THE PUMICE KING OF ONGABOTO.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 19180, 10 December 1927, Page 13

THE PUMICE KING OF ONGABOTO.

(WRITTEN FOB THt TRBSS.)

(By E A. Anson.)

Beyond lonely Puhouteroa, Waikato cuts her bed through pure white pumice. Banks fringed with fragile preen of dainty willows, wild rugged hewn gorges, blue backwaters, white-foamed rapids, give way to a broad sombro valley full of ti-trco and flax. On either side two thousand foot hills hem in the low-lying valley. On a naturil terrace overlooking Wnikato's fretful water 1 met tho Pumice. King beside his bungalow. Short, thick-sot. with blue eyes that twinkled, he radiated a peculiar sort of quiet humour and determination. His face was the face of a man who has lived his life in vast open spacesinquisitive, searehing,gentle. A fatalist at heart— "God knows," his favourite expression—by choice a bachelor. Thirty miles from anywhere this man arid fhe little community on his station had been quietly turning pumice into sheep, butter—into . . . . well, pretty nearly everything except wire for the fences.

No one before him had dared to fight these lonely half-forgotten pumice lands. Nobody "had dared to conquer these vast wildernesses of never-ending ti-trce.

I looked around me as we walked towards a comfortable verandah. For miles and miles and miles these pumice, lands lay virgin, like a highly-magnified picture of the moon, waiting to be called from sleep by some life-giving kiss, waiting a pioneer brave enough to light the pumice—some pumice king. Wild brumboes roamed the open fernclad hills, wild pigs rooted in tho bush and tuis called where men had rarely been. Here and there a cherry tree, or perchance an apricot a smother of white. Here a hole that hold potatoes for a Maori Pa long since disused. All was very wild and virgin. "Yes," said the Pumice King, "this land was once all forest, till m years gone by the molten lava swallowed everything. Why, we often come across buried trees—hiilf coal, half burnt, so swiftly were they overcome that thoy had no timo to burn.'' Ho jerked himself up and looked across: "Is that sheep this side of tho hay paddock or the other?'' All 1 could sec was a small white dot nbout a mile away, lost in the vague perspective of distance. He whistled his dog, in a minute or two the errant sheep was taking unpretnediated exercise out of a paradise of grass. "I've been fighting pumice nearly all my life. There's everything in this pumice soil for growth, but its locked up, one has to learn how to unlock it— I've been learning ever since I came." I looked around. Green paddocks stretched right up to where the first thin lino of trees proclaimed the bush. Little creeks ran tinkling from the mountain-sides—sheep called to sheep and cows, contented, grazed on luscious grasses. "Every year the land improves; when I came here first there was nothing but ton foot ti-trce —everywhere ti-tree, ti-tree, and fern. Roughly, it takes two or three years to break in a paddock and make it.fit to carry shoep. We're breaking in a paddock now —care to see it?" On our way wo met some Maoris from the local Pa. A thing on wheels that was once n car stopped shuddoringly beside us. Would the boss let them have a sheep—dead and skinned —and some flour from his store?

In well under ten minutes ho had caught and skinned a "killer." Killing sheep to him was reduced to a fine art. A few dexterous slashes with a knife, a pull here, a .pull there, and the skin slipped off just as if he was merely relieving the animal of an overcoat on a hot day. . '; Away on the second ridge a pali of pumice dust revealed a team of striving, straining horses. From out tho dust faint oaths oozed as Geoff the ploughman urged his wild steeds to super efforts. Wo walked across this half-tamed land where men fought virgin Nature. Soft, yielding pumice crunched like sand beneath our feet — Sahnran, dry, choking. No\y and then little birds sprung up from beneath our feet, but all was dust and dry. Day after day, straining, sweating horses had been at work for months—tearing up the ti-trec with huge ploughs, discing, harrowing, up and down, across and sideways, till all was fit for sowing. 'Super," said the Pumice 1 King, and he went on .to mention a veritablo chemical works of other ingredients; "then we sow turnip seed and clover. After that the paddock goes down in grass." He told me all aoout legumes and nitrogen until my brain reeled with thoughts of humus, bacteria, and manures; 'Legumes, vou see, put nitrogen into the soil—that's what this pumice country wants, in its natural rt4te the plants can't make use of all *>it there is in it."

So the fight goes on—sheer brutal ploughing—super chemicals—turnipsgrass, and then sheep. No town within thirty miles—just a little self-contain-ed community with only one girl within twenty miles or more." For food mutton, everlaßthijr mutton, water from a nearby creek—day after clay fighting 'tho cruel pumice—forcing it to grow grass—making day by day, vear by vear a little hit more of New Zealand fertile where all before was virgin ruggedness.