PAROCHIALISM

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 271, 11 July 1932, Page 6

PAROCHIALISM

COMMUNITY JEALOUSIES IN EARLY N.Z. HISTORY. ROTARY CLUB ADDRESS. Addressing members of the Wellington Rotary Club on a phase of the early history of New Zealand, the Rev. W. Bramwell Scott scored his biggest laugh when he referred to the jealousy and parochialism of the settl'ers of the '40's. This state of mind, he said, was induced by their enforced isolation, as means of communication were rough, rare, costly and very uncomfortable. "The various communities knew little of each other save Wellington and Nelson," said Mr. Scott. "Auckland pitied the poor wretches who had doomed themselves to the frost, mist, rain and snow of Otago. Otago pitied the Aucklanders, broiling in tropie heat and exposed to the onslaughts of naked eannbals. Canterbury looked on Otago as a set of bigoted Scotch Presbyterians in a country of hills, where only oatmeal-eating Scotsmen could exist. Otago returned with scorn. It regarded the settlers of Canterbury as a set of aristocratie swanks and snobs dependent for their existence on the contributions of wealthy friends in England rather than on the results of their own energy. "Wellington hated Auckland with a perfect hatred, as having deprived it of the right of being the capital of New Zealand, as intended by the New Zealand Company. Auckland despised Wellingtonians as a turbulent set of fellows existing somewhere in the region of Cook Strait, which seemed to jangle their nerves. "Nelson and Taranaki alone," the speaker concluded, "were content to P'addle their own canoes."