The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 6, Issue 8 (April 1, 1932.)
Picnic Hilltop
Picnic Hilltop.
Here, if anywhere, is the place for camping and picnicking. We found a place that seemed to have been planned by some kind mountain providence as a halting place for tired and hungry trampers. It was just under the eastern lee of the range-top, with Berard's great black thumb of a peak lifting in its rear. A great knotty kotukutuku tree bent over from its rocks, and the little timbers around were all clacking and hissing with the stridulated song of the sun-loving cicada. The blue smoke went curling up from the billy-fire, the only smoke of man on all this ridge-top, and the picnickers wasted no scrap, and thanked their climbing stars that they were not cooped up in a hot and crowded city this midsummer day.
That is one side of the great saucer of mingled farmland and woodland that slants to Akaroa harbour. On the other side, the west, there is the perfection of pastoral scenery, with many a bushy valley and many a cascading stream and rich fields for the farmer. The mountain-tops are a succession of volcanic crags and peaks, dark in relief against the fadeless green of the climbing pastures.