OVER THE ALPS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 473, 16 July 1948, Page 19

OVER THE ALPS

By

SUNDOWNER

ROSSING the Alps is no C more difficult to-day, if you drive from East to West, than getting out of Wellington into the Wairarapa. Though my own crossing was made in rain; it was rain following a long spell of dry weather; and: there was no trouble with creeks or slips. But I was glad that I was not travelling the other way. I

had crossed Arthur’s Pass both ways on foot, and I still think that there is no other way of crossing if it is the mountains themselves. you want to feel. The moment we accept aid from petrol we pay petrol’s price-cease to listen and cease to see for the mesmeric sensation of movement. I don’t think I exceeded 15 miles an hour’ between Arthur’s Pass and Otira, but even crawling like that I was moving four or five times as fast as a sensible man walks, seeing little But the road in front of me, hearing nothing but tyre and engine noises, and smelling nothing but rubber and gas. I had made my contract. with the devil of ease and speed,.and those were his terms. wh ¢ ae

WHAT'S WRONG WITH RAIN?

oP a al ie HE rain continued all the way to the sea, and all the way-with. one slight break-to the Franz. Josef glacier, It rained at the glacier and it . rained all the way back (with two breaks) to Reefton. I had one fine day at Lake Kanieri, half a day fine at Ross,

and one brilliant hour (in three days) in front of the ice in the Waiho Gorge.

In 17 days that was all the sun I saw south of the Buller, though it was bright, calm, and mild during my only day in Westport. But when I look back after eight or 10 weeks I have no feeling of wetness at all. I know that it rained because I recorded the facts at the time, but I have so dim an impression of it all now that I must have adapted myself

very quickly both to the rain and to everything that goes with rain on the Coast-as I am sure everybody does who goes there without prejudice. I certainly thought it a little strange when Allan Wood of the Westport Times told me what he liked best in: Westport was the climate. I had known Allan both in Christchurch and in

Dunedin, and I thought I knew that for every inch of rain in Christchurch Westport had four inches, and at least two for every inch in Dunedin; that Christchurch had far more sun, and Westport far more wind. But I was assured that I was wrong about everything but the rainfall, and that rain, as soon as it stopped on the Coast, was at once forgotten. Well, I am glad to > know that I was wrong, -and to add that I very soon felt wrong. If you get wet in Otago you feel wet, and cold, and generally miserable, I can’t say that I enjoyed the rain on the West Coast, but I was never really cold there, and when I look back now the rain seems as natural, as necessary, as easy

to accept and far easier to forget than the mountains, which I saw only twice, and the bush, which far more than the weather, the hotels, or the long Pacific rollers, really is Westland. When I asked a man in Ross how long a particular shower would last he looked at me for a moment before he answered. I think he was wondering how smart I thought I was. But here is what he said: "You're on the Coast, aren’t you? What’s wrong with this?" ae ah ~~

MILES OF RIMU

be HAD never before driven through a hundred miles of forest of any kind, and it would not be quite accurate to say that I did so in South Westland. Though it is more than a hundred miles from the Taramakau to the Waiho. the

bush has in places been cleared, and when _ deductions

have been made for the four major gaps at Hokitika, Ross, Hari Hari, and Wataroa, there may remain only about 50 miles. of bush so near to the road that you can touch it with your hand as you pass. But, in these 50 miles, long stretches are still predominantly rimu, and I found it deeply moving to glance up mile after mile and see these gloriously straight trunks towering above the road on either side. After Waipoua, which is not so much an excitement as a solemn experience-a kind of resting place between two eternities--South Westland (continued. on. next page)

THROUGH N.Z. TO-DAY

(continued from previous page) is the most exciting stretch of tall timber still left in New Zealand. Only deliberate folly ¢an now rob us of Waipoua, which goes back to the beginning of time and -will continue to the end hof time if the earth itself endures and escapes control by madmen. Rimu is not in that category. Its cycle is shorter, its destiny tied more closely to our own. I am too ignorant even to guess at the point at which rimu begins to die of old age. I know only that a rimu 50 years old is still. immature, which makes me suspect-that most of the really big trees I passed in Westland had seen seven or eight generations of men come and go-say 200 years-and that they will last at least half as long again if they are left undisturbed. They will of ‘course not be left undisturbed as long as that, and clearly should not be; but I was glad to discover that the "situation is under control." When I saw logs perhaps. seven or eight feet round going in at one end of a mill and ‘emerging before long as boards and beams at the other endwhen I saw that and asked a benchman if the supply of timber was giving out, it was reassuring to be told that there ‘was "any amount of rimu if the Government will let it be used." I hope "any amount" is true. But I hope that the Government proves it true before it opens the door too wide. sh * oa

IN A HOTEL

HEATED bearing before I reached Ross had rather pleasant consequences. As I waited in the service station admiring, as I always do, the competence with which mechanics locate faults, the conversation turned to hotels. I refuse to say turned inevitably to hotels since that would be the

big Westland lie. I asked about the hotels because it

was clear that I was going to be detained for a day or two, but the silliest of all West Coast libels

is the legend that drinking is the chief occupation. In three days and four nights in the Empire Hotel in Ross I saw no more drinking than I would have seen in half a day in half a dozen places in Lambton Quay, or in half an hour on a sale day in Wallacetown, Instead of non-stop drinking I saw drinking conducted as it ought to be-in something like a family circle. Because of the rain there was no work going on outside, and the bar sitting-room was seldom without occupants. But they were not noisy occupants, or guzzlers, or brawlers. They played cards or ninepins, read the papers, discussed the news, stoked and sat round the fire. Everybody knew everybody else, and if they usually filled up again when their glasses were empty, it was social drinking and not gulping against time. In the afternoons some women came in, most of them with. sewing or knitting, and when it was time to go home husband and wife went away together. The game I have called ninepins was probably not the ninepins of tradition, but an adaptation of that. They gave me a local name for it, which I have forgotten, but told me that a visitor from England had identified it as the ninepins of old English inns. I think it was a kind of. table variation of ninepins, with a suspended ball taking the place of a ball thrown along an alley, but although anyone could play it and nearly everyone did, the finer points come only with practice and concentration. It was humiliating, but no doubt salutary, after a lot of solo practice on the sly, to be made to look thoroughly silly as often as I tried conclusions with other visitors, whether they were men or women. The proprietress was so skilful that she easily beat two of us together, though I’ never once saw her practising, and as she was without a cook, and yet served the most excellent meals, she could have had no time by day to leave the kitchen. (To be continued)