PUNCH ON NEW ZEALAND

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVII, Issue 4922, 6 January 1926, Page 4

PUNCH ON NEW ZEALAND

“ EVERY VIRTUE AND CHARM.” VIEWS ON ROTORUA. Punch went a-roving with the Empire Press delegates in the person of Mr A. P. Herbert, and in his latest article to reach the Dominion, mainly about Rotorua, he pays a fine tribute to this country. MORE LOYAL THAN CROWN. “New Zealand is a darling,” he writes. “She is, more English than the -English, more Loyal than the Crown ; she is as small as Great Britain and as hospitable as the United States ; she has a.population of a million odd, and she produces more per head (including newspapers) than any country in the world ; 98 per cent, of her is pure British stock, which- is more than can be said, of Britain ; and there can be no other place where the English tongue is by every class so purely spoken and with so little accent, dialect, or twang. She is beautiful and prosperous. aiTd democratic and conservative; she has every virtue and every charm.” And then, in obedience to the traditional call of gentle satire, the writer proceeds with “But why, I wonder, in a country so full of pleasant things, arc they so proud of Rotorua

“Every New Zealander says at once, ‘You are going to Rotorua, of course ?’ as one might say ‘You’ll go to Westminster Abbey ?’ And, knowing no better, we said we would. Rotorua is a health resort, the centre of a regiSn of thermal activity. There you ,have baths in a grand Government park, sulphur baths, and,mud baths, Rachel baths and Duchess baths, and all these are good for you. As you alight from the train a. great whiff of sulphur greets you and remains with you until you depart. The first bath I took for my health gave be a cold ; the second g.ave me a bo.il; and after the third the cold tunned to a chill. Once away from the spa,l threw off the chill, but the boil (and I have had many) has beaten all records for perseverance and malignance, and, 10, it was like hell.’ SMELLS THE SMELLS. ( “The Rotorua is advertised not only as a spa, but as a spectacle. They took us, out to Whakarewarew.a, where the Arawa Maoris dwell, to see the sights and smell the smells. They showed us the geyser valley, and ‘Look!’ they said proudly, and we looked ; and io, it was like hell. Steam issued from the earth in all directions ; bes.ide the path were bubbling pools of water, deep, blue, bottomless, and boiling; hot sulphur oozed among th.e bushes ; ste,am vents, mud cones, blow-holes, fumaroles, sulphur wells, and I know not ivhat were everywhere at work. The whole valley, and indeed the whole country, has been built over a. hot bath.

“We saw Pohutu make a ‘shoot’ which was not an inch less thaii sixty feet. Pohutu spouts by sp.asms and capriciously. He did not play for the Prince of Wales, neither did hei spout for the Admiral of the American fleet a day or two before us, but We had not been in the valley twenty minutes before up he went, a beautiful Prince of Wales’ feathers hot-water fountain; and very fine ha was.

“Our Maori guides (all ladies, and. very charming) remarked that our mission was exceptionally favoured by fortune; and so we thought till someone whispered that they ale able at will to provoke .the marvellous natural forces of Pohutu to artificial activity by the application of common yellow soap: My own guide, Mihi, hotly denied the charge ; other geysers, it might be, were sometimes, so abused, but Pohutu was wholly unsusceptible to soap. And when I attempted a gentle cross-examination the simple Maori maid replied, ‘Oh, gosh, Punch ■ —cut the comedy out!’ So let us leave it at that “ I SHOULD KEEP IT DARK.” “Mihi certainly was perfectly sweet, and it is the pleasant custom for a guide (or two) to walk arm in arm with the visitor, les,t he fall into a bottomless cauldron and be boiled. Nevertheless I decline to rave .about the disorderly manifestations of nature which constitute a ‘thermal region,’ indeed, were I New Zealand 1 should keep it dark. It is as though one took a visitor into one’s bathroom, showed him the taps running and the bath leaking, and s,aid, ‘The drain don’t work, and at any moment the pipes may explode. Isn’t, it capital?’

“The Maoris dwell in the middle of this mess. And as lo|hg as the village does not explode it is without' doubt an aid to village life. It w.wrms the house, makes cooking simple and washing cheap. Mr Honeybubble, the foil from whom “A.P.H.” will never part, makes, his entry to represent the character who is prepared to take a good deal of thermal activity for granted so that he may get out of the rain and brood upon his boil. “For my part,” remarks the satirist, “T cared very little what plight be .the explanation" of these things. There is a very simple one, and that is Biblical. Well, what is one to think, I had seen with my own eyes, in the churchyard at Ohinemutu, a small but constant jet of sulphurous stea.m emerging from the grave pf a solicitor.

“Just now, however, I was thinking of my boil. And when at the far side of the dreadful region Mr Honeybubble halted, dripping but delighted, and proposed to return by the same route, Ho.neybubble,’ I said, ‘I have myself seen quite enough of the excesses of nature and the disorderly eruptions of the foul powers. I shall now return to the hotel; and anyone Who is not so satisfied is free to look at. my boil, which is not less remarkable and quite as unpleasant. POM’S ANCESTRY. “A Labour member rose and told the Government quite frankly that, so far as they had a policy, it was a policy of window dressing. They never turned a hair. Only, on the front bench (Government) sat a Maori Minister, the one live figure in the waste of words. Crouching low behind his desk, he fixed his lively belligerent eyes on the speaker’s and

peered across the barrier, like one of his warrior ancestors about to spring ; and from time to time he flung at the.orator a low, polemical, exultant laugh most disconcerting, I imagine, to iiis enemy. This gentleman, whose family I met, had a grandfather who ate the first Presbyterian misionary to arrive in New' Zealand, and modestly attributes his political success, I am told, to his Scottish ancestry. Now, as we cross the Tasman Sea to Sydney, we hear by wireless that the same Maori Minister has provoked a storm of protest by referring to the leader of the Opposition as ‘Snivelling George.’ I am afraid they have little to learn here from the mother of Parliaments.”. In these excerpts can be found the spirit of what A.P.'H. saw in New Zealand.