“SCORIA ROBBERS”

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 506, 8 November 1928, Page 14

“SCORIA ROBBERS”

PROTECTION SOUGHT FOR MOUNT SMART CONTROL CRITICISED ••Robbers" is the description oiven by Mr. H. B. Dobbie, chairman of the One Tree Hill Road Board, to the controlling bodies engaged in removing scoria rock from Rarotonga (Mount Smart). Last evening, the chairman received the approval of the board for a letter which he is sending to the Minister of Lands asking that quarrying at the mountain should be stopped. In his letter. Mr. Dobbie describes the activities of the Onehunga Borough Council as “shameful handiwork. His letter says: ■ The residents of the One Tree Hill district have appealed to me to ask the Government to stop further destruction of the beautiful cone of Rarotonga. Although the hill is entirely surrounded by the One Tree Hill district, it is controlled by the Onehunga Borough Council and the Railway Department. “It is not correct to say that the cone is past redemption. About ninetenths of lt are intact, including about four acres on the summit. Very little disfigurement is visible on the northein and the eastern sides. RETRIBUTION FOR ONEHUNGA “It is only on the southern and the western (Onheunga) sides that the scoria robbers have left their mark. Perhaps this is just retribution. Future generations in Onehunga will have ever before their eyes the shameful handiwork of the former city fathers. The most wholesale scoria robber has been the Railway Department, but, as the cliffs have been sloped off as the spoiling work has gone on, it will not require much work to restore symmetry. A siding on the eastern face, it continued, will bar all access to the domain. “The Onehunga pit is in the most disgraceful condition. Great, irregular cliffs around the quarry are positively dangerous." The chairman contended that scoria roads were useless with so much motor traffic, and there was ample surface rock for the Railway Department's requirements. He ended his letter with the hope that, as destruction on Mount Albert and One Tree Hill had been stopped, the “present enlightened” Government would save Rarotonga.