Publicly accessible
URL: http://www.nzetc.org/collections.html
copyright 2008, by Victoria University of Wellington
All unambiguous end-of-line hyphens have been removed, and the trailing part of a word has been joined to the preceding line.
Some keywords in the header are a local Electronic Text Centre scheme to aid in establishing analytical groupings.
Looking Across Lake Pukaki Towards The Southern Alps, South Island, New Zealand.
The final instalment of the “Thirteenth Clue” will appear in our September issue. — [Editor.]
The New Zealand Railways Magazine is on sale through the principal booksellers, or may be obtained post-free for 6/- per annum
Employees of the Railway Department are invited to forward news items or articles bearing on railway affairs. The aim of contributors should be to supply interesting topical material tending generally towards the betterment of the service.
In all cases where the Administration makes announcements through the medium of this Journal the fact will be clearly indicated.
The Department does not identity itself with any opinions which may be expressed in other portions of the publication, whether appearing over the author's name or under a nom de plume.
Short stories, poetry, pen-and-ink sketches, etc., are invited from the general public upon New Zealand subjects.
Payment for short paragraphs will be made at 2d. a line. Successful contributors will be expected to send in clippings from the Magazine for assessment of the payment due to them.
The Editor cannot undertake the return of Ms. unless accompanied with a stamped and addressed envelope.
All communcations 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.
Controller and Auditor-General.
17/5/37
“From its full laver, pours the white cascade;
And, babbling low amid the tangled woods,
Slips down through moss - grown stones with endless laughter…”
—Longfellow.
The Aniwanawa Falls, Lake Waikare-moana, North Island, New Zealand.
(Rly. Publicity photo.)
Settled in the snug routine of the daily round, and served as they are by all the modern means of transport, city dwellers may know nothing of that colourful romance in life that marks the first coming of the rail to new territory. But some of the elders, perhaps, remember the days when a train connection meant no less than the very breath of civilisation to the widely scattered and severely isolated communities that they in their youth assisted to settle.
That the coming of the rail can still arouse romance was vividly seen on the 29th June of this year, when on the Mohaka Viaduct the last rivet was hammered, and the last spike was driven on the track that brings into active being the portion of the North Island East Coast Railway between Napier and Wairoa.
There was an air of joyous expectancy about all the settlers—young, old and middle aged—who had gathered from miles around along the route of the new railway, at the temporary Wairoa terminus, and at all the new little stopping places on the way.
The rail-car Arai-te-uru, was the first passenger-carrying unit to make the through passage from Wellington to Wairoa. Many eyes watched the car, freighted with its fifty passengers, as it ran smoothly and steadily across the awe-inspiring height of the Mohaka Viaduct, on that narrow trail of steel above the delicate geometric tracery of those stupendous piers, which rise from the swift deeps of the Mohaka river, 315 feet below. And spontaneous bursts of cheering from Maori and pakeha alike greeted its arrival on the northern side of the great gulch, and again as it rolled to a stop at the Wairoa end of the line. It was thus, in circumstances of genuine and whole-hearted public rejoicing, that this modern means of contact and transport for the people as a whole, made its effective first appearance in the fertile hinterland of Poverty Bay.
Experience in New Zealand, as in all other countries suitably served by rail, shows clearly that progress and prosperity follow close on the trail of the iron horse; and the glamour of its coming owes much to the knowledge that the rich promise of better times the shrill train whistle brings, is usually fulfilled beyond the brightest expectations.
Another thing about the railway that aids romance is the fact that it represents the united effort of so many people. The greatest of all land transport services is no one-man affair. The running of a railway is only possible by the community effort of numbers of men, experts in the varied details of a large and complicated undertaking upon which heavy fixed capital investment has been made. Once laid and manned, the railway is ready for the transport of every kind of load, in mass quantities beyond the power of any other form of land transport.
Besides the benefits thus rendered for the development of the country and the extension of settlements throughout the newly-reached territory, there will be, after the official opening of the East Coast line to Wairoa, a new range of holiday resorts made easily available to the people of other districts; and this again helps to bring back for New Zealanders and visitors alike, the age of rail-made romance.
The rules of the Department place the safety of the travelling public as the first and most important duty of every railwayman. Whilst every member of the service must subscribe to this rule, proper care and thought should also be given to the question of how to make it most effective. Equipment and appliances of various kinds play their own particular part in association with the unremitting vigilance which is the price of safety, but there is another great aid that does not always get its full recognition. I refer to orderliness.
Some things have come under my observation recently which show that there are still some railwaymen who have not fully grasped the value of orderliness and thoroughness in the work they take in hand, and as this has been noticeable chiefly amongst some of those who have more recently joined the service, I wish to draw pointed attention to the matter for their good and that of the public whom we all serve.
Orderly habits and tidiness are the product of a well-ordered mind, and the more they are encouraged and cultivated the more abundant will be the advantages. Training in the many details of railway work is, of course, necessary, and in this the Management looks for the help and interest of the older members of the service, who should watch and check the work of newcomers and of each other to ensure that a high standard of orderliness may be maintained. After all, orderliness is just planning of some kind carried out effectively and brings with it its own immediate reward and pleasure.
I would like members to bear in mind always that just as every problem has to be reduced to order before it can be solved, so every piece of work has to be arranged in orderly fashion before it can be put through with satisfaction to all concerned.
General Manager.
(Railway Publicity photos.)
Nowhere in the world can there be on show, as it were, two sharper contrasts in the conception of beauty than are provided by the modern majesty of the Mohaka Viaduct and the laughing loveliness of Lake Waikaremoana.
With all their differences they are closely connected, for Mohaka will act directly in bringing Waikaremoana to the knowledge and appreciation she has long lacked. Later in this article, the threads of cause and effect are fully unravelled.
The Mohaka Viaduct is an immense and complex tracery of steel and concrete, an intricate and mighty meccano work. From great concrete pylons, those giant but slender trestles of interlocking steel climb to the road-line from the riverbed. The roof of Parliament Buildings would reach less than halfway up the first cruciform trestle, and of these there are six. The height is 315 feet, rather more than three times as high as the tallest building in Auckland or Wellington. The length of the span is 911 feet. Nearly two thousand tons of steel have gone into its construction, and it is very easily the largest viaduct on the New Zealand Railway system, already famous the world over for the number and immensity of this type of structure.
It is all very well to be rightly proud that in New Zealand there is compressed a universe in miniature, but it entails gigantic difficulties for our engineers. However, where tasks are stupendous, mighty men arise to overcome them, and the Mohaka Viaduct is a case for self-congratulation for New Zealanders. Perhaps, there will some day come a time when the men who succeed in such a feat as this will receive public plaudits as hearty as those given for the folks selected to play against the Springboks.
There is a type of mind, turning perpetually to the poetic tradition of the misty past, which refuses to sec beauty in these vast creations of metal and stone. I suspect that the feelings of many of these are derived from the prosaic fact that such a structure as a viaduct is useful, and possesses workaday values.
Yet usefulness is integral in beauty; beauty is one facet of usefulness. Emerson, the great American visionary, said this: “It is a rule of largest application, true in a plant, true in a loaf of bread, that in the construction of any fabric or organism, any real increase of fitness to its end is an increase of beauty.”
The Greeks taught that all beauty must be organic—that outside embellishment was the deformity.
The Mohaka Viaduct fulfils all the laws of beauty. It is pleasing to the eye in its very grace of form; its massive symmetry fires the imagination; it is awe-inspiring as the work of fellow human beings; it is the very apotheosis of efficiency; but, perhaps, best of all, it is of its own essence, a swift road to further beauty.
This great span means that in a very little while, trains will run through to
It is forever a truth of our history that making the railways made New Zealand, and it will soon appear that the making of the railway to Wairoa will make Wairoa and its splendid hinterland.
I have been to a carnival week in this delectable centre, and like so many of the smaller towns of New Zealand, it has developed a personality that is all its own. With the spirit so characteristic of New Zealand provincial communities, the citizens realised early the aesthetic possibilities of the banks of their broad river, and they have been converted into panoramas of sloping green, of velvet turf, and of smooth lawns ornamented with shrubs and gay flowers. A thousand views of picturesque sweetness can be got of the neat town buildings from across the shining waters of the Wairoa. It is a noble stream, and it is fitting that the work of men should adorn it, and so increase its natural charm.
But Wairoa, pleasing as it is, is but a stopping place on the way to a scenic fairyland which even in our country of Elysium after Elysium, is wholly unique.
Lake Waikaremoana is the most unspoiled Eden in all New Zealand. Let us, however hear the flat facts first. In the cheerful but unpoetic prose of the geological surveys: “Lake Waikaremoana is the deepest lake in the North Island. It is 848 feet deep, but its surface is 2,015 feet above sea level.”
