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WEST OF THE BRANGES

Written for "The Listener"

by

SUNDOWNER

FLAX AND FOXTON

SHOULD like to tell a story about the textile factory that is Foxton; but it is half political and half romantic. If the factory closed most of the breadwinners of Foxton would be compelled to go and earn their bread somewhere else, and the forbidden story is why it

did not close. On the other hand if twice as many bread-winners as it has now could find houses in Foxton the factorv would feed

tem all, and feed them well, and do an even bigger job than it is doing now in converting our native flax into woolpacks and floor mats. T will go softly on the political aspects, saying only that if the Government had not come to the rescue of this industry it would have disappeared, and that it might still disappear if the Government’s hand were withdrawn. But governments don’t rush to the rescue of derelict industries for the fun of seeing the wheels go round again. They have to be persuaded that the risk is good and they have to be made to believe that the service is of national importance. I am not free to say how conviction on these two points was conveyed, because I don’t know how much of what I was told was told for publication. But I think I may say as much as this: that the present managing-director went to Foxton to liquidate the industry, saw when he began to dig into the mess that although the situation was desperate it was not quite hopeless and in time got that fact into a sufficient number of other heads to make re-organisation a possibility. To-day the mills are Foxton. As the barber put it when he was cutting my hair, "the old town couldn’t take the pump if they closed." The old town, as things are, seems to me to be living rather comfortably, but even when I had been through the mills I-would not have stayed two days there if the manager had not insisted that only half had yet been seen, "When you have followed a load of flax all the way from the scrutchers to the wool-packs you~have seen the manufacturing half of this industry. The other half is out in a swamp on the way to Shannon, Stay another day and you'll get the whole picture." I stayed. I went to the swamp, and for half a day saw flax as a crop, flax being planted and flax being harvested, flax as a subject of research, flax attacked by caterpillars and invaded by spores and flax making graphs and tables in the laboratory of the biologist, I saw flax putting £2 a day into the pockets of cutters, flax fighting for its life against willow trees and tall fescue, flax like stubble and flax like a forest, but every stump and every blade playing a part in the’ long-term plan. The first step, I was told, was to kill the idea that flax is a one-crop product or, worse still, a noxious weed. "This is the biggest stand of fla@& remaining in the Dominion, Instead of getting rid of it we want to conserve and enlarge it." "And in the meantime use it?" "Yes, but not blindly. Flax can be cultivated like any other crop, but will

of course not yield an annual harvest. Like other crops it is invaded by pests and varies in quality. Our job is to fight the pests and eliminate the unsuitable varieties." "Are you making headway?" "T think we are. But there is much we don’t understand yet, and I would sooner not make claims." "You don’t look downhearted." "T am not. But research is a slow business, and it is not enough to be hopeful." "Can you say that there is now an assured supply of raw material?" "Yes, I think I can say that, though it is not my business." "You're not afraid of these. pests you’ve mentioned? You don’t think they seriously threaten supplies?" "Yes, I am afraid of them. I would not be here if they were not dangerous. But I think we can deal with them." "Ts there enough flax here to meet all the Dominion’s needs?" . "All the needs we have to supply. We make only wool-packs and mats; no rope and no twine. There is enough for that. But I am a biologist. Business questions should be reserved for the managing director." In the end I thought it unnecessary to pursue the matter further. I went back to the mills, but that was to look again at the design and colour work in the mat factory, I have no knowledge of such things, but it seemed to me remarkable that men and women with no formal training at all in art should have arrived experimentally at such wholly satisfying results.

ROUGH BULLS

‘ee OST of us go through life haunted by words or phrases or obscene jingles that we would gladly forget and can’t.

Sometimes, however, they are merely

silly, like the negro preacher’s text I read somewhere when I was a boy and have remembered ever since:

"And they shall gnaw a file and flee unto the mountains ' of Hepsidam where the lion roareth and the wangdoodle mourneth for her firstborn."

That silly improvisation kept running through my mind as I lay half awake and -half asleep in the moonlight near Levin. Then the wangdoodle somehow became Rachel, and I woke up realising why the death of the firstborn was haunting me. I was listening to a cow calling for her calf, perhaps her first, perhaps her last, but

whether first or last gone the way of all bull calves whose pedigree is not good enough to keep them alive. In the animal families that most of us know best, dogs ard cats, it is the females that go at birth; but with dairy cattle it is the males. I listened for perhaps a quarter. of an hour before I went to sleep again. I noticed that she usually called five times in quick succession, then was silent for two or three minutes-listening no doubt. Of course the answer never came, and never would come. He was on the truck that I had seen collecting bobby calves the afternoon before.

