Sunset at the Mokihinui.

Clematis has come again to the Mokihinui Valley. White as foam on summer seas, white as winter moonlight, it shines from the dark embrace of the trees.

Leave Westport on a blue September morning and take the road to the north. If your choice is made with care, you will be rewarded with that flawless gem, a perfect West Coast day. The way runs along the coastal flat between the sapphire blue of the mountains and the dark blue sea. Far ahead on the curving coast where distance steals the height from the mountains, Kowahaihai and the Heaphy beckon.

Along this coast, almost a hundred years ago, the intrepid surveyors, Heaphy and Mackay, made their first exploratory surveys of this remote district. Accompanied by a Maori guide they made their way along the one practicable route—the seashore; supplementing their inadequate provisions with pipis, mussels and Maori cabbage; climbing by precarious improvised ladders of raupo flax leaves the precipitous headlands which occasionally obstructed their passage; crossing the frequent swift streams on frail rafts fashioned out of flax stems and capable of bearing their weight for only a measured period before inevitably becoming waterlogged; thus slowly and painfully they travelled the 190 miles that lie between the Heaphy and the Okarito.

Thirty miles north of Westport the road turns away from the Coast to follow the Mokihinui.

And now the clematis flashes like a sudden waterfall among the trees. The Mokihinui is a friendly little river with shallow sunlit reaches and quiet green depths which faithfully reflect the infinite variety of the bush-clad banks. Standing on a little shelf above the shining water where the road and railway run side by side, you can look downstream to the river mouth and see the morning sunlight fill the curling Tasman rollers with green light. Years ago there was a railway station on this spot and many years before the railway was built, a wharf stood at this point on the river. If you peer through the bush which clothes the high, steep bank, you can see all that remains of it now —a few posts black with mussel shells sticking out of the water thirty feet below.

An aerial picture of the Mokihinui River, showing Seddonville in the background and the railroad and highway joining to run parallel at the site of the old station.

Fifty years ago coal was loaded into the little steamers which lay at this wharf. The coal was brought from the mines upstream, in drays by road, or in flat-bottom boats by river. Passengers and goods were unloaded here for the township at the mouth of the river and for Seddonville two miles upstream. Of any road or path which must once have given access to the wharf, there is now no trace. Only the blackened posts remain to show that the Mokihinui——like most places on the coast—has a past.

From 1867 when gold was first found here stout little coasting steamers—the Murray, the Nelson, the Bruce, on their way from Nelson to Westport and Hokitika, used to call in here with passengers and cargo. The last steamship to enter the Mokihinui was the Lawrence. She was leaving at noon in April, 1891, when she grounded on the bar. The vessel managed to get off, but having lost her propeller blades, was driven inshore and stranded on the south side of the river entrance. On page 38 page 39 the following day a heavy sea came up and the steamer was so heavily pounded that she broke her back and became a total wreck. Her memory was recently revived when a bell, inscribed with the name of the steamer and the date of her launching, was found on the beach near Westport. As the railroad to Westport was almost completed in 1891 the steamship trade was allowed to lapse and the busy little wharf abandoned to the bush and the tides.

Approaching the river, the road forks. One way leads on up river through St. Helen's to Seddonville. The other follows the river down to a little hamlet (Kynnersley) at the river mouth. It is a pretty place with the charm of serenity and remoteness. A few cottages, tree shaded and flower bedecked, cluster round a green and empty space. Over yonder, on the Point, at the edge of the river stands an ancient hotel, the last of six. A gaudy petrol pump waits in front of a creeper-draped house which receives and distributes H.M. mails. And that is all. Not even a school. We passed that at the junction of the roads a mile away. The sea is not visible from here. A small forest of stunted rata separates the further edge of the empty green from the steep shingly shore, and the trees with their wind-bent twisted stems and flattened foliage shelter the village from the tormenting westerlies which blow for three-quarters of the year.

Once this green sunlit space was laid out in streets; there were shops, a Bank of New Zealand, and busy stables from which smart coaches set out three times a week for Westport. Two thousand people worked and loved and played here fifty or sixty years ago. Tall bearded men in moleskins and flannel shirts sought for gold by day and drank and gambled and fought in the six hotels by night. Ladies in old-fashioned finery, starched and ironed their voluminous white petticoats, or gossiped in the shops while choosing the flounced and trained gowns which they would proudly trail across the dancehall floor at night; gathering up the rustling frills with a graceful twist of the wrist to dance the Lancers and the Quadrilles to the music of concertina and violin.

