The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 3, Issue 5 (September 1, 1928)
In the Wanganui Watershed
In the Wanganui Watershed.
Now we descend into pumice land, on the banks of the hurrying Ongarue. In ages past this was a region of fiery furnaces. The rocky ranges on the east side of the valley are cast in significantly volcanic outlines. Vast showers of pumice sand were rained over the land, most probably from the craters about Lake Taupo, and as we travel towards Taumarunui we see whole cliffs of this pumice, washed down from the hills, and glittering like chalk in the sun. To the west the soil is better. That way goes the main road to the Ohura, the Tangarakau, and Whangamomona, the highway that emerges at Stratford, Taranaki. The branch railway by this route, that presently will link up the Main Trunk line with Taranaki, leaves our railroad at Okahukura, seven miles north of Taumarunui.
Running easily down this upper valley of the Ongarue one marks the sites of the old-time camps where a thousand men toiled on the railroad-building. It was a typical scene of nation-making, the breaking-in of the great wilderness to the uses of man. Navvies and rock-cutters from far parts of the world were gathered here, and their temporary townships of slab whares and canvas livened the bush clearings and the ferny river-terraces. Some of these line-makers’ camps bore romantic names reminiscent of America's Great West—“Carson City,” “Angel's Rest,” and so on—labelled in charcoal on a hut-front. Another legend was conspicuous in every camp: “Hopbeer Sold Here.” The King Country hop-beer of that era carried, from all reports, a most potent and agreeable “kick.”
Down below on the Ongarue brink there were some heavy cuttings in the rhyolite rock, and the roar of rackarock and dynamite explosions was frequent. Some of the co-operative workers had easier jobs, as when a stretch of pumice was encountered. One of these pumice cuttings at the Taringamutu revealed a bed of that soft volcanic deposit 40ft. deep, the wash-down of the ancient showers from the pumice-coated hills. Crystal-clear streams come in, nearly all on the east (our left hand); one of these is the beautiful Maramataha, flowing down with many a little rapid from the Maraeroa Plateau; all of these streams carry rainbow trout. The Ongarue is broken here and there by rapids and spray-washed rocky islets. From below the Onehunga Rapids, close by our rail-line, canoes can be taken right down to the mouth of the Wanganui, 150 miles away.
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The Rangitikei River, near Mangaweka.