TOURIST IN TAKAKA

New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 811, 11 February 1955, Page 8

TOURIST IN TAKAKA

by

Lawrence

Constable

"Hill is one of the facts fife’ to the people of en Bay. A single metal road switching ten miles up to 2600 feet and six miles down again through ghost-white foliage and dusty daisies is their only link by land with populated New Zealand. On the one hand you look back over the prosperous Motueka lands and the dim blue arc of Tasman Bay; on the other the couhtry cobbles up into white-ridden ranges. whose crests recede like a giant gea. 41a ies The lower slopes of the Hill are blackberry, broom, fern and manuka, and the black patches where they have been. The heights are littered with sharp-shaped rocks, lying as if they had tained there in some cataclysmic rockstorm. The stumps of trees long since dead haunt their old forests in ghostly copses..At times the ground sags into craters, treacherous holes overgrown with scrub, where the limestone crust has fallen in. Takaka Hill, so they say, is completely hollow, wanting only a hole punched in either side to open a tunnel all the way through. "Only we won’t see no tunnel,’ an old-timer rounded out the legend; "not enough of us t’other side to,make it pay. Fact is, they’re scared, that’s what. They don’t know what they might find under this old "Kaka Hill." The capital of the lonely side is Takaka, population 520. The town is arranged as a triangle approached at the apex, its sides each about a mile long. No side streets complicate the lay-out. Three‘streets are all there is of Takaka: once round the block, three miles. Let AB represent the main road and shopping centre, and AC is residential, while BC remains in reserve, like the blank period the Programme Organiser hasn’t made up his mind what to do es Ao ‘3

with, which turns out in "the end to be just for Variety. Golden Bay, on the whole, makes few concessions to the traveller. Its hotel lounges tend to be decorated with photos of the proprietor’s relatives, and the bathrooms with reminiscences of his toilet, his brushes-hair, nail, tooth\and shave-arrayed along the sill. Only Takaka greets you with anything like a modern facade. "These fires do a lot of good, y’know," a commercial traveller observed over lunch. "You can always pick the place that’s had a good blaze, it's got a new pub. Forces progress, a fire." We sat there chatting, a solitary foursome of guests, speculating on all that country near road’s end, None of us knew much about it. "Why is there no road through to the West Coast?" a lady asked. One thought about it, and instinctively found the answer: so few people want to repair from Takaka to Westport, Just the same, a road would suggest a fascinating round trip from Nelson to the Coast, open up new and spectacular country en route, and breathe new life into a district that has never had a great deal of its own. After lunch I wore my camera and went in search of Takaka. If Nelson is sleepy hollow, what is this? With its score of shops, and E.P.B., and R.S.A., a W.D.F.F.R.R., and B.N.Z. and a T.A.B., it is void from 12 to 2, an unswerving mile cleanswept of people. Shipping offices are plentiful, but remember that solitary switchback over the Hill, and even though Takaka is some distance from the sea, this will seem less surprising. An up-to-the-min-ute library, dedicated all embracingly to those who served in South Africa, two World Wars and Korea, presents

itself as a reminder that Golden Bay has a name for marble and cement. Then there is the dairy factory, crucial to the local economy, for Takaka, bushhewn of timber and gold, is now dependent first and foremost on the cow. Back of the spearhead of shops and houses the pastures begin at once, fevered with daisies and dandelions down to the riverbank; its waters rattle by arpong the brambles like the sound of sése faraway train. There, a hundred ds from the shops, the stillness has a quality of awe. The strong blue hills surround you like the power they are, each an occasion for abiding views. All at once, New Zealand seems peripheral; you stand in that valley on the very verge of the map. From each of its three corners, a road departs, bound for one of the three claims Takaka makes on the visitor’s attention. Three miles from point B lies Takaka’s proudest moment, the Pupu Springs. There is no one in charge of the car park, no turnstile at the gate, no guide; only a notice to acquaint you with the facts: "Twin springs, the largest in the world. Flow approximately 400 million gallons a day from a mysterious

