platforms each have a length of 1,200 feet.
A most interesting feature of operation on the Great Western line is the working of slip coaches on passenger trains. The Great Western is the only railway in Britain to employ this system to any extent, and the practice actually dates back to 1858. The advantage of the slip coach arrangement lies in the fact that it enables long-distance expresses to serve intermediate towns without the necessity for interrupting long non-stop runs. Also, it renders possible the detaching of coaches at junction points to form the nucleus of trains serving lines not traversed by the main train.
Coaches in the rear of Great Western trains are slipped in this manner:—The slip coach is equipped with a special coupling hook hinged on a pin and retained in its normal position by a sliding bar fitting over the point of the book. At the other end, the bar is connected to a lever in the slip-guard's compartment, situated in the front of the leading coach of the portion of the train to be detached. As the train approaches the point where slipping is to be undertaken, the slip-guard pulls the lever, removing the sliding bar from the point of the hinged hook and permitting it to fall and release the slip portion from the main train. The action of the lever causes the vacuum brakes to be partially applied on the slip portion, and speed is thus reduced. The main portion of the train speeds away on its journey, and the slip section is gradually brought to rest alongside the platform by the slip-guard operating his hand-brake.
There are at present twenty-two slip services in operation on the Great Western. Among these are two slip coaches detached daily off the “Cornish Riviera Express” at Westbury (for Weymouth), and at Taunton (for Minehead and Ilfracombe).
Passenger travel at Home is being immensely popularised by the utilisation of air-conditioning plant in the main-line passenger coaches. The first air-conditioning experiments date back to 1906. Three years later there was introduced the “Thermotank” system of pressure ventilation and heating, a system which is now largely used on both day and night expresses.
On the L. & N.E. line, a new air-conditioning apparatus, known as the “Stone” system, has recently been introduced. The apparatus is accommodated in a box on the underframe, and air is drawn into the coach through oil filters by means of an electric fan. After leaving the fan, the air is heated
The operation of the equipment is entirely automatic, as the fan motor is switched on by a thermostat as soon as steam is applied to the train. The power supply is derived from the lighting batteries, and the equipment continues to function until the steam supply is cut off. The new system not only provides a supply of clean fresh air to passengers, but as the air is introduced only under a very slight pressure, it also ensures an absence of objectionable draughts.
Railway passenger travel at Home is now cheaper and easier than ever, thanks to the introduction of a new fares programme, embodying wider facilities and important fare reductions. Public support has justified the railways' policy of lower return fares to such an extent that it has been found possible to make the third-class penny-a-mile, return-within-a-month facility a permanent feature. Hitherto known as the “Summer Ticket,” this facility is now named the “Monthly Return Ticket,” and its advantages have been still further increased.
First and third-class monthly tickets are now available for use on the outward and return journeys any day within one calendar month from date of issue. They also admit of break of journey in either direction, and in many cases, where two or more railways operate in the same territory, the tickets are available on the return journey by alternative routes. Minimum fares for these tickets are 3s. 9d. first-class and 2s. 6d. third-class, except on the Southern line where the minima are 7s. 6d. and 5s. respectively.
As an experiment Home railway first-class cheap fares have been cut by ten per cent., and their basis is now fifty per cent. over the corresponding third-class cheap fares. This applies to monthly return, cheap day, excursion, and other reduced fares. Tourist tickets issued between 1st May and 31st October will be reduced by 26 per cent. first-class and 18 per cent. third-class. These tickets will have an availability of three months, and will be subject to minima of 22s. 6d. first-class and 15s. third-class.
The Home railways cannot claim to offer the cheapest travel in Europe. This distinction falls to the State Railways of Finland, where a thousand-mile journey may be undertaken for approximately 34s. second-class, and only 23s. third-class.
Finland is one of the most interesting of countries, and her State Railway system covers a length of 4,000 miles. The first railway was opened between Helsingfors and Hameenlina in 1862.
Remarkable speed records set up on the London & North Eastern Railway a short time ago, by a steam-operated train between London and Leeds, promise to mark the opening of a new era in high-speed main-line passenger operation. For some years, the L. & N.E. Railway has had in mind the necessity for speeding-up train working on its main-lines out of London, and had it not been for the Great War it is probable many of this Company's trunk routes would have been converted to electric traction.
Recently the rapid strides made in the development of the internal combustion Diesel engine, using heavy oil, have diverted attention in fresh directions. Germany and Russia have been particularly successful with high-speed Diesel engines, and in the United States, too, there is now a feeling that Diesel-electric traction may quite conceivably render main-line electrification as we know it to-day quite obsolescent. The recent speed tests on the L. & N.E. line were undertaken with the idea of ascertaining the possibilities of the operation of high-speed units like the “Flying Hamburger” at Home.
The steam locomotive concerned in the test was No. 4472, named “The Flying Scotsman,” with a load of 147 tons. The 186 miles between King's Cross Station, London, and Leeds were covered in 151 minutes 55 seconds, an average speed of 73.4 miles per hour. Two hours exactly were occupied in the first 155 1/2 miles of the run, giving an average speed for this distance of nearly 77 miles per hour. On the return journey from Leeds to London, the throughout average speed worked out at 70.8 m.p.h., with 205 tons behind the locomotive. At one point, a speed of 100 m.p.h. was actually reached, while for forty miles a speed of 90 m.p.h. was maintained. Since these speed tests were made, another typical express locomotive of the L. & N.E. line—the “Cock o' the North”—has been despatched to France for special tests at the Vitry Testing Plant, this being presumably another move in the plans now under review for the acceleration of main-line services generally between London and the north.
