The title of this article is
deliberately chosen with a kindly purpose. It treats of a part of New
Zealand whose inhabitants should be “telling the world,” as they say in
U.S.A., yet it is comparatively little known even in the big city
nearest to it.
Scene 1: Central Hotel, Auckland, 8.15 a.m.
“Hullo, where are you going?”
“Oh! North Auckland—Keri Keri Ohaewai and other spots. Been there?”
“Never. You'll find it hard to get about up there. Where are those places, anyway?”
Scene 2: The Homestead, Keri Keri, 5.10 p.m.
(Reflecting) What a joke! A comfortable train journey, a short ride
in a luxurious service car on a perfect road and here we are! Hard to
get to!
The train winds out through the wide-spreading suburbs of Auckland,
slips past the Waitakeres, and at Helensville we get a glimpse of a
river steamer. Thereafter the scenery is notable, particularly the
lovely bits where the arms of the Kaipara Harbour cross and crisscross
in little blue sounds. At Maungaturoto we get out for lunch, and notice
that the air is warming up. From here on the country is rolling and
hilly, well filled with settlers facing an awful perplexity, for there
can be no weather to growl at. The rainfall is good, and the temperature
steady, winter and summer.
In no time we skirt the side of the fascinating Whangarei Harbour.
There are miles of this Riviera drive, the water is azure satin, and the
hill contours gentle and beautiful. In the far distance is the
startling profile of Manaia, a mighty and exact replica of a prone
mountain god gazing at the sky.
Then we reach the capital of the North, Whangarei; but of this delightful little city in the making we shall talk later.
There is a pleasant interlude here for refreshment, but, as all the
way from Auckland, my camera friend has been hard to dissuade from
poking his lens through the carriage window to get a “shot,” I am glad
to get away again.
The next episode of the serial is much the same until Otiria is
reached. Instead of the anticipated bone-shaker, a magnificent service
motor bus stands there with half a dozen brethren. This was a merry half
hour. My neighbour was, he told me, a little hard of hearing as he was
seventy-four. I could not catch his name, but from his red cheeks, white
whiskers and blue eyes, he ought to have been called “Union Jack.” It
appeared that he had forty miles to do after he got to Kaitaia, and was
doing that little bit on a push bike. I registered surprise and he
explained that it was geared for the hills. He helped to prove the
statement made to me later by a settler that no one north of Whangarei
ever died unless he was run over or gored by a bull.
The Keri Keri Homestead is a luxurious private hotel with beautiful
gardens. From the dining room there is a perfect view of the exquisite
Keri Keri falls.
The surprise to the visitor from the South is the nature of the
country from the railhead into Keri Keri. The scene is English downland,
like a Surrey panorama. The second growth totaras and the neat puriris
are exactly like those little trees we used to get in the Noah's Arks.
They dot the landscape, and with the smooth rich pastures, the lazy
sheep thickly clustered, the well-kept fences and homesteads, they make a
parklike effect which has the ordered beauty of older lands.
One forgets that this is the oldest part of New Zealand. I played a hymn
on a sweet toned old pipe organ in the Waimate North Church, where there
are tombstones in the churchyard dated 1834, and the great trees
overtop the spire.
At the edge of the dreaming loveliness of the Keri Keri Inlet stands
the oldest stone building and oldest two-storey wooden dwelling in the
Dominion. The stone building is a busy store and cigarette placards
cover up the date. Totara lining boards one hundred years old are nailed
to the walls in simple fashion and are so free of warp, that in the
dark, you could not tell that the whole wall was not one smooth plank.
Upstairs is the Bishop's study and the famous letter recording the first
use of a plough in our land.
This fine stone building was erected to keep watch on the Hone Heke Pa that surmounted a low green hill across the narrow sound.
It is a strange but inevitable turn of the wheel of history that is
bringing this region, first of all New Zealand to be loved and settled
by Englishmen, back to its original pre-eminence.
Here I pause to make
the prophecy that this district will one day be the most prosperous part
of our whole Dominion, and be a hive of human activities of every kind.
Keri Keri settlement, inaugurated and established by the North
Auckland Land Development Corporation Ltd., is an indescribable place.
