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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 8, Issue 7 (November 1, 1933)

The Glories of the Waitemata

The Glories of the Waitemata.

In his book “Poenamo”—a mutilated but musical version of the Maori word for greenstone—Campbell gives a series of pictures full of charm of his pioneer life on the shore of the Hauraki and his first year in infant Auckland. His narrative tells of the Herekino pakeha-Maori establishment, of a boat cruise to Waiheke Island and the then lonely and unspoiled Waitemata, of his first walk across the Tamaki isthmus to the Manukau, of camping life among the Maoris, and of the truly primitive and happy days in the midst of the Maoris at Waiomu. His pen lingered with delight and regret on the glories of the forest, the noble kauri, the fragrant fern tree dells of the bush that then came down to the very water's edge. He describes leisurely canoe voyaging about the shores of Tamaki, and tells how he came to know the true inwardness and import of that sometimes delectable and often exasperating word “taihoa.”

There is a wistful note, a sigh for untouched beauty passed away, in Campbell's chapter in “Poenamo” describing his first day on the harbour where New Zealand's largest city spreads over its hills and plains.

“How lovely and peaceful were Waitemata's sloping shores as we explored them on that now long, long ago morning! As we rowed over her calm waters the sound of our oars was all that broke the stillness. No, there was something more—the voices of four cannie Scotsmen and one shrewd Yankee (the sum and substance of the first invading civilisation) loud in the praise of the glorious landscape which lay before them. On that morning the open country stretched far away in vast fields of fern, and nature reigned supreme…. We rowed up the beautiful harbour close in shore. No sign of human life that morning; the shrill cry of the curlew on the beach, and the full rich carol of the tui, or parson-bird, from the brushwood skirting the shore fell faintly on the ear.”