WAIRARAPA HANDICAPS

Evening Post, Issue 126, 29 May 1936, Page 8

WAIRARAPA HANDICAPS

In 1840, when the Wakcfield colonists came to Lamblon harbour, after a tentative slay at Petone, it must have been evident at an early stage that the productive future of the Wellington settlement was to be found beyond the rampart of hills. The famiable land of the Hutt. Valley—contested by the Natives up to 1846—was obviously too limited in area to support a large community, and already by 1844 the pioneers were driving sheep to the spacious South Wairarapa plains. It is noteworthy that they drove them from Lower Hutt via Wainui-o-mata and the Mukamuka rocks to Lake Wairarapa; so the coastal route was the first route to the Wairarapa, yet to this day it has never been roaded, except as far as Orongorongo. The coastal route was quitted not because of the earthquakes of 1848 and 1855 —which, by coast-lifling, seem to have improved the passage between the sea and Mukamuka—but because in the fifties and early sixties the Rimutaka route took shape first as a bullock track and later as a dray road. Then, when the railway era came, both the Wairarapa plains and the Manawatu plains had to be reached by tunnelling; but whereas a private company (the Manawatu Railway Company) made a workable job of the tunnels between Wellington and Tawa Flat and between Tawa Flat and Paekakariki, the Government made an awkward, irritating, and costly job of the Rimutaka grades and tunnels. Farm statistics from the eighties to dale show how the Manawatu has raced away from the Wairarapa. Being on the Main Trunk route, the Manawatu has now secured a deviation (Tawa Flat) and an electrification, vastly improving on the private company's good pioneer work. But the Wairarapa still suffers from the Rimutaka railway bungle of the seventies and eighties. Against this historical background, and in tlfe light of the still incomplete transport revolution, the Wairarapa deputation's request to the Government must be considered. Besides the old coastal route, and the Wairongomai route advocated by the late Mr. Coleman Phillips, there are various route proposals affecting the Rimutaka itself. Some years ago the Public Works Department reported on a long tunnel from Mungaroa to near Featherston. This tunnel would still leave a gradient between Upper Hutt and Mungaroa, and the report proposed also an improvement of that gradient. To this the late Mr. Fulton, former engineer of the Manawatu Railway Company, pioneer of .the Manawalu route, proposed an amendment. Why not, he asked, cut out all grades by tunnelling direct from Upper Hutt to the Wairarapa?- If the Government today is inclined to consider a long railway tunnel at all, it seems to be worth while estimating the extra cost involved by Mr. Fulton's proposal, and whether the extra cost is offset by the grade improvement. But, in view of the transport evolution, it is to be doubted very much whether a decision to drive a long railway tunnel is justified on purely economic grounds. The strength of the Wairarapa deputation's case seems to be' this—that if an era of railway construction for developmental and employment-giving purposes is beginning, then this oldstanding Wairarapa project should be weighed up along with the others. From Wellington the first district to be opened up was Wairarapa. Dairying quickly put Manawatu ahead of it. Transport has also counted. What is the best transport help the Government can give? Freight counts in this matter as well as fares.