THE UREWERA: PAST AND PRESENT

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 118, 22 May 1939, Page 8

THE UREWERA: PAST AND PRESENT

Thirty or' forty years ago the Urewera was so much a terra incognita that trippers were invited by the Government to traverse the country west-east (Te Whaiti-Waikaremoana) or east-west on horseback, with a Maori guide. The trip was made on Maori unshod ponies, which climbed like cats up steep clay faces where rain had hollowed" the track to a slippery ditch. The ride was an affair of at least two days, with a night at a Maori village in the mountains; and it was a wonderful, if strenuous, trip through a wonderful forest of native vegetation and

bird life. Today, it can be done in a few hours by motorists who may possibly see nothing, but who will feel that they have "done the Urewei-a." The road and the deer, arriving gradually over about the same period, abolished the primitive Urewera, and introduced a new age. Begun in Mr. Seddon's time, discontinued, and completed in comparatively recent years, the road has altered Maori life and opened the way for all those abuses hated by. a one-time resident of the Urewera, the late Mr. Elsdon Best. In his pages will be found a lament over a single cigarette package found lying on the old-time track; today there must be hundreds of them, and possibly not a few of the live cigarette butts which promote summer conflagrations. In stationing a Government officer in the Urewera to attend to deer and "other matters," the Department of Internal Affairs is taking a forward step if the officer rises to his opportunities. It is a pity that Elsdon Best's published records of his Urewera work are not more widely read.