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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 3, Issue 9 (January 1, 1929)

Train Pictures — Through The Waikato

page 32

Train Pictures
Through The Waikato

The Waikato District takes its name from the great river alongside which, for many miles, the railway line runs on the section between Auckland and Hamilton. Miss Morton's pen pictures of this beautiful region are fully worthy of the subject. The Waikato, besides having a distinctive scenic charm, is the great wealth-producing area of the north, through the development of its dairying industry.

You'd better go by service-car,” they said, when I announced my trip to Rotorua. “The train journey is so tiring!”

On the Rotorua Line. Mr. J. R. Fow (left) and Mr. W. H. Paul, President of the Hamilton Beautifying Association, admiring a flowering cherry tree in the Hamilton Station grounds.

On the Rotorua Line.
Mr. J. R. Fow (left) and Mr. W. H. Paul, President of the Hamilton Beautifying Association, admiring a flowering cherry tree in the Hamilton Station grounds.

I refused flatly to believe them. I never believe train journeys are tiring.

To me, train trips are always interesting, and full of pictures. I find even the Auckland-Papa-kura suburban run a panorama of charm and beauty when the tide isn't too far out at Westfield, and many a time have I risen in the cold white light of breaking day on the Main Trunk express, hung shivering around corridors and outside platforms, rather than miss the glory of sunrise on the three great mountains. One glimpse of Ruapehu, when that first radiant, rosy flush sweeps up the ice-blue glacier, and Parateta-tonga flares suddenly in the golden sky of sunrise, and neither smuts in the eye, nor frozen hands and feet, are of slightest consequence. And once I stood outside on the platform all the way from Ohakune to Waimarino on a winter night, rather than miss moonlight on Ruapehu and Ngaruahoe….

So you see how it was that we saw Waikato a few weeks ago, from the open window of the Rotorua express rather than from the interior of a service car, which never seems to me quite so friendly or intimate a thing as a train.

And when you, too, make this trip through the Waikato, see to it that you have with you that silent travelling companion who fills every hour, every mile of the train journey, with absorbing interest and entertainment, J. C. Cowan's fascinating little book, “The Romance of the Rail” (issued by the Railway Publicity Branch). Never before had I realised the historic importance and interest of those miles of green farmlands between Auckland and Ngaruawahia, now so prosperous, so calm and beautiful in the beauty of an early summer morning, yet once covered with heavy bush, scene of deadly encounters between Maori and Pakeha. Close beside the railway marches the Great South Road, leading on from one thriving township to another, in old time a dark and perilous way, where the treacherous Maori laid in ambush for the White Queen's soldiers; where settlers in the isolated districts of Papakura and Pukekohe fortifield their little Selwyn churches, and went daily in peril of their lives.

Still staunch and sound is the little grey church at Papakura, where as a child I counted

page 33

Nature oftentimes breaks forth
In strange eruptions.

A scene in Geyserland, Rotorua, New Zealand

A scene in Geyserland, Rotorua, New Zealand

page 34

the dark roof-beams on drowsy Sabbath morns, and watched the sunbeams stealing in through the tiny diamond-paned windows. And for another reminder of those far-off days, we have the old grey stone walls that follow the line up and down, over fifty miles from Auckland into the heart of the Waikato, strong, enduring old walls built with laborious care and patience by the soldiers at the close of the Maori War, nearly seventy years ago. Covered with lichen, picturesque as no modern wall is picturesque, the old grey walls carry us back to the tragic years of bloodshed that laid so cruel a burden on this young and helpless country.

Stately Kauri Trees in the Trnunson National Park, North Auckland.

Stately Kauri Trees in the Trnunson National Park, North Auckland.

But no shadow of those years of travail lies on this lovely morning of blue-and-gold, the kind of morning that comes only in early November, mingling the transient beauty of late spring with the sparkling beauty and warmth of early summer.

The poplars have just put on their new robes of shining gold, so fine and delicate that they lie like a sheen on the blue of the hills and far green fields. The farmer is ploughing a long straight furrow, and the earth behind is a dark ribbon of chocolate trailing across the landscape, the green and gold landscape. Oh, the indescribable green of Waikato fields this sunny morning! A dazzling emerald, making a wonderful background for white lambs and woolly sheep, and herds of grazing cattle! And then the farmhouses, with little children swinging on the gate, waving as the express thunders by, the little rambling gardens, with flaring rhododendrons, sweet lilac and wisteria blooming by the front doors. The scent of pink and white apple blossom, golden acacia and hawthorn massed in snowy bloom, wafts in through our open window; blackbirds run swiftly through the crisp grass, and there are larks trilling valiantly high up in the blue sky… And those are just a few of the things you notice as you pass through the Waikato by train.

