THE PIAKO COUNTY. (By our Travelling Reporter.)

Waikato Times, Volume XVI, Issue 1382, 12 May 1881, Page 2

THE PIAKO COUNTY. (By our Travelling Reporter.)

The Waitoa Station. One of the completesfc stations along the district ot rich alluvial flats that are to be found all around here for miles is that known as the Waitoa Station, thriving as it does under the care of two indispenfaible agents for the fostering of a fine, young estate, namely, a liberal owner with means and the desiro to improve upon nature, and a sensible energetic manager able to lay out the means and carry out the ideas of the owner to the bebt advantage. Mr. F. Larkworthy is precisely this sort of owner, and Mr. Chas. Collins is a manager who need only point to his actions as the best testimonial he could produce. There could not be a finer specimen either of the good qualities of the district in the richness of the soil, the easiness of the working, the accessibility of the spot when the work arranged to be done has been completed, and the fine rivers surrounding: it, without mentioning the neighbourhood of the geld diggings and the township that whether immediately ' and extraordinarily successful or not cannot fail to add largely to the value of landed property around. The Waitoa Station embraces 4,500 acres bounded on one side by the Waitoa river and on the other by the Piraunui creek, and the soil of the whole, with the exception of 100 acres only of swamp land, is a fine rich vegetable loam that has formerly been the bed of a noble river, of which the Waitoa ia the present fascinatinglittlerepresentative. The old days must have been rather trying to anyone of at all a dry style of humour, and the owner of the Waitoa Station then might have been depicted in the language of a celebrated Iribh lawyer, referring to the opposing counsel in a case wherein he represented him as standing like a crocodile with a smile on his face, a tear in his eye, and his hands in his breeches pockets. But hom> avous change tout ccla ; land is to valuable now-a-days to be left under water except in certain strictly defined limits where the water is wanted to perform its indespensible work for man's convenience as well as every other element. Let us see some of the results of a few years of tho magic of civilisation here, and we shall be better able to appreciate the beauties of innocent m/defiled barbarism, and the unpardon--ople wickeclue&s and selfishness of the Auglo-Saxon in interfering with the Maori occupation of all the good things of this part of the earth that is so strongly denounced by virtuous and verbose Exeter Hall. In good old days — only seven years ago — the only road down to tliis valley was lound by Cam* bridge and down the swamps, and along the foot of the ranges 111 and out, and catting one's own track through flax and titree, and, with a bullock dray the journey took seven days of misery and danger. In those days it used to take three days to get to the present site of Te Aioha on horseback ; a journey that I accomplished to-day on foot in an hour and a-half. Then flour used to cost £14 a ton in Auckland, and £25 to get it to the Waitoa. No wonder land in this part of the world was then at a discount, and could havo been had almost for a gift, if it even could have found an acceptor. Three years ago the government upset price, at all events, was £2 per acre for some of the estates I have seen round these parts : and now I am quite sure that it anybody Avere to offer Mr Larkworthy from £6 to £8 an acre, he would indignantly refuse that amount. A line of railway surveyed to the Thames traverses nearly the centre of the property, and will pass within an easy distance of the house. There is every reason to believe that the Government will carry out the work at once ; the line being formed as far as Piako, and the sleepers being ready for laying down. The railway, it need not be said, would add nearly double to the piesent pneo per acre, and, according to tho success of the diggingsandtheincrcase of population, will be the further increase of the value of land lound here. It is not at all a wild idea therefore to anticipate a price of £20 within a few years for land that 13 cent per cent bettor than that of Canterbury Plains at the present time when £30 per acre is obtainable there, and in special cases considerably more. The work of nnpiovement effected on the Waitoa estate, under Mr Collins management includes the following items that tell in the most eloquent language the tale of the past and the future, First of all 3000 acres have been sown in grass, 2000 acrea of which have been ploughed, though the surface sowing on these rich Jow lands an&wers remarkably well, just ih^ mere scattering of the seed on the ashes^ijf the burnt fern, or the swamp flax end grasses, or the scrub, being as good as a a careful sowing on land broken up and expensively manared. Twenty four miles of wire fencing have been capitally done, dividing 22 paddocks and all tho road line 3, and altogether 10 miles have been planted with thriving young whitethorn hedges. Altogether 18 milea of drains have been run through the property, most of these, however, being only of a medium size of from 4 feet x 3 and smaller. All along the liver bank and, whereeer Nature has planted wood, good fresh handsome copsea amounting to 300 acres have been left. It is impossible to over estimate the value of good native bush copses about a large estate, and it is pleasant to see an owner showing somo consideration for the future, not to mention the beauty, in the place of the ruthless destruction and the sacrifice of beauty to hungry greediness, that, after all, is a mistake of the worst kind, that is only too frequently met with on New Zealand estates. The bush here form 3 a capital shelter, as good as a shed for the cattle in winter, and protects the home paddocks from any rough gales, and in summer it forms a splendid shade increasing the depth and freshness of the feed, and furniHhing a runfor the cattle, the value of which experienced owners appreciate. The amount of planting of foreign trees of all descriptions effected by Mr Collins in every part of the estate, shows the high appreciation the owner and he have of the beauties and advantages of timber about an estate. The feeling of the true old English squire for his timber, that is as sacred as his 1 family name seems shared by Mr. Larkwortby, for all round thq