underground sotirce." One climbs a little umpire’s platfarm overlooking the performance. The water nucues 1 ee io" Rn eal an * faintly "Blue, sparkling ‘like an’ inlemonade. To swim the twenty yards across the pool is said to be impossible. A stately copse of weeds beneath the water is doubled back under the force, as if before a great wind. A pile of red weed smothers the rocks. The water ebbs away a new-born river, nourishing on its fringe a bumper hatvest of cress. "TJ knew a fella once,’ the old-timer said, "lost a cow down one o’ them craters on’ the Hill, Three weeks later she come up here, out o’ this. old Pupu Spring. She’s a weird country. Climb any hills round here, boy, mind where you're puttin’ your foot." Six miles from point C brings you to Pohara Beach, blessed by its situation with a freedom from great numbers of people. No more than a handful of cottages dwell along the shore. The tide rolls back and forth over the unspoiled sands of what was once called Murderers’ Bay. Navigator Tasman undoubtedly had his feasons for leaving so unpleasant a label on the map; but as if to forestall angry mass meétings of Takaka merchants in the Murderers’ Bay Cinema, the map was corrected long ago. Golden Bay is not only a more becoming name; it fairly describes the whole district by the colour of its beaches, its roads and its sunshine. The only thing that disturbs the solitude of Pohara‘is the passing from time to time of a lorry under a sheet of dust; for a cove or two beyond the Pohara Store lies Tarakohe, where industry suddenly takes over. Tarakohe is cement. The tall clanking canister of the cement mill digs back into the cliffs. A framework built high above the road carries trolly-loads of silica and limestone down to the scows at the wharf. A ttamline at a lower level brings coal and gypsum in. A little further on, a memorial on a headland commemorates Tasman in cement. From the apex of Takaka, fork right for the Long Plain and Kotinga, by-pass the turn-off to One Spec Creek, xeep on making dust from farm to scattered farm for three more miles or 30 (they think nothing in these parts of a few miles of sheer distance), and at length a cottage looms up with a sign at the gate: "The eels." Here Mrs. McCallum waits in a broad-brimmed straw hat to feed her pets in the Anatoki River, as she has since 1914, as often as visitors came. "Forty years," a visitor exclaimed tactlessly, watching the long black shadows on the floor of the stream. "Are they as old as that?" "They aren't,’ Mrs. McCallum replies with a glimmer, snapping thumb and forefinger on the surface of the water to call the rest of her brood. They come with smiles on their faces and open mouths, ready to take the food from the fingers of their benefactress. Two courses are provided: one of raw meat cut in small pieces; the other a cup of blancmange fed to them on a spoon. "They're very fond of milk puddings," Mrs. McCallum says. There is little quarrelling amongit the family. Mrs. McCallum shares the food around; she says she has come to know their expressions and their manners, Of this at first I was sceptical, but watching some push in over their brothers, and others biding dog-like for their (continued on next page)

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turn, gradually I began to recognise amongst them the faces of people I knew. When the cup is empty, Mrs. McCallum lowers it into the water for the lucky nearest to clean. I used to do the | same myself with the cake-mixing basins. The Eels, the Springs and the Beach, these are the attractions Takaka urges you to see. It is only the feeling of the place that a traveller can add Locals don’t do that; it is too much a part of them. Only a narrow strip of dust and shingle binds this place to the rest of New Zealand: that is. wnat alte*s the temper of its living. You feel it most strongly when night comes down. Then when the moths close in and caper at Takakas lonely aucleus of power from the Cobb, every house and every room becomes an island of its own invention. Your mind or your fingers or your mere contentedness with nothing to do must satisfy the evening for you. There is no cheating at the pictures, except on Friday or Saturday Along the hypotenuse of main street the only sound is the occasional whir of a milk shake being mixed. Beloag there and you may have band practice, crochet or the prospect of milking in the morning. Otherwise you may take a walk (multiples of three miles), rounded | out with beer, bath, book and bed. Somehow you have become exempt from the cares the world has on the other side of the Hill,