Nelson Residents9 Pride In Province

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28259, 23 April 1957, Page 8

Nelson Residents 9 Pride In Province

[By a Staff Reporter of "The Press”}

Nelson is renowned for its history, climate, and industry. It is one of the oldest settled communities of New Zealand; the weather records have long established that it is a highly desirable area for those seeking sunshine; and, for those attached to the primary industries, the production records talk for themselves.

Yet Nelson residents must still be in a class of their own in advertising their province. Numerous men boost Nelson as a few did 30 years ago in the “Winterless North” beyond Auckland.

They have plenty of ready-made material to present. Nelson depends, as it has from the beginning, on its sea trade. The province may appear, tucked as it is on the north-eastern tip of the South Island, isolated from the rest of the South Island and from the whole of the North Island. But the word “isolation” does not appear in the currently used dictionaries of Nelsonians. They will have nothing of the word, although the railway to Glenhope has been wrecked, regular air‘ services direct to Christchurch have terminated, and stormy Cook Strait lies between their harbour, sheltered by nature’s Boulder Bank, and Nelson’s main trading point, the North Island. “I won’t have it that we are isolated,” Mr M. H. McGlashan, chairman of the Nelson Harbour Board, told a party of visiting Parliamentarians last week. “We are only 35 minutes from Wellington.”

No Railway Residents and visitors can reach Wellington by air in 35 minutes, provided Rongotai is open for service by the Heron aeroplanes, but all goods must go by sea to the North Island and by lorry to other points in the South Island. The railway line ran only as far south as'Glenhope, leaving a most difficult gap between there and a possible rail link at Inangahua to connect with the main railway system.

Near Richmond is an overhead bridge with no lines near it. Not even a creek flowed under it during this week’s storms. For months, an elongated memorial to the passing of the railway has stood on the railway line to the port at Auckland point. It is a rake of old waggons, on the sides A which have been painted in mammoth letters indictments of members of the Cabinet. Except for the fun it gives visitors, the writing has little purpose now; Nelson realises its one railway is a thing of the past. Perhaps the pain could be ended for its residents if the waggons were removed; but they serve one purpose—they blot out the unattractive tidal flats to those who drive from pretty Nelson city to the highly attractive Tahunanui Beach . ~d the other places which have made Nelson a playground for people from north and south. Fruit Production Besides its agricultural and pastoral activities, Nelson is the largest producer in New Zealand of fruits—pip and stone and berries, combined—and the only producer of hops and tobacco. Some of the hops are exported after the Dominion’s needs have been met. The pip fruit orchards have been established on land which at the turn of the century was regarded as almost unproductive and more suitable for forestry; near Mapua is a plantation of self-regenerated pines. Be he a farmer interested in sheep, dairying, cropping, fruit and small fruits, he finds Nelson a highly productive province. The prosperity is there—well-kept farms, neat homes and good living —for all to see who pass on the way to Nelson’s many beautiful holiday places, its golden beaches, its undisturbed bush resorts, its mountains and lakes. Nelson has always been interesting minerally. Gold gave it its early prosperity. Goal, limestone, dolomite, asbestos, marble, and clays are all mined or quarried; and it has iron ore, but insufficient to warrant the establishment of a steel industry.' And now the boosters are agitating for the development of the serpentine deposits for use in the manufacture of superphosphate. They want a fertiliser works built. A Vital Port The doorway to Nelson does not lie across the main highway or the newly-laid sealed runway of the Nelson aerodrome, which was built on sand dunes. It is the port of Nelson. Nature has been kind to Nelson in more ways than its climate, its beauty, its productivity. It gave it a harbour. A geological curiosity, the Boulder Bank, eight miles long, is a natural mole, created by the littoral drift of shingle and boulders. The bank is extending all the time; since 1860 it has build up from the lighthouse, brought out in sections from England, to the eastern end of the entrance between the bank and Haulashore Island. A six-knot ebb current keeps clear the harbour entrance, which was opened to replace the original entrance past the Fifeshire rock, and inside it the Harbour Board is working to build a port for the future. The policy is that the direct shipment of Nelson’s primary produce is of the utmost importance. Less than five years ago,' the grab hopper dredge Tasman Bay was ordered at a cost of £lOO,OOO from England; the cost of the new dredge which the Lyttelton Harbour Board is about to order will be between £600,000 and £700,000. It is widening the entrance cut and improving the inner channel and the shoal off the entrance. The suction dredge Karitea, built in England and fabricated and launched at Nelson four years ago, is sucking up sand from the harbour banks and pumping it into the reclamation area. 100-Acre Reclamation The area enclosed by the earth wall for reclamation is 100 acres. Already the filling has been equivalent to the reclamation of 35 acres. Six acres has been leased already to an oil company at a rental of £l5OO a year, and by July another acre and a half will be ready to take the tank installations of another company. The building of a breastwork wharf along the western side of the reclamation, a cargo shed, and a slipway for ships of up to 1000 tons is planned. The Apple and Pear Board is waiting for the completion of the scheme so that it can build a cool store. The people of Nelson are behind the harbour board. The board tells them by news letters and by model displays what it is doing and intends to do. They also

realise how vital is a bigger port with all facilities for the future of Nelson. Another Big Scheme Nelson’s enthusiasts do not look down from the picturesque Brittania and Victoria Heights on to the port alone. They look to their left across Golden Bay to Rabbit Island and visualise the day when a permanent breakwater will be run from near Stoke to link the island with the mainland and continue to Mapua. This work, they say, will enable 9000 acres to be reclaimed and increase the area of arable land in the Waimea county by one-third. The proposal is to build a highway on the top of the breakwater and so shorten the distance from- Nelson to Mapua. Nelson has its schemes; and the schemes have their advocates, who took full advantage to expound them to the Parliamentarians who visited Nelson to learn all about the growing, harvesting, cooling and transport of apples and pears. Anything which will make for a more prosperous Nelson has general support. The orchardists praise the watersiders for their handling of fruit, and the City Council and the Harbour Board pull together. Thdy share pride in Nelson, and do not hesitate to say so.