TOURIST TOWN

Korero (AEWS), Volume 2, Issue 23, 15 January 1945, Page 3

TOURIST TOWN

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The Rotorua express drops slowly I down past Ngongotaha and the woman on the other side of the carriage sees Lake Rotorua for the first time. She confides to her friend that Rotorua is not at all what she had expected. Nor is she alone in her surprise, for later, on the station platform, in the hotel sitting-room, you hear the remark repeated by other tourists who are having their first look at New Zealand’s most important tourist town. It is an interesting comment, for it makes you wonder what they did expect. Geysers going up beside the railway line ? Mud pools plopping outside their window ? Mineral baths in the hotel itself ? Perhaps the writers of the guide books wrote more into them than they saw. Anyway, it is certain that most people spending their first holiday in Rotorua are a little disappointed as they step from the station into a street that differs very little from that of any other country town. Arriving in Rotorua in peace time is less of a let-down, especially during the summer months when the streets are packed with tourists, when the hotels are packed, too, the boardinghouses, the theatres, the buses, the tennis courts, the bowling greens, the golf courses, the baths. The towns’ resident population is less than 7,000, but it has an annual roll call of 500,000 visitors. ■ Half a million people spending the year’s leave allowance and out for a good time. Certainly this is enough to keep a smile on the face of the business man.

If this atmosphere is good for a man with a roll of notes and a fortnight’s holiday, it is not so good for the forty hour a week resident who has to earn his living, from 9 till 5. Any one going to work in Rotorua may find it hard to believe that he is not on holiday, too — until the boss points it out to him. So what about the average resident who cannot turn the tourist traffic to profit, who does not let rooms or sell curios or run a taxi or dive for pennies off the Whaka bridge ? How does he regard the tourist ? Not so much as a nuisance perhaps as an amusement. Even if he cannot stay up all night and laze about the Blue Bath next day, he is not envious as much as tolerant. Perhaps, too, he is a little proud that his town should attract so much attention. Personally he is not much interested in mineral baths or geysers—one Maori who had lived in Rotorua all his life was more astounded than Korevo’s artist when watching the mud pools ; he hadn’t seen them beforebut he realizes that it is the thermal wonders that bring the tourists so —“ Long Life to Them.” One resident jokingly suggested that the townspeople should be charged an amusement tax on the camera-hung, black-goggled, queerly draped figures that parade their streets. Actually, the Borough Council has power to levy the citizens a special rate of .£I,OOO a year for the amusement of their tourist guests. The Council is wondering what would happen if it did so. The tourists would get a little of their own back in laughs, anyway.

" On the golf course,” said another, “ you are careful to call ‘ Fore ’ when within striking distance of the party ahead. That tubby little chap in the green plus fours who is always in the bunker might be the Governor of Nyasaland.” It is a town full of such possibilities, and the residents feel that there is no better camouflage than “ that holiday feeling ” and “ that holiday dress.” How does Rotorua look to-day without the crowds and the gaiety of peace time ? It might be a little unfair to compare it with a movie star without her make-up, but your first impressions bear out the simile. There is none of the grandeur that you may have expected, and no bush. Afforestation has clothed the hills behind Whaka with alien trees, but the land to the north, through which the road and railway enters, is gently rolling farming country. It is pleasant and prosperous but in no way inspiring. The town itself squats beside the lake in a basin of low hills over which you’ve climbed crawled in the train—for the last few miles. And you haven’t dropped back to sea-level. A sign-board on the station tells you that you are about 1,000 ft. up, a fact which, together with its inland location, accounts for Rotorua’s biting frosts and blistering summer days. The main shopping street running up from the station might be that of any inland town. But if you are in any doubt as to whether you’ve come to the right place, your nose will reassure you. Especially if it is a dull day. The heavy smell of sulphur is Rotorua’s trade-mark. Two other things will further convince you. The older Maoris sitting on the low fence in front of the Native Land Court seem to be very much at home. Talking smoothly in Maori, greeting each other with the traditional “ ongi,” or rub-noses, sitting and smoking or just sitting, they seem to fit very easily into the scene. And you’ll hear more Maori spoken in Rotorua than in any other town of comparable size in New Zealand. Final and no less emphatic evidence will be the accommodation problem. Rotorua has four public houses, thirtytwo registered private hotels, and innumerable other houses offering rooms,

full board, or bed and tray. Yet even now, when the tourist traffic is small, accommodation is not easy to find. One hotel was booked out by August for the summer months. Admittedly some of the guest houses have closed down for the duration and others have been taken over as convalescent homes for servicemen, but, though it is better served with boardinghouses than most cities, Rotorua still can’t find room for everyone. So it’s no use planning that furlough for Rotorua unless you book well ahead.

