KING COUNTRY VIEW OF TAUPO

Taupo Times, Volume IV, Issue 173, 20 May 1955, Page 1

KING COUNTRY VIEW OF TAUPO

"A Place Gone Mad" (By Te Kaka) v. "O wad some Power the giftie gie us To see oursels as ithers see us ! It wad frae mony a blunder free us, An' foolish notion." Ever since Robert Burns, on seeing a louse on a Lady's Bonnet at Church (as he himself asserts), penned the foregoing lines, in his poem addressed to the self-same "crowlin ferlie," it has been assumed that te see ourselves as others see us would, indeed, be informative. Whether such a view of ourselves would y be, in addition, more realistic or accurate than our former view, would depend, no doubt, on circumstances. A reflection which has been prompted by the reading of an interesting article in the King Country Chronicle (Te Kuiti), headed "Words of Caution Regarding This New Pumice Province," which begins by stating that "New Zealand is in a fever of excitement regarding its pumicelands and pine forest development. In some cases fingers "are to te burned." Following these words of warning the article, after discussing the setting up of the ^ Taupo County administration, asks, "What of Taupo town?" It then proceeds to answer this question. To enable the people of Taupo to judge whether the King Country pa'per's view of Taupo has any insights denied to them, let me quote its burden for their consideration : "What of Taupo town? Here is a place gone mad in its rapid development. It giew- by 87 per cent. between

the 1945 and 1951 census, and now • boasts some 2100 people. But from land values and other factors it is evident that most people imagine that ■ It will be another Tauranga. They happen to be wrong. True, we find ourselves totally and completely unable to evaluate Taupo s tourist traffic as a factor in its growth. Bevelopnient of the I Taupo-Desert Road route and its posi tion on the Napier Road has ™a " a halfway house between North and South and East and Wesf stons yet;TTOl1, °nCe cor|struction ln the area there will be some fingers burnt at Taupo, in our humble opmion. "What seems to be generally forgotten 1S that, even when farming production reaches its expected final and still moderate total in Taupo unty, most of it will not centre on Taupo. The Mangakino area will centre on Tokoroa and Putaruru — 3I1a ^rhaPS lD Part on Bennydale and Mangapehi; the Tokaanu-Tura-ngi area will merge with that to be developed in Taumarunui County up the western shores of Lake TaupoTaumarunui will be the town to beneflt. "Taupo will be left with a district extending east from Mokai between the loop of the Waikato River and Lake Taupo, plus the eastern Lake shore and the unplanted portion of the Kaingaroa Plains; probably a fairly considerable tourist industry, and some sawmilling— but with main emphasis on the Kaingaroa bush in the Murupara 'working circle-' That will not, we imagine, support the semi-city that some see as likely. ''There will, of course, be a sort of false prosperity when the heavy wa ter-cum -power station is under. construction, but when that is finished . . . we doubt very much if this will be maintained."