Taupo Lands Said to Require Railway

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 771, 18 September 1929, Page 1

Taupo Lands Said to Require Railway

INQUIRY ON PETITION NEW SOUTH AUCKLAND Press Association WELLINGTON, Today. Hearing of the evidence in connection with the petition of Ernest Earle Vaile and others asking that the" Construction of the Rotorua-Taupo railway be resumed was continued today. Continuing his evidence, Frederic's Carr Rollett, agricultural journalist, said there was a tremendous area of easily ploughable land, which could be made permanently productive on each side of tho proposed route. Further down, east of the lake, there were further valleys which offered great productive possibilities. The work done by the Prisons Department at Hautu had shown what could be done with pumice lands, as some thousands of acres had been broken in, and good work had been accomplished on hill lands. Good results were also achieved in the prison camp at Tongariro Valley. Other valleys were .also capable of carrying good snug 'little farms. Witness expressed surprise and indignation that the State had allowed so much nice country, which could be cut up into farms, to be locked up in forests for a hundred years or more. Good roads through the district would certainly open up the land for settlement, but not so economically as a railway would. He did not see how it would be possible to convey heavy traffic by motor, and he believed that a railway was absolutely essential for the carriage of immense quantities of timber. Witness expressed the opinion that, with the use of fertilisers, the land between Taupo and Rotorua could be made more productive than in the Waihi district. The construction of a railway would practically lead to the establishment of a new South Auckland Province. Some good tobacco leaf was grown in the district. Mr. William A. Parnham, farm manager, said he had broken in about 1 250 acres of pumice land in five years. It had been very asily cultivated and broken in at a cost of about £5 an acre. He believed the area could be well settled by small farms and knew no other land which could carry a dairy cow so cheaply. The land was capable of giving a return in crops within a year of ploughing. To Mr. Semple he said the speediest method of settlement would be to break the land in by means of group settlement and then enable those men to take up farming areas. The land could not be profitably settled without a railway. William George Butcher, a farm manager of Reporoa, said the country eould settle all the unemployed on the land. With a railway the settler could not fail to make good.