IRRIGATION MIRACLE

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 11, Issue 85, 26 September 1947, Page 4

IRRIGATION MIRACLE

CENTRAL OTAGO STORY FILM TO BE RELEASED There is soon to be released for showing to farmers’ groups, to schools, and to everyone who is interested in soil conservation and improvement—and that should be everyone—probably the best documentary film produced in New Zealand. It is the story of the transformation of waste lands of Central Otago by taking to them water that ran to waste. This story is the very opposite of land mining. When it began the land that now grows splendid crops of grain, rich pastures,' and lucerne for winter feeding, apples, pears, peaches, offered mostly unending work and yearly droughts that undid it all. There is a low rainfall always, 12 to 20 inches, and it falls in the wrong months of the year. Began In Mining Yet Otago’s irrigation miracle did begin in mining, for the first, patchy, minor miracles in unexpected fertility came about when gold mining petered out and the miners’ races, falling into disrepair, spilled water here and there.

Then, in those heres and theres, waste lands blossomed like the rose and in more profitable variety. A lot of water has flowed over the dams and through new races since conviction was carried in that accidental fashion. The miners drew their one crop; the farmer's are only beginning to draw their yearly crops of greater value—grain, pastures, fruits. These Central Otago highlands always were picturesque—rugged rocky above valley bottoms; colourful in rock tints and yellow tussock. Brilliant blue skies and sailing summer clouds brought no rain, so the brief spring greens faded to lichen greys, though the tussock held on in spite of drought. Still, if there is land farmers will farm it. They burned and sowed and grazed, with not much success. The summers beat them. The rabbits managed better; they became a pest, as, everywhere.

Winter water erosion and summer wind erosion set in.

In the country back of the arid rocky plains and low .hillsides there are unlimited supplies of water in the high country lakes and streams. The first planned work, was commenced in 1913 in the survey of 350 miles of race, and next year the first dam, Manorburn, was under way. By 1926 20 schemes were completed, in hand, or promised, and 280 farmers rejoiced in water where and when they needed it for their 27,000 acres. Today double that acreage is getting water from the high country, but there is still a long way to go, for there are half a million acres crying out for the magic touch.

- That is why a permanent irrigation staff has been set up at Alexandra.

It is quite an engineering job: to build a score or so of dams, build flumes, route races, drive tunnels, plan orderly rapids down long hillsides, take water down one valley side and up the other' by syphon. All that costs a lot of money. Naturally, as always on the screen, the film tells the story very well.

The sun shines always; the lucerne grows a wondrous green; the sheep baa-a in most grateful appreciation; and there never were such peaches seen in a Wellington shop window. But the Public Works photographer who went down there on an open assignment, Mr Walter Kennedy, brought back, as well as this picture of farming plenty, the contrast between the land as if used to be and as it is today. Over the fence from the plenty are the tussock, struggling hard, the useless scabweed, and lichen-en-crusted stones—land just a shade better than useless, because there never is enough year’s rainfall and because it falls in the wrong months in any case. Cost Of Transformation It costs money to work this transformation scene. The farmer and the orchardists have to pay; and, at 10s an acre to replace tussock, scab weed, and lichen with crops, pastures, fruits, they seem to like it. So well has this “documentary” turned out that copies are being prepared to be sent overseas, to Britain, Canada, the United States, Australia, where New Zealand has official representation. Interest in soil conservation and improvement has become world fashion, of necessity, for the world’s

farmers realise that disaster is ahead if land is mined instead of farmed. Though Central Otago is but a small patch of the world’s wide arid acres, yet the achievement there is as wholly convincing as in those vast schemes which Britain has carried out in India and the United States in California. Water is the key to prosperity in those barren regions, and irrigation is the hand that turns the key.