This is where this great lake differs from her southern sisters, for the beds of Wakatipu and Manapouri, for instance, are hundreds of feet below sea level.
The lake is 12 miles long, and 6¼ miles in breadth at its widest part.
However, facts about a land of enchantment are dull articles. I make the plain and sturdy statement that in all our bevy of lake maidens, in all our Pantheon of lake goddesses, in all our beauty chorus of ferny tarns and our galaxy of shining meres, Waikaremoana is the red-haired girl of them all.
There is no difficulty in going to see Waikaremoana once you have reached Wairoa. The road is a good one and the distance about forty miles. The first part of the journey is through the fertile reaches of the Upper Wairoa Valley, following the Waiau River to the lake, where the Waikaretaheke goes roaring down to join the main river. In these utilitarian days, the first thought that comes to everyone is the unique situation of this mass of water for the generation of hydroelectric power. Dammed up two thousand feet above sea level, and pouring a furious, huge, swift stream through sub-tunnels, it is a thing of joy for electrical engineers.
The underground water tunnels often take care of the whole outfall and the surface outflow stream bed runs dry.
At the power house at Tuai, a peep back at the Wairoa plain is worthwhile. A power house is a prosaic article and it seems a desecration to find it here. But, what new worlds of comfort and gracious amenities are granted to those fortunate dwellers in that wide reach of verdure, through the fact of the existence of that stolid building.
Now there is a steep climb through splendid bush until the Rotorua road junction is met and the Lake Hostel comes into view. It looks like a large and comfortable station homestead and lives up to its appearance. It is right in every respect for Lake Waikaremoana, and the greatest artistry will have to be used, when, as is inevitable now, it is rebuilt.
Now we are in the heart of fairyland. The hostel is situated on a headland covered with dense forest and below is a lovely little white beach with small huts, a toy pier, and the inevitable launches and row-boats.
My first glimpse of the lake waters made “mine eyes dazzle.”
Here was the first veritable liquid turquoise I had seen.
“Blue” is often carelessly applied to the waters of both oceans and inland seas. Waikaremoana's azure is the deep of a summer sky towards evening; it is often an eggshell blue; it shades to indigo, reddens here and there to purple; with a tiny riffle of wind in the sun it shimmers into “lapis lazuli”; in dead calms it softens to sapphire.
However often she changes her gowns, every new fabric is emblazoned with the true cerulean hue. If the present lovely name did not exist, she might well be called Lake Forgetme-not.
How sharp the contrast is between the scenes that ring this star-shaped sheet of water and the great lakes of the South! There are no minarets of snow in the distance. The forest is lacy, and the trees have a softer and more diversified green. Panekiri Bluff is almost as awe-inspiring as Mitre Peak. It rises in a sheer wall from the great water-mirror for two thousand feet. On its huge scarred face, game little shrubs, and gnarled valiant small trees cling, like alpinists making an ascent.
In some mystic fashion, however, it has a friendly look, and behind it are mountain tablehands with dense bush which again repeats in smoky blue the tone colouring we have learned to love.
The map of the lake resembles a starfish which joined the rebels and lost an arm or two.
There are dozens of minor inlets all decorated with tiny beaches, and islets that cluster like a constellation of gems. They seem to rest on the waters like floating Dorian tree groves. Each should have upon it a small secret temple. These islets stand at the entrances to little coves, or off the shore of miniature beaches, and dot the whole surface in the most irresponsible fashion. Some idea of the intricacy of tiny fiords and sounds, mysterious little bays and secret gulfs which enmesh the whole contour of the lake, can be got from the fact that the shore line is over 121 miles in length.
A journey from anywhere to anywhere gives one the joy of being an explorer without taking risks. The launch pulls in, stops, and, most times, you can say with reasonable betting certainty that yours is the first booted foot that has ever been placed on that particular spot. The islets have no names so you can show your esoteric knowledge of epithet and title by contriving appellations that suit the shape or distinctive beauty of each island gem. The last name bestowed is the “Isle of Capri” from one of the loveliest Mediterranean pleasure islands, which I am afraid is mostly known to New Zealanders through a musicianly and tuneful jazz song.
The foreshore changes as the boat meanders along. It takes fantastic shapes, drop scenes come and go, little harbours open and close, and beaches gleam and disappear.
A narrow passage between two jutting peninsulas admits to the wide arm known as Wairau Moana where beauty is heaped upon beauty with profligate profusion. This strait has the lovely name of Te Kaunga-o-Manaia… . “The Place of Manaia's Swimming.”
The isles here are if anything thicker and closer and in the far blue distance are the untamed eerie Ureweras. Again there are dozens of small sandy beaches, scores of tiny jutting headlands bushclad and verdant with changing greens. The tree varieties are bewildering, and the experienced tree lover from the South will be at a loss to name half of them.
North of Wairau Moana is another great arm called Whanganui a Parua. Down to its winding shores again appear to roll mighty breakers of green foliage.
The stately forest rollers are relieved by the intermittent white of limestone cliffs and the shimmering silver of the sands.
Waikaremoana inevitably leads to the quotation of poetry…, One of the best selections from Keats was made by James Cowan, and here it is:
It doth seem
A mossy place, a Merlin's Hall, a dream You know the clear lake and the little Isles
The mountains blue.
I do not know what Waikaremoana would have meant to Keats, but I do wonder if its ineffable beauty will ever give us a poet to do it justice in verbal music.
Everywhere there are waterfalls and to use Tennyson this is:
A land of streams—some like a downward smoke
Slow dropping veils of thinnest lawn did go
And some through wavering lights and shadows broke
Rolling a slumbrous sheet of foam below.
The Mokau Falls are famous. A great tumbling swirling mass of waters crashes over a cliff of a hundred feet, strikes like thunder against a huge out-jutting rock curve which fans the wide cascade into an immense boiling cloud of snowy spray.
The Aniwanawa Falls form a double fountain of superb beauty with the appearance of planned classic form. They are made by the stream that winds and plunges down from Waikareite. There are no words for this little lake—this secret treasure which if it were not so richly invested with its aeons of Maori tradition would do for a resting place for “Grey-haired Saturn quiet as a stone.” It would be the perfect green Valhalla for the dying sylvan gods of the long ago. I think that Keats would have felt supreme ecstasy in Waikareite. Line after line of his suits this mysterious lakelet so well:
Forest on forest hung about his head Like cloud on cloud … no stir of air was there
But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest.
Waikareite means “The Little Lake of the Rippling Waters” and is only two miles each way in measurement, nevertheless bearing on its glassy surface seven little isles.
It is six hundred feet higher than its older sister and is reached by a narrow track. The feeling here is of remote antiquity. The silence is absolute. I saw it when the rata was in blossom, and their crimson reflections were like water colours on glass. The forest trees are gnarled and ancient giants, taking the queerest contortionist shapes, and are draped with lichen and feathery mosses.
Waikareite seems to brood in rapt contemplation of the sentinel troops of tall trees. Here again are small replicas of the odd inlets, miniature sounds, headlands and beaches, replete with fern, shrub and native flora.
It is no wonder that the Maoris believed that Waikareite lay under a “tapu” spell. The pakeha who does not feel its weird and inexplicable power of mystery is without imagination.
Withal, it is compact of sheer loveliness. I would like everyone in New Zealand to visit this wonderland, but it will be a sad day when a motor launch exhaust disturbs the placid sleep of this, the loveliest piece of jewelled water in all New Zealand.
I should have mentioned that one feature of the ever-changing colour panorama of Waikaremoana's Falls is the red hue of the mosses on the water strewn rocks.
To me, at any rate, Waikaremoana is the first scenic region that has given me the sense of an age old heritage of ancient pagan lore and the rites that go with the worship of nature.
Now I have been in danger of being too poetic and I hasten to state for the benefit of the lethal-minded that Waikaremoana teems with fish and game and is a sportsman's paradise.
I find it passing strange that more is not heard of this fascinating resort. In comparison with many of our other lovely places, it has inspired little literature.
This takes us definitely back to the residual fact that it is situated on a road without reasonable railway access.
When Wairoa is on the Iron Trail and a day's journey in comfort can be made from Auckland or Wellington, I expect to see Waikaremoana come into her deserved position of leadership.
She will make poets from the most prosaic money-makers. She will make nature worshippers out of engineers, or mathematicians. She will lift the eyes of bridge and chess players to the glories of tall tree, ferny dell and winding waters.
In any case, if our history has a meaning, we can look forward to the flowering anew of the whole East Coast as a result of the railroad.
It will bring a new life force to that whole vast fertile area from Napier to the East Cape, a distance, let it be remembered approximately equal to that between Wellington and New Plymouth.
