OFFICE WAS MAJOR BASE FOR SURVEY

Taupo Times, Volume XIV, Issue 43, 3 June 1965, Page 7

OFFICE WAS MAJOR BASE FOR SURVEY

The building in which tens of thousands of acres ©f the South Waikato were plotted on paper before afforestation has been removed from its site in a Putaruru business street to be converted into a house. A new shopping block will be built on the site.

Thirty years ago the building, then the surveying office of Harrison, Grierson and Paxton, was a key point in the early development of the huge exotic forests of the South Waikato. Tens of | thousands of acres were surveyed by teams from Putaruru which, in those days, provided one of the biggest nurseries for the profession outside main cities. Included among those who received their training there were Mr C. G. Beale, now a senior Ministry of Works engineer at Wellington; Mr S. A. Tetzner, who later developed a big surveying and valuation practice in Fiji; j Mr G. W. Ensor, now Mata- ; mata County engineer; Mr j G. A. Gibbs, now a surveyor i in private practice in Te Awamutu; and Mr M. Williams, who has a surveying j practice based on Thames. One of the chainmen, Mr H. Allen Mills, has a large earthmoving business at I Rotorua. The surveying firm of j Harrison and Grierson was , formed in Auckland, and Mr

M. St. J. Paxton, now of Whangarei, was a partner in Putaruru. The main purpose for the establishment of the Putaruru partnership was to undertake survey work for New Zealand Perpetual Forests, Ltd. This was the planting and maintenance company for' the Australasian Forestry Bondholders Proprietary, Ltd., and the two were later merged to become N.Z. Forest Products, Ltd. From Putaruru surveying teams moved in 1924 from their first office in Yandle's Building, now Oraka Building, at the corner of Main " and Taupo Streets, to work on the Afforestation Block at Pinedale and the Waotu Block at Wiltsdown. This was the start of a vast survey which extended across miles of country to Whakamaru, Ongaroto, Atiamuri and the WairakeiRotorua road. In 1930 the Princes Street office was j built to accommodate a staff ! of about 12. Slashers Needed Mr Ensor, who joined the firm in 1926, yesterday recalled the pattern of work. Field teams consisted of a surveyor and a chainman or two, and all hands, including the leader, used slashers to cut lines through manuka, fern and manawa, a tough heather-like shrub. "It was pretty rugged," I said Mr Ensor. "If there were only two in the party there would be a tent with a sod fireplace in front of it. We did our own cooking in a camp oven and the food was pretty meagre. "It was quite usual over

a long period for the party to become wet ten minutes after leaving their vehicle in the morning and to remain wet until they got back in the evening." When the surveyors began working on a block they did a title survey of its boundaries and then prepared plans for a planting survey and roading. This meant locating and surveying roads in position for planting, and locating firebreaks. A 50ft interval contour survey was then made of the whole area. This provided an appreciation of the country on paper and assisted in logging development later when the ground could no longer be seen for trees. Mr Ensor recalled an interesting assignment he undertook about 1937. He was in the field locating and pegging a main line standard railway from Tokoroa toward Whakamaru and upriver toward Upper Ataimuri. The line was to have been used to carry logs to mills near Whakamaru and

Tokoroa, but a decision was subsequently made to use road transport. Other Work In addltion to forestry work, the surveyors undertook a considerable amount of land development and other tasks. One was to cut and develop a block east of the highway at Tokoroa owned by Mr John Schloss, of Cheviot. All the Education Board survey work for the firm in the South Auckland area was undertaken from Putaruru. The millions of computations from all these years of field work were put on paper at the Putaruru survey office, which consisted of a large draughting room, an ' interview room and a staff room. Here a permanent. ! | draughtsman — and at one time, a draughtswoman— was employed, and the surveyors plotted the results of their rugged days in the field.