It has, at first blush, the air of a large and prosperous garden suburb,
but proves to be something far different on inspection. There are
numbers of overseas settlers who contrive, in some way, to make the long
bench on the verandah of the corner store look rather club-like. Men
were drifting about the place when we arrived, clad in shorts, all
sun-tanned, an odd one a little ostentatiously “rolling his own” like a
real colonial.
Down the cross-road is
the utilitarian factory building that has, in
the words of the song, “changed the whole course of their lives.” The
factory collects the passion fruit at each gate, the farmer's job being
to grow and pick them.
Here is a settlement of primary producers who get their money
fortnightly throughout the year, and the price is fixed for a long term.
They ought to be happy and they look it.
I found an old Wellington friend and he took me to see passion fruit
vines, planted in November last, and now bearing fruit. The soil is a
dark loam, easily worked, and varying little in quality throughout the
settlement area. The combination of warm, even temperature, copious,
gentle rains and sunshine, produce a growth that is unbelievable.
By the courtesy of several settlers, I am able to make positive
statements about this amazing profit-making paradise. Naturally, the
pioneers had the usual experience, and the early difficulties were stern
and plentiful. Luckily for the block, men of ample means and unbounded
courage and enthusiasm took up land and developed it. Passion fruit is
the staple crop, but oranges by the ton are in sight, as the species
suitable to the locality has been found after much experiment, and this,
the Washington navel, is definitely better than any orange we import. I
do not say this after eating one or two, either. My friend of the
camera reckoned that I would be a rich orange colour all over if I did
not stop! The lemon is of easy and luxuriant growth, cures well, and we
often buy them in our cities thinking they are imported.
After detailed examination, I find it to be a fact that one acre of
passion fruit in full bearing, will produce from £50 to £80 per annum.
One man can, without strenuous effort, look after two and a half acres
single handed. The first cost of the land, of breaking it in and of
planting, is by comparison trifling, and building is less than
two-thirds of city cost. Electric light and other amenities are
available.
Grapes grow freely in the open, and down below the unique homestead
of glass and concrete belonging to Mr. Little (whose pioneering work and
expenditure should get a monument one of these days), there are
magnificent hillside terraces of vines and other plants, the result of
years of experiment.
Fine houses, spacious gardens, carefully tended drives, ornament
vista after vista. The settlement numbers two hundred already, and they
are arriving all the time.
No one can visit this place without a twinge
of jealousy. Here are people living a Garden of Eden life of ease and
making a profitable income from it. Even the rain is only liquid
sunshine. Here is a land where it is really true that “every prospect
pleases.”
Any man who retires on a pension (often just enough to let him see
his club once a month and potter on a quarter acre suburban section)
should have a look at Keri Keri. If he does not decide to come here, he
should have a look at himself. There is a safe outlook here, too, for
the young working farmer, whose practical experience would prove to be
gold mounted.
The word that has done North Auckland more harm than anything else is
used to describe its land—“patchy.” The word would be better if the
size of the patches were known. The truth is that the area of good land
is very large. After all, the peninsula is responsible for a seventh of
New Zealand's dairy production. A farm of 450 acres close to Keri Keri
is carrying 1,700 breeding ewes, and 90 odd cattle and horses. The owner
is a skilled and ingenious farmer, but the bare facts are almost
incredible. There is no end to which this land can be put, particularly
having in mind the fact that the climate is actually “winterless.” The
steady beneficent temperature and abundant rainfall remove at one stroke
the two main disadvantages of California, where irrigation is
universal, and the expensive smudge pot is absolutely necessary to cope
with the numerous frosts.
It is obvious that there is still endless exploration to be done in
the methods of using this unique combination of soil and climatic
conditions.
All vegetables can be grown here all the year round. Potatoes, yams,
kumeras, revel in this soil, and so do all the melon tribe whose tasty
and more exotic varieties have only to be known to be appreciated in our
country. Grapes ripen in the open air in riotous profusion. Almond,
fig, peach, nectarine, and all fruit trees are assured bearers of heavy
crops, and early is a mild word when their fruits ripen. All small
fruits, similarly, do excellently. You have the feeling, wherever you
look, of the fecund ease of growth of everything, and yet the place is
free of tropical disabilities. The narrow shape of the peninsula, with
its myriad of deep indentations of the sea, give this immunity and add
to the riches of the plant life, a legacy of health and strength. One
settler, commenting in his dry way on what the land seemed able to do,
cracked this joke, “I believe if you dropped a wooden toothpick, it
would start to root.”
