FIFTY YEARS AGO

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 174, 16 March 1932, Page 6

FIFTY YEARS AGO

ROTORUA SPA WAS TOWN CONSIDERED MERE SUBURB OF AUCKLAND. WELLINGTON PAPER'S PROTEST. In an editorial discussing the sale of sections at Rotorua and enlarging upon the value of the resort, "The Wellington Evening Post" of fifty years ago remarks: "There is a great future before Rotorua, and it has the potentiality of becoming a mine' of wealth to New Zealand, and more lucrative than a goldfield. The report of the first sale of leases in the Government township shows that the public are beginning to awake to the valuable colonial property they posse&s in these Thermal Springs. We find sections going at twice and thrice the upset price after eager competi-^ tion. We may expect to see building promptly commenced and vigorously pushed on until the town becomes a colleetion of pleasant residences where visitors may sojourn agreeably, benefiting their health and at the same time enjoying the exquisite scenery. Not Auckland Suburb. But it will require to be administered as a colonial property, a'nd not as a mere appendage of Auckland. A good deal of dissatisfaction has been expressed that no opportunities were given for persons to purchase 'Rotorua lands anywhere but in Auckland. The official handbook issued by the Government has come in for much hostile criticism, not only on account of the curiously incompetent manner of its compilations, but sti'll more in regard to its obvious intention to represent Rotorua as a sort of suburb of Auckland. Wellington's Claims. The only route indicated is that via Auckland, the shorter, easier and better approaches by Napier and Tauranga being deliberately ignored. We are not at all prepared to admit the spee-es of suzerainty sought to be established on behalf of Auckland over the Rotorua Spa, but we are prepared in due time to set up the claim of Wellington to be the natural port of Rotorua. It will be seen, on eonsulting any good map of the North Island, that when the Wellington-Manawatu railway is constructed to Palmerston, there is an obvious line, marked as it were by Nature, on to Taupo and then diverging to Rotorua on the one hand, and Cambridge on the other. This will undoubtedly one day be the regular route from outside colonies and other countries to the great Sanatorium of the Southern Seas, and it is just as well that the people of Wellington should keep the fact in view as another inducement towards the speedy construction of the WellingtonManawatu railway."