Lord Bledisloe, in his capacity of Governor-General, untiringly urged the people of New Zealand to make a study of their stirring history, and he reminded his listeners that the Dominion had possessed heroes and heroines whom posterity at any rate would honour as having illuminated the country's national story. His advice cannot be repeated too often, for the young generation especially is apt to imagine, from its popular reading and the cinema, that one must go abroad for great stories of adventure, of frontier life and of heroic endurance and endeavour. The fine things of our past are too little known; the teaching of New Zealand history is insufficiently attended to in our schools. If ever there was a country that developed the spirit of the frontier and the life on the edge of peril and romance it is New Zealand. The episodes here narrated are selected as examples of the brave and self-sacrificing character of many New Zealand women who played a truly heroic part in the face of death on land and sea.
(From a drawing by T. Ryan, at Taupo.)
The courage and devotion of our New Zealand women, both Pakeha and Maori, in the pioneer era of this Colony, have perhaps not been recognised adequately by those who followed after them in the days of peace when the rough places had been made smooth and the frontiers of settlement obliterated. Those whose memories carry them back to the times when there was a “furthest out,” when work on the land and travel through the back country were accompanied by hazard, can appreciate thoroughly the trials and dangers to which many frontier women were exposed. But the new generation cannot know of these things at first hand; the times have changed, and New Zealanders, present and future, must rely on printed records, and these are all too few so far as the adventurous phases of Colonial life are touched upon. The real history of New Zealand was not made in the towns or in Parliament but on the farms and the long, irregular border lines where Maori and Pakeha touched each other, sometimes with friendly hands, sometimes at short rifle range or the point of the bayonet, or the swing of a tomahawk.
The wives and daughters of the outback farmers had their anxious days and nervous nights, in the period of raids and alarms. Many a frontiers-woman had cause to dread the bush or the high fern that grew close up to their homes, and masked the movements of Maori hostiles.
I was once asked by a correspondent whether a woman had ever won the Victoria Cross or the New Zealand Cross in New Zealand. He was under the impression that one of the women in the Poverty Bay massacre had been awarded the Cross for her services, the wife of an officer who was killed on that red morning. This, of course, was not so; the War regulations did not recognise women as combatants or even as nurses, in the Maori Wars; at any rate they received no service decorations. That is not to say that the women did not earn a medal then, as our nurses did many a year later in the Great War. Many of them fully earned the Victoria Cross or its equivalent. But there were no decorations and no mention in despatches for the brave women of the frontier.
Many a Maori woman deserved a war medal for deeds of courage, even in the firing line. The white woman did not take the fighting trail, but Maori wives and sisters and even grey-haired mothers often accompanied their men in the field, carrying ammunition and food and attending to the cooking, and sometimes using a gun. Some of, those who served in the last Hauhau wars in their young days are still living. The lately dead Heni Pore, the heroine of the Gate Pa in 1864, who fought in 1865 on the Government side, used her rifle and also played a man's part with a spade in one of the Arawa saps before the Hauhau Pa at Te Teko. She fully earned a medal and a war pension, if such rewards had been for the women. When Te Kooti, in 1870, attacked the Government camp at Tapapa—close to the present motor road from Matamata over the Mamaku hills to Rotorua—the wife of Pehimana, a Nga - Rauru chief, turned imminent defeat into victory by her inspiring example. Her tribe were serving on the Government side. She climbed up on a whata, a high food platform, and waving her shawl she shouted her rallying cries, calling on her people to turn and charge. They did so, and Te Kooti's men were
But the shining example of woman's heroism in my mind just now is Ahu-mai te Paerata, whose deeds of noble courage were twofold; she fought for her national cause and she saved a pakeha's life when no other arm was stretched out to defend him. Ahumai of Orakau—she is one of those whose names will never die in our country's story.
Ahumai and her brother Hitiri te Paerata were the only survivors of their family at Orakau. Her father, brother and uncle fell on the battlefield. Her husband was killed soon after she had delivered her reply to the British request that the women and children should be sent out of the beleagured redoubt so that they would not meet the fate of the men. Major Mair (who was a young officer in the Cavalry Defence Force at Orakau) gave me the actual words of his request, as interpreter, when the warriors of the Pa had refused to surrender. He called out to the garrison, from the head of the sap:
“E pai ana tera mo koutou tangata; engari kaore e pai kia mate ai nga wahine me nga tamariki. Tukuna mai era.”
(“That is well for you men; but it is not right that the women and children should die. Send them out to us.”)
A young woman of noble and fearless bearing stood up on the firing-step inside the earth parapet and cried to Mair:
“Ki te mate nga tane, me mate ano nga wahine me nga tamariki!”
(“If the men are to die, the women and children will die also!”)