You may, of course, get in at Crowther House, a soldiers’ hostel given by a resident and furnished by the townspeople, but from the standard of its comfort it will be pretty popular also. As in any business where customers are plentiful and goods are few, accommodation standards are sometimes hardly in keeping with the price or Rotorua’s position as New Zealand’s chief tourist attraction. The Mayor favours municipal —something the same as in Invercargill. He has other ideas for Rotorua, too.

“ Look at Iceland,” he said. " They’ve tapped their hot springs and given Reykjavik central heating—on tap.” His idea isn’t just hot air, either. The new civic buildings—Council rooms, offices, library, concert chamber, and theatre—are all heated in this way. The Mayor showed us the bore they had sunk, steaming hot pool attached. It provides hot mineral water at something over boiling-point to heat natural water which is pumped throughout the building. This, the Mayor argued, was possible for the rest of Rotorua. The deeper you go the hotter the water and the greater the pressure. In Rotorua the bores are 350 ft. deep. In parts of Italy they go down many hundred feet. But here it’s something of a gamble. Rotorua is the one place in the world where alkaline and acid springs are found together, and it’s just the luck of the toss which you strike. If you strike acid, then you can buy a new section for your drill. It’s strong enough to eat through almost anything. Even the alkaline water needs special pipes. Zinc is used. In the early days some one tried to solve the problem with wooden pipes, but illogically bound them with steel wire. When the water corroded the wire you didn’t have to go down to Whaka to see geysers— -they played in the main street. And if you want to watch that newly painted roof stay green you’ve got to use a zinc-based paint. A lead paint turns black in no time. If, in the early days of motor-cars, the steam passed over your white bus during the night, you’d find it piebald in the morning. The housewife who wants to save a lot of elbow grease has her silver chromium-plated. The tiles in the bathhouses now have a leadless glaze. The minerals in -the water soon eat into enamel. And talking of bathhouses, .Rotorua is well equipped with opportunities to take the waters. Varieties of aches and pains bring thousands to the spas that have been built in the Government Gardens beside the lake. Here the gouty can stew in a soup of acids and chlorides and nitrates and then hobble out to watch with envy more fortunate (or wiser) men

splashing about in the Blue Bath, rolling them up on the bowling green, galloping about the tennis courts, or correcting that slice, on the nearby golf links. The idea is to encourage the invalid to slip the surly bonds of arthritis by reminding him of what he is missing. It seems a little like rubbing salt in the wound. But sometimes it works. Physical wrecks have been playing tennis after a week’s immersions. On the other hand, one man soaked in the brew for eighteen years and then gave up. Perhaps for him a vital element was missing from the list of analysed contents outside each bath. One of the most famous rheumatism bathsthe Priest’s Bath—got its name from an old Irish priest who during last century, set out to walk from Tauranga to Auckland to get treatment for rheumatism. At Rotorua he became so crippled that he could go no farther, but he discovered this hot spring and cured himself in a couple of days by bathing in it. And the cures have been going on ever since. The Mayor has other suggestions for using the supposedly limitless supplies of hot water beneath his feet. “ What about kiln drying timber ? . We have thousands of acres of urgently needed exotics at our back door. And our own electricity supply ? We have the power in our back gardens if we like to dig for it.” It sounded like a ratepayers’ dream. But most interesting was a rehabilitation suggestion. “ Let’s use the hot water to heat glass houses and grow tomatoes and grapes and other luxury fruits out of season. The frosts won’t trouble us then. There’s a man in the town doing it already.” When you think of the work and expense that goes into heating glasshouses for early tomatoes in places like frosty Blenheim, and the good prices the fruit bring, you agree that the idea has something to it. That’s if there isn’t a catch somewhere. “ But,” said the Mayor, “ indiscrimate digging is not to be encouraged.” We agreed. We had seen a Maori blocking off a road at Ohinemutu that morning and the steam rose from the post-holes when they were only 6 in. deep. But

we didn’t know that when the sexton goes to dig a grave he takes another man with himjust in case the grave is prematurely occupied. There is a chance that he might strike a well of gas that contains a fair portion of carbon monoxide. A whiff or two will put you out, to come round wondering what has happened. One after-effect (from too much) is temporary blindness. It can, of course, kill. The Mayor told us a story from his own experience. He was doing some excavating, and the chap who was carting the spoil away in a barrow didn’t come back from one trip. The Mayor found him quietly asleep beside a load. “ And he was neither tired nor tiddley.” Despite these dangers lurking underneath the potato crop some of the citizens have braved the depths and the taps in their bathrooms read Hot, Cold, Mineral.” Originally Rotorua was indeed a tourist town. It was controlled by the Tourist Department until 1923 when the local Borough Council was formed. The Department still has two nominees on the Council. The late start has been a headache for the Councillors, who say that they had to give the town a complete set of civic amenities in twenty years. No small job, when you’ve got the difficulties of a thermal area to handle. Rates are consequently high. “ Why,” they complain, “ hasn’t Rotorua as a community cashed in on the tourist traffic ? ” Everyone else has. One of the town’s most successful business men was on his " beam ends ” when he arrived. He is now retired. But, with easy money for civic improvements within reach, the town has so far missed its chance. Scenic resorts in other parts of the world charge tourists a toll and put the money back into the town to the ultimate benefit of the tourists. " It’s not our fault,” they say. “ We have suggested a 10 per cent, levy on all hotel bills as an amusement tax, but official approval has been lacking. And yet we are authorized to levy our own citizens to pay for the amusement of tourists.” Their case sounds well for Rotorua. Half a million people a year spend a lot of money, and a small levy would mean an