The commercial and economic benefits so derived are important, obvious, and logically certain for the advance of both this district and the Dominion as a whole. But the new railroad will confer a community boon which will have a value almost infinite. Scenic wonder is an asset in human happiness. It is not the exclusive possession of any part of New Zealand, and this region, newly to be opened to modern transport methods can claim parity in this regard with any other part of New Zealand.
Thermal springs, delightful seaside resorts, sporting paradises, wonders of canyon, river, mountain and lake, and all the other varied heritage of New Zealand's Nature-given treasures, are here in rich profusion.
Tens of thousands of New Zealanders and overseas visitors will come to know them, and when they do, they will with one voice join in the praise of the flawless beauty of that jewel in our diadem of lakes—Waikaremoana.
Russell I knew; tourists and stuffed swordfish; and Keri-Keri, which has more charm, but is rendered fantastic by ex-tropical civil servants of massive build skipping about its plantations in Baden Powell shorts, discussing tung oil. But Whangaroa—so far as one can see, nobody knows about Whangaroa. Nobody goes there; well, one swordfisherman did, some years ago, and was instantly bitten by a centipede. In Whangaroa, centipedes grow to a lusty length of ten inches, living in the great pink pile beneath the timbermill which is known to the Maoris as “That Sawdust.” In “That Sawdust” flourish Maori cabins and patches of Indian corn, canna lilies and wild ginger. Nobody seemed to mind the centipedes—except me, I minded the thought of them very much indeed, though the only one I actually saw was pickled in alcohol, and kept in a large glass jar on the counter of the store at Saies. Just another little idea of a tourist attraction.
Of course I'm exaggerating when I say nobody goes there; there are a sprinkling of summer cottages, round the harbour that is dark as greenstone and shaped like a heart. Quite handsome yachts and launches fuss in and out, and parties save up for a day's swordfishing—four guineas the day, and once you start out, no matter how seasick you are, no matter how much you may long to commit your soul as well as your dinner to the deep, it's against the canons of the swordfishers to put back, either for man or for woman. The strong survive and drink beer; the weak lie on the decks and moan. Half the secret of successful swordfishing is an unlimited capacity for swallowing down beer in grilling sunshine, without getting sunstroke.
The cabins should be drawn to be believed, but the theory behind their architecture is this. Get hold of some unpainted boards, bore a few holes (to allow easy ingress and egress of bugs, very plentiful in this district), and form into a narrow oblong. Leave nails sticking out—the cabin-dweller will like something on which to tear his pants. Add a tiny tin chimney, but put mason-bees inside it—they will live there very comfortably, and this also prevents the cabin-dweller from indulging in beefsteak orgies—he can't use his fire, and his kerosene stove upsets if he balances anything larger than a baby kettle over it. To give individuality to this bijou residence, supply sliding wooden panels instead of glass windows, and erect the whole cabin on stilts; long stilts; insecure stilts; stilts wobbling above the mangroves.
You mayn't believe in the existence of such a residence, but I ought to know. I lived alone in one for nearly a month, on the long spur where once Bishop Pompallier had his old mission station. No ghost of those pious days remains, except, forlorn in the scrub, two old carved totara tombstones, tipped on their backs, their inscriptions still quite legible. And there are also the castor oil plants, rather pretty, reputed to have been planted by the Bishop himself. If he did it, I say it was an unsportsmanlike way of civilising the heathen—this castor oil—but the bluish-green serrated leaves are handsome enough, and blended well with my ancient pohutukawas, whose rheumaticky grey limbs spread wide over the lip of foam just a few yards below my stilts.
And the cabin windows (not the sliding wood ones, at the sides, but the front one, which was real glass), was painted with a beautiful sea and sky in the cool autumn mornings. Just opposite lay Peach Island, which saw the Boyd float burning past in the sinful old days. Old men and women in Whangaroa still carry walking-sticks from the Boyd—not many made from her actual timbers, but more from the cargo of hardwood she was carrying when the Maoris attacked her. I've seen grapeshot, too, and odds and ends, and hair-raising tales which somehow blend peacefully enough into the background of this old world.
Govt. Tourist Photo.)
Whangaroa—A gem of New Zealand's Northland, showing St. Paul's rock in the background.
Once all this country was heavily forested, mostly with kauri. One firm —Lane's, of the Sawdust—has milled fifteen million feet since the War, and milling is still in progress on the more distant hills. But the near-at-hand life of the old timber camps, where Maoris and whites bunked together in perfect equality, and men drank their tea out of huge earthenware bowls, the pannikin not yet having dawned on the horizon, has vanished away. There are relics; I saw ten of them, mild-eyed, great-horned, hauling cut manuka uphill from Campbell's place, their oddly shaped wooden yokes heavy on their necks. Bullocks are very wise. These would stop at a crack of the whip, without the ripe traditional bullocky curses, but at the shadow of a stranger they swerved, and were restless, trying to see out of the corners of their wrinkled eyes what foe was coming. Sometimes Mr. Campbell (whose bullocks have been as long engaged in hauling as any
veterans in the district), takes them deep into the woods—“the sacred deep forest of Tane,”—where green kauri is cut, and the day of their dignity returns.
If you live in Whangaroa, semi-aquatic habits are expected of you. You take your launch, or your little flat-bottomed speedboat, which tears along the water like a zipp fastener coming undone, and head for the Mushrooms—the queerly shaped, large-headed rocks tottering on the outskirts of the harbour. Or, when the tide is full and gleaming, your launch plunges bodily through the famous Hole in the Wall, and the females aboard shriek, while the males look self-consciously heroic. Or you seek out the recently-discovered caves, where all sorts of odd fish-hooks and trundled skulls have been unearthed. Central Otago's black cliffs and lionpelt of tussock have more grandeur, but I have never seen more fantastic rocks than the great black and iron-grey masses hurled up around Whangaroa. The artist who made them was a specialist in lightning sketch and caricature. There is a remarkable Napoleon Bonaparte, glaring at an almost perfect Duke of Wellington. There are gods and brutes—rock faces, frozen black. Also there is Taratara.
You start from in among the brambles and manuka, and the trail is good, but you dodge the little cabins, with their thready smoke and fluttering bright flags of maize, because the Maori people are not too fond of watching whites climb Taratara. The mountain is tapu, an ancient burying-place. There is a cave there, full of the dead. Its exact entrance is either hidden or forgotten, but in Whangaroa I met one old lady whose best friend had been inside. The way up, it is said, was by the roots of an overhanging tree, which has rotted away and fallen from the cliff-face, leaving the dead to sit secretly for ever. I can believe it; halfway up Taratara, which is neither of an enormous height nor a dangerous climb, but weirdly majestic, with its grey chimneys and steeples and its dying forest beneath, one could believe almost anything.
This bush has never been burned or felled. So great puriris scatter their little rosy apples on the leaf-mould, supplejacks writhe like giant serpents, and there are many nikau palms. It is the fantastic forest of which one reads in early journals, but which is seldom enough seen to-day. Peach trees have forced their way in amongst the tumult of the native growers, and their fruit rounds honey-yellow and falls untouched. Above, the rock is bare; great shelves give foot hold to a tiny golden moss, and nothing else. The wind snatches a scarf and hurls it away—perhaps to the lips of the tapu cave, for it cannot be seen again. Below, another part of the forest is strange as a valley of the moon, for all its trees are dead, bleached like silver, shining in the noon-day; rough Maori cattle graze the thin grass in this forlorn world, lifting their sullen heads and shaking their horns when they see us. “Tapu” they say.
All Whangaroa is full of the things remembered or half-forgotten. One old lady, Mrs. Sanderson, of the shells, (her collection is celebrated round about Auckland and the north, and many callers never think of visiting her without bringing her a new species of limpet, a green shell butterfly, an iridescent snail, or some papery beauty from the tropics), showed me a quaint treasure. Her late father knew that old Charles, Baron de Thierry whose career in New Zealand and elsewhere gave me material for a book. Charles, in his own papers, was always insisting upon himself as a musician—and in Mrs. Sanderson's Whangaroa house, which is seventy years old, if a day, I came across the visible proof of it—nothing less than the printed score of “The Waitemata Polka,” by Charles, Baron de Thierry. The Polka was played for me, then and there—and such a gay, sparkling little composition it seemed. So far as I know, there lies the one and only Baron de Thierry music sheet surviving in New Zealand. Waitemata should be quite proud of it, but I don't suppose Waitemata sets much store by the Polka, in these days of jazz ….
