The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 6, Issue 8 (April 1, 1932.)

From Bush to Farm

From Bush to Farm.

It must have seemed an untamed mystery-laden land to the first white settlers who anchored in these bays. All the Peninsula, from the feet, of the lava crags to the cliffs and the waterside, was covered with tall dark forest. The bush was cleared gradually, the Peninsula forests supplied Canterbury with building timber for many a year. Then began the farming process, which made the hill country a rich productive region of cattle-raising, wool-growing and dairying. Today it is a country of moderate-sized farms, and the homes scattered about it are set, often enough, in places of great beauty. It is a land of glens. The little streams that come cascading down from the ranges rising between two and three thousand feet above ocean level are rocky-bedded and shaded by thickets of small bush, and there is infinite variety of scenery in these deep valleys and little gorges. There is one valley on the Lyttelton harbour side of the range that reminded an old settler acquaintance of mine of the famous Valley of the Doones, in Blackmore's great story, strewn about as it was with mossy old rocks and the cliffy places and little woods that made it a well-sheltered sanctuary.