THE DEPOPULATED SOUTH

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 439, 21 November 1947, Page 22

THE DEPOPULATED SOUTH

GETTING THERE

NEVER cross Cook Strait in bad weather ;without wondering how the Maoris ever crossed at all. When I crossed yesterday, it was a miserable experience from harbour to harbour, with great seas breaking over us all the way, and most of the passengers, including myself, sick and a

little afraid. Halfway across the open sea I found the locked doors intol-

erable, so let myself out on the lee side and spent the rest of the journey holding on to a rail in a sheltered corner watching the waves roaring and tumbling past in confusion. It was fascinating but horrible, and when I remembered the difference between the Tamahine and the Endeavour I was not surprised that~Cook’s victory. over the Strait was not complete. He proved that it was a strait; found his way through; and located and entered the safe havens on the South side. But he never entered Wellington harbour, though he knew that it existed; and Tasman in the Heemskerk never got through at all. Cook came in January, Tasman

in December, and primitive though their vessels were by comparison with a modern twin-screw steamer, they ‘were leviathans tto the Maoris, ° If there was ever such a_ navigator as Kupe, he came in a canoe; but there can be no doubt about the later migrations, when New Zealand was occupied from canoes; and even if we could refuse that ‘story we are close enough in time tc Te Rauparahia to’ know that he dominated Cook Strait from Kapiti, raiding passing vessels at will, and thinking no more of the waves than we do of a high wind on the crest of the Rimutakas. Maoris did of course get drowned in the Strait. Whole canoe loads got drowned. But it was never an impassable barrier to them whether they were North Islanders raiding the South or South Islanders retaliating on the North, end it meant no more to’them in general than it means to us to-day. To the average individual it meant far less. _ a ,

THE COST

~- (CROSSING the Strait cost a Maori three or four hours of muscular effort and whatever that represented in the depreciation of a canoe that was

good for a hundred years. The shipping company that carried me over charged

me £1 for my own bulk (203Ib.) and £19/8/6 for my truck (2 tons 3cwt.

1 ar.). I make no complaint of those charges, since I have no means of judg-

ing whether they were justifiable or not. I did ask the manager of the Company to explain them, and since I have no answer to his answer -that they were fixed after protracted discussions with the Automobile Association and the Price Control Tribunal -I must accept his explanation. But I imagine that if Cook had been plying for hireshe would have accepted £20/8/6 for a special charter for 3%4 hours and that I paid enough for one little corner of the Tamahine’s deck to give me the whole Endeavour to myself for an afternoon,

with all the ship’s company working for me. It may be true, as the manager told me, that Cook Strait is cheaper to cross, actually and relatively, than the English Channel. But if it is I suspect that the reason is the same in both cases, and the moral too. In any case I am sure that burdens tend to lose their weight when we all know about them, Meanwhile it is a sobering thought for us all, buyers and sellers alike, that we have made such a crazy pattern of our econdmy in a single century-partly

by folly, partly by strife, partly by indolence and self-indulgence, and partly by the universal contempt we everywhere show for any such golden rule of conduct as giving to others what we demand from them. I am not going to try to say how much of the present cost of any service is retaliation for past plunder, but I know that what the Tamahine did to me most of us ate doing to one another in a desperate attempt to recover bad debts, * * *

COOK STRAIT TO CAMDEN

T is a far cry from Cook Strait to Camden, New Jersey, but I was not long in Picton before I smélt lilac, and looking about saw it growing in evefy second garden. It grows in the North Island too, of course, but not so freely

as in the South, or so comfortably, and it is difficult to imagine a North

Island Whitmiah Writing "When lilacs last in the door yafd bloomed." But lilac could scent the memory of a South Island poet if he was not a child of the bush, It is a sign, with weeping willows and Lombartdy poplars that we still belong spiritually to Europe, that the districts in which it grows most freely were settled from the South of England, that they have less rain than most of the North Island, and less wind, and that if it is now growing where the bush used to be, as in Picton and Akaroa, the men who planted it saw only timber in the big bush and rubbish in the rest and dreamt evety night of Devon. I have thyself nevér seen Devon, or Surrey, or Somerset, of any other English county. But lilacs scented every spring till I was 20 .and gave me the split personality of most South Islanders, whose environment is not in shatp enough contrast with Britain to cut them away from it, and yet is not Britain physically or spiritually. I hope the residents of Camden, whose decision to make Whitman’s home a national shrine was reported just before I left Wellington, will plant a lilac bush at the back door if there is not one growing there already. But lilacs are indigenoug to North America. They were never seen in New Zealand until a hundred years ago, and they encourage the

longing lingering looks behind us that should long ago have ceased. * * *

BOUNDARIES

HE boundary between Marlborough and Nelson on the west is a geographical line on the crest of barren mountains. Though it lingers on on some maps it means no more than the boundary between Hutt and Wairarapa or between Nelson city and Nelson port.

But I found mo one 6n one side or the other crossing it

unnecessarily, They told me in Blenheim that if you were not born in Nel son you need not apply to Nelson for a job — that the place was stagnant economically and ingrown mentally. They went to Nelson when they had to go, and co-operated with their neighbour when there was no alternative: they took power from the Cobb River, for example. In Nelsén they said that Blenheim had lost its way during its fitst decade or two, had remained submerged in commercialism ever since, and yet had to forgo commercialism’s chief aids and rewards-free communication with the world outside. — I tried not to see either place as the other saw it, and found the task easy. I had not seen either of them for many yeats and found precisely the same change in both-a great iricrease in population an@ trade. I thought this more matked in Nelson than in Blenheim, but it was unmistakable in both, afd at this season of the year, with spring just passing and summer just coming, it calls for no special effort to be happy in eithtr. Until I crossed another rangé still and reached Takaka, I thought I had never seen such gay October flowers-azaleas, bride’s blossom, banksia and common red roses, pansies, lilac, and primroses. But I am sufe the peoplé of Blenheim are glad that it is not at present easy for them to listen to Nélson’s broadcasting station. I thought too that Nelson had some secret satisfaction in parading its cultute in ufexpected places. While Blenheim is no better than Wellington and: Christchurch in its invitations to "Gents" and "Ladies," Nelson makes life easy for Men and Women-a malicious» smack in the eye, I am sure, for those who call Nelsonians genteel. (To be continued)