Not a sign of this former pulsing life is to be seen to-day. No grassgrown streets, no sagging doorways or cold and empty hearths remain to tell the casual visitor that life, joyous and vigorous, once surged through this quiet backwater. Over most deserted townships of the goldrush days there broods an air, half tragic, half forlorn, as of one who mourns remembered glories. Kynnersley does not share this mood of desolation shot with triumph. The past seems quite obliterated by the wholesome peace of the present.

Twice a year even now the village comes to life. Shrill voices of children, impatient voices of motor horns, strident voices of portable radios, ripple the surface of the sunny tranquillity for a week or two at Christmas and Easter. Just before we reached the village we passed a delicious sandy bay of bright water. Twice a day the river flows in till it laps the low grassy bank where white daisies grow in these spring days.

Looking back from the famous Karamea Bluff towards the Mokihimi River. The photograph gives some idea of the density of the bush and tall forest trees.

It is a perfect place for bathing, warm, safe, sheltered. At a little distance among the lupins, to which the flax bush has given place, are a few modest baches. Their owners, who live in the mining towns on the mountains, cut off from the sea by six or seven miles of hairpin bends and devil elbows, come here for holiday delights of bathing and fishing.

On the way back to the crossroads and our riverside ledge we pass a little graveyard set in a garden of white arum lilies and yellow daffodils. Most of the inscriptions belong to the last century. They lived dangerously in those days: “Drowned on the Mokihinui bar”; “Killed by a fall of earth”; “Swept away while crossing the rocks.” They should sleep well here with the song of the river and the tui for company, while the kowhai slowly drops its gold and the clematis spills white loveliness from the enfolding trees.

Conveyer system at Slippers Ltd., Lower Hutt.

Buy New Zealand Goods.

(Continued from page 20)

The conveyer track is an objectlesson in team-work. Twenty-one operators each handle one process at a time as the tray of shoes is passed down the line.

One unique exhibit was a comely heap of the tiniest slippers; even these miniatures, apparently made to fit elves or very small fairies, were elegant and decorated with minute bows of pink and blue. New Zealand Slippers Limited make every size from Kiddies o's to Men's 13's. The stock-room is a revelation; the world has been ransacked for the range of odds and ends that are needed to produce over 2,500 kinds of slippers. I was pleased to see a vivid blue dyed-sheepskin and to find that 150 dozen of this New Zealand-grown and processed article were used last year.

No wildest flight of fanciful design, no ultra smartness in shape or material, no extreme of luxurious comfort is lacking in the slipper made at New Zealand Slippers Ltd. I suggest a visit there for anyone who is doubtful at all of the modernity or efficiency of New Zealand industrial methods.

Lastly, I paid a visit to the spacious Social Hall, which has a good dance floor, and is naturally in constant use.

I returned to leather at the establishment of W. B. Darlow, in Auckland. Here, good New Zealand leather from the Sutherland Tannery is made into suit-cases, golf bags, and other useful articles, with Rugby and Association footballs for good measure. This is a specialist factory with twenty years of experience, research, and planning behind it. I naturally went first to see the oval of a Rugby ball being made. The segments are first cut with meticulous care, for they dare not be a fraction out of drawing. The stitching and assembling is done inside out, with hempen thread of six strands. The final sewing is most ingenious, but I was like George III. over the dumplings; I could not see how the ball was to be brought the right way round. The last stitches go in through the mouthpiece, and a sort of sleight of hand brings the leather right side outwards. The neatness and celerity of the operation beat any card tricks.

At Darlow's all manner of machines deal with the suit-case problem. The leather is shaped while it is wet, and exact calculations go into the use of the heavy presses so that it retains its shape when dry. The stiffening materials come from Whakatane, soundly made New Zealand goods.

Making a Rugby football, Darlow's, Auckland.

The largest and longest-armed sewing machine I have encountered deals with the problem of the lengthy golf bag which Darlow's make in quantities. Some idea of the range of goods tackled by this factory can be seen in the showroom where baby harness, shields for butchers' knives, all sizes and shapes of suit-cases, camera cases, soldiers' wallets and money belts, kit-bags, and other articles of leather foundation, jostle each other.