That was the final word of the defenders. Mair did not know then who the woman was, but soon after the war he discovered she was Ahumai. Indeed she was not a woman to be forgotten. She bore to her last days the marks of Orakau. On that fatal second of April, 1864, she suffered terrible wounds. She was shot in the right side, the bullet going through her body and coming out on her left side. She was shot through the right shoulder; the bullet went out at her back. She was also hit in the wrist, hand and arm. Yet wounded almost unto death as she was, she struggled through the swamp of death that lay between the Orakau ridge and the Puniu River, the line of retreat on which scores of her comrades were killed. She survived, she reached her distant home at Wai-papa, near Lake Taupo, with her gallant brother Hitiri te Paerata and the
In the year after Orakau Ahumai's tribe had become Hauhaus and were desperately eager to obtain revenge for their losses at Orakau. She was with them at a small village on the bush edge near Oruanui (on the present road from Atiamuri to Taupo) when an adventurous white man rode in to the settlement. He was Lieutenant Meade, of H.M.S. Curacoa; he had been escorted to Taupo by Major Mair, and was returning to Rotorua with a Maori guide. The fierce old Chief and priest of the tribe, Te Ao Katoa (a big name—“The Whole World”) was leading the people in the ritual of the fanatic war-faith Pai-Marire, the chanting and processions round the Niu, the sacred flag-pole of worship. The tohunga seized the occasion to demand the sacrifice of the pakeha to the Hauhau war gods. A Maori stood behind the white man with a ready tomahawk, awaiting the word to strike. Meade, who sat on a log with his guide, was ready, for his part, to fire his hidden revolver through his coat if the executioner raised his tomahawk. But this would have availed him little in the midst of, those armed men. The wild service ended; a council of war began; it looked dark indeed for the white man in the midst of his enemies.
But at the height of the barbarous council, a woman wrapped in a shawl rose from the seated crowd. She walked slowly across the marae. Without a word she sat down at the young Naval officer's feet. She was Ahumai; her wounds at Orakau scarcely yet healed. She had abundant reason for bitterness of soul. Yet she was generous enough to forgive all that, and risk the anger of her tribe, to champion the friendless pakeha when the grave was opening for him.
Her silent act of succour and her high tribal rank saved Meade's life. He and his guide were allowed to leave the village, they rode off with thankful hearts from the nest of Hauhaus where they had all but resigned themselves to death.
Europeans at Taupo long years afterwards sometimes saw the tattooed white-haired dame as she hobbled into the township for her old-age pension. The stray traveller perchance would see in her just a decrepit old wahine, without any story to speak of. But in Ahumai I recognised a truly heroic spirit who could face death without flinching, and defy her people to save a friendless man of her enemies from the tomahawk. Ahumai died at Mokai, near Taupo, in 1908. Her warrior brother Hitiri, whom I knew very well and from whom I heard much of the history of Orakau, was not long in following her to the Reinga.
Lieutenant Meade wrote a book narrating his adventures in New Zealand and the South Seas (“A Ride Through the Disturbed Districts of New Zealand”), and illustrated it with some of his sketches. There is a small drawing of the scene in the bush village where he so nearly fell a sacrifice to the Hauhau spirit of war.
The second subject in this sketch of courageous women is Huria (Julia) Matenga, the young chieftainess of Whakapuaka, on the Nelson coast, whose bravery and humanity at the wreck of the Delaware in 1863 earned her the admiration and praise of both races. She came to be called “New Zealand's Grace Darling.” She was foremost in saving a distressed crew at the risk of her life, in a stormy sea, and her deed of bravery even excelled that of the plucky English girl who rowed off to a wreck with her father, braving the gale to save the perishing.
Julia Matenga, whose Maori name is the native form of both Marsden and Martin, was the wife of a young half-caste chief named Hemi Matenga (James Martin), who had been named after Sir William Martin, one-time Chief Justice of the Colony. They were each about twenty-eight years of age, a handsome couple, tall and stalwart, and they were both strong swimmers. I have never seen a more admirable specimen of the athletic pakeha-Maori blend than Hemi Matenga, erect and straight-backed and powerful even in his seventies. His beautiful wife was the granddaughter of a renowned warrior, Te Puoho, of the Ngati-Toa, the great Rauparaha's tribe (His amazing march from the Nelson country down the West Coast and into Otago and Southland is narrated in the book “Tales of the Maori Bush”). Hemi and Huria lived on their farm at Whakapuaka, near where the cable-station was afterwards established.
Early on the morning of September 4, 1863, the Maoris saw a vessel lying wrecked on the rocks off Whakapuaka. This was the Delaware, an English bri-gantine of 241 tons, a new vessel recently out from London; she had sailed from Nelson the previous day for Napier. A strong gale was blowing, and in endeavouring to beat out against it the vessel was driven on the rocks, about 100 yards from the cliffs, where she lay with the seas sweeping over her. The mate made ready to swim ashore with a line, but a sea caught him and dashed him on a rock, and he was hauled back badly injured. The natives on shore saw the wrecked craft, and several of them hurried along the beach until they reached the nearest point to the Delaware, eager to succour those in distress; some of them lit a fire on the shore and prepared for the reception of the imperilled mariners.
The three who came to the help of the crew were Julia Matenga, her husband and a man named Hohapeta Kahupuku. One of the crew threw a light rope, a lead-line, overboard, and Julia and the two men threw off their clothes and swam out, in spite of the great seas. They had no canoe or boat, but no small craft could have lived in that boiling surf. A terrifying sea was rolling in before the N.E. gale and breaking over the brigantine.
The three Maoris had a desperate struggle; it seemed half-an-hour before they were near enough to get the line which the sailor had thrown out. A rope was bent on to the ship's end of this line, and the Maoris hauled it ashore; the ship's end was made fast to one of the masts and the Maoris secured the other to a boulder on the narrow beach at the foot of the cliffs. Julia was the foremost of the swimmers and was the first to grasp the lead-line which the sailor threw. The swimmers dived under the great rollers that came roaring in
The line between ship and shore having been hauled taut, all but one of the crew struggled to the land holding to the rope, assisted by the three Maoris. This was a task of great difficulty. As each man neared the beach the Matengas and their companions rushed out, sometimes up to their necks in the surf, sometimes swimming, and helped him to the beach. All this time the line was being chafed through by the sharp rocks and it parted just as the last man to leave the wreck, the captain (Robert Baldwin), reached the land.
