Gentle Annie and Her Mixed Company

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 170, 8 October 1927, Page 26 (Supplement)

Gentle Annie and Her Mixed Company

(Written for THE SUN by J. G. HcLEAN)

“Spotted Dog” Beside the Ngaruroro

ENTLE ANNIE, by Kuripapango, is in mixed company. At her feet is the hamlet whose name means “Spotted Dog.” Across the val-

ley is the Blowhard, more readily interpreted, and from the mass to the north the peak called Don Juan raises its proud head, in contradictory constancy. Of other Gentle Annies—this is a familiar female in New Zealand’s hill country—one recollects most sharply the crested palisade flung across the Wanganui River valley a score of miles from the mouth. A road which is an improvement on the former packtrack breaks through a notch bitten deep into the saddle, and far below it the murmuring river, turned by the steep flanks of Gentle Annie, wanders with faint protest into a gorge looped among the hills to the North. But the lady at Kuripapango has even more character. Where her namesake near Wanganui commands a prospect that is partly pastoral and entirely domesticated in its seaward sweep, she of the quaint associates has only the wilderness for company. Green fields and a tilled patch or two encircle the homestead away below, but elsewhere is only the dissected upland, heaving its bosom skyward in a manner consistently characteristic of three-fourths of the landscape along that most remote of by-ways, the Napier-Taihape Road. Motorists have been slow to discover the glories of the drive over the Ruahines, from the Main Trunk into Hawke’s Bay, but now that the road is fit for summer traffic there will doubtless be questing swarms of trippers and campers investigating the secrets of the forgotten countryside. Forgotten? Yes, because years and years ago it was better known than it is to-day. It preceded the Main Trunk railway as the outlet for the great sheep runs Studholme's, Craig’s, Batley’s into which the Karloi country was divided before the sawmills came. UPLAND PASTURES

Fed by road and railway, Wanganui is now the outlet for the plains settlers, but in the ancient days strings ol’ bullock-wagons or pack-trains bore the wool to Napier by way of the mountainous divide. Studholme’s and Craig’s no longer hold tracts near Karioi. Their holdings have long since passed into other hands, but at Moawhango the rambling Batley homestead still shelters the children of the pioneer settler, who made a forced landing in New Zealand when the old Northumberland was burned off Napier, and in the family’s private chapel the Batleys of to-day are wedded —or christened. By the store at Moawhango the road to Napier first assumes individuality. Guided by a yellow sign pointing vaguely eastward, it thrusts into the mass' of hills. Miles on is Ohinewairua, farmed by R. H. Lowry, a Cambridge Rugby blue. The new farmstead, bare of trees, is a strange contrast to sheltered, mellowed Olcawa, the Lowry home leagues away in Hawke’s Bay, hut still on this strange road.

Here on the uplands winters are severe, and lambs perish if the snows stay late. Erewhon, beyond Ohinewairua, is the highest homestead iD New Zealand. From its weathered chimneys the smoke forms wisps of blue against the dark background of pines, and the homestead, set in lawns looks like an English manor.

Like a Luna Park switchback on a colossal scale is the track across the island's backbone. It plunges down a mountain side to the infant Rangitikei, which rises in little known country, and then it clambers round easy spurs to a region of tussock and pasture, the plateau of Otupae, which is dominated by the battlemented peak from which the sheep run takes its name. Wealthy lowland landowners acquired for a song miles of this windblown country when they were denied acquisitions elsewhere, and Otupae was once part of Mangaohane, the enormous property owned by the late G. P. Donnelly. The highest part of the road is marked by a gate, which please close —it is rabbit-proof—and, looking back to the ragged line of Ruapehu, one feels that the altitude (3,300 feet) places one on friendly terms with the snowy monarch. deerstalkers; playground Broken ridges loom in the east, where the slashed plateau falls away into gorges. Athwart the steeps the

road creeps down, along a ridge, and the Taruarau River is seen deep down on either hand. I surrender to the magic of this amazing country—the playground of the deerstalker, the workshop of the rabbit-trapper. I have camped a night in the solitary valley of the Taruarau, and learned the contours of the forbidding hills, because mysterious insects under the sward made queer noises and dispelled slumber, so that five distracted motorists gazed, night-long, at the ridges and the stars.

Miles of gear-changing, zig-zags, and le ford of the Kakakino, and here is

Gentle Annie, lady of the snows. A pebble tossed from her shoulders seems to hang in the air as it falls to the Ngaruroro. Every corner of the descending road has its ominous name—somebody or other’s mistake —and below in the river are the rusted bones of cars. Kuripapango is the hamlet at the foot of the hill and the name, as I mentioned before, means “spotted dog.” Two taverns did a thriving trade in the coaching days, but now only quaint farm buildings remain to welcome the wayfarer. Always there are the wire-netting gates. Rabbits keep the country terrorised, and a grim penalty awaits the man who fails to close the gate across the high, narrow, one-way bridge. Not so far away, the Ngaruroro worms its way out of the mountain rampart, but its exit is through a gorge too narrow for the road to traverse, so wise drivers drop to second for the last climb of the trip. In some ways the Blowhard, last hill of all, is the most picturesque along the road. Northward the valley offers dim vistas. Legends are woven round the headwaters of the Ngaruroro, and tales are told of boiling springs, hidden in the mountains. Much Maori litigation has been expended over the upper Mohaka block, which is up in that direction, and has no prospective value unless an engineering genius can build a road to allow the exploitation of its forests. “SILENT, UPON A PEAK—”

The fluted rock-columns of the Blowhard are reminiscent of the Awakino Valley, but with nothing I know of can the view it commands be compared. Like a sheltering wall the ranges guard Hawke’s Bay, and they roll north and south in unbroken lines. Below are the foothills of Hawke’s Bay, the rolling pasture-land that has founded ancient fortunes, and the crazy-quilt plains of Heretaunga, skirted by the sweep of the Bay. Pause to consider the associations of the fertile province, a sunny country different in atmosphere from any other part of New Zealand. Over these ranges, twenty miles south, climbed the missionary-explorer, William Colenso, who penetrated to the headwaters of the Tuki Tuki, and conquered the mythical “singing ridge” of the god-mountain, Te Atua Mahuru. Striking bravely westward, he beheld the terraced basin of the middle Rangitikei, but even that prospect could not surpass the outlook from the eastern scarp.

The white cliffs of Cape Kidnappers are blotches against the distant sea. Scinde Island, girt by the roofs of Napier town,, is a mound that from this far eminence looks as insular as its name implies. Then, underneath, is the chessboard of sheep stations. Pampered by the powers, the historic acres laugh at the laws against land aggregation, and with an air of picturesque serenity they wear a feudal splendour.