Inland Waterways

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 174, 13 October 1927, Page 8

Inland Waterways

WAIUKU CANAL SCHEME

Engineering Elifficulties Absent

ENTERING the lower Waikato is the Awaroa Creek, which rises in mild hills at the back of Waiuku. Maori navigators formerly found it a useful waterway. They paddled their canoes to Purupuru, and from there began a portage, little more than a mile long, to the head of the Waiuku River Though they did not know it. they were traversing almost exactly the‘six-mile line which the proposed Waiuku canal will follow.

its lowest point the gentle wai.ershed between the Waiuku and the Waikato is barely 60 feet- above sea level. Its rising and falling slopes are little more than a mile across, and they represent the only serious cut-

ting which would be involved in the Waiuku Canal project.

Inspecting the locality yesterday, members of the Auckland Harbour Board were shown the drained swamps on the "Waikato side, where the formation of the canal would be more a matter of dredging than of excavation. LAUNCH TRANSPORT At one spot, near Aka .Aka, a Priestman grab dredge was actually at work deepening the Awaroa Creek, which is traversed daily by launches carrying cans to the factory. In a small degree the operations of the launches symbolise the development which would follow the linking of the Ma.nukau with the Waikato. There would then be created a navigable waterway 150 miles in length. A laurfch could go from Onehunga to Cambridge, a trip of 135 miles, on inland waters, and on its way back could turn up the Waipa and enjoy a 50-mile jaunt

to Pirongia. Butter, timber, stock—every class of merchandise —could be transported cheaply. In the shooting season Auckland sportsmen could engage launches at Onehunga and make their trips a pleasure cruise, extending far up the Whangape and other tributaries of the Waikato. With a lock at the Needle s, two miles below Waiuku, and another on the Waikato side of the low watershed ridge, the Waiuku Canal would be maintained at high tide lev el. Bet w een the tides in the Waikato and the Manukau is a simultaneous disparity of seven feet. But for the locks the difference in level would create a racing current in the canal. COST OF CONSTRUCTION

Construction costs have not been thoroughly investigated yet. The Harbour Board for the moment, as Mr. M. H. Wynyard explained to Chamber of Commerce representatives at Waiuku yesterday, is more concerned with ascertaining what business the canal would be required to handle, and that is where the chambers ot commerce can help. Something like £350,000 or £400,000 would probably be involved in the construction of the canal. For the effect it serves, the creation of a waterway from Onehunga to Cambridge, the outlay seems negligible. It would, moreover, represent the first stage of a scheme that may ultimately join the harbours and rivers of Auckland in one vast, almost limitless, canal system. The far-reaching Kaipara and the broad Northern Walroa will be at the back door of Aucklaud shipping men, and by the Whau, or the Tamaki, the Waitemata and Manukau will mingle, thus completing the future chain of inland shipping routes. WATER TRANSPORT CHEAPEST Four or. five vessels, in eluding the new and imposing Rawhiti, are now doing a regular trade, under the Roosa colours, on the Waikato, and the Waiuku Canal would permit the extension of these services to the Manukau. The shallowness of the Waikato, which in places is almost plugged with sand, will always apply a limitation on the size of the boats that can use the completed canal system, but as an auxiliary to deep sea and coastal shipping the fresh-water services have an undeniable place. Water transport is still the cheapest, and it therefore follows that the development of a canal system would assist both primary and secondary producers.