Notes by the Way

Mt Benger Mail, 26 October 1938, Page 2

Notes by the Way

East Meets West at Kerikeri. Posted on the wall of a local Office an old show schedule with “Robert M. McNamara, oxen conductor” from Edievale to Roxburgh—grand old days —there are places in New Zealand where the old practices linger, Kaeo, mentioned last week has still a team or two of bullocks, hauling logs, uprooting willows, very useful to those who know how —like the single rein of the French and Belgian peasant; let anyone else take hold and the old horse turns round, gives you the once over and does what it jolly well likes. Horse-sense. 9 * « Labour Newspapers. The statement by the Prime Minister last week that Labour Party newspapers would be started in the four centres leaves us serene and smiling still. Journalists will remember the ray of expectancy that spread through their ranks in depression days when it was announced that the Party was sponsoring a newspaper enterprise in Christchurch, and that after Mr E. C. Huie bad sat in conference for long enough it failed to materialise. There is more to a city daily’s work than the mere collection and dissemination of news. The Auckland Sun survived three years, the Gisborne Times two and a half years, the Christchurch Sun and the Wellington Times somewhat more generous periods, and an addition to Nelson journalistic enterprise came to naught. Journalists are alleged to love politics no more than a lolly-shop girl loves sweets but the business side of a city daily simply has to face cold nonpolitical matters of £. s. d. New Zealand’s early history is strewn liberally with the records of publications which averaged about six months life. • * • • A Land of Dreams. From Otiria Junction in the Northland the road leads up TurnTable Hill and on 20 miles to the fertile lands of Kerikeri, on one of the many arms of the Bay of Islands. This is the home of many a fond ideal, of many a high hope. It is an attempt to bring the East to the Northland, not of Chinese, but of those who being English, have lived so long in Eastern towns that they wished to build again in the spirit of those lands they knew so well. Here is a definite settlement of Englishmen and women from; the east. Men who would be aghast at other un-conventions have walked blasely barefoot in the street of nearby Kaikohe, clad in shorts and stubble. Others in a majority, have retained all their charm and courtesy in this new settlement.^ Here men have made the mistake of paying up to and over a hundred pounds an acre for this land won from the wilderness. It was imadness( Kerikeri growls oranges and lemons and passion fruit. It is warm, rich and fertile but the problem has been the marketing of produce. When passion fruit sell at l|d per lb—an absurd price, and disease may attack the vines, there is scant return to growers. A co-operative citrus factory has only recently