One life only was lost. The mate, a young Englishman named Henry Squirrell, had made a gallant attempt to swim to the beach with a line soon after the vessel struck, but he was badly hurt and was laid in a bunk apparently dead. But after all the others were safe on shore, they were amazed and greatly distressed to see him climb into the fore-rigging and wave for help. Hemi Matenga asked the captain, “Why did you not tell me there was still one of your men on board?” The Maoris would have brought him on shore had they known but now it was quite impossible, the tide was rising, and the seas were thundering right over the brigantine. The poor mate was washed off and drowned.
So all hands but one were rescued, thanks to the fearless and powerful Maori swimmers. Julia and her men were very much cut and bruised by the rocks, in their efforts to get the sailors to the shore, and Hemi Matenga related afterwards that when he rode the twenty miles into Nelson town to report the wreck he was scarcely able to sit his horse.
The Nelson townspeople were greatly excited by the news of the Delaware wreck and the rescue by the Maoris. A fund was immediately raised, and a public presentation was made to the three swimmers. Julia and her husband each received an inscribed gold watch, and their companion, a youth, and the helpers on the shore each were given a silver watch. Sums of money were also presented to them. Julia's portrait hangs in the Nelson Art Gallery, and under it is this inscription:
“In Public Recognition of the Brave Deeds of Huria Matenga, Chieftainess of the Ngati-Awa, Ngati-Tama and Ngati-Toa Tribes, who, in company with her husband, Hemi Matenga, at risk of life swam for a rope through a stormy sea, thereby saving the lives of the crew of the Delaware, wrecked at Whakapuaka, September 3, 1863.”
The portrait of Julia Matenga which illustrates this article is from the painting by G. F. Lindauer in the Partridge collection of notable Maoris, in the Auckland Municipal Art Gallery. The brave woman of Whakapuaka died at her home there in 1909. Her stalwart husband followed her in 1912, at the age of seventy-seven. Hemi, who was half-brother of Wi Parata Kaka-kura, the chief of Waikanae, was a fine figure of a man to the last, lean and erect. When I last talked with him in Wellington he was on his way, notwithstanding his three score and fifteen years, to Matata, in the Bay of Plenty, duck-shooting, a sportsman to the end. Only a little while previous to our meeting he had rescued a Nelson man from drowning, near the very same place where he and his wife had saved the despairing crew of the Delaware forty-six years before.
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When The Lake Trout Come Inshore: Told By The Camera.
Lake Rotorua, North Island, New Zealand. (Rly. Publicity photos.)
Both on Rotorua, and in the companion lake, Rotoiti, rod-fishing for rainbow trout by wading anglers is an alluring pastime. In places the lake bottom shelves so gradually that the angler may walk out for distances, and good catches are made when the trout come inshore to feed in the evening. But fishing has other charms than fish. Note the forested beauty of the lake coast-line, and the willingness of vegetation to accommodate itself picturesquely to detached fragments. Lakeland is conquerable by water or by road. A natural playground, highly organised by man for the use of man, is at our door. And at moderate cost.
Fleet Street, the highway of fame, is actually one of the narrowest and drabest of London thoroughfares. In the days when it was built, such traffic as now throngs it was undreamed of. Traffic! An endless fivefold belt of buses, taxis, lorries, ambulances, motor cycles, vans, floods down the canyon of the printers' paradise (or should I call it the poets' purgatory?) at all hours of the day and night. Every building bears the name of some famous newspaper. Here all the world's best-known journals are housed. Those that are not actually printed there have an agency office there. Small indeed is the newspaper that is not represented in Fleet Street.
Many a fortune has been made and lost here. It is the most romantic street in the world; paved with gold for some, washed with tears for others. Many New Zealanders have tried their luck here, and a large proportion of them have distinguished themselves and us by their gifts and their tenacity.
First and foremost, of course, comes David Low, the famous cartoonist. Low, who was born at Rangiora, is the highest paid black-and-white artist in the world. His cartoons are not only killingly funny, but often they are sermons in picture. One of his most delicious books is his Russian sketchbook, made during a tour of the Soviet Union. Low did more to enlighten people about that much misrepresented land than any amount of Moscow propaganda could do. He seemed to catch the soul of the Soviet scene, with all its humours and absurdities, all its fine humanity, its rich and vigorous progressiveness.
Another brilliant New Zealander who has made good in London is Sheila Macdonald, daughter of Mr. Scobie Mackenzie, of Dunedin. You will remember her delightfully human book “Sally in Rhodesia.” It was a best-seller, and deservedly so. New Zealand girls have certainly played their part in the journalistic world. Another fine novelist is Jane Mander, who has published several books, though nothing has ever come up to her “Story of a New Zealand River.” Jane, of course, is now back in this country, a distinctive figure with her gleaming white hair, and humorous eyes. She spent several years in Fleet Street, as a reader for Jonathan Cape, the publishers. A writer whose books have had quite a vogue is Nelle Scan-lan, who has had a popular success as a writer of light, pleasing novels of New Zealand life.
