SUMMER WIND IN ARROWTOWN

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 500, 21 January 1949, Page 9

SUMMER WIND IN ARROWTOWN

UST hides the face of the Arrow hills in the evening, coming between’ them and the street, tree-lined, tree-darkened. UST after gust coming up from the narrow, steep, bleak bluffs hanging over the river. "HE wind is a voice and the dust is a phantom, so that children, playing, are roused from absorption and raise, for a moment, small serious faces. What? Who calls? UT the dust moves on with the question unanswered, The stone hut is roofless by the gorge at Kawarau, and the races are broken. HE dredge lies rusting in the Nevis Valley. . Grass grows on the tailings where the mindless sheep wander. LA Plees bend over, Molyneux; over the waters where men tever-ridden, gold-haunted, Waded, and dipped, and dug, and died. Ay htetas grow in Roxburgh. Matagouri and snow-grass still find lite aade the massed rocks of the Lindis, echoing now to car and cattle-truck, while the grudging Dunstans no longer take the breath and the heart from the seeking, climbing men. ‘CAIRN by a creek remembers where they fell in the ranges on the night of the big snow, succumbing, through pain and reluctance, to the essential, final aloneness. HE, shores of the Lakes see the tourists where Rees and the Shennans sought for homesteads; Thorlby and Teviot, built for grandeur, now house the tractor and serve as barns for hay. N Arrow the street is quiet Where Bully Hayes blustered. The gold office is open for two hours on Thursdays. and a chimney is all that is left of Ballarat where the pretty ladies lived. of ng wind blows up the Arrow gorge in the evening, bringing with it the dust of men gnd of

dreams.

Isobel

Andrews