adequate income for new accommodation houses and public works. Apart from the Government Gardens, Rotorua is not so well off scenically. The lakes are Nature’s work. The town itself, though pleasant enough, is not a beautyspot. “ Why,” the citizens ask, “ do they cut down and prune the trees ? ” “ Because,” the Council replies, “ they grow too fast and interfere with the overhead wires.” A pity. Rotorua, boiling hot in the summer, needs the shade as well as the beauty of trees. And what would this somewhat nondescript little town depend on for its existence if it were not for the thermal areas beauty spots, and sporting facilities so plentiful and so handy ? It wouldn’t starve. In the last twenty years farming has been developed on lands around Rotorua to such an extent that the town could probably now exist as the centre of a farming community without the income from tourist traffic. This swing to dependence on primary industry has been assisted by the work of the Native Department in bringing into production thousands of acres of undeveloped Native land in the vicinity. So well have these Native land development schemes worked out that, in one product alone—family meat —they have been Rotorua’s sole suppliers for the last few years. They were able, also, to supply sufficient for thousands of soldiers in nearby camps. And though the Borough Council is disturbed by the rapid growth of trees in Rotorua, the State Forest Service is not. An area of about 10,000 acres of exotics, mostly Pinus insignis, was planted behind Whaka some thirty years ago. Now milling has begun. As these are perpetual forests, the benefit of the new industry will be a lasting one for Rotorua and the 500 people employed in this area and at the Waipa Mill, a couple of miles out on the Taupo Road. The mill is the most modern in New Zealand and supplies large quantities of box-wood and crating. But when the forests at Waiotapu are opened up, as they ,soon will be, a mill three times the size of that at Waipa will be needed.

So even if the geysers were to stop playing to-morrow and the Green and Blue Lakes were to turn grey, Rotorua would still have a fairly sound economic background in farming and forestry. It has been upon these more secure sources of income that the business section of the town has had to depend during the war years, and some few boardinghouses are the only places that have shut up shop. Rotorua is thus discovering that there are solider, if less rapid, roads to prosperity than the tourist traffic.

However, the war has publicized Rotorua amongst the Americans in a way that paper publicity could never do, and residents expect a boom in overseas visitors after the show is over. Even if you are making a fortune out of early tomatoes, there's no sense in ignoring the fruit on other trees. One large section of the community, the Maoris, can be certain to appreciate whatever - the post-war boom brings their way. It was very interesting to discover the effect of the tourist depression upon the Maoris. As one of the chief tourist at-

tractions in themselves, the Maoris have shared in the boost to business. There was guiding for a few, curio and souvenir work for many, and even for the children a share in the profits recovered from the stream at Whaka. No one, not even the Natives themselves, would agree that this curiosity interest has benefited the people. As proud a people as the Maoris resent the feeling that they are a museum piece. And tourists are notoriously ill-mannered in their questions and interests. One guide told us that some of the overseas visitors are annoyed if they are not allowed to pry into the homes of the people at Whaka. “ Does she speak English ? ” they ask. “ How many children have you ? ” “Do you sleep in a bed ? ” They are a little bewildered and embarrassed to find that Rangi and Helen and the others speak better English, perhaps, than they do,- that questions about their families are liable to rebound on the questioner, and that the guides homes are modern, contain beds, and .are, indeed, well furnished. Helen told us with a chuckle of the party who, before engaging her, wondered amongst themselves whether they would be safe in her company. They were a little embarrassed when she asked whether she would be safe in their’s. Very natural, if naive, this search for knowledge, but the witty answers of a proud and intelligent people have confounded more than a few questioners. It is a truism that tourists can be told ’ (and sold) anything. In the old coaching days the driver at the foot of a steep hill would tell his passengers to get out and look at the iron springs. These were to be found underneath the coach. The lightened vehicle would then go up the hill followed by a trail of deflated tourists. But the loss of the tourist traffic has not impoverished the people, even if money is a little harder to come by. There is work on the land schemes and in the forests for the men, and congenial and useful work in the box-factory at Waipa for the girls. These are harder ways of earning a living than catering for the tourists, but from the point of view of both Native and national welfare, some will say they are better ways. In the