approaches to the house and the home' Btead are 26 acres of fine young gums and pines, 10 flores more being planted over a gentle hill that r 'ses near and rer quires softening down, 8 acres in another direction 3 acres round the lawns and N shrubberies that will be plante^ with their brilliant and fragment adornments in another year, and 15 small plantations of from to \an acre each at the corners of roads, exposed angles, or wherever they can be brought in beneficially. Down the sides of steep gullies along the banks of the rivers and creeks or in any spot that seems unsuited to cultivation or of poor quality young trees have been planted with a wiso eye to the future ; 50,000 young gums alone having been so provided for, besides hundreds of pines, cypresses and yews, oaks, ashes, willows. ■ poplars, sycamores, and horse chestnuts, There is a very nice little orchard now, but next spring 7 acres will be planted with every variety of fruit in rows, including oranges, lemons, lime Band grapes. That this would be a good country for the grape in places I fancy may be taken for granted from what I have hoard of wonderful crops found on old vines in little deserted nooks of former native settlements. That all fruits revel in this climate, and nourish to an extent that would seem incredible to an unbelieving Englishman is a fact well known to all old New Zealand settlers. At a few hundred yards from the road ther is the plesent cottaga with the cheerful bay windowed drawing-room, and the shady verandah, and cosy sitting-room that give the Now Zealand settlers' homes a style of comfort jteculiar to them. In this Mr Collins resides, and across the road that passes the gate there are situated some fino outbuildings that constitute a homestead that is nob often surpassed here. The principle one of these includes an eight-stalled stable on the one side, and on the other a curt-shed with a barn and arrangements for sheep-shearing in in the centre. The whole building covers 4S feet by 50. There is, bebides, a comfoi table workman's cottage of four rooms, a carpenters shop, complete with all requisites, pigatyes, a stockyard that for substantial buildiug of strong totaj a and matai posts and solid rails would beat anything I have came across ; and for its perfeot arrangements of gates and rails, enabling its owner by himself to divide cattle without any trouble into four different lots, and run them anywhere just as he may require, has been admired by the best judges and the largest cattle owners in the colony. Everything is complete including the branding pens, and the whole covers 70 feet x 80. An equally substantial and complete cattle shed is being built of 34 feet x 36, that will include 3 bull pens, cow bails, feeding stalls, an opening for hay feeding and every arrangement necessary. In all those buildings neither expense nor trouble has been spared and the result has been a first-rate homestead that will do ita work well for another generation or two.