And I heard of how Nene used to walk the streets of Russell, buttoned up in a magnificent seal-skin coat, with cap to match, and with Ruti, his wife, padding along at his side. And the story of how a French sailor's ghost haunts that house in Russell where Bishop Pompallier lived, because one came in the night and slew the French sailor, in an attic room … and the story sounded likely enough, as ghost-stories go, being told by one who had had plaster thrown at him, and cuddled down terrified under the bedclothes, even if he hadn't actually set eyes on the ghost. But I also heard of the little old woman of Maori fairytales, who is like our version of the ogress, and of the she taniwha who follows along by the rear of the dead. And a white-moustached Whangaroa resident told me how down at the point where his cottage stood, all the land had been owned by a chief, so well-tattooed that one couldn't put a pinpoint between his markings; and this chief would sometimes go a-fishing with the white man, and always caught twice as many fish, because there was a Maori way of weighting the fish-hook which cleverly prevented the fish from wriggling free.
Govt. Tourist photo.)
A glimpse of Whangaroa Harbour, North Island, New Zealand.
And if I wanted ghosts in the vicinity (apart from those of William Hayes and Hugh McKinnon, the right ful owners of the two old carved totara tombstones), I had only to go to the end of my spur of land, when the moon was in the sky, and see the tapu tree, whose severed limb thrust out like a maimed hand. There were several legends about this tree. One was that it had been a gibbet for hanging white malefactors who needed that little disservice. But I got at the right story after some pains.
The bough was used for holding and drying out the skulls of the dead, who were placed there until the time had come for oiling them and conveying them away to the caves. This confirms an account I had read in a pre-Waitangi manuscript of tapu groves round about North, where the corpse of a dead man would be placed in the trees until such time as he was considered fit for the further treatment of oiling, washing, and dressing in his fine raiment. A gruesome tree, I suppose; but stolid enough now, and the whole point a strangely lovely place, either at sunset, or when the moon lay across its thin grass and thin stems of manuka. The sunsets over the mangrove swamps are like a great flight of flamingoes, and all night long one can hear the popping of little olive-brown bubbles, swelling up out of the mud and exploding like miniature musketry. And besides these, the terns cry in the night, with such shrill fishwife voices, especially at the turn of the tide, that they wake you up. And then you can lie no longer in bed, but wander out, and see against the starry silver the huge black shape of something that might be a taniwha … but it turns out to be merely a grazing black horse. The last patch of light has died down in “That Sawdust,” and the shrill Maori laughter, turned in with a freight of guitar-music, no longer comes over the harbour. We all live by lamplight, and I know that the people on the other side of the water watch my lamp turn up and down, which is somehow a friendly idea.
And by the way; almost none of us have baths. I mean the true cabin-dwellers. If I wished to be free of paspalum, the sticky grass which ruins one's “longs” inside a week, and is a mortal enemy to canvas shoes, I had to go outside, and scrub at a tap under a tank. The show bath of the Whangaroa district belongs to a Maori convent a few miles away, down the road towards Kaeo. It's a new building on a hilltop, where young Maori girls are being trained as nuns and nurses, while below olive-cheeked Maori kiddies attend school, or pile by the score into some unseemly old motor-car, and squeal with delight as the thing belches and jerks forward. The soil around is thin, heartbreaking, devitalised. To make themselves patches of gardens where they can grow kail and a flower or two, the nuns carry up richer earth from down in the valleys. But miraculously their little chapel, with its quiet flame, has white branches of flowers around the altar.
But it is the cabin-folk who are Whangaroa. To talk about the Maori without sentimentalising him is a difficult business; but it is a wonder to me that some of the north-travellers, who harp on poverty, hunger and dirt, haven't even noticed the ease and the grace of these people. One can't visit such cabins without being offered a farewell gift, even if it is only a corn-cob or a Maori kit; and as corncobs and a broken fishing-net seem to constitute the total capital of many such little homes, perhaps that irregular generosity, not fitting into our economic schemes, has its value somewhere and somehow. It is a poor house but a gracious one.
Rly. Publicity photos.)
(1)The Minister of Public Works, the Hon. R. Semple, driving the last rivet; (2) The Mohaka Viaduct; (3) A group of spectators at the opening ceremony; (4) The Minister of Railways, the Hon. D. G. Sullivan, addressing the settlers; (5) The first railcar to cross the viaduct; (6) The arrival of the first railcar at Wairoa station.
What the official opening of the Mohaka Viaduct and the through railway line from Napier to Gis-borne meant to the people in a huge district could not fail to impress itself upon those visitors who attended the ceremony on 1st July, 1937. Isolation has been the blight of a very fine agricultural and pastoral expanse of New Zealand, and the carriage of tock, fertilisers, and farm implements has cost a good deal of money. Now, with concessions on through freights, settlers will have an easier time, and will be nearer the centres. The section of line opened on 1st July, is a direct link with the outside world, and was welcomed by the people concerned with the greatest enthusiasm.
The great spidery-looking structure of the viaduct is only a link in the line, but it is an engineering work which compels admiration, if not awe.
Seen from the road crossing down stream the huge engineering achievement robs the shaggy gorge of its dignity. It is only when nearing the viaduct from below that the great gash worn by the river in the sandstone during the centuries assumes its true proportions, and the eye, taking in the height of the structure, drives home to the mind the relative width of the bridged chasm. Wearing its bright reddish preliminary coat for the most part, with a few girders painted the final chocolate colour, the viaduct strikes the visitor's attention immediately, and the suddenness with which ++ springs into view and rivets the attention from either road or rail is arresting. To the rail traveller it is merely a continuation of the track, but the gorge below gives it its true importance. Looking up from underneath through the maze of girders and braces, he planks of the windscreen on the parapet look like a fringe of stubble, and everybody who walks up the riverbed to look upwards “stays put” until a stiff neck ends his absorption.
There is a great hinterland, even in this one part of the district which the line will serve, and there were some 100 cars parked on the Wairoa side where the ceremony was held. Many came afoot and the large Maori population was well represented. The big wooden tower on this side built to support the travelling cables across the gorge, used to build the piers, was left for the occasion as offering a convenient arrangement for the official platform. From 10 a.m. onwards there was a growing crowd looking for the railcar bringing the Ministerial party from Napier. It made the run in an hour and fifty minutes, including a stop at Putorino, and the party was soon in position.
Photo, courtesy “Evening Post.”)
The massive steel piers of the great Mohaka Viaduct, spanning the Mohaka river gorge on the East Coast Railway, North Island, New Zealand. The viaduct is 315 feet high, and 911 feet long.
Mr. E. L. Cullen, M.P. for Hawke's Bay, presided, and welcomed the visitors, who included the Minister of Railways (the Hon. D. G. Sullivan) and Mrs. Sullivan, the Minister of Public Works (the Hon. R. Semple) and Mrs. Semple, the Speaker of the House of Representatives (Mr. W. E. Barnard), Mr. E. P. Meachen, M.P. for Wairau, and co-opted with the Minister of Public Works, the Mayor of Napier (Mr. C. O. Morse), the Mayor of Wairoa (Mr. H. L. Harker), Mr. A. G. Nolan, chairman of the Wairoa
(Continued on page 41)
Passenger traffic now reaches peak point on the Home railways. August is the most popular holiday period of the whole year, and during the Bank Holiday millions of vacationists travel by rail between London and the other principal cities and the long chain of seaside resorts scattered among the four group systems. This year it was anticipated that, because of the tremendous rush to London for the Coronation, the seaside Bank Holiday bookings would be somewhat adversely affected. So far as advance bookings show, however, there will this summer again be witnessed an enormous Bank Holiday exodus, which will make tremendous demands upon the operating department.
Excursion travel is a feature at this season. While specially low fares are quoted for this class of transport, the carriage stock generally employed affords a very high standard of comfort, and the Home railways are constantly adding to the already very large stock of excursion train vehicles. The London, Midland and Scottish Railway has recently put into traffic eleven new light-weight excursion trains, in which the use of high-tensile steel, welding, and articulated bogies has effected a reduction of 55 tons in weight as compared with a standard ten-car train. Seating eighteen first-class and 511 third-class passengers, the new trains, also, are forty feet shorter overall than their predecessors. Each ten-car train is formed of five two-car units. By joining each pair of carriages together by means of a single four-wheel bogie, on which the ends of both carriages are mounted, there is a saving of five bogies, or twenty wheels per train. The body of each coach is built integral with the underframe, forming one structure. The complete train of ten carriages weighs only 245 tons, and this saving in weight naturally results in valuable operating economies. The saving of forty feet in length is of great advantage at busy periods, being of assistance in station working and in storage siding operation.
It is significant that in these new Home railway excursion trains only eighteen seats are provided for first-class travel, as against 511 third-class. Broadly speaking, first-class travel is dying out. There are several reasons for this. One is the competition of the private motor car, and another that third-class travel now is as comfortable as anyone could wish for. First-class is a relic of the “good old days” of the stage coach, and it will probably disappear altogether as time goes on, just as the old second-class has been abandoned on most routes.
