The Radio Explorer

Radio Record, 1 April 1938, Page 13

The Radio Explorer

DISCOVERIES-ANCIENT AND MODERN

j T is not often these days when aeroplanes and radio have laid bare nearly all the secrets of the lonely places in the world that one runs across an explorer. But, last week, | found one in Wellington. He explores modern New Zealand, as well as old New Zealand. In his own way he isin the direct line from Tasman and Cook and Baron Thierry.

me is @ radio explorer.

~By

EMILE

OME of the d is coveries of the radio explorer are startling. Most of us in the cities lead snug, rather narrow, existences. If we see any further than our noses it is only as far as the

tram or bus or train that is going to tuke us in to our day’s work. Sometimes we go to a film and see pictures of Tibet or Alaska, and we think how strange these places are and how interesting they would be to go to if they were not thousands of miles away. We don’t realise that there are things just as strange on our back doorsteps. I freely admit that I had not renlised it until I had talked with the radio explorer. He told me some of the latest things he had discovered. He had just been to Motueka and Takaka, and there really did not seem to be a great deal of discovering to be done there. At least, so one imagined. It was the place where Clouston had been born and the place-or as nearly as possible the place-to which he had flown back in one of Britain’s fastest civil planes over half the world. But while Clouston was flying back to that district there dwelt there, 20 miles in from Takaka in the NeverNever of the New Zealand bush, 2 man and his wife who had lived there in solitude 20 years beside an asbestos field about 150 acres in area. TPHEY lived such a lonely life in their solitary cottage that they have a notice on the track that leads in from civilisation. It says: Visitors Are Requested to Call Out to Give Us Warning. THE two people who live there, away from the world, have such lonely lives that the sudden oncome of a stranger without warning is upsetting.

This is difficult at first to imagine. We who live in the towns and the cities are so used to one another. The sight of strangers means nothing to us. But it would not mean noth-

ing if we had lived in the Never-Never of New Zealand for 20 years with only a radio set to give us contact with the outside world, and all around us the bush. O the radio explorer called out his warning as he came riding up the track to the cottage by Nelson’s asbestos field. The man and his wife who lived there made him welcome. They uusaddled his horse and gave him tea in the hospitality of their cottage, that stood on the edge of unsurveyed country. "FINALIC about atmosphere!" suid the radio explorer. "It wus just like going into some old half-lit Huglish inanor house. At one end of the room was the vast open fireplace, hung with billies and kettles on wire. "The walls, brown with age and softened by smoke, were covered with photographs of famous New Zealanders who at one time or another had been interested in the asbestos field. On the floor were half a dozen deerskin, shot on the place, and out of the window one could see mile upon mile of mountains covered with bush. "The cottage was 38000 feet above sea level. The elderly couple had lived there for 20 years or more." That was one thing that the radio explorer found when he set out to discover Nelson’s asbestos field. "Asbestos?" he said. "You’d have thought it a dull enough matter for a radio talk, wouldn’t you? It became straight away human and fascinating." ‘EH had gone exploring in that district, the radio man told me, to find out all he could of the hops and tobacce and apple growing in Nelson and Motueka, to dig up early