Now the fields are left behind for a while, and we are in the country of lagoons and marshes, that lovely, colourful strip of the Waikato that stretches a score of miles from Pokeno to Rangiriri. A menace to the farmer are the marshes when winter's floods submerge the countryside, but very lovely when the waters fall, and a carpet of green and bronze and gold is spread to the foot of the far blue hills. The swamp-grasses, mosses-and flowering rushes make a glowing mosaic of colour, fringed with white-starred, dwarf manuka, the foreground ablaze with golden dandelions and red sorrel. The young raupo blades stand up like tall green spears, and the smooth flax turns its shining, silver-backed leaves to the morning breeze.

Close beside us now is the Waikato River, suave and deep, running in shining reaches beneath the willow-fringed banks. What history was made here in the olden days of war, when the little turretted gun - boat, the “Pioneer,” churned its way up to Cameron's army, encamped on the river - bank, when the swift, silent canoes of the Maori glided through the shining waters to the plaintive music of the paddling-chant! Beneath the shadow of sacred Taupiri Mountain we pass, with the river wheeling round steep, bush-clad hillsides. The mining towns are left behind, we take our farewell of lordly Waikato at Hamilton, and speed down through the level miles of the Eureka swamp-land to the verdant plains of mid-Waikato.

Over in the east rises the rugged walls of the Kaimais, with the midday sun lighting their ridges with golden sheaves of light, indigo shadows sweeping across deep ravines and forest-clad slopes, and the silver mist of a waterfall rising like a thin column of smoke against a towering rock-wall.

Through mile upon mile of rich pasture land we pass, with grazing cattle and sheep staring page 35 placidly at the train, and bold grey bunnies holding tea-parties in the crisp green grass. Then at last the uplands, a tang in the sweet, cold air, the steep lift of the Mamaku Hills, with the sun shining through aisles of pale, slender-leafed tawa, and lean, shaggy rimus towering above their lesser brethren of the forest.

Spring lingers in the Mamaku Hills; we catch a glint of her beauty in the clematis, gleaming like a cloud of stars caught in the tangle of the tree-tops. The little native clematis is in bloom too; it hangs in long festoons from the branches, and lightens the dark forest with its fairy beauty. At the top of the steep hill is Mamaku, home of the timber-milling industry for long years, with stumps of fallen giants still marking the line of the one village street.

Then down the steep incline to Tarukenga, through sheer rock cuttings, with perpendicular cliffs and bush-crowned crags and bluffs rising majestically beside the line. More clematis, patches of golden broom ablaze in the sunshine, then that exquisite first glimpse of Lake Rotorua, lying like a fairy lake of turquoise beyond the bracken-covered hills and green farm lands of the foreshore.

Where Geysers Play. At Whakarewarewa, Rotorua, where visitors are ever fascinated by the varied thermal wonders, and the Maori legends associat ed with them.

Where Geysers Play.
At Whakarewarewa, Rotorua, where visitors are ever fascinated by the varied thermal wonders, and the Maori legends associat ed with them.

By the deep-shadowed groves of Rotorua Station we come to journey's end, well content to have come in the old way, down the shining rails, the way of unwritten romance, the way of prosperity and progress.

A Veteran Passes.

Mr. Thomas Dennis, late enginedriver N.Z. Railways, died on 6th December, at the Waikato Hospital, Hamilton, in his 79th year. Born in Jersey, Channel Islands, Mr. Dennis came to New Zealand In 1873, and joined the Otago Railway service (at Invercargill) in April, 1875, being appointed as a driver on 10th December, 1877.

He had six months firing on the broad (4ft. 8½in.) gauge engines on the Invercargill Railways (Bluff-Winton) before the conversion of those lines to the New Zealand standard gauge in December, 1875.

Mr. Dennis was transferred from Invercargill to Riverton on 1st July, 1879, and later from Riverton to the Wanganui district. He was afterwards stationed at Waitara, Auckland, Cambridge, Mercer, Dannevirke, Foxton, Wellington, Hastings, and Napier. Up to the time of his death Mr. Dennis was the oldest engine-driver in the Dominion. He retired, owing to ill-health, on 23rd July, 1908.