A very successful youngster is Ian Coster, who used to be on the Auckland “Sun.” For two years he was the assistant editor of Nash's Magazine; now he is film critic, at a salary running into four figures, for one of the great Northcliffe papers. Many of you will remember this charming boy, who looked rather like a Greek god. He was a fine tennis player, a splendid Rugby forward, and a reporter with a nose for news. Ian will never be a great writer, but he has a flair for the unusual. He digs up the most extraordinary and unexpected stories, always carefully documented and quite authentic. His article in Nash's on “Black Magic as Practised in London at the Present Day” caused quite a sensation. Now he is recognised as one of London's most capable journalists—and he was only thirty last birthday. “What a man! What a man!” as Jimmy Durante would say.
Another gifted New Zealander in Fleet Street is Percy Crisp, ex-editor of the Auckland “Sun.” He is now on the “Daily Express,” one of England's most important papers. The “Daily Express” has the most palatial offices in the street. The huge many-storied building is entirely faced with black glass. It has no corners, but curves of gleaming glass—an architectural novelty that is most imposing.
A New Zealander who has made a great name and fortune in London is Hugh Walpole, son of the Bishop of Auckland. He is in the first rank of novelists to-day. Even greater than he, is our Katherine Mansfield, daughter of Sir Harold Beauchamp, of Wellington. Personally, I consider Katherine the greatest short story writer of all time, male or female. Her life was a tragic one. Illness and poverty were her lot, but her work is amongst the bravest and best that has ever been written.
Another very clever cartoonist from this country is Harry Rowntree, who is a frequent contributor to “Punch.” There is one charming picture of his in the Auckland Art Gallery, a slight sketch of some sparrows huddled on a branch.
A painter who does newspaper work is Ronald McKenzie, formerly of Lower Hutt. He paints marvellous coloured advertisements for American papers. He was the first husband of Rhona Haszard, the gifted artist whose death in Cairo in 1931 was such a blow to her friends and such a loss to New Zealand art.
An Aucklander, Reginald Berkeley, is now famous as a successful play-wright, his “Lady with the Lamp” being considered one of the best of the last decade. Another dramatist from this country is Dr. Merton Hodge, whose delightful play “The Wind and the Rain” is still running in London.
So, you see, New Zealand has made its mark in Fleet Street. Our gifted children have gained definite honour there. And, of course, apart from actual writers there are many of our countrymen and women who are always good “news value” in London; their names are frequently in print. First and foremost comes Lord Rutherford, next to Einstein, the greatest scientist in the world. Then there is Dr. Condliffe, of the League of Nations, a very well-known figure at Geneva. He used to be Professor of Economics at Canterbury College. Another person who is much in the news is Jean Batten, our aviatrix, daughter of an Auckland dentist. Jean's brother John is a film star who has done splendid work in English and German films. Considering the size of our population we have really produced some wonderful people, and when we consider the younger ones, like Ian Coster, the Battens, and our young poets, like Fairburn, we can see that the supply is not diminishing and that we have a very big part in the life of the street that rules the world by the power of the pen.
To-Day, New Plymouth, the capital of North Taranaki and the whole province, has a population that borders on 20,000. This town has a fine harbour, which, although artificial, is nevertheless a venue of the largest cargo vessels coming to the Dominion. The chief industry of the province is dairying and while sheep-farming is carried on in a small way, the damp conditions are not conductive to success in this direction. New Plymouth has doubtless been put on the map by her now well-established aerodrome at Bellblock, five miles to the East of the township. Should a permanent airmail service between the Commonwealth and New Zealand be inaugurated, New Plymouth will in all probability become a terminal point for the trans-Tasman fliers. This statement is borne out by the flights of Sir Charles Kingsford-Smith and the late Mr. C. T. P. Ulm, who both made several flights over the Tasman to make New Plymouth their landing-ground. Extensions and renovations are always being executed at the airport and in a few years it should be one of the finest, if not the finest, 'drome in the Dominion.
Mt. Egmont (8,260 feet) is the famous sentinel of this pastoral province, and its conical beauty has been likened to that of Japan's Fujiyama. It is indeed an imposing landmark, situated as it is in the central position of Taranaki and 19 miles from New Plymouth. A fine scenic reserve circles the base of this majestic peak—I say majestic, for what it loses in height it compensates for in symmetry and grace—and the fine native bush of this reserve must be seen to be appreciated. Words are poor things to describe adequately the panorama that stretches out before the eyes from the Old and New Hostels, or the simple beauty of the Veronica Valley and Ngatoro Gorge walks, the tracks to Bell's and Dawson's Falls and the grandeur that attends the 14 miles to the Kahui Hut. Two tried guides, Messrs. R. Sole and S. Arthur, are always ready to take the sight-seer along the track of his or her choice. From the summit of Egmont on a perfectly clear day can be seen the hills that surround Nelson, while Ngauruhoe, Tongariro and Ruapehu stand out in relief. Inglewood, Stratford, Waitara and New Plymouth lie at the climber's feet, glistening and scintillating in the sun.
From Stratford, in South Taranaki, Egmont loses its conical perfection by reason of Fantham's Peak, the parasitic cone that protrudes halfway up the mountainside. Hawera, too, the capital of South Taranaki, offers unrivalled perspectives of Egmont. In winter, when the snows mantle Eg-mont's slopes, she is a thing of beauty, a gem that would vie with Earth's most famed natural glory.
