A BUSH VALLEY FIFTY YEARS AGO

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21416, 7 March 1935, Page 9

A BUSH VALLEY FIFTY YEARS AGO

TO TUB EDITOR OF TUB I'IIESS. Sir,—As Mr Blow, of the New Zealand Forest and Native Birds' Protection Society has been giving us lately, by radio, such fine addresses on the vital parts our native trees and birds play in protecting the land we depend upon from destruction, I have ventured to supplement his good work with my own experiences of over 50 years in this direction. With your leave I will give as an illustration of what the bush and native birds were like in past days, my life in the Akatarawa Valley, a valley running from Upper Hutt through the ranges to the West Coast, in the year 1881. In those days, after passing the sawmill, about halfway to my bush section, there was only a pack-horse track beyond, where slips often occurred and fallen trees blocked the way. I was the only settler then living" in the valley. True, there were one or two whares besides mine in places, but they were occupied only fcr a week or two in the bush-felling period. It was a lonely valley, right in the heart of the brsh, but lovely as only New Zealand's unspoiled beauty is. Mine was a two-roomed whare on section '389, which contained 200 acres, of which perhaps 50 were cleared and in grass. I slept in a hammock slung to the wall-plates. No one who has never slept alone in the bush, miles from everyone, can realise how our far-off ancestors lived in past ages, long ere towns were invented. The sighing of the breeze among the pine-tops, the distant murmur of the river, the call of the weka or the morepork, and then, when the winter gales blow, a far-oil crash ot some mighty monarch ol" the forest as he falls to the earth from which he sprang, hundreds of years before. And then the coming of the dawn. A note from some distant tui on some branch in the forest, quickly answered by another close by. A kaka's shrill cry from the big rata on the opposite hill. Then a whole chorus, in which tuis, bell-birds, and kakas join, mingled with the first morning breath of the breeze from up the river. And now shaft of sunlight strikes over the hill to the east and lights on the tasselled tops of the rimu, where already pigeons are wheeling, their white and bronze breasts gleaming against the blue sky. In the elbow of the river, just where the water glides beneath an overhanging tree-fern, a blue mountain duck with her young brood around her is paddling up-stream. And now the huias call from over the river, where the rangiora is in bloom and the old hinau tree rears its worm-eaten boughs on high. Some parrakcets are chattering in the honeysuckle tree, where pink blossoms hold the nectar they so love, and on the very top of the dead pine in the clearing perches a bush hawk. The kakas, in a body of some 20 or .'lO. screaming loudly, wheel round the rata with its crimson blooms, in whose wide-spreading boughs they sleep every night before they fly far over the bush-covered ranges to their favourite feeding grounds. A warmscented breath from the heart ol thr bush steals on the ambient air. Day has begun in the Akatarawa Vallev. Sometimes I would go alone eeling ill) the river at night time with a "bob" made of interlaced worms from the garden. It is dark and muggy on the river-bed. Great trees loom up on either bank, strange and mysterious. All sorts of noises come from the depths of the bush. Think of the countless ages these hills have been here with the forest, hiding strange sights and sounds long ere man profaned this lovely land! All around in the river one hears the "chug! chug!" of the eels snapping at the mosquitoes now everywhere in evidence. And now a dim light, ever growing stronger, steals around, and over against, the ratas on the distant skyline. the rising moon is outlined like a silver globe, and round the dead trees in the clearing is heard the cluttering of the little native bats as they dart to and fro in pursuit of insects, while close by a weka sounds his mournful note, and a morepork perched on an overhanging bough .screams shrilly. A puff of the night breeze comes laden from the depths of the bush, where rotting logs lie, the remains of trees that fell perhaps scores of years ago, and are now mere shells covered with moss and creepers! How it seems to revive in one dim ancestral memories, that no residence in crowded feted cities can ever wholly efface ! Though from a monetary aspect my residence up the Akatarawa was not a success, I shall never forget the months I lived there. Those long walks alone in those bright summer days, with the unspoiled bush around, lovely as only the New Zealand forest can be, with tuis, huias, kakas, parrakeets. fantails, pio-pios, wekas, and kingfishers, not one or two here and there as in these days, but in countless numbers, with their beautiful plumage and sweet songs, can never be forgotten! In one tawa tree alone, on one occasion, I counted -30 pigeons, with others on trees nearby, busily engaged devouring the damsonlike "berries. One small flat by the river-bed had a number of small fuchsia bushes thereon with ripe fruit, and the trees seemed alive with parrakeets picking away from branch to branch. In a wide spreading rata on a hill near my whare a number of kakas roosted at night, and each morning at dawn I would be awakened by their harsh cries, and later some 30 or 40 at the least would fly off together to their feeding grounds, screaming shrilly. About mid-October the huias put in an appearance, and you could hear their plaintive calls everywhere. They always flew about in pairs, the male bird with his straight powerful bill searching a decayed trunk of a tree for the huhu grub, and stripping the bark and rotten wood from the hole where it was, while the female, waiting nearby, would then insert her curved bill in the cavity and pull out the coveted morsel. In mid-summer the mountain or blue duck would appear in the river. I often used to wonder whence they came, as before this they were never seen. The most I ever saw swimming together was eight. Like the pigeons and the huias, and for that matter nearly all the native birds, they seemed quite fearless of man, proving to me the ages they had been unmolested by their natural enemy. The valley is now open from end to end with a good motor road, from the entrance off the Hutt Valley over the saddle to Waikanae. In the year 1933 I travelled over the route in a car with some friends. But what a difference! Until reaching halfway the bush had vanished, and its place had been taken by bare rugged rocks with slips of loose stones, with here and there patches of coarse grass rapidly

becoming smothered in tawhine, manuka, or bidi-bidis, etc. Amongst this foliage a few sheep were browsing, their woolly covering consisting mainly of a tuft on the rump and a little around the shoulders! Gone were all the lovely birds, the sole representative of the bird family being an Australian magpie! And for this the beautiful forest with its exquisite feathered songsters had been sacrificed! Truly is it written that "Man marks the earth with ruin!"— Yours, etc., A. H. GIBSON. Ngaio, Wellington, March 3, 1935.