South Auckland Storyland.

Papakura (20 miles)—the name refers to the rich red soil of the plain—is an inviting rural place, with its well-grassed fields, its large areas of root crops and fruit groves, its old-settled air. The churches here were fortified in the war days, there were redoubts by the roadside, and there was skirmishing in the bush yonder up to the left a few miles from the township. Sixty-odd years ago all this plain, like the ranges yonder, was practically one great forest, with a few clearings in which the pioneer settlers had their homesteads, and where Maori communities lived and cultivated. Hereabouts page 12 begins the storyland of South Auckland, this theatre of soldiering in the era when war against the Maori was on the grand scale under Imperial Generals.