On the continent of Europe, first and second-class travel still flourishes in many lands, and third-class is often a very uncomfortable business, spelling wooden seats and similar hardships. In one or two European countries, however, third-class is almost universal, as in Britain. Sweden and Denmark are two cases in point. There is one snag associated with third-class travel in Denmark, a country formed of a number of islands, and employing train ferries for inter-communication. First and second-class carriages are usually run direct on to the ferry-boats, but third-class passengers generally have to alight from their carriages on one side of the water, and entrain again on the other side. Russia has replaced her first and third-class by a “soft” and “hard” classification. France has some very comfortable third-class stock, notably on the Northern and P.L.M. lines. Italy, in her desire to attract the foreign tourist, has made drastic cuts in first and second-class fares, so that the average traveller there will have no need to resort to third-class.
Photo., French Railway Collection.)
A typical electric passenger train, Orleans-Midi Railways, France.
Like most European countries, Italy has recently put large numbers of new railcars on the road. The latest units consist of novel streamlined three coach Diesels known as Fiat motor trains. The train is made up of three articulated coaches, carried on four bogies. Total length works out at
about 197 feet. Two Fiat twelve-cylinder Diesel engines, developing 400 h.p. at 1,500 r.p.m., drive the train, power being transmitted to the wheels through a four-speed gear-box, a free-wheel device, a reversing pinion and reduction gear. The first car comprises a driving compartment, mail section, luggage compartment, kitchen and lavatory. The centre car seats thirty-six passengers, and the third car forty-two passengers. A restaurant section is included in the centre vehicle, and the third car embraces a rear driving compartment. Maximum speed of this new light-weight train is 100 m.p.h. At the outset, operation is being confined to the Turin-Milan-Venice section. From Turin to Venice is a distance of 260 miles. This is covered in 258 minutes, including a seven minutes' stop at Milan. The highest average speed is attained between Milan and Venice— 167 miles in 160 minutes.
Air services operated by the Home railways provide rapid communication between north and south, and between South Wales and western points. The services on the north to south route operate between Liverpool and Brighton, via Birmingham, Bristol, Southampton, and Ryde (Isle of Wight). The other route links Bristol and Plymouth, with intermediate stops at Cardiff and Exeter. Three planes are used to maintain the services, these covering 1,386 miles daily. The planes are the latest type multi-engined airliners, named after the Cities of Birmingham, Bristol and Cardiff. Each plane seats eight passengers in a well-ventilated cabin. Speeds of between 110 and 130 m.
p.
h. are maintained. Each passenger is allowed up to 35 lbs. of hand-luggage free, and heavier luggage is collected, conveyed by rail, and delivered to destination, under the “Luggage in Advance” system, available for rail passengers. The planes also provide traders and others with an express service for the conveyance of perishable or urgent goods.
Travel between England and Ireland has increased considerably of late, and both the L.M. & S. and G.W. Railways report good business in this connection. One popular route to Erin's Isle is that operated by the G.W. Company, between Fishguard, in South Wales, and Rosslare, Ireland. This is a daily service, on which the G.W. Railway employ fine turbine steamers, with restaurant and sleeping-car trains running in connection. Leaving Paddington Station, London, at 7.55 p.
m. each week-day, an arrival is given at Rosslare at 5.25 a.
m. From Rosslare, the Great Southern Railway of Ireland operates breakfast-car trains to Wexford, Wicklow, Dublin, Limerick, Cork and Killarney. Especially useful is the Fishguard-Rosslare route for visitors to Southern Ireland, and particularly the beautiful Killarney lake country. The whole of this delectable slice of territory is served by the Great Southern Railway, the big transportation concern having its headquarters in Dublin.
In England, regulation of road transport by degrees has been installed, while the railroads themselves are engaging in this form of movement. One striking result of the changed conditions brought about by the development of the road motor is the modification which has been necessary in railway commercial practice. As is pointed out in a report prepared by Mr. Ashton Davies, chief commercial manager of the L.M. & S. Railway, for submission to the International Railway Congress in Paris, it is recognised that railways must maintain the closest possible contact with traders and potential passengers to ascertain, and be in a position to meet, as far as practicable, all their transport needs. To assist in achieving this objective, many railways have strengthened their commercial sections. On the L.M. & S., the chief commercial manager is responsible for the sales effort and results accruing therefrom for all descriptions of transport. He is, therefore, in effect, the company's public relations officer in a wide conception of the term, and holds the responsibility for ascertaining the requirements of the public and of traders, and of meeting such ascertained requirements in every possible way. Thus, the chief commercial manager decides what is necessary to secure the business, and the operating and technical officers cooperate with him in carrying the arrangements into effect.
French railway receipts continue to show a steady improvement, and a noteworthy feature of French railway activity is main-line electrification. Two of the principal routes being converted from steam to electric traction are those between Paris and Le Mans, and Tours and Bordeaux. It is expected that the first-named work will be completed this year, while the Tours-Bordeaux project is due for completion next year. The Tours-Bordeaux electrification will enable through electric services to be run between Paris and the Spanish frontier at Irun, and so will play an important part in bettering international communications. The cost of the work is in the neighbourhood of £5,000,000, for in addition to the electrification equipment, it involves considerable track changes and new construction. Fourteen sub-stations are being installed, ten of the rotary converter type, similar to those already utilised on the Orleans-Tours electrified route; and four with rectifiers of similar design to those on the Montauban-Cette line. Through the recent amalgamation of the Orleans and Midi Railways, the common use of each of these system's electric power sources has become possible, thereby effecting marked savings.
Rly. Publicity photo.)
The Chateau Tongario, with Mt. Ngauruhoe in the background.
With the introduction of the five-day, 40-hour week into our national life comes the necessity for something in the nature of moral, social and physical uplift to fill the idle hours—especially for the dwellers in our cities.
Like the Psalmist, David, to many of us come these words: “I will lift mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.” Many eyes will be turned to the Tongariro National Park as a possible source of aid in this direction. The value of the park lies in its accessibility, as a week-end Mecca for the workers in the cities and main towns of the North Island. Tongariro National Park lies within a very few miles of the Main Trunk Line, and it is an easy matter for those who wish to visit this great pleasure ground to leave Auckland or Wellington by the “Limited,” on Friday evening and arrive at the Chateau for breakfast on Saturday. The return trip may be made in the same comfortable manner on the Sunday evening in ample time for the commencement of the week's work on Monday. Two whole days of glorious, care-free existence on the “Roof of the North Island!”
In brief, let me write of the joys of this alpine wonderland. The luxuriously appointed and friendly Chateau forms the base for numerous trips. Firstly, for those whose physical handicaps bar them from serious tramping, I might mention the Silica Springs —a delightful three-mile walk through grand tawhai (beech) forests and over flower-carpeted glens and sparkling alpine torrents with exquisite glimpses of majestic Ruapehu rearing her virgin snow peaks into the blue; Tawhai Falls and the Haunted Whare with its quaint legend of the dusky Maori maiden who peeps in at the window during the midnight hour; Taranaki Falls flashing an 83 feet of scintillating waters over the ancient lava flow; Matariki Falls, far below in the valley, a twinkling star in a setting of sombre green; the Tama Lakes, twin circlets of ultra-marine, nestling at the foot of brooding Ngauruhoe; Ketetahi Valley, on the northern slopes of Tongariro, a satanic gulch of blowholes, eerie mud-pools, boiling cauldrons, sulphur vents, geysers, and weird noises. I mention but a few of the many wonderful sights to be seen in this region.
For the more ardent climber the park offers the ascents of the main peaks. Tongariro, the mountain of contrasts, the lonely mountain tarn and the torn and jagged craters, belching sulphur from numerous vents. There are the alpine flower gardens, and, impressing most, the jumble of ancient lava flows, red and black, as if they had cooled but yesterday; the grim, sullen Ngauruhoe with its 5,000 feet of scrambling scoria screes which try the mettle of even the best of alpinists, the view into the crater, perhaps quiescent, perhaps venting forth poisonous vapours or billowing smoke, but always impressing with thoughts of the vast powers held in leash within its slumbering bosom. Lastly Ruapehu, the Queen of the Park, the playground of the gods, awaits the climber; 9,000 feet of rock climb, of virgin snowface, of lofty peak and minaret, of gleaming glacier, rent and plumbed by crevasse and ice-cave, and from the summit one of the finest views in the world—the Crater Lake, a lake of torrid heat in its frigid hollow of ice-cliff and glacier neve.