meantime, the little boys still call hopefully for pennies below the bridge at Whaka and, between times perhaps, dream of more affluent days to come. The tribes round Rotorua are hapus of the Te Arawa Tribe. In this war the percentage of Arawa boys in the Maori Battalion is high, and many of them come from Whaka and Ohinemutu. There have been many casualties, too. Some of the returned men are now convalescing at the hospital down by the lake ; others are learning the carpentry trade at the training school at Ohinemutu. It’s a completely Maori class under a Maori foreman, and the students are enthusiastic. There will be plenty for them to do around Rotorua. The pa at Whaka may be quaint, but it is neither a beauty spot nor a health resort. Ohinemutu, at the other end of the town, is little better. The need is for improved housing, but the old problems of confused titles and inadequate means of repaying advances are stumbling blocks. However, with these men trained to a useful trade and working if they want to under the control of the Native Department, much may be done to replace the present unhealthy and overcrowded houses. Prerequisites are steady jobs, so that housing loans can be repaid, and secure titles. The fluctuations of the tourist trade hardly provide the former. Work on the land and in the forest and in the mill and factory, work at which the Maori excels, will do so.

Improving the housing would certainly be more useful than carving picture frames to sell to gullible tourists. We saw the work of one of these pseudo-carvers, much of it punched with a chisel and daubed with a red varnish. We compared it with the panels in the Tamatekupua meeting-house depicting the history of the people. Each panel is a hundred years old and carved with a stone adze inches deep with intricate and delicate patterns. Tamatekupua, after whom this house is named, was navigator of the Arawa Canoe which brought the forebears of the Rotorua people to the Bay of Plenty hundreds of years ago. The meeting-house, one of the best in New Zealand was rebuilt at the time Qf the Centenary. Originally all meeting-houses were tapu. Te Kooti’s house at Ruatahuna still is. It seemed strange, then, to see the brightly polished dance floor of this house and all the paraphenalia of a dance band in one corner. A bob hop is held there every Saturday night. One old Maori shook his head sadly—“ Such is progress.” Tamatekupua was a bit of a lad. In fact, his mischief was mainly the cause of the migration of some of the Arawas from the Bay of Plenty to Rotorua. One of the panels shows him on stiltshe used these to cover up his tracks when up .to his little jokes. The old people can tell you the story of each of these wonderful pictures in wood and of the woven tukutuku panels that separate them. The favourite is that of Tutanekai and Hinemoa — rangatiras and lovers —of the Ngatiwhakaue hapu. The story is well known. The couple fell in love, but Hinemoa’s father would not let her marry the young chief. One evening, while sitting on the foreshore, she heard the music of Tutanekai’s flute carried on the wind from Mokoia Island, in the centre of the lake. All the canoes were under guard, so Hinemoa swam the three miles to join her lover. It was interesting to hear the story from two men who claimed direct descent from the couple and to hear, too, the less well

known story of Tutanekai’s flute. The tohunga who had declared the child Tutanekai tapu, or holy, as being of royal rank, broke the strict convention that he must not for some days handle the food he ate. In retribution he was drowned by Tutanekai’s father in Lake Rotorua and the bone from his right forearm was used to make the flute. They told us with pride that the flute was now in the Auckland Museum. We met Mere, who told us the story of how the Maoris came to Rotorua and the legend of how the thermal activity started. She told it in Maori sitting at the head of the table in her parlour. It was a strange, almost theatrical, performance, but her charm and the art of her storytelling impelled that concentration and feeling of intimacy which a great actor can impose. Her clothes were unremarkable —a black dress and a black shawl hooded over her head and shoulders. What caught your attention were her gestures and the intensity of the changing expressions on her lined face.

Unhurried, she made the story live ; brought Ngatoroirangi to the table to plead for warmth as he had done by the snows of Tongariro ; was herself his sister sending across the sea the fire he needed ; drew from the ground before us the steaming pools. Mere had been to the San Francisco Exhibition with the Rotorua Concert Party, so we asked her how she , liked America. “ Ai,” she shook her head, “ too far from home ; too far from family.” “ But,” reminiscently, “ You could buy beer everywhere.” Don’t form your own opinion of Rotorua when you get off the afternoon express. Wait until you are on the station at the end of your holiday. But remember those first impressions, or otherwise you’ll let the steam from the geysers obscure, as it never does, the town. Oh, yes ! about the geysers. If any one tells you the thermal activity is slackening off, don’t believe him. Down at the end of Arawa Street, Pohutu’s playing better than it has done in years.