TRACKS & HUTS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 May 1939, Page 2

TRACKS & HUTS

IN TARARUAS & OTHER RANGES GOVERNMENT PLANS. MAKING THE MOUNTAINS MORE ACCESSIBLE. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON. This Day. The Government has decided to make financial provision for the employment in the off-season of the official deer destruction parties on the improvement of tracks and the erection of huts to make the Tararuas and the lake country of the southern mountain areas more accessible to trampers. The plan of operations for the work has been devised by the Physical Welfare and Recreation Branch of the Department of Internal Affairs. It gives effect to one of several schemes to provide healthful and companionable recreation for the ablebodied of different ages, and, at the same time, will provide continuous employment for the men on deer destruction duty who will also benefit in the way of improved access to their work. “The decision of the Government for this work to go on,” said the Minister of Internal Affairs, Mr Parry, yesterday, “will be appreciated by the many men, women, and youths to whom the inspiring mountain tops and ranges have an all-absorbing attraction. It will be equally appreciated by that well-selected hardy team of men, so experienced in hazardous mountain climbing, who have been long employed helping to rid our wonderful native bush areas of the menace deer have created. It means also that we will be able to keep intact this team in the deer-infested bush-covered mountains, instead, of in the offmonths of the killing season retrenching or placing them on other work. A practical start with the work under the plan approved would be made straightaway, the Minister said. When completed the tracks and huts would greatly facilitate the taking of New Zealanders and overseas visitors over the mountains at a comparatively cheap cost which would recoup the official expenditure involved.

“There will be made available to walkers the splendid national asset of bush, mountain, river, and lake country which at present is most -inadequately exploited on account of lack of track and hut accommodation,” said Mr Parry. “The three areas which are both deer infested and accessible to large areas of population are the Lake Sumner region in North Canterbury, the Tararuas near Wellington, and the Lake Wakatipu back country. These are roughly tracked in places, are compact of the most magnificent tramping country imaginable, and are not too difficult even for inexperienced walkers. Runholders’ rights and the requirements of the State Forest and other national services will be respected, but experience in the Lake Wakatipu area, which is the most developed of these back-country areas, proves that no difficulty should be encountered in this respect.” The planning of many of the trips, the Minister said, would be on the “group travel” lines now becoming popularly well-established in the South Island. Mentioning the Tararuas,, Mr Parry stated that the track envisaged for improvement there would be accessible not merely from Wellington, but from Palmerston North and the Manawatu, as well as from Eketahuna, Masterton, Carterton, land, other Wairarapa towns. The finance involved, in the establishment' of the tracks, bridges, and huts would be an investment, and the scheme would be run on business lines. Its systemisation, with a moderate fee to cover costs, including capital charges, would make secure the scheme.