For the sports enthusiast the park caters liberally. Ski-ing, tobogganing and glissading on wonderful snow-fields, fishing in the finest trout waters in the world, deer-stalking within a mile of the Park boundary, and golf and tennis amidst such refreshing surroundings.
There is no feeling like that of complete healthy exhaustion, no thrill like that of conquest by one's own efforts and no fellowship to equal the goodwill of these uplands. To the seeker after recreation, inspiration or recuperation, the Tongariro National Park is the end of the Rainbow, Nature's answer to quest for peace in a turbulent world.
Rly. Publicity photo.)
The entrance foyer to the National Art Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand.
The Dominion has welcomed famous soldiers, scientists, musicians, explorers and a not inconsiderable number of men closely connected with English Letters during the past sixty or seventy years. With few exceptions, however, the literary luminaries we have had the honour to welcome to these shores have given little subsequent expression in their work of their observations and contact with us. It is true, Kipling in his “Song of the Cities,” remembered Auckland, and sang her beauties in his “Last, loneliest, loveliest, exquisite—apart.” In one line, perhaps, Auckland's beauty will never again be so epitomised.
It is also reputed that Kipling laid the scene of one of his stories in New Zealand. Domett, who came to the colony in the early days, became not only one of the minor Victorian poets, but one of our early Premiers. One of the earliest of our distinguished literary visitors was Anthony Trollope, who stayed with Sir George Grey at Kawau Island. Samuel Butler came to New Zealand in his mid-twenties and bought sheep country in Canterbury. His sojourn on the wild isolated run at “Mesopotamia” was certainly marked by definite literary output. He contributed freely to the Christchurch “Press.” The letters which he wrote home to his father were published (Book of the Canterbury Settlement). From a letter written later by Butler's father, it appears this little book by his brilliant and fearless son was the only one he ever acknowledged to have read. Such was the bigotry of the times, or at all events in such atmosphere as Butler was brought up—an English vicarage. Up in his lonely little farm-house facing the mighty Southern Alps, Butler, by the light of his kerosene lamp, first read Darwin. His vivid, fantastic imagination was stirred. At night as the winds swept down the mighty ravines his questioning spirit — his brilliant brain—began to bring reason and imagination to bear on “superstition, myth, and ritual.” In his brain were born the germs of that strange fantastic theme that was to ultimately develop into “Erewhon,” which has been described as “the finest piece of satire since Swift.” R.L.S. came to New Zealand on more than one occasion, passing through from “Valima” to Sydney. One can imagine him browsing among Auckland's then limited bookshops searching for “something new.” Rupert Brooke was here in 1912 or 1913, at Christmas time. He is reputed to have found Auckland “smug,” but enthused much over “strawberries and cream.” Alas, his laughter, his dreams were soon to be no more! Masefield, the poet laureate, and Galsworthy, were both in New Zealand, the latter about thirty-five years ago. And last, heralded, “featured” and lionised as all Shavian visits of the latter years, came George Bernard, the one and only Shaw. But we all remember his visit. We have been pretty fortunate in the matter of literary visitors, but if we want to see our own hill and dale, the streets we know so well and the folks we rub shoulders with, portrayed with deft artistry, with the sure hand of genius, we must turn to the pages of our own Katherine Mansfield, New Zealand's neglected genius.
Rly. Publicity photo.)
A view showing the lighting arrangement in the National Art Gallery, Wellington.
(Concluded.)
McKinley, a constabulary officer, is sent to Fangaloa to confiscate a shotgun with which a trader (Alpheim) has been threatening the natives. Not knowing Alpheim, he endeavours to find out what sort of man he is; but the commanding officer gives curiously guarded answers. At Fangaloa McKinley meets a chief who tells him that he should have brought a gun. This ominous remark is followed by a gunshot from across the bay. McKinley borrows a canoe and reaches the far shore, where a Saraoan boy informs him that the “white man” has gone mad. McKinley walks up to the store alone. Alpheim adopts a hostile attitude, but the astute McKinley overcomes this with peace-offerings of books, eigars and gin. He is then claimed by the eccentrie Alpheim as the Fairy Prince for whom his daughter has been waiting; but there is no sign of the daughter. By playing on McKinley's confidence Alpheim induces him to stay the night. McKinley feels that he can humour his fantastic host, and leaves Alpheim in the store to go down to the village bathing-pool. While there he meets an old Samoan woman who reports that Alpheim quarreled with his native wife and killed his daughter. This story is corroborated by a girl who says that Elsa Alpheim has not been seen for three days; and that some boys who visited the stere to sell Alpheim a fish were fired upon and forced to run away. McKinley himself has seen this incident through his binoculars.
For the second time that day, I walked up to that store. The old woman had suggested that I take some men with me. But the Samoans are so excitable in any crisis that you don't know what they'll do.
I went around the front way, on the sand. Lamps had been lit in many of the fales, and the members of each household were at evening prayers.
This time, I made no noise at all.
My boots were tied together by the laces, and I had put on a pair of canvas shoes.
There was a certain savage humour in the notion that I was about to have dinner with a murderer who fancied that he had outwitted me.
Alpheim was sitting in an easychair; he had his back to me. There was a kerosene lamp on the table, and Alpheim was looking through one of the books I'd brought him.
The gun was in a corner by the door.
I dropped my heavy boots on the verandah, and strolled into the room.
Alpheim shot out of the chair and spun round. He still held the book open with his thumb, but he was trembling. He looked straight at my feet, to see how I had come so quietly.
“You make me jump!” he cried. He waved the book.
“Here is a murder story—and you frighten me like that.”
Then he became suspicious.
“But you are back already?”
“Yes,” I said. “There were some women at the pool.”
He gave me a sharp look, and laughed harshly.
“When I am young like you the women run from me, not I from them. Come, we have dinner. Do you like fish?”
“Why did he ask me that?” I thought.
I answered, “Yes. I'm very fond of it. It makes me thirsty, though.”
“It is a good way for a man to be,” said Alpheim with a chuckle. And he went out to the kitchen.
He had set the table, in the rough
Then there were biscuits, salmon, and corned beef—also from tins; boiled taro, baked bananas, and fried breadfruit.
When Alpheim came back, he had a coffee-pot in one hand and two plates of fried fish in the other.
We started with the fish. (Everything else was cold.)
Alpheim ate it with a biscuit in one hand and a fork in the other; it was so hot that he blew on every mouthful.
“I get this fish for nothing,” he began. “Some boys come here to ask me do I want to buy it. But I know they only make a togafiti (trick). They come to quiz. So I say, ‘Alu!’”
“Or,” I put in, “as they say in America: ‘Scram!’”
“Then they say I am manumanu (mean), and throw stones on the roof. I get my gun and fire it in the air, and coconuts fall down; and those boys drop the fish and run.”
“It was a good fish, anyway,” I said.
The man was trying to find out how much I knew.
We ate in silence for a while, but every time I looked down at my plate I could feel Alpheim watching me.
At last he came straight out with it: “And were you talking to those women at the pool?”
“Yes,” I said. “One of them asked me how the Mad One was.”
Alpheim grunted, laid down his fork, and proceeded to extract a fishbone from his moustache.
“They all think I am mad,” he went on gravely. “It is because I am too clever for them. For ten years I live in Fangaloa, and they all hate me. But this is the only store. They do not like to take their copra in boats to Falefa, because the trader there pays the same price as me.
“All day I think. I read a lot. But I am lonely. Now that I get old, I need a son. How is everyone in Apia?”
“About the same,” I said.
“For three years I do not go there any more. The last time is too much. You like some more coffee? It is Samoan coffee. But I tell you:
“One day Svenson comes to take stock. We drink whiskey and talk all night. Next day, a headache. So we finish all the whiskey and take stock. We have roast chicken and a sucking-pig. Then Svenson tells me, ‘Alpheim, why don't you come with me to Apia?’ I wonder has he found a shortage, but no. I do not like to leave the old woman in the store. She gives the Kanakas aitalafu (credit). But I go with Svenson.
“We get to Apia, and it is like New York or London. There is a big ship with tourists—people everywhere—so I feel in my pocket for my tie, and put it on. Then I meet Henry Arlington and he says, ‘Hullo, Alpy! When did you come over?' ‘I just get in,’ I tell him. So he says, ‘You're looking fine. When are you going back again?’ I tell him Friday. So we walk up the Beach, and Henry says, ‘Well, how about a drink?’
“There are some ladies from the tourist ship. One of the ladies says, ‘What ever is the matter with that old man's arm?’ I am pretending not to hear, but a man with horn spectacles comes up to me and says, ‘Good-day, old-timer!’ And when I stop, the lady takes a picture of my arm.”
Instinctively, I looked at Alpheim's arm.