I left Keri Keri with a feeling of regret and I am going back at the
first opportunity. Our illustrations are restricted, naturally, owing to
space considerations, but they convey some idea of the progress of
this, a most important undertaking of national interest and a
contribution to our country's welfare.
The road to Kaikohe is a perfect one, through lovely country, well
stocked and closely settled. Kaikohe is a clean and sweet country town,
modern and progressive. I was advised there to take a trip to the
property of the New Zealand Tung Oil Corporation. Here is another
staggering surprise.
A plant crop which is an innovation is subject to two criticisms,
firstly will they grow, secondly, who wants them, anyway? Henry Ford is
planting them in Florida, so he apparently wants them, among others. I
saw them growing, in all stages, so that is beyond doubt. Like most New
Zealanders, the only tung oil I had heard of was spelt a different way
and was the property of a lady with a blackboard and a pointer. However,
all joking apart, this colossal undertaking is being managed with such
care, prudence, and zeal, that success is deserved. We passed through
seven miles of plantation, all bounded by road frontage. There are vast
nurseries, both of tung trees and of varieties of shelter trees. In this
climate and in this soil, shelter trees grow in eighteen months, and
the groves are being gradually
and scientifically intersected. Painstaking research has established the
best varieties of seed, the best and quickest growing shelter trees,
and the cheapest and swiftest cultivation methods.
I was delighted to
see the vim with which the Maori workers, men and women, were doing
their work. There are three large working camps. This is another work of
national importance, giving the variety we badly need to our list of
exports.
I now worked back to Whangarei. The fascinating newness of the Maori
place names, makes a new music for the ear all about this district.
Ngunguru, Matapouri, Poroti, Kailiu, Whananaki, Ngawha, Pataua,
Tutakaka, Nukutahwiti, Waimamaku, sound all about, and, of course nobody
knows what they mean. Don't, however, ask about Waitemata, that's a
beer!
And so, to Whangarei. This is a bustling, heart-warming town, with
the New Zealand provincial capitals' air of being a small city. It is
beautifully situated, with two imposing streets of fine buildings and
striking suburbs full of beautiful homes. The gardens are rich with
flowers and everywhere there is a sub-tropical brilliance of scene. The
night airs are cool.
The hotels are good, fit for any city, as will be particularly seen
from the picture we show of the modern lounge from which our host, Mr.
Powell, took us down the harbour to one of the legendary spots in all
New Zealand, the “Hen and Chickens,” the old men's home of the tuatara
lizard. There are good golf links, one tennis ground has fourteen grass
courts, the motor parks are up-to-date, and the public grounds,
particularly Mair Park with its natural swimming pool set in natural
bush, are worthy of a metropolis.
Scenic beauties of all sorts, from the great Wairoa Falls, to the
picturesque beaches of Matapouri and Ngunguru, are within easy reach.
Whangarei has its own personality and is the rightful capital of this New Zealand Elysium.
Before I conclude, I want to stress one point.
Years ago, a member of
Parliament, in a natural anxiety to get something done to please his
constituents, coined the phrase “The Roadless North.” Now that kind of
epithet has a habit of sticking, and there is still an impression that
the district is difficult of access and full of terrors for motorists.
Nothing of the sort exists to-day. Led by that model of practical
management, the Whangarei County, the northern counties have modernised
the whole network of roads, which are uniformly excellent. The train
services likewise. The timetables are convenient for all centres and
junctions, luxurious car services act as feeders at all important
points, and the connection, both ways, with the Southern trunk lines is
efficient and speedy. I repeat that the Northland is as easy to reach
and travel over by road or rail as any part of the Dominion.
I have tried to tone down the adjectives that seem to press for
outlet while I write this article. Honestly, however, my story is
suffering from suppressed superlatives. Our land is so lovely in so many
ways, it is such a pocket world of beauty, that claims for leadership
in attractiveness for any one district, are impossible of answer. But no
one can blame the dweller in the Northland for saying that his is the
best of all. The pity is that he does not seem to have said it long
enough and loud enough. And lastly, and above all, the Northland is a
land of opportunity, a land of golden chances.
AND THE THE SUMMER SEASON IS UNDERWAY.