UP THE RANGITIKEI

OU are not many miles north of ‘Marton before you realise that you have left the fat lands behind you and passed from four-sheep country to two. But Marton did not interest me much ‘and Mangaweka did. Marton is comfortable and safe but characterless. It

exists only because three main traffic routes meet in an area of good soil. Mangaweka hardly exists

at all. It is just about as lifeless as a settlement can be and still remain on the map. But the Rangitikei river makes it a place of beauty, and its cliffs and two railway viaducts almost a place of awe. From,the motor camp on the old Taihape road I looked across at a cliff 300 feet high which last summer came down with a sudden roar and blocked the river (I was told) for nearly half-an-hour. Some day it will do the same thing again, and another day and another as long as that beautiful river flows. It must have been doing it from the beginning of time, if my ignorant eyes are not fooling me geologically.

And if Mangaweka in the meantime

shows signs of decay, with some empty houses arid some decrepit and paintless, that is because it required more men and women to open up this country than it now requires to care for it and enjoy it. I was assured too, and can easily. bélieve, that if the township seems to be dying, the farmers round about are as prosperous as they have ever been. The hills, a solid and sensible man told me who has lived here all his life, carry two sheep to the acre and the flats from four to five. Twothirds of the lambs go fat to the works from their mothers. and the

cattle require only a little topping off to follow them. I give these claims for what they are worth — it was impossible to investigate them in two or three days — but the colour of the grass supported them, and on that steep country there can be very little if any top-dressing. "Stick to papa," another man said, "and it will stick to you. When it slips the slips heal themselves, and when the dowp-country men have wind, wet, or drought, the papa farmer’s stock are putting on weight!’ It was a partisan’s opinion, but the stock I saw were on his side. There was however one sight in Mangaweka which I found a little depress-

ing: a caterpillar tractor dragging a set of harrows on ground so rough and steep that it was almost hdir-raising to watch, It would be impudent to call it nerve and mechanical’ science misapplied, but that is what ran through my mind as I looked on, and I have only a slender hope that I may be wrong. * * %

"INLAND PATEA"

ORTUNATELY for their grandchildren the pioneers of Taihape left enough of the native bush to show what the original was like. There are matai and rimu

and Kahikatea in the domain, and an impressive mixture of natives and exotics on the

top of a hill right inside the town, that must have entered into the ‘minds of all those boys and girls who grew up here and first saw the world against’ that skyline. But there is no more knowlédge here’ than anywhere else in New Zealand of the real pioneers -- the missionary-explorers who found their way through the bush 50 years before white settlement really began. I had to make many inquiries be fore I found someone who could tell me where Colenso came across from Hawke’s Bay, where his "inldnd Patea" was situated, and how long it'was before the bush absorbed it again. It was like asking a schoolboy in Dunedin where Gabriel’s Gully was or a roadman in Nelson for Astrolabe Point. If you get any information . at all you are mildly surprised, but if it happens to be precise and accurate you almost wonder what has happened to New Zealand that: its young people should be bothering their heads about things that happened ‘so long ago. I still don’t know by what route Colenso came over the Ruahines, but I found his Patea, and if I had not been unlucky I should have had the story from a farmer who has devoted half a life to it and is collecting -his memories and experiences into a book. I found him through the owner of the Taihape Times, a friend of many years, but on the evening of the day on which I was to call on him he was off-colour and had gone early to bed, and when I set the telephone ringing again next morning he was docking lambs. In the end I did not see him at all, and I hesitate to put down the things I heard at second-hand about the original clearing that was Patea, the first white settlers there, and the adventures of the wool-waggons that carried their first clips to the sea. I had not realised that wool found -its way over the ranges to the East coast before anybody pioneered a way down the gorges to the West coast, but I was assured that it was so-and that on one famous occasion the Maoris held the waggons up, unloaded them, and sent them off to Napier empty. The wool was of so little importance to them that they merely hid it in the scrub and left it there, but they felt it an indignity that these convoys should go through their territory without permission or tribute. ate: (To be continued)

This article text was automatically generated and may include errors. View the full page to see article in its original form.I whakaputaina aunoatia ēnei kuputuhi tuhinga, e kitea ai pea ētahi hapa i roto. Tirohia te whārangi katoa kia kitea te āhuatanga taketake o te tuhinga.
Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19461108.2.21.1

Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 385, 8 November 1946, Page 11

Word count
Tapeke kupu
1,994

WEST OF THE BRANGES New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 385, 8 November 1946, Page 11

WEST OF THE BRANGES New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 385, 8 November 1946, Page 11

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