“That day,” he said, “I finish. It is the strange people and the ship, like I leave home in when I am eighteen. I think if I go back some time nobody knows me, and the people put me in a circus, in a tent.”
He held out that awful arm of his as if he wanted me to bandage it. “Before, I play the violin,” he told me.
“Let's have a drink,” I said.
He tossed down half a tumblerful.
“So,” he went on, “it is too much. I have a drink with Henry. Then I think, ‘I go now to the office and talk with the manager.’ The boys say, ‘Have one more before you go.’ I have it.
“I wake up in the morning when the sun is high. I wonder where I am. I do not know what day it is. The boys have gone to work. The manager is saying, ‘Where is Alp-heim? Find him!’ So Henry comes to find me. He has a bottle with, him. I have eye-openers on an empty stomach; and I am drunk again. Then Henry goes back to the manager and says, ‘I look everywhere for Alpheim, but I do not find him.’
“One night they put me on a boat. I have a life-belt for a pillow. In two minutes, I am fast asleep. I wake up when the engine stops, and I am here. It is like a dream. I leave my coat and tie in Apia. My hat is lost. And the old woman says, ‘Did you bring so-and-so?’ But I forget to buy it, and there is faalavelave (trouble). The captain says, ‘Hey, Alpheim! There is a parcel yet.’ Until they open it, I do not know it is a new dress that I buy for Elsa.”
We had another gin.
“You seem to be very fond of Elsa,” I remarked.
Alpheim burst into tears.
“All right,” he said. “All right! For three days and two nights I have no sleep because of her. I tell you! We fight about the gramophone. I am a lover of good music. I have the best records in Samoa. That day I go to Samamea, to my shed there, to weigh copra. Elsa is by herself. The old woman I kick out before: she has too many natives here.
“I send a boy to Falefa to buy needles for the gramophone. At Samamea there is much copra; they are wanting money for the church; and the chiefs talk to me. When I come back it is already late. But I am thinking, ‘Ah, now I have some opera, some string-quartet.’ And I am very happy then.
“I come in. I see Elsa and the native boy with all my records on the table. And I say, ‘What have you done?’ Then she begins to cry, ‘Father, it was wound too tight. The spring is broken.’ So I am like a mad man, and the boy flies out the door. There are the needles. But what use are they?
“‘You fool,' I tell her. ‘How many times I show you that you wind the gramophone when it is running? Eh?’ I grab her by the dress. And she says, ‘Father, father, it was him!’
“ ‘What do you mean in having that Kanaka here?’ I shout at her. And then I think, ‘By God, I wonder if it is the spring that they look guilty for?'
“I rush over to the gramophone.”
Alpheim sprang up and began to re-enact it all.
“I have a canvas bag with money in my hand. When I let Elsa go, she runs. ‘A—ah,’ I think, ‘it is a trick. They make a fool of me. They had been on the couch, and now they run away together. All Samoa will laugh at me.’
“So I rush after her. She flies to the door there. She is too quick for me. She is outside already. So I throw the bag of money, and I knock her down. Then I am on her like a cat, and drag her back in here by the hair.”
He stood there panting, and the shadow of him filled the room.
“Yes?” I said.
“She screams. She fights. I am too strong for her.”
He sat down with his head between his hands.
“And afterwards, I think about the gramophone. I try it. It is broken!. It is broken like my heart. I kneel beside her on the floor, and I say, ‘Elsa! Elsa! Please forgive me!’ But there is no answer; so I leave her there.”
I noticed that my wristlet-watch was ticking very loudly.
“That night I walk the house. I drink pineapple gin. When the Kanakas come to look, I hunt them; and they run like pili (a large lizard). I think about the night that she is born, and I am there. I sit beside her bed when she is sick, and hold her hand. I see her when the time is by for her to be a woman, and the boys are there like pe'a (flying-foxes) in a mango-tree. Yes, all the years fly back again.”
“You haven't told me what you did to her,” I said.
He groaned.
“You look! You look! I do what the Kanakas do.”
“Where is she?” I demanded.
He pointed to the store.
“Give me the key,” I said.
He groped into a trouser pocket.
“You take the lamp. There is no light.”
The store was very dark and stuffy; it smelt of soap, kerosene, and calico. There was a copra sack nailed up to screen the window. I put the lamp down on the counter.
Elsa was huddled on a sleeping-mat, face-down, her arms flung up around her head. Beside her was a cheap trade mirror—broken.
I unlatched the little gate at one end of the counter.
The girl sprang up and bolted into a far corner with her back to me.
“Leave me! Go away! Get out!” she moaned.
Alpheim had clipped her head all over, like a convict's. Her dark hair lay in coils on a white pillow.
“I thought that you were dead,” I stammered, backing out.
“I wish I was! I wish I was! If the Samoans see me, they will think it's true.”
I realised that she had heard it all. I closed the door and left her there.
Alpheim was huddled in an easy-phair, staring stupidly in front of him. He looked very old and haggard. When I put down the lamp he shivered.
“You fool!” I said. “You—fool!”
He whimpered like a child.
“I am her father,” he began.
I shut him up by saying, “Listen, Alpheim. To-night you told me that the natives hated you because you were too clever for them. You said that if any man laid hands on Elsa you would blow his brains out. You blubbered over her. And now you shame her; now you treat her like a wanton. Suppose somebody overheard you, some native who knows English. That story will go round the island like a hurricane. For years the natives in this place have waited for a chance to get you; and now the time has come.”
He lolled there like a rag doll, open-mouthed.
“The shame of it! The shame!”
“You should have thought of that before,” I said. “Now look. You can't keep the girl cooped up forever, like a fowl. The Company will want to know why no one can do business in the store, and you'll be emptied out. Where will you go? That boy is sure to have told someone in the village that there was a row that day; he may even say it was because he broke the gramophone. But who'll believe him? No one. And if one native woman gets a glimpse of Elsa's head, she's done for. You know what a shaved head means here: it's the trade-mark of a girl who's misbehaved herself.”
Alpheim rocked to and fro.
“My pride!” he wailed. “My pride!”
“Here,” I told him. “Pour this on your pride.”
I shoved a glass of gin into his hand.
“We've got to get her out of here,” I said. “You know the old saying: ‘A lie is halfway round the world before the truth can get its boots on.’ And if the lie's about a woman—well, God help her! Tell me, has anybody
“No, no one. They are all too frightened of the gun.”
“Right,” I went on. “To-morrow it is Sunday. In the morning, while the natives are at church, I'll borrow a canoe and go across to Musumusu. Then we'll walk to Falefa. Til get Herman Schwartz's car and drive Elsa into Apia. But where shall I take her to?”
Alpheim sat up and took notice.
“Come,” he said. “We go outside. She hears us here.”
We went outside. Alpheim talked rapidly.
“She has an aunt in Apia, a Samoan woman married to an overseer at Avolau; but that is far from Apia, in the bush, and Elsa does not like to live there any more than here. She wants all the time to go to Pago Pago, where the big ships come from Honolulu, and there are talking-pictures, and dances with the navy men. I tell her she stays first with her aunt, until her hair grows. Then she goes, maybe, to Pago. Eh?”
“All right,” I said. “You tell her now.”
I went down to the beach, where I could think.
There was a moon. Across the bay, behind the village of Salimu, was a mountain that went straight up in the air. The thatched huts of the village nestled underneath it like chickens underneath a hen. The bay was so calm and still that it looked as if you could have walked across it.
I wondered how Alpheim had come to know my name, and where he got that Fairy Prince stuff from. There is nothing more romantic or flattering to one's vanity than the thought that some girl you've never met is keen about you.
When I got back to the store, Elsa had made up a bed for me on the couch. The dirty dishes were no longer on the table.
“It is settled,” Alpheim said.
I undressed and crawled in under the mosquito-net.
Next day we got away. We took the best of Alpheim's two canoes. Elsa had made her hair into a plait and wore it underneath a scarf tied tightly on her head. She would not say good-bye to Alpheim.
He tried to make a little speech to me. He said, “Good-bye, McKinley. Maybe I never see your face again—”
“Oh, that reminds me,” I put in.
“I'm going to take that gun of yours.”
He handed it to me without another word.
We shook hands.
Alpheim did not come down to the beach.
When we had crossed the bay he was still standing on the front verandah with one hand above his eyes. He waved to us, and I waved back. He turned and went inside.
We climbed the steep track that goes up from Musumusu to the wooded promontory on the west side of the bay. I turned to have a last look at the store.
The place was locked up, and on fire.
“Elsa!” I said. “Look!”
Alpheim was paddling a canoe straight out to sea.
We ran down through the bush until we came to an open space beside an old chief's tomb. You can see that tomb from any passing ship.
I shouted and hallooed, but Alpheim took no notice. So I got out the binoculars and watched him.