TALES OF THE RADIO EXPLORER

Motueka history and to learn the work of the Cawthron Institute. The plan for iron and steel works at Onekaka had given the district special interest. When he went there he heard of this "somewhat mystical" asbestos field. He got a horse and decided to go exploring. He found it was one of the finest in the world. There were 150 acres of it, some in clay, some in solid rock. He found that a large company was damming the nearby Cobb River and tunnelling the hill and then piping the water down 1800 feet into the Takaka, At the bottom of this pipeline they were putting in a power-house which, he understands, is to supply Ouekaka and Nelson and the asbestos field and any other subsidiary industries with their electric power. Edge of Beyond AND on the border of all this immense potential in-dustry-where dynamos will hum and _ factories will clang their loud metallic noise of Progress, he found the solitary elderly couple of the bush. The radio explorer, Mr. Douglas Cresswell, is well known for‘ his explorations-both ancient and modern-in Canterbury. One week he is telling about his explorations down a coal mine of the West Coast and another week he is telling about his explorations into the history of old New Zealand families. Now he has had some of his talks recorded by the NBS in Wellington, and they will be heard in time from all the national stations in New Zealand. , ASKED him what first gave him the idea of. giving these talks. He used to be a farmer in South Canterbury. He told me. "Living the life in the country," he said, "I soon began io see that half the people in New Zealand didn’t know the problems of the other half. That was really what first started to turn my thoughts toward radio." He would vead in overseas journals and trade papers of the impressive work done in this country by the farmers. Then he would come into town and and hear people in New Zealand talking in just the opposite way. "They seemed to have the idea that the farmer was a mun who was always going to the Government for

help and couldn’t stand on his own feet.’ VIIERE was perhaps some truth in that, but people didn’t realise, he argued, that the life of the farmer wus the life of Nature. It Was governed by matters over which he had

ho direef control, such as disturbances m overseas price levels and catastrophes of Nature, The townsmen didn't apprethis.

"Why," usked the townsman, ‘is the farmer always running to the Government for aid and at the same time he is buying expensive cars?" "But,’ argued Mr. Cressvwell, "even with his cars the farmer can’t persuade his children to stay on the land." He Disagreed

EOPLE said the rural districts of New Zealand could not absorb its own population. He disagreed violently with that.

One had only to point to European countries © where the land settlement was age-old and much denser than in New Zealand. "i The country; he urgued, should absorb its rural population; it should stop the drift to the towns: it should learn to be sympathetic to the man on the land. Ty

"Whatever way you look at it." argued Mr. Cresswell, "the farmer is the zoese that lays the golden egg. And if we had such a bird in our family, think

how we would look after it and care for it." SO he began to explore the problems of the men on the land and tell about them over the air. This led him on to other explorations, He began to dig into the stories of the o!d farming families o f Canterbury, piecing together the tales of their struggles and adventures. Sceptieal at first about the prospects of interesting the radio

public in these talks, he was surprised to lind bow many people were fascinated by these tales of the pioneers. They wrote to him and told him scraps of their own family histories. "My great-grandfather was the first to drive a bullockwagon over the plains," one would write. "I can remember my grandmother telling me . . ." and so on, Forgotten Tales HE learned the old forgotten tales like that of the old farmer of Timaru, who Was driving his bullock-wagou into town and came to a river which he had to ford. "The old chap took off all his clothes and rolled them into a bundle and put them in the wagon. He forded the river, but on the far side the bullocks bolted, "They took the wagon and his clothes with them and he was left utterly naked in the tussock country where there were no trees and no leaves to cover him, not even a figleaf."

HE radio explorer wandered on journeys to odd places like Port Underwood, near Queen (Charlotte Sound.

There he found a family which had lived in the same spot for 110 years. It was the family whose far-off ancestor, Captain Guard, had been the father of the first white child born in New Zealand.

That white child had a= strange adventure. If was seized by hostile Maoris and held hostage. Captain Guard went to Australia for aid, and a Warship was sent across the Tasman to Port Underwood to force the Muaoris to surrender the nine-months old child.

To-day the radio explorer found only five families living in Port Under-. wood, That in itself was not very exciting. But it soon became exciting when he found that once upon a time, shortly after the Battle of Waterloo, in 1815, it was nothing unusual for 180 boats to

put out during the morning after whales from Port Underwood. Port Undervoud of New Zealand, now deserted, had once been the greatest whaling port the world had ever seen.

OW the radio explorer is going to extend his field again. Ina short time he is to visit the Wairarapa and the Hawke's Bay districts. There he will gather material for talks on the stories of the old families in those districts, just as he hag dealt with the stories of the families of Canterbury.