A COUNTRY DAY

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 916, 8 March 1930, Page 29

A COUNTRY DAY

! During the week-end we went for | a trip to Ferndale, a lovely country : spot, about eight miles from Helensvtlle. It was a lovely morning when .we started, a beautiful, cloudy-pearl morning, with a faint, white-blue sky —a sign of a sunny day. As we went I farther into the country, the sun smiled ■ out from a gauzy film of clouds and ; shed a bright, cheery light on the coun--1 tryside. We reached Ferndale at about |lO o’clock. The sun shone fiercely then. and the air, laden with the scent of ■ penny-royal, was still and fragrant. i The creek, a foamy, frothy stream, calm as a mill pond in some places and swirling like an angry little sea l in others, was surrounded by bush.

Tall, cool trees, clothed in fresh, green leaves, stood all around, and the sun flickered through the leaves and formed a gay, dancing patchwork on the damp ground. Willows bent low over the j water’s edge and let no sun reach the cold, muddy stream, making it look dark and forbidding. In the afternoon we went for a ramble over the hills, through the lovely, lacy-green ferns and across the swamp. When we left for home it was twilight—grey, silvery, mystic twilight. A pale moon, very silver and fragile, hung in the sky, which was yet faintly blue. Later, as we drew farther away from little rustic Ferndale, night came on, and we drove through velvety shadows. Grotesque forms flitted past the car, tall weird shadows of giants and goblins dancing an eerie ; dance beneath the moon! Hours later, j it seemed, we saw the glittering lights j of Auckland —thousands of them —like ; so many sparkling jewels. —Joy Hill, aged 35. |