Other formats

    TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 5, Issue 8 (February 1, 1931)

This Land of Ours

page 38

This Land of Ours.

One could go on recalling one such midsummer memory after another. There were days and nights far down the West Coast, in the glacier country; there was a quiet and enchanting week at stewart Island, by bush track and whale-boat. The cumulative effect of the retrospect is a sense of gladness at having seen so much, experienced so much of the real New Zealand, a gratitude to “whatever gods there be” that one was able to extract so much of the joy of life from this pleasant land of ours while there was yet time. For inevitably there comes a time when bones ache and joints creak, when one wants to take it easy in holiday-time. Tents leak, the fire smokes, the bacon is burned; you can't see the mountains for the wet fog; you might as well be home in comfort.

But the joy of the road, the call of the open air, is overwhelmingly strong when the sun shines and the wind softly blows across the plain, and there is the knowledge that office and shop and factory
“The glassy river sparkled smooth as jet, Just touched with crystal beams.”—Robert Buchannan. The beautiful headwaters of the Whakatane, North Island, New Zealand.

“The glassy river sparkled smooth as jet, Just touched with crystal beams.”—Robert Buchannan.
The beautiful headwaters of the Whakatane, North Island, New Zealand.

and school can do without us for a while. And with our modern travel methods, it is easy enough and cheap enough to tour the length and breadth of the land and seek out the place of rest and solace that suits us best. For as always, whether it is a lively and crowded holiday house or a lonely camp in bush or bay, everyone to his own taste.