Here, is a good instance of the utilisation of a New Zealand primary product, from the beast's hide in the paddock to the genial bowler's leather container for his wooden globes with the bias that causes all the trouble. W. B. Darlow is doing a national work. Here, too, I found confirmation of the fact that New Zealand tanneries are modern institutions turning out modern work from chrome to coloured leathers.

My last visit was to the Auckland Shoe Manufacturing Factory of Bridgen's & Co. Ltd., an old-established Northern institution. I liked the first wall motto I saw: “Keep Up the Quality.”

I have gone into some detail as to the modernity of equipment characterising our footwear establishments. It is in ample evidence in this Auckland factory. As described before, the pattern and “clicking” departments start off, and I had an interesting survey here of the pattern-filing cabinets. Track is kept of every order from its receipt to the time it leaves the finishing room. In this factory I had a closer look at the “stuck on” sole system. The page 42 upper sole is roughened a little to enable the cement to penetrate the fibre of the leather. The bottom sole is treated the same way, and when specially prepared cement is used, the sole is one solid but flexible piece of leather. This has solved many problems. I should mention that this particular process involves heating and pressing, the big presses exercising enormous pressure. At Bridgen's every individual shoe is examined for signs of waste or for hollows.

My guide said with a full sense of responsibility that: “Out of a million pairs not one sole will lift.”

It is often complained that New Zealand made goods are less popular with New Zealanders than the imported, though they may be better quality —and cheaper, too. Perhaps this prejudice does exist to some extent. If so, it certainly does not extend to toasted tobaccos grown and manufactured by the National Tobacco Co., Ltd. (pioneers of the tobacco industry in N.Z.), and as showing the widespread use of this tobacco there is the experience of a Public Hospital patient at Gisborne. Not until confined to the surgical ward did he realise the extent to which the use of the above Company's goods had grown. From 20 to 30 patients were in the ward at the time, and most of them rolled their own cigarettes. Only two brands were in evidence. Riverhead Gold was one, and it was smoked by all with one exception. When our patient was leaving he noticed that the one exception had a newly-purchased tin of Riverhead Gold by his bedside. Other popular brands are “Desert Gold,” “Cavendish” and “Navy Cut” (medium) and “Cut Plug No. 10” (fullstrength). All are toasted.”

As in the garment industry, I saw from plain visual proof, that machinesewing is better than any work by hand, and in the words of my teacher: “In ladies' shoes hand-sewing is a thing of the past.”

There are the usual batteries of modern machinery, but I found that the element of personal skill is still important. Many of the craftsmen at Bridgen's are old-timers, and there is an air of competence and planned organisation about the place. Every country has its own special problems in the footwear industry, for folks have all sizes, shapes, and conditions of feet. Bridgen's Ltd. in common with others of our boot and shoe manufacturers, are examining and solving the regional difficulties with true New Zealand initiative.

Intricate lasting-machine at Bridgen's, Auckland.

Naturally, there are many other fine organisations devoted to this branch of industrial activity in New Zealand. In fact there are more than fifty large-scale establishments, some of them specialising and others covering the field. However, limitation of space has kept me to the few examples quoted, but they alone furnish ample evidence that the New Zealand man and woman, boy and girl, from fisherman to dancing enthusiast, from hiker to party-goer, are catered for with New Zealand-made articles. Many a woman proudly exhibits a smart shoe which she fondly imagines is by some maker abroad, whereas it was well and truly turned out in a New Zealand factory.

In footwear, as much as in anything else I have seen, there is no justification for imagining that some foreign-made article is better than our own.

Sixty-Nine Years Ago.

A season ticket-holder on the Great Eastern Railway, finding his train not ready in consequence of the fireman not keeping up steam, ordered a special, for which he was charged £39/14/-, which he paid, and then brought an action to recover together with £10 for loss of time. The case was tried in the Court of Exchequer, and Mr. Baron Martin said it was nonsense for people when guilty of negligence to say, “Mind, I won't be responsible for it.” He was astonished that the company had not returned the money charged for the special train. The jury gave a verdict for the plaintiff for the amount claimed.–(From “The Graphic” of November 19, 1870, reprinted in “The Railway Gazette,” May 19, 1939).