OLD OHINEMURI.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVII, Issue 4969, 3 May 1926, Page 3

OLD OHINEMURI.

TALES OF EARLY DAYS. WOMAN'S POINT OF VIEW. (Mona Tracy, in the Christchurch. Sun.) 1 never catch the scent of rain-wet bria,r roses, nor see a red road winding away to the hills, but I am back again in the town of Paeroa and living my own small part in the old Ohinemuri days. Those were the days: when mines like the Martha, the Waihi, and the Talisman were names to conjure with, when the grelat batteries at, Waikino worked double shift and the slow waggons; brought down to Paeroa, —the railway had not been carried through to Waihi —the precious output of the mines. But they were days of simpler things, too; of childhood, Awakening to the interest and beauty of the world, of playtime dedicated to the thousand delights; of bush and river and range. That is why a red road andl the scent of briar roses are inextricably mingled in my memory with an old Ohinemuri town.

1 should like to know a thousand things about the Paeroa of to-day. Do the roads still wander over the landscape with fascinating irregularity, and are they still hedgeid with hawthorn, in spring a miracle of whitey blossom ? Does the fragrant pink manuka s.till grow on Primrose Hill, and are there still wild strawbeiries to be gathered along the little survey paths ? Do the children still play at bushranging ? When the river spills a flood of yellow water over the swamp" Icinds do the boys still g° a-pirating, with tin-lined packing, cases for their, pirate ships ? Do they stll wash gold from the little creeks that tinkle down from the bush on the high ranges ? Almost I fear the answer ; but even if the Paeroa of to-day still held all these simple delights it could never contain the romance .that, made it unique 30 years ago. I c’annot but think tha,t the old road tha;t ran through the ranges from Paeroa to Waihi must have been at that time the most interesting highway in New Zealand. Although it was, crossed by all of a dozen st,reams, brawling their .way to the Ohinemuri River, I, dp not seem to remember a . single bridge, ;• but I;do remember great,-frowning cliffs' a.nd a gorge of savage beauty, with the river, yellowed by cyanide tailings, foaming a hundred feet, below a road all too narrow for the pageant that moved along' it from dawn until dark. ' .

And what a pageant that was. I The waggons with their slow, plodding teams that dre.w in, .without bidding, before each favourite caravanserai; the coaches, clattering perilously down from Waitekauri to Mackaytown ; the gigs, the heavy darts. They will a.ll have gone, now. Nor will there ever, go up to Waihi thie same motly stream of humanity tli.at makes the road so vivid in my I can see the travellers yet—the miners, the battery-hands, the men hoping to buy mines, the men Wishing they hadn’t, the piospectors,, the sharebrokea-s, the. auctioneers, the. confidence men, the pedlars, the drifters;. A kaleidoscopic pageant of people, all, beckoned to Waihi by a finger dipped in gold. There were women,, too. \ < - Somehow they did. not. carry in their faces the eager look that one saw in those of the men. Qne beheld them, standing at the doors: of the tiny housas: ailong the road; they came out to look at the coaches. There might be gold in the . hills' but ther.e\was life on the road- Though there was 'constant, work for your man .at the batteries •or the- mines, you' - never knew when the dry cyanide would settle on his Jungs. If your man had money to-day, the ' chances: were be without a penny to-morrow. I do not think the. women of old Ohinemuri found life a thing of easy security. . .

They sang sg,d little songs, too ; all the Ohinemuri songs I remember were sad. And if there wlas sometimes. a great deal, of pathos about them, the spirit was there.

There in Waihi with its pride and its millions, Men’s lives 1 a,re squandered while earning !a crus,t; Leaving homes desolate, the graye of some loved one Ruthlessly slain by the battery dust. ’

I I heard that particular ditty sung by a coach-lo:ad of women returning from an excursion to Thames. They had all their finery on; they were well pleased with the day’s outing; but their eyes, like' their song, were sad. .

So, even htough you were, to tell me that they have not cut the manuka from Primrose Hill to set that most delectable of playgrounds down in English grasses, and even though I could be assured that the swamp lands on which I went a-pirating have not been drained to make a model suburb, I do not think your Paeroa; could even' -.be quite life mine. To me it was the beginning of romance and beauty “land adventure; and I think it was the eager stream of people on the old Paerc-a-Waihi road that first showed me the vanity bf fol.lowing a finger dipped in gold.