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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 3, Issue 3 (July 2, 1928)

Memories of Ngaruawahia

Memories of Ngaruawahia.

Now we go with a long whistle across the deep blue-green Waikato where it flows in swiftly from the left. On our right a bright green tongue of land, shaded with tall old English trees, and beyond the tongue-tip another river, a slower, darker, stream, gliding silently in to the main river. Just over that river, up climb the sudden ranges, blue and wooded in the distance; bush to the skyline. This waters-meet is Ngaruawahia, the delta and heart of Waikato.

The dark, slow river is the Waipa, one time a gunboat waterway like the Waikato, now a channel of navigation for power - launches, timber-craft, flax-carriers—a handy river road through a well-settled countryside where the dairy cow is queen. This is the land of fact cattle and sheep and butter-fat. The greatest dairy company in the world operates here and throughout the Waikato; its turnover runs into several millions a year.

The junction here once reminded Bishop Selwyn of the confluence of the Rhone with the Saone at Lyons—“the quiet Soane,” he wrote, “answering to the Walpa, the Rhone to the Waikato.” And, as if Waipa's sedative current had steadied down its big brother for good, the Waikato from here to the sea is a pattern of smooth, easy courteous deportment to all who embark on its waters. The fume and fury of its far-away upper waters is as a tale that has long ago been told and the pages closed.

The sound of the bugle and all the martial turmoil of a great camp livened Ngaruawahia back in the “sixties,” after the patriot Kingites had fallen back from this their thatched-whare page 40 capital and the British flag had replaced the Maori red-bordered national colour on the tall flagstaff in front of Tawhiao's council-house. This was the busiest place on the Waikato. A fleet of paddle-wheelers went steaming up the two rivers. Two more armoured iron gunboats came up—the “Rangiriri” and the “Koheroa”—with bulwarks and 'midships tower pierced for rifle-fire and guns at embrasures on the lower deck. There is a relic of the flotilla on this riverside esplanade to-day, one of the two iron roundhouses or turrets of the “Pioneer.” This was handed over to the town of Ngaruawahia as an historic monument on the annual regatta day in 1927 by the late Hon. Richard Bollard, then Minister of Internal Affairs, on behalf of the Government. The guncupola fittingly links up the storied little town with the fighting-days of its foundation.

The name Ngaruawahia is often misinterpreted. It does not mean “Meeting of the Waters”; which is rather a pity, because a Maori translation of such a term would fit it exactly. It means “The food-stores broken open,” a name which holds a tradition bearing upon the Maori custom of placing the housed-over pits of kumara (sweet potatoes) at the disposal of the guests on occasion of ceremonial visits.

Big Engineering on the Main Trunk Line. The picture shows the construction of the Makatote Viaduct—860 feet in length, and 260 feet above the stream.

Big Engineering on the Main Trunk Line.
The picture shows the construction of the Makatote Viaduct—860 feet in length, and 260 feet above the stream.