He sat very straight and stiff, paddling like a machine. He steered a course dead in the centre of the pathway of the sun. I watched him till he was a black speck against the shimmer of the sea and his movements made him look like a beetle of some sort crawling on a burnished tray.
“Poor father!” Elsa said.
She crossed herself. And I took off my topee.
That was the end of Alpheim.
“But what happened to the girl?” somebody asked.
“She had no aunt at Avolau. I left her at the convent.”
McKinley got up and went out of the smoking-room.
Nobody spoke a word until he'd gone.
Then Crosby said, “You know, I like McKinley, but he's the biggest liar south of the Equator.”
That night, when I'd turned in, there was a knock outside my cabin door, and McKinley poked his head around the curtain.
“Oh,” I said. “Come in.”
I wanted to hear more about the story.
But all he said was, “I wondered if you'd ever read this—I just got it back from Crosby; it's not bad.”
He handed me a book.
“Good-night.”
“Thanks,” I said.
It was a copy of Green Mansions.
Written on the flyleaf were three names and a date:
Elsa McKinley, Apia, 1934.
On the playing fields of the Dominion may be seen many of the employees of the country's largest transport system engaged in the manly sport of cricket.
In the capital city a railway cricket club has been in existence for some years, and few, perhaps, fully appreciate the difficulties associated with this and other railway sporting clubs. The membership of these clubs is made up of men employed mainly on shift work, and in consequence, they have not the same opportunities for participation in their favourite recreation as those whose hours of employment are more regular. Nevertheless, the Wellington Railway Cricket Club has, during the past season, been successful in minimising those difficulties and two teams out of three concluded the season with championship honours.
Two years ago the Club celebrated its Jubilee with a similar victory. Such success after twenty-five years of patient endeavour is a fitting reward for the tireless efforts of those stalwarts who kindled and kept alight the flame of enthusiasm which is now promising to burn brighter than ever.
The performances of the teams during the season just concluded augur well for the future. Although games are, as a rule, not won by individual effort, the following averages will tend to give an indication of the calibre of some of our players:
In addition to playing competitive cricket the Club participated, during the season, in several friendly games, outstanding among which was the game played at Wanganui for the coveted Hayhow Cup. The Club is now the proud holder of that handsome trophy presented by a gracious donor for competition between teams representing the railwaymen of Wanganui and Wellington.
The final curtain of a successful season was rung down on Saturday, 1st May, when members and supporters of the Club attended a banquet held at the Empire Hotel.
A cordial invitation to join the Club is extended to all members of the Service located in Wellington. Given additional support the coming season can be made an outstanding one in the history of the Club.
County Council, Mr. C. C. Smith, acting chairman of the Hawke's Bay Cunty Council, Mr. John Wood, engineer-in-chief of the Public Works Department, Mr. A. Dinnie, district engineer, Mr. Newnham, assisting designing engineer, and Mr. G. H. Mackley (General Manager of the New Zealand Railways).
The first item on the programme was a welcome by the school children, the ranks of the Raupunga School being swelled by children from surrounding schools. It took the form of hakas depicting the growth of the bridge and the pleasure its completion gave. These were very well done, and were closely watched and appreciated.
Mr. Semple, who was greeted with applause, said that he had felt it incumbent upon him to attend, if only to say to the men who had built the viaduct, “Thank you, and well done, faithful servants.” Making special mention of the engineer in charge of the job, Mr. Haskell, he said that here was a case of a young New Zealander, who had never been out of the country, whose work would compare more than favourably with that of older engineers from other parts of the world. Under him there had been no troubles with the men; Mr. Haskell had merely appealed to the men to work with him. “I have come chiefly to thank them for their wonderful achievement,” he continued, “and I also want to express appreciation of the work of Professor Cull, the designing engineer, Mr. Newnham, the assistant designing engineer, Mr. G. A. Lindell, under whose supervision all the fabricating steel for the work was made, and the foreman of works, Mr. T. Robinson. The Chief Engineer of Public Works, Mr. John Wood, has a mighty task in charge of thousands of men. I am personally proud of the type of man associated with the public works of this country.”
Mr. Semple referred to the progress that had been made in the equipment, organisation, accommodation, and the type of work itself, in the last twelve months. In all this Mr. Wood had been the guiding spirit.
Not Profit-making.
Mr. Semple had displayed great genius for organisation, said the Minister of Railways (the Hon. D. G. Sullivan). He was proud of him as a colleague, because of his vigour. With the young men who have gathered round him he had placed New Zealand on the map, from the point of view of the way in which business was carried out. Mr. Sullivan spoke of the new schedules which would be available with the opening of the line.
“There are some people who seem to think that the railways should be run in the same way as any ordinary private business,” said Mr. Sullivan. “We cannot judge the Railway Department on that basis. Railways are necessary for the development of the country, and cannot be looked on from the narrow accountancy sense. If it had been so in the past, the country would not have the population it has to-day. We must look on the railways as a national service. We cannot spend any amount of money on the job. We have to estimate how much we can afford, but we must look on this service as many people do on the education, health, and other services upon which money is spent, as a necessary service, in the production of national wealth.”
The Mayors and heads of the surrounding towns and local bodies having added their quota to the general enthusiasm and appreciation of the occasion, Mr. Semple went out on the bridge, and, being handed a hot rivet from the forge, ran it home with a clattering racket and drove home the last spike in the sleepers, finishing a work manually that he had largely pushed along by his personality and personal interest. He was presented with a silver replica of the spike by Mr. Nolan.
It is interesting to note that the rail-car arrived driven over the viaduct by Mr. Sullivan himself.
Rly. Publicity photo.)
The railcar which conveyed the Ministerial party for the official opening ceremony, crossing the Mohaka Viaduct.
Extract from “Evening Post,” 1/7/37.
Photo, Thelma R. Kent.)
Mt. Talbut from the Hollyford River, Eglinton Valley, South Island, New Zealand.
Where is it? Only Southerners seem to know. This enchanting fairyland, known topographically as the Eglinton Valley, or, more broadly, as the “Sounds National Park,” comprising, as it will some day, the vast expanse of mountain—and forest-land of Eglinton and Holly-ford Valleys, and the indescribable Sounds and Fiords, with which our West Coast abounds, is situated in the South-West corner of the South Island. Among the many gems of fairyland are places, some better-known than others, as Lakes Te Anau and Manapouri, the beautiful Waiau River, the enchanting Eglinton and Hollyford Valleys, Mt. Howden, and Lake How-den, Mt. Tutoko, Mt. Christina, Lakes Gunn, Fergus and Lochie. These are but a few of the wonderful places to visit.
The Railways Department have now the catering for transport to this region. There is the choice of transport by rail and ‘bus, or by ‘bus alone. We chose the former, as providing more variety. The railway—cum—’bus journey is a week-end journey, leaving Dunedin on Friday morning, and returning on Monday night. To my mind this week-end cruise is the most inexpensive holiday offered in New Zealand, by our enterprising Railways Department. These cruises are run I from Dunedin, but this is not essentially the point of departure. Gore, Lumsden, Kingston or Queenstown, Invercargill, Waikaia—any of these points provides easy access to our new-found Wonderland—not, perhaps, so much “new-found,” as newly-adver-tised, for a ‘bus, and, previously, a coach-service from Lumsden inaugurated the trip to Manapouri and Te Anau many years ago, while access to Milford Sound, Martin's Bay, and the hinterland was available by boat.
But that it is newly-discovered and advertised is obvious when many people have never heard of Eglinton Valley, and but vaguely know that Lake Te Anau is somewhere in the South Island.
The Railways Department provide for the excursionists. One makes the arrangements in the office, and is handed one's ticket, which comprises the railway and ‘bus tickets, and accommodation at the Te Anau Hotel.
At the rear of, the Dunedin—Invercargill express, on the Friday morning, a special first-class carriage was attached, for the exclusive use of the excursionists. Thus for the first ninety miles, to Gore, each person surreptitiously eyed the remaining passengers, for were we not all in the next four days to be thrown together, with the common object of getting some fun out of life, and of seeing a beauty spot of New Zealand?
So here we were, each of us engaged only with his or her own friends, occasionally advancing a timid remark that may include or be directed towards a stranger. I noticed that at Milton no one seemed to be aware that there were Refreshment Rooms there, so I gathered that probably many of them were strangers, at least to that part of New Zealand, if not to New Zealand generally.
So at Clinton, I asked one or two of the elderly ladies if they would like a cup of tea. The magical words, “cup of tea,” spread through the carriage, and soon we men-folk were travelling down the platform, linked in the common obj ect of obtaining tea for ladies.
When the train left Clinton, gone was the wondering-atmosphere, and replacing it was general conversation,