BEAUTIES OF DOMINION.

Taranaki Daily News, 3 June 1922, Page 11

BEAUTIES OF DOMINION.

FROM VISITOR. WONDERFUL MOUNT EGMONT. REVELATION OF THE BUSH. Very fresh and vivid impressions of Australia and New Zealand have been formed by Professor Goode, formerly of Manchester University, who in the /course of his first visit to what he calls “this side of the world,” has just completed an 18 months’ stay in the Commonwealth, and has been “doing” the North Island. “It was an intense relief to get over here after the greyness and flatness of the bulk of Australia,” Professor Goode said to an interviewer in Christchurch, “and to be among mountains and green fields again. What I have seen here would make an Australian farmer absolutely green himself—with envy.” Running over his North Island visits, he said that the surrounding viewpoints and the beauties of Auckland were something that it was very difficult to estimate without seeming to exaggerate. At Rotorua he would have considered himself well repaid for all the trouble he had taken coming across the world, even if he had not done so to visit relatives. The town itself was nicely laid out, and the parks and baths extraordinarily good, but the charm of it all lay in the surrounding district in almost any direction. It charmed him, although he knew it frightened some people. He had spent ten very full days there, but one could spend omnths and find fresh material constantly —the thermal activity was so definite and so concentrated. One could get a little of the same thing in Mexico and a little in Arizona, and another display in Iceland, but in Rotorua it was concentrated within a workable district, and one got a first-class impression of the whole thing. Professor Goode confessed to getting one thrill in the course of his visit. He had left the party and was on the top of a hill about 600 ft. above the gorge. Striking the surface with his stick, he found it was as hollow as a drum, and rang hollow. All of the region, he added, had a certain amount of interest associated with the volcanic activity, but the really beautiful part of his visit came in a three days’ motor trip from Rotorua to Gisborne. FINEST TRIPS IN THE WORLD. From Rotorua to Whakabane the country was singularly beautiful. To him, who had seen none of the primeval bush in New Zealand, it was a sort of revelation. It reminded him very forcibly of the tropical jungle of North Queensland, though without the fleshy, big leaved, tropical plants. The next day’s trip, to Opotiki, was tamer, because the bush had been routed out for dairy farms; but the trip was a ■great foil between two beautiful trips l that to him were two of the finest rims of mountain and forest scenery that he had seen anywhere in the world. The beauties of the third day’s trip, from Opotiki to Motu, crossing three of the ranges, was worth trumpeting round the whole world. Its beauty was something extraordinary. The arrangements for transport were of the first order, but he wished he could say the same for the road. It had been extraordinarily well engineered, but it was very narrow and costly to keep up. No difficulty was experienced except at one point where they met an immense lorry transporting somebody’s household goods from south to north. There was some manoeuvring that wuld have done credit to a general, before they could squeeze past. That road was the thing he would best remember of his northern trip. His only prayer was that they would never get anything in the way of a railway or a bush-whacker through the district, for to do so would be to commit murder on the body of New Zealand beauty. SUPERB VIEW OF EGMONT. Professor Goode ‘ did not go out to White Island to have a look, as he said, at New Zealand’s safety valve. Making his way through Gisborne and Napier he was greatly pleased with the hospital in each centre. He declared that they were ’ institutions of which any country might be proud. He called to see Ratana, but the miracle man had gone for a holiday. Instead he had a long talk with his secretary, Moko. Getting off a slow train at Bell Block to visit an old Lancashire friend,' he had a taste of the life of a “Cocky farmer.” From the back of the farm he had a superb view of Egmont and even Ruapehu was to be seen. “I think Egmont seen under the conditions I enjoyed, morning, noon, and evening,” Professor Goode said, “would impress the most blase sightseer in the world. It is to me really a wonderful mountain, and the character of the country around about it is so rich and good that I am not at all surprised that the Cornish people, whom T know thoroughly well, had the happy idea of settling round it.”