Through the untiring efforts of the North Taranaki Acclimatisation Society, whose president is Mr. W. H. Moyes, M.A., B.Sc., Principal of the New Plymouth Boys' High School, the rivers of the province afford trout anglers the sport of their lives. The Waiwakaiho (laughing water), Ngatoro, Stony, Warea, Henui and numerous other rivers are without rival for fly and creeper fishing. Many a doughty “bag” has come from these streams and many are the parties of fishermen who spend the day of their lives in fishing conditions such as Walton or Cotton never dreamed. Taranaki can truly be classed among anglers' paradises.
Should the tourist prefer deep-sea fishing, then his opportunities are many. Let him take a launch or a dinghy off the Sugarloaves, Moturoa and Saddleback, where schnapper, cod, hapuka, terakihi, barracuda, kingfish and kahawai are plentiful, and I can assure him that he will return for more.
Historical relics and reminders abound in Taranaki. St. Mary's Church is here in New Plymouth with all its surroundings so redolent of the Maori Wars, Mousland Hill at the back of the church, where once stood the town's barracks—these barracks were taken down and the timber used in the construction of the Old Hostel at North Egmont. Bullet holes may still be seen in the walls of this hostel. To the West of the town, near Omata, is the battlefield of Waireka where regulars (H.M.S. “Niger”) and volunteer troops fought side by side for the first time in British history. To the East of New Plymouth, ten miles away, is Waitara and its Pukerangiora pa where such a deadly scene of carnage was enacted by the Waikatos. On Moturoa island, in the Sugarloaves group, Dicky Barrett of whaling fame lived. Running through the town is the Huatoki stream on whose upper waters, near Baine's Terrace, Maoris blocked the river with corpses and dyed the water crimson near the stone Pai-ane.
Taranaki has an array of beaches of outstanding merit. Ngamotu beach, to the west of the town, is expansive and offers all the facilities one would expect of a popular resort. There are very few “curlers” on this beach, but should the tourist prefer aquatic sport of a more boisterous type then he has East End, Strandon, and Fitz-roy beaches to the east. Here is the place for great breakers and sunny sandhills. Surfing is indulged in to a great extent and during week-ends these strands are one mass of splashing, laughing and carefree humanity. About fifteen miles from New Plymouth is the Oakura beach, while forty odd miles away is Opunake, another popular seaside resort.
New Plymouth High School Old Boys are at present the champion life-saving team of New Zealand.
New Plymouth's chief claim to natural beauty is Pukekura Park and the subsidiary estate, Brooklands. Under the supervision of Mr. T. Hor-ton these two areas have become patches of floral and sylvan beauty on the grandest scale. Many tourists have broken forth into paeans of unaffected praise over these two parks. Some have said that nowhere in the world have they come across anything to equal Pukekura; and indeed it would be difficult to find a more lovely spot. Trees and shrubs of every description abound, while swans glide serenely on the two mirror-like lakes, the upper one in particular with its willow-pattern-like bridge, being most imposing. In the fernery and surrounding garden plots may be seen the pick of the world's flora, while on the fringe of the park is a basin reserve where sports of all description are held. The Grenadier Guards Band played here and many said they had never performed in more imposing surroundings. A fitting background to her parks is New Plymouth's residential area.
As a picnicing area, the Meeting of the Waters, five miles out on the Mountain road, is very popular, for here, as the name implies, the Wai-wakaiho and the Henui rivers converge. Here also is the Mangama-hoe power-station, the centre of electrical supply.
In South Taranaki there are several secondary schools of repute. Stratford Technical High School and Hawera Technical High School are two well-established institutions. Yet I think for scholastic and athletic achievement the New Plymouth Boys' High School leads the province. It is not bias makes me say this, but cold statistics. For many years, from 1923–28, this school's rugby football prowess was a byword. Mr. R. Syme, now of Oxford, was one of New Zealand's outstanding classical scholars, while Mr. M. Barak was a Rhodes Scholar.
Last, but by no means least, are the educational facilities of Taranaki. New Plymouth has two fine secondary schools, the Boys' High School (the venue for this year's Teachers' Summer School) and the Girls' High School. Primary schools include Central, Fitzroy, West End, Westown, Vogeltown, Moturoa, Convent and Welbourn.
After dinner they adjourned to the smoke-room, where the host produced a decanter of Scotch, a syphon, a silver box of cigarettes, and a tin of tobacco. Idly picking up the tin the guest read: “Toasted Navy Cut, No. 3.” “Why Toasted,” he queried. “Improves the flavour, what?” “Ay,” replied the host, “and eliminates the nicotine, or most of it. Don't know another tobacco that's so good—or so safe. Try it?” The guest lit up, and sinking back into the depths of his luxurious chair lazily watched the smoke-rings. “By Jove!” he said, at last, sitting up, “it is good!—American” “Easy to see you're a new chum,” laughed the host, “no, my boy, not American: it's grown and manufactured in New Zealand. What d'ye think of that? Brands? There are five: Cut Plug No. 10 (Bullshead), Navy Cut No. 3 (Bulldog), Cavendish, Riverhead Gold and Desert Gold.” “I'd not the faintest idea New Zealand produced such tobacco,” declared the guest with enthusiasm. “We live and learn,” replied the host as he passed the decanter.*
Starting point—Wellington. Not that Wellington is really, as unkind critics aver, a good place to get away from—the capital has both charms and charmers, but the northern sunshine, northern flower-gardens, northern hospitality, all beckon.
Nobody could possibly look at, or around, Thorndon Station (where the northbound trains lie waiting for the unwary) without a very genuine sense of pleasure. For isn't this ancient place to be demolished, almost in no time? Haven't the contractors commenced building a new station, a station which Wellington will be able to show to callers with housewifely pride? I hope that when the new station appears on the scene it will be grey and granite-ish in keeping with the rugged empery of the stormy, sea-girdled old city it is to adorn.
