TRAVELLING THE TAUPO ROAD FORTY YEARS AGO

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 72, 17 December 1937, Page 27 (Supplement)

TRAVELLING THE TAUPO ROAD FORTY YEARS AGO

IHE THRILLS OF THE COACHING DAYS

A Journey that Now Takes Four Hours Occupied Two Days in 1897 MUD TO THE HORSES' GIRTHS IN WINTER "Let's slip through to Taupo for the week-end," suggests the Hawke's Bay motorist to his tvife. Saturday morning dawns bright and fine, they have a leisurely breakfast, leave Napier straigh, afterwards, and arrive in Taupo for lunch. So much for 1937 . What of the same journey in 1897, or a few years before that?

The scene is the box seat of a swaying eoaeh. The driver, elenehing- a pipe in his teeth and the reins of a straining team in his hands," focusses a brooding eye on the long winding clay ascent ahead. The garrulons English tourist at his side, bowler-hatted and bewhiskered in the fashion of the time, is interested in the many nps and downs of one of the finest scenic rontes he has ever travelled in his wanderings over a wide, wide world. "Drivah!" bleats the E.T. "Drivah, I think it wonld be most fraightfullay interesting to cbunt the numbah of hills on this piece **f road." • "Mabbe/'.comes .the laconic reply. ■ , "Has it ever occurrecL to you to do that, 'drivah ? " "Yessir. Ithas.". .. . "And have ybn.coimted them?" "Yessir. Thave." "And how mahy are there, drivah?" ''Only. one, sir." . . - , ' And that litilo story,. even to-day, suins up the Taupo road — a piece of road the mos't nervous traVeller will love, and love even though its precipitous grandeur makes him fear' it: • In the oid. coaching days, to-day 's four-arid-arhalf-hour jaunt was two days ' hard gping, mud to the girths quite of ten in the winter, with snow in the high places, and most horribly bumpy in the. summer. The earliest route went for six miles up the Esk river,

and in those six miles there were no fewer than 42 open and often dangerous watercourses to be4forded. Passing Eskdale, there was a long, clayey uphill pull to Te Pohue, where the horses were changed, 1 and the passengers had

lunch. They began the climb up to the Titiokura Saddel, 2,250 feet above sea. level, iollowed by the steep, winding descent to the Mohaka river. Here, if the team had been at all lively, the driver would climb down from his perch to bathe his aching hands in the cool water before urging his team up the Turangakuma -hill, passing the settlement of Te Haroto on the way. Not more than ten miles from the Mohaka bridge (which uscd to be five or six chains further upstream than it is at preseut) tliecoachman would stop his horses on the summit, 2,625 feet above sea-level and 1,625 feet above the river bed, for a "breather." The passengers would climb do'wn to stretch their limbs, and people who had toured the world, walking a few paces from the roadside, would gaze spellbound over miles of what they voted to be the fmest mountain scenery they had seen anywhere, not excluding Switzerland. That view is still to be had, and it is something no tra\ eller should miss. Then the dizzy five-mile descent to Tarawera Hotel, which marked the end of a long day's drive. The shadows would be lengthening now. The passengers' conversations would have become desultory. The lady in the left-hand corner might norl

and doze a litle (if she should happen not to be at all nervous). The opulent-looking gentleman on the right would draw thoughtfully at his cigar till the acrid smell of burning hair warned him of imminent danger to his well-tended moustache, that pride and joy of the lads of the gay nineties. But for all their weariness, for all the jolting, swaying motion of the creaking conch, 'the travellers of those days had perhaps better opportunities to enjoy the wonders of nature as they passed them by than we of this age of speed have as we rush on with one thought uppermost--to go places, and get there soon. ... Six o'clock of an evening. Tarawera, witli a good dinner and a comfortable bed awaiting the travellers who had left Napier at a chilly 6.30 a.m. At half-past seven next morning, fresh horses would stand harnessed in the hotel yard. Refreshed with a good night's sleep and a three-eourse breakfast, the passengers would talk brightly, perhaps joking a little with the driver as they.took the uphill road past the Ohinekaka native village towards Rangitaiki. A stop was always made between Tarawera and Rangitaiki, to allow the party to walk to the Runanga (more eommonly known now a% W aipunga Falls, where twin cascades joined to form an entrancing picture of forest beauty. * The journey would be broken again at Rangitaiki for lunch, and the coach would roll merrily across the pumice road for the plains and down into, Taupo at about 4.30 p.m.