OLD AKATARAWA

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 30, 28 September 1931, Page 5

OLD AKATARAWA

FIRST SETTLER AVIAN PARADISE IN 1884,, August as Bird Month was celebrated not only in the press but by broadoasting, and one of tbe broadcasts has brougbt to light the first settler in tbe Akatar.awa Valley. Enough is left of the nativ.e glory Of the tbreequarters- spoiled Akatarawa to belp one to imagine its pristine beauty. ^ And now an eye-witness is to hand, in the person of Mr A. H. Gibson, of Ngaio, who claims to have been the first settler in the Akatarawa. That' was in 1884. A previous passing tiahitation by someone was indicated by one or two whares, but they were uninhabited in 1884. Mr Gibson had a tworoomed whare on section 389, of which 50 acres was clearecT and grassed. Flght Worth Fighting. After listening-in to a broadcast on Birth Month by the hon. seeretary of the New Zealand Native Bird Protection Society, Captain E. V. Sanderson.

Mr Gibson wrote to him saymg mai the New Zealand bush and birds _ were doomed owing to imported animals, vermin, and birds. Captain Sanderson wrote in reply that the New Zealand Native Bird Society's progress encouraged it to persevere in its "well nigh impossible task" and seek tbe aid of all New Zealanders. Mr GibI son wrote again agreeing that the society's was "a worthy cause even if liopeless." Then he proceeded to describe the bush and birds of the Akatarawa in 1884, quoting from an autobiography: I "I was the only settler living in tbe ctiipv at. that, time. It was a lonely val-

ley right in tbe heart of the bush, but beautiful as only New Zealand s un- i spoiled beauty is. Mi'ne was a tworoomed whare on section 389^. I slept in a hammock slung to the wall plates. Have you ever slept alone in the bush miles from anyone? If not then you don't know how our far off ancestors lived long before towns were invented. The sighing of the breeze among the

plne tops, the distant murmur oi uie river, the call of the weka or the morepork, and then when the winter gales blow, afar off the crash of some mighty monarch of the forest as he falls to earth, the earth from which he sprang hundreds of years ago. A Forest Dawn. "Apd tlien the coming of_ the dawn. V note from a distant tui on some branch in the forest quiekly answered liy another close by. A lcaka's shriL cry from the big rata on the ^ opposite hill. Then a whole chorus m which t-uis, kakas, and hell-hirds join, mingled with the first morning hreath oi the breeze from up the river. And now a shaft of sunshine strilces over | the hall to the east and lights on the tasselled tops of the rimu where already pigeons are wheeling, their wlhite and, Ibronze hreasts gleampg against the blue "sky. In the elhow of the river just where the water glides under an overhanging tree fern, a blue mountain duck with her hrood of young is paddling up stream. And now the huias call from over the. river where the rangiora is in full bloom, and the old hinau tree rears its worm-

eaten boughs on higtt. 5 me parakeets are chattering . in the honeysuckle tree, whose pink hlossoms hold that nectar they so love, _ and on the very top of the dead pine in the clearing perches, a bush hawk. The kakas in a body of some 20 or 30, screaming loudly, wheel round the crimson rata, in whose wide spreading houghs they sleep every night, preparatory to flying far over the husli ranges to other feeding grounds. A warm scented hreath from the heart of the bush steals on the ambient air. Eay has begun in the Akatarawa Valley. Whispering Night. j Those elbows of the river where the water glides under an overhanging tree-fern are still to be found (although it is true that over long distances the river has been de-ponded | and shoaled up, results of deforestation and erosion) and it is also a fact that in remote upper waters, or in _tnbutary waters, the hlue mountain ducli still swims. But the kakas are rare, parrakeets rarer, and the huiar non est. Yet anyone who has eeled at

night on bush streams in tne nuii basin will recognise the validity of the following pen-picture, though the writer was not previously aware of the appetite of eels for mosquitoes. "Often I would go eeling up the river with a bob made of interlaced worms dug from the garden. It is dark and muddy on the _ river bed. Great trees loom up on either bank, dark and mysterious. All sorts of noises come from the depths of the bush. Think of the ages and ages these hills have been here with their forests, hiding strange siglits and sounds long ere man ever profaned this lovely land ! All round in the I river you hear the 'chug, chug, of the eels snapping at the mosquitoes now everywhere in evidence. And now a dim light constantly growing steals round you, and over against the ratas on the distant 'skyline the rising' moon is outlined like a silver glohe, and round the dead trees in the clearing is heard the chattering of the bats as they dart to and fro in pursuit of insects. Close hy a weka 'sounds his eerie, mournful note, while a morepork perched on an overhanging bough, screams shrilling. A puff of the light breeze comes iaden with an earthlv smell from the bush depths

where rottirio logs liG, the rein8.ins oi trees that fell perhaps many years ago, and are" now only a shell covered with creepers and moss. How it brings to me dim, ancestral memories that no residence in crowded feted cities can ever wholly stifle." j Could Folly Farther Go?

It may be added that withiu the last three years the small native bat has J been seen at evening in the Akatarawa Valley. j Mr Gibson further writes : "I trust you will not think in quoting so fully I am actuated by any other desire than to give you some idea of the impression the bush and the birds have imprinted on my memory. I may say 1 am just on 70 years of age; but I am thankful I shall not live to see this country when 'progress' (so-called) shall have wreaked its worst. In Taranaki I have seen where in 1878 were beautiful stratches of forest — with in between clearings with grass knee deep, and sparkling streams — reduced to a waste covered with hlackberry brambles ; not a stick of timber or a native tree anywhere, the streams a swamp, and the only birds the imported sparrow of the blackbirdl