“All aboard, please. All aboard!” Well, we were, and looked with reproach and disdain at the fat man who, as the Limited started to move leapt from the bosom of his wife with the agile grace of an antelope, and sank puffing into his seat. Not for us such cavorting. For us the pleasure of choosing a really satisfactory seat, of raising reproachful eyebrows at the spinster who fusses over the window-catch, of buying the evening paper from the youth whose stentorian yells resound, to the very last moment, through the carriages; a train is, above all things, a leisurely-minded vehicle. True, one buys a paper. But one looks through the news with a delightful, airy sense that it doesn't matter in the least whether wool is up or down, or even whether Sir Oswald Mosley has challenged Miss Ellen Wilkinson to a duel in Hyde Park. For a few hours we are all, consciously or otherwise, naturalised citizens of Trainland, lost in a warm, lamplit limbo of strange places and strange faces, and with the cosiest of high-backed, stoutly padded seats to help us relax. It's odd that so few train passengers realise that they are, for the moment, escaping from the world. The fact must filter through to their sub-consciousness, for I don't think I've ever seen a seriously annoyed person on a New Zealand train. Warmth, change, comfort, the possibilities of adventure, dark dream-blue fields slipping quietly past.
After all, there's a queer fascination in the departure from Wellington. First one's farewell glimpse of those ancient and decrepit two-storey Thorndon houses, about which Nathaniel Hawthorne might have written, as he did about the ramshackle parts of his own home town; and then the great shining grey-blue sweep of sea, a hill grade, and a swoop towards the black mouth of a tunnel, and goodbye to Wellington. Already, where green grass and the fairy gold of a whole world of broom wave greeting to the train from the other side of the tunnel, we are over the hills and far away.
Incidentally, can anyone explain with or without diagrams and scale map just why there is always someone who leaves train windows open when a tunnel is drawing nigh, and who therefore has to wrestle simultaneously with the spirit and the window-catch? For so it is. There is absolutely no teaching these hardened smoke-drinkers, and one can only suppose that they are first cousins to the family of fire-eaters. Tunnel number one appears on the horizon, is passed. Reproachful but forgiving, the other occupants of the carriage survey the offender, who beams charmingly. (Almost every male in the carriage has rushed to her assistance as she struggles with the window-catch, which, simple though its mechanism would appear to the brain of the average adult chimpanzee, is none the less entirely beyond her). The instant that the train has cleared the tunnel, up goes her window once more. Nor does it descend in time to escape the vengeance of tunnels two, three, four, or five. Everybody's patience wears thin except that of the lady with the passion for fresh air who comes smiling through it all.
Johnsonville …. Otaki …. now, wasn't it somewhere about here that a moonlight drive distinguished by fields of glistening purple foxgloves and a dignified 'possum strolling at his leisure across the wild Akatarawa Gorge Road, ended in a strawberry garden where everybody ate incredible quantities of the tiny half-wild, sugar-sweet berries grown by cheery Maori gardeners? Levin …. Palmerston North, and a memory of a sort of wake held in a hotel lounge long, long after closing time, to soothe the heartfelt sorrow of half a dozen of us, who had simultaneously lost our all on a fiery-looking black horse that conducted its race on slightly unconventional lines, galloping round the pretty little Palmerston North racecourse at incredible speed, but in the wrong direction.
Marton Junction … a very important place, this, for sandwiches, for cups of tea, for magazines and touching family re-unions. But beyond the town
I remember Wanganui with great kindness because (a) there I first encountered wild duck properly roasted, and served up in a sensible little restaurant which knew its business; (b) for a much more important reason, because in remembering Wanganui I can remember a smooth, burnished-steel sheen of river and lake waters.
Stately and slow the black swans sail on little Virginia Lake, and the trees all around are yellow-leaved, because, in the country of memory, it is always autumn hereabouts. A cicala threads the afternoon's peace with a tiny silver stitch of song. The leaves are soft underfoot and there is an archway of boughs, and one understands why the residents of St. John's Hill, which favoured locality flows in a pleasant tide of houses around Virginia Lake, are so proud of their neighbourhood.
The little river steamer toots long soulfully in the early morning, and the creamy plumes of toi-toi quiver in the swirl of her wake. Maori women, bright-frocked but with black shawls drawn over their heads, squat on deck and chat with one another in voices plaintive as a tui's call. A live and wriggling something in the stern of the ship turns out to be a couple of frisky young pigs, kept in order by the simple expedient of having a net thrown over them.
We have many things to show you on this river. A first halt where the kowhai trees usually golden flowered, shower down bright red blossoms, red as new minted sovereigns, and a tui laughs for sheer joie de vivre in the ring of the trees; little dreamy Jerusalem, where the Maoris still believe in the kehu, the ghost that brings death and perches uncannily on the doomed one's gate-post. Maori canoes, old and unpainted, but as graceful in their slender, peascod lines as fairy boats; the great stone where green boughs should be laid as an offering to Taniwha, god of the river, enormous rowan trees, laden with brilliant coral berries, guarding the fine Pipiriki Hotel, and after that a river overhung by ferns and native bush which seem entranced by the delicate beauty of their own reflections in the still water. Earth has splendid rivers enough, but can any of them outrival the Wanganui for this pensive charm of green and dusky blue reflections?
