KAURIS NEAR CITY

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 533, 10 December 1928, Page 16

KAURIS NEAR CITY

| FOSTER’S BUSH INSPECTED | PARK FOR ABOUT £I,OOO Just a mile or two off the road to Muriwai beach and 29 miles from the city is a tract of choice native bush containing kauri, totara, rimu, kahikatea, puriri and karaka. This is Foster’s Bush, near Waimauku, which was inspected by members of the Auckland district council of the New Zealand Institute of Horticulture and representatives of the City Council yesterday. Nine minutes after the party left its motor-cars it was in the middle of a fine clump of kauris, easily the best specimens to be seen so near Auckland. Thirty-two of the kauris are of millable size, and the biggest being 26ft in girth. The bush, which is about 30 acres in extent, is bounded on one side by the track of the Pacific cable from Muriwai. The Scenic Preservation Board has reported that A is worth preserving. The present owners, the Northern Fruitlands, Ltd., are desirous of saving the bush, which was first set apart by the late Mr. Foster, and are willing to sell it as a park for the same price, £OOO, which was offered them early this year by a timber milling company for the millable timber on the property. This has been estimated as over 400,000 ft. Yesterday’s visitors consider that £I,OOO would cover the cost of purchasing the property, erecting fencing to exclude straying stock and building a small two-roomed cottage for a caretaker, possibly an old-age pensioner, who would undertake the small duties in return for the use of the cottage and the right to cultivate a garden. Among the visitors were Miss A. Basten and Messrs. G. Knight and J. W. Kealy, of the City Council, Professor A. P. W. Thomas, Mr. J. Hunter, chairman, and Mr. N. R. W. Thomas, secretary of the Institute of Horticulture.