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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 4, Issue 8 (December 1, 1929)

[section]

There is a newness, a brightness, a varied beauty about New Zealand's northern peninsula that impresses the mind to a more marked degree the further north the traveller proceeds. It is a land of good cheer and happy people. It is fitted to be the permanent home of the Christmas family. Improved transport has here brightened prospects already made bright by the bountiful hand of Nature. Everywhere the rate of progress recorded makes the wonders told of Aladdin's Lamp seem but the weak efforts of an impostor.

It is a country rich in natural beauty and historical romance, and to these are added a soil and climate from which other wealth, though of a more perishable kind, is being increasingly won. Here the native element is more in evidence. Here are legends and evidences of age-long wars among the Maoris for the possession of healing waters or favoured valleys, from Ngawha Springs to Kirikiri—wars conducted with a zeal and joy in fighting that showed how the people's surplus energy—the pent-up steam of a strength-giving environment—found vent in happy killings all along the hills that still show miles and miles of hand-hewn slopes where ancient fortifications defended the pas of the tribes.

To the visitor it is a land of many delights, while it exerts a strange and powerful magnetic force on all its children, so that few who have lived on this happy peninsula are content to remain elsewhere.

Asked for a selective opinion upon the natural wonders of the North, one would give pre-eminence to the 90-mile beach, the Mangamuka Valley, and the Bay of Whangaroa.

The “beaches of Lucannon, before the sealers came,” had no charm to equal that degree-long stretch of sand of the alleged “90-mile,” which strikes northwest in an unbroken line from near Kaitaia.

The forest stretches of the Mangamuka Wonder Valley are so beautiful that they even lessen the overpowering effect of the grandeur found among the Kauris of Waipoua; while the magnificence of Whangaroa harbour, with its waterfalls, islets, bays, and coves, its brooding stillness, its warm and wooded beauty, is far beyond the power of brush or pen to portray—it beckons as the absolute ultimate in the world's treasure trove of natural beauty.

Fish of all kinds abound. This probably accounts for the success and popularity page 6 of the haangi of the North—the Maori means of cooking for a feast. After sampling the contents of these, one concludes very definitely that the fleshpots of Egypt contained nothing so enticing as the fish-pits of the Maoris. Here Bacon's advice is carried out to the limit—use fasting and full eating, but rather full eating.

New Zealanders who want a change of scene, and visitors from overseas, should realise the advantages for holiday-making which the Northland possesses. It is only in recent years that rail access has been available into the upper portions of the Peninsula, and for this reason the country has been rather a terra incognita to the average traveller. Now, however, the place is easily reached by good train services from Auckland City to the railheads at Okaihau, Opua and Kirikopuni, while beyond these points regular car services by road, and launches by bay or river, are available.

New Zealand'S Railway Chief. Mr. H. H. Sterling, General Manager of Railways, snapped on alighting from the “Limited” Express at Thorndon Station, Wellington.

New Zealand'S Railway Chief.
Mr. H. H. Sterling, General Manager of Railways, snapped on alighting from the “Limited” Express at Thorndon Station, Wellington.

In the future development of tourist traffic within the Dominion the Northland, with its many charms, is sure to claim increasing attention.

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