But perhaps you prefer to stick to your ship—or rather, to your train—at Marton Junction. Rivers, you feel, can keep for some other time. Very well. In that case, you follow the example of your fellow passengers and equip yourself with not fewer than three detective novels. These will have paper backs and purple contents. The predominance of detective stories at all railway bookstalls (love limping home a very poor second, and the rest of literature nowhere at all), shows how thin is our veneer of civilization. The book which sustained me from Marton to Frankton Junction sported no fewer than thirteen corpses, and I must confess I could have done with more.
Lights out on the Limited … perhaps it's eleven o'clock when the last page is turned and the last yawn yawned. The game then, unless you are travelling by sleeper, is to curl up in such a way that your sleeping-partner can't object, and lapse into the arms of Morpheus.
The sleepers are alluring, of course, more especially the de luxe kind where your bed looks and feels like a bed, and your wardrobe may be conveniently draped about, and there's a non-spill glass which you may use for drinking purposes.
Yet in the carriages themselves, watching station after station slip back in purple of dusk and shadowy grey of manuka is rather fascinating; especially if your compartment contains a mighty man of valour who will, as the night-wears on, stay you with coffee and comfort you with ham sandwiches. And daybreak is “secret, shy and cold,” with jaunty blue feathers of smoke from some nearby farmhouse signalling greeting to your train's great sweeping ostrich plume.
I tried once, being misguided, to interview a railway guard about the life of the Limited. Adventure and lots of it must be compressed into the engine-driver's domain, or the guard's van, where “dawgs is dawgs, cats is dawgs, squirrels in cages is a parrot, but this yar tortoise is a hinseck, and travels free,” to quote a classic of the rail. Nothing doing. The guard blushed in hectic style, and informed me firmly that the train had three sleepers and I forget how many carriages. He also mentioned the names of the stations at which we might or would stop. Further than that he would not go. I gathered that he was very proud of his train.
Flutter of seagulls' wings …. not Wellington's large and formidable sea-gulls, but dainty scarlet-legged, bright-eyed fellows, a whole cloud of them. The train curves sinuously round a bend of sparkling blue sea. “Auckland.”
That very night, ere gentle sleep was allowed to come anywhere near my eyelids, I was given the difficult and dangerous task of making conversation with two amiable children. Both red-headed. Lessons, as a likely topic, proved a dismal flop. They seemed inured to stories of wild beasts, nor did my perfectly good plasticine model of a sailing-ship cause them to evidence the faintest emotion. I tried them with engines. Their eyes brightened. Simultaneously, and with a sigh of heart-felt satisfaction, they uttered the one glad cry: “Trains!”
So the first instalment of the journey north ended in this far from dignified strain:
“Will you crawl a little quicker,” hissed the Austin to the Ford,
There's a Riley on my bumpers, and I'm getting slightly bored.”
But the train rushed past, ever so fast, on tracks that were shiny and broad.
“My Kingdom for a horse,” King Richard cried, in vain—But nowadays, of course, He'd just have caught the train.
But how did that make them black? Well, you see, I couldn't resist patting the dear old engine.
The evening goods was about to leave Reefton station. Old Ben swung himself to the footplate and took a last look round. It was not unusual to have something put aboard at the last minute, and Ben was too good a railwayman to miss a chance of freight, and too good a Coaster to inconvenience anyone.
“Not likely to be anything more today,” said Teddy Brew, his fireman. “Apart from our staff, I don't believe there is a soul in Reefton. Even the pubs are deserted.”
The day was the occasion of the annual picnic. Instead of having a dozen or more little picnics, Reefton people combine to make one big affair and have a special excursion train for the event. Everyone, from the oldest pioneer to the youngest baby, attends. On this occasion they had gone to Greymouth, and the goods train would most likely pass them homeward bound a short way down the line.
“I seldom get away from here without being held up in the straight,” old Ben replied to his fireman's last remark. “There you are; I thought so.”
The Reefton station is situated about a quarter of a mile from the main road to the town.
Ben's exclamation was caused by the figure of a slight man who staggered round the corner carrying two boxes. He put one down to signal frantically to the driver to wait. Ben gave him an encouraging wave, and waited for him to come up.
“Uhm! Gelignite, eh? Are you wanting to travel on the train with it?” asked the clerk as he filled in the consignment slip. “If so, special permission will have to be obtained from the Stationmaster for you to travel in the van, and you will have to sign a form quitting the Railway of all responsibility.”
“No,” said the stranger; “I do not care for the risk. I will leave it to be called for at Greymouth.”
“That will be all right. It will be left in the truck on the siding, but you will have to pay hire of the truck for whatever time you leave it there.”
“Right oh! I'll pick it up to-morrow.”
The stranger left the station, and the goods, which was held up a matter of moments only, started on its journey to Greymouth.
About three days later the Station-master at Greymouth stopped old Ben and asked, “Did you see the man who consigned those two boxes of gelignite from Reefton a few days ago?”
Ben pushed his cap over the back of his head and scratched industriously. “Ted,” he called to his fireman, who was passing, “Do you remember the man who consigned those two cases of ‘Jelly’ from Reefton the other day?”
“Yes,” was the reply. “That was the day of the picnic.”
“Do you know him?” asked the Stationmaster. “He has not collected the stuff, and it is still in the truck waiting for him.”
“No, he was a complete stranger to me. I was struck by the fact that he was consigning from Reefton to Grey-mouth, when he could buy here all the ‘Jelly’ he wanted. I don't ever remember bringing the stuff from Reefton