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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 10, Issue 7 (October 1, 1935)

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A comparison of the difference of growth in 45 years in Norway and New Zealand.

A comparison of the difference of growth in 45 years in Norway and New Zealand.

can berth twelve miles farther up the harbour than the Tinopai plantation, and this direct water access solves in a most satisfactory manner, the whole problem of transportation. Then for good measure, the excellent road highway, and the railway pass through and round the property.

We made the return journey through the apparently endless drop-curtains of lacy foliage, until we took the picture you see of the pines on the hill slope among the native trees, with a typical New Zealand waterfall in the foreground. There is a monotony about the pine, but he is a relentless invader. Everything blenches before his resistless march. Like the Norwegian rat, he is the conqueror of the indigenous article. Here in this Northland, particularly, where there are no frosts, where the air is mild, and the days are compounded of sunshine and shower, this exotic immigrant revels in his new-found strength. I noticed a tightly-massed row of trees resembling a hedge eight feet high. It proved to be a forgotten trench of odds and ends of seedlings which had been heeled in and left. Similarly I saw in dozens of places where trees had been felled, self-sown youngsters jauntily growing. The moment the sun gets in when the shadowing branches have gone, innumerable little ambitious beginners spring up everywhere. This involves the interesting fact that a planted acre will grow trees to the end of time, and that little trouble or cost is incurred in re-establishment. This natural regeneration is far and away best in the Dominion, and is a comforting factor in the money value of a forestry investment.

In the older lands, tree culture is a State duty, and is regarded as such. Here in New Zealand it is a proposition of commercial safety and attractiveness. It is the speed of growth that makes this true. Compound interest has a habit of waxing-fat at the expense of investment, but as a spectator said to me, “These monsters can race any interest bill.” In ten years, pines on this property become marketable pulpwood, and in a further ten years, are forest giants fit for the sawmill. This is the whole basis of the confidence of the folk who are commercially interested.

As to the marketing future, the reference can only be to these old and familiar twins, “Supply and Demand.” It is indisputable that the world is racing towards a timber famine. The Encyclopaedia Britannica, never notable for light or humorous statements, makes the cold and final summing up after a world survey, that the world growth is eighty per cent. of the world cutting and the rate of the latter is increasing.

The newspaper world is wholly dependent on soft woods. Lord Rother-mere predicted a year or two ago, “A serious shortage of pulpwood within the lifetime of many of us.”
(Rly. Publicity photo.) The long spine in the centre represents one year's growth of a pine in New Zealand.

(Rly. Publicity photo.)
The long spine in the centre represents one year's growth of a pine in New Zealand.

One of his newspapers uses a hundred acres of pine in a single issue.

Our Director of Forests said six years ago, “New Zealand must establish plantations of exotic softwoods to the fullest extent of her financial ability. The market will probably be limitless.”

We must remember that it is only forty years since newsprint manufacturing was commenced from pulpwood. In that short period, the consumption has been so enormous and at such an accelerating rate, that even the last great natural reservoir, Canada, is in actual danger of exhaustion in thirty years. The various uses of these timbers have expanded since the War from 400, to 4,000 and included in the new consumers is the amazing artificial silk industry.

Timber still forms the basis of modern civilisation. We New Zealanders, under the stress of urgent demand, and like the rest of the world, have squandered our forest wealth, but we own a private and exclusive miracle-working quality. we alone in the world have the capacity of swift re-creation of forest capital. Our North Island is a tree paradise, a timber

(Continued on page 49.)

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