On The Plains

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 20, 14 April 1927, Page 12

On The Plains

Tour of Ministers SWAMPS AND PASTURES Incidents by the Way It is a strange, astounding countryside which the Ministerial inspection party in the Hauraki Plains is now traversing. Once the basin of a great river, and later the bed of an encroaching sea long since repulsed, it is now a land undergoing the actual process of redemption from the primitive. Dairy cows, grazing in its fields, now enjoy rights which were formerly the prerogative of swamp fowl alone, and near Thames a ribbon of bitumen crosses acres that were formerly quaking bog.

Geologists have said that between the blue ridges of the Waitakaruru Hills on the one hand, and the Coromandel Ranges on the other, the Waikato River must at one time have found its way toward the sea. In those days the earth’s stability was doubtful, the river’s course was diverted, and ponderous earth movements tilted the floor of the great Hauraki Basin. It became the fen country of Maoriland, and its endless marshes prohibited intrusion. Where the changes of former epochs were natural, those of the twentieth century have been wholly artificial. In 1910 the Government of New Zealand set about in earnest the task of its reclamation. To-day nearly half of the 100,000-acre tract covered by the original plans is producing butter-fat, and the ultimate redemption of a further 20,000 acres is regarded as a matter of certainty. LEVEL ACRES And now it is a country which fascinates the stranger. Leagues of land as level as a table are scored by canals. Groves of ti-tree and straight-shafted kahikatea break the long, flat vistas. Across the plains wander wide, sluggish rivers—the Waihou, Piako, and Ohinemuri —so influenced by the tide that they are navigable for many miles. Ancient steamers lie at quaint jetties far from the sea, and in one quiet backwater lies the old Waimarie, rusting in what is apparently her final idle- 1 ness. Linking river to river, or cutting off bends so that the flow may be accelerated, is the extensive canal system. Dredges of various types wallow through the marshes and build these di'ainage One dredge, in the Awaiti area, strayed into a peat bog, and is there still. After six months’ inertia she may shortly rove along a channel constructed for her rescue. Here, where the peat is deep, the impervious clay stratum underlying the whole plain has sagged a little, forming the Awaiti basin. Further west a similar phenomenon accounts for the Patetonga basin. Both of them, still primeval swamp areas, are problems for the drainage engineers, and it is improbable that the reclamation of the Patetonga swamps will ever be attempted. For preference flax will be grown in the miry 30,000 acres, and the area will serve, also, as a ponding basin to act as a safety catchment zone and prevent floods from descending over-rapidly upon the lower pastures. TALES OF WOE Naturally, the settlers on the fringes of these vast marshes are not without their troubles. In the ears of the Ministers, the Hon. KL. S. Williams, and the Hon. A. D. McLeod, they have poured many a tale of woe. This drain and that, a floodgate here and another there, are held to be solutions, and the Ministers are absorbing all they hear, conferring with their engineers, and quietly formulating policies for the improvement of conditions. No tour of this character could be without its laughable features. First there were the mustard-coloured riding breeches affected by a popular member of Parliament. The air of dash and devil-may-care that these garments created impressed the entire party. The same energetic politician speaks often with a humorous twist. When the Ministers thanked him for the interest he had shown, he expressed gratification “that they had not taken the opposite view, and thought him a damned nuisance.’’ And in retaliation he stated —hastening to add that the adjective was his own — that the wisdom of the Ministers was “Solomonic.” Again, there is humour even in the utterances of deputations. One man “confidentially trusted” that the Minister would help them, and another referred to a floodgate the party had just “witnessed.” STOP-WATCH AND YARD-STICK Quite probably the men of the plains, tutored by experiences that often are embittering, and learning through daily need to watch the trend of currents across country, and the slow drift in the drains, profess contempt for the theories of engineers. Few of them could not propound a scheme which, in their belief, would solve all difficulties, and as for the pace of currents —one observer said that all the engineers did was to sit beside the ditches with a stop-watch and a yardstick. But that is obviously unjust. The plains form a land flowing with milk and honey. Butter-fat production reaches 2001 b per acre, and clusters of beehives dot the landscape. Broad acres would not be thus but for the engineers.