Water and Wealth

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 464, 14 May 1948, Page 14

Water and Wealth

By

SUNDOWNER

RAIN RAISES PROFITS

WAS much struck by Mr. Hore’s insistence on the value of water, which he clearly placed ahead of gold. I had not forgotten the miles of water-races cut by the early miners, the labour

and money they represented, and the legal battles to which they gave _ rise

when farmers’ and miners’ needs came into conflict. But I was not prepared for the possibility that when the water went from Naseby goldfields to the Ida Valley grasslands it left a million pounds’ worth of fine gold still in the wash-dirt. To Mr. Hore it was not merely a possibility but a demonstrable fact, the only question being in which direction the water would yield its treasure first. He had been for a while in the carrying business, he told me, and had noted that every inch of rain in the district put the profits up £100. But rain is one thing and water from a race another. I could not persuade myself as I drove over the Galloway Flats, through the Poolburn district, or later down the Ida Valley, that irrigation is succetding beyond all further thought and anxiety. It has made dramatic changes in carrying capacity, spectacular changes to the eye, but I did not think that all the sheep I saw, or all the cattle, were a hundred per cent healthy and thriving. I also saw a lot of rushes and less good English grass than I had expected to see after such a favourable summer. When I mentioned these facts to a local resident’ he asked if I had seen that country before the water came. I told him that I had not seen the stretch between Omakau and_ Ranfurly, except once by train, but that I was familiar with drier stretches and was not questioning the changes he had seen in the last 20 years. What I wanted to know was whether these changes had been wholly good, or so far only good in parts. "Tt’s wholly good if land that carried no sheep at all now garries one or two or three sheep to the acre." "Even if they have footrot, and scour?" "Yes," "Don’t you mean that it is better this way than having no sheep at all?" "No. I mean that it is good now." "Wouldn’t it be better than it is if the sheep were healthier than they are?" "There’s nothing, wrong , with my sheep." "But I-can see some limping and one feeding on its knees. There is one badly scoured." "A few years ago you would have seen rabbits." "Yes, I know, and it’s wonderful to, see sheep. But flooding the ground is a new thing. Isn’t it possible that there are lessons yet to be learnt about it?" "All we want to know about- water here is how to get enough of it." Perhaps he was right. Perhaps the footrot was not encouraged by too

much water but by a too infrequent washing away of the germs. But there were still the rushes. * * *

SO MANY FLATS

T seems odd to me now, but was quite natural when I lived among them, that the map of Central Otago should be so liberally scattered with flats. My world then extended from a little below Lawrence to a little above Roxburgh,

and began witn Clark’s Flat. But as soon as I passed throuch Tvawrence T

was in Tuapeka Flat, and only Munro’s Hill separated that from. Evan’s Flat, which soon became Bowler’s Flat, and over Beaumont Hill Carson’s Flat. For some~ reason orf other Beaumont never became a Flat on the map or in local terminology-unless you turned down the river to Tramway Flat-and the next stretch of level land became a Block instead of a Flat. But you soon came to Miller’s Flaf and Moa Flat, passed through Roxburgh to Coal Creek Flat, «and then half-way to Alexandra dropped down into Bald Hill Flat, which some called Speargrass Flat, and others a. few years ago tried to make into Fruitlands, to their own confusion and the distress of most of those who listened to them. It was this absurd name still clinging foolishly to Bald Hill Flat that made me realise how many Flats there used to be. But whether we had too many or too few it would be sensible to see Bald Hill Flat on the map again instead of Fruitlands, which recalls nothing but a rather discreditable venture in which many good people lost several years ‘of their lives and all their money and even the rogues did not gain very much. For Fruitlands is that place in Central Otago where fruit can not be grown successfully, where late frosts will get you if you escape the early ones, and where such a name, after such a history, is a mockery and continuing offence. * * ae

WATERSHED

LITTLE more than half-way between Raes Junction and Edievale the road, which for some miles has been almost flat, turns sharply upwards, and after rounding one of the innumerable elbows the devil has in New Zealand,

continues on a level some. hundreds of feet higher. The

creeks, which have been running against you, now run with you, and the slope is now roughly downwards all the way to Invercargill, 80 miles away. You have crossed a watershed geographically and entered an area of conflict economically. I was back to my native heath when I reached this point, and it amused me a little to discover how _important it had recently become and to notice how much the residents enjoyed being courted simultaneously by Invercargill and Dunedin, It is, of course, a very rich area agriculturally; cold, but as productive as land can be where growth stops for about four months in every twelve. Sixty bushels of wheat to the acre and 80 of oats are not exceptional but normal over an area of at least 209 square miles, and that alone, if nothing

else were produced when the crops were growing, would call for the attention of any city interested in the manufacture and sale of farm implements to the men and clothes, shoes, washing machines and refrigerators to the women. I can’t think of any area of comparable size that buys more cars, tractors, carpets, and ready-made clothes every yea‘, including, of course, boots and shoes, and the ardent wooing of two suitors each approximately 80 miles distant would. not have surprised me if I had remembered anything like it in my youth. But those were days of sustained austerity, when ninepence was a big price for either butter or wool, when oats sold for one and-three, and wheat was good et anything above half-a-crown. No one was interested in us then, nor did it matter much to our parents whether the money they gave for our moleskins and Blucher boots afterwards went north or south. Now my grand-nephews and grand-nieces cost more to clothe than a ploughman 50 years ‘ago, and the drapery firms are more interested in their mothers than all Dunedin was then in a household of eight or ten. * * *

THE FACE OF THE TIGER

HERE are a dozen ordinary economic reasons why, if I had taken time to think, I should not have been surprised by this long-range courting. But there are also two special reasons that I would not have allowed for. The first

is the fact that Tapanui is to be brought to life again by the erection of a

big sawmull--the biggest in the Southern Hemisphere one man told me, though another was content with the biggest in the Dominion-and the second was the fact that Roxburgh will soon be doubled in size by the building there of New Zealand’s biggest power station. In both cases there is more than rumour to build on, or even official statements. At Tapanui I saw the foundations of the mill and the huge hostel already housing employees. I saw where the new township is to be built, and I travelled for two miles in the dust of one of their lorries. Near Roxburglp I saw the township that has already been built at the outlet from the gorge, was

given more figures than I could assimilate about kilowatt production in the distant future, and was told, I suspect a little prematurely, that a shaft had already been driven below the river on one side and across and up again on the other, passing all the way through solid rock. It was a local resident who told me that, not a ~Public Works engineer, but however different the engineer’s story would have been if I had found him, I saw enough to know that this huge project is a fact and not a vague promise. So have Dunedin and Invercargill. Roxburgh is as clearly Dunedin’s territorially as Tapanui is Invercargill’s, but geography seldom wins its battles without §assist-

ance. Dunedin could not claim Tapanui’s forests. But it could point out to the Government that mills need not stand in or near the growing timber -that it is as easy to move the logs into "civilisation" as the sawn timber afterwards, and that Mosgiel, Burnside, and Green Island were all good sites for distribution. I was offered no evidence that the Government listened. But I was assured (again without documentary proof) that it listened to Invercargill’s answer-that it would be easier and safer to land the Roxburgh plant at Bluff and not at Dunedin or Port Chalmers, and rail it, to Roxburgh via Waipahi. By this route, it was pointed out to me, there was only one short and shallow tunnel, which could easily be converted into a cutting and this, they said, was actually being done. I am, of course, neutral in long-dis-tance manoeuvres like these-not interested. in the result, and not well enough informed to follow all the moves as they are made. But I am interested when I see a smile on the face of a tiger, and I am not going to pretend that I was not pleased to see my schoolmates and kinsmen for once in their lives on the box-seat-smiling on one side of their faces when Dunedin told them what fine fellows they were, and on the other side when the assurance came from Invercargill, but confident whatever hap> pened that they would get better roads and bridges, and capable of taking everything else that these converging streams of goodwill brought their way.