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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 3, Issue 8 (December 1, 1928)

The North Auckland Country

page 37

The North Auckland Country.

This Waikato visit concluded the programme of journeys in the South Auckland districts.

Now the great peninsula lying to the north of the Waitemate had its turn. The country to be inspected was practically unknown to many of the travellers, naturally so because for so many years it had been difficult to tour the north owing to poor roads, and the slow process of building the railways; the only ready access was by sea, and that only to the fringes of the Northland territory. Now, with the completion of the most important links it was possible to travel comfortably by rail right up to the shores of the Bay of Islands, within a few miles of New Zealand's earliest capital, and to the Kaikohe country, the heart of the widest and most fertile part of the north. As events proved, this was in some respects quite the most pleasant and the most informative section of the provincial tour.

That great inland waterway, the Northern Wairoa and its surroundings, with a typical area of the world's greatest timber-yielding tree, the kauri, came first on the train-motor car itinerary. At Kirikopuni, the rail junction that is to be when the branch line to the west is through from the Northern Main Trunk, the party took motor car to Dargaville, the principal town on the Northern Wairoa. There, and at Mangawhare, they were in the hub of the old-time kauri timber industry. They saw the mills where in former years large square-riggers loaded kauri in bulk and boards for Australia, the United Kingdom and Europe. They saw the townships and old camps where hundreds of tree-fellers and sawmill-hands made merry after their strenuous toil: heard stories of the lively years when timber was all the talk and when timber ships came up and went down the river in a continual procession. Now they saw farms and orchards and comfortable homesteads where once timber-men plied axe and cross-cut saw; rich grass fields and herds of dairy cows where once tall kahikatea trees stood like feathered spears in the swamps. The clearance of the bush and the drainage of the swamps have transformed the northern Wairoa from a land of kauri and white pine to a land of butter-fat and root crops and fat cattle and flocks of sheep.

“My truant steps from home would stray,
Upon its grassy side to play.”

Along the Banks of one of Northland's Glorious Rivers.

Along the Banks of one of Northland's Glorious Rivers.

Dargaville was as hospitable at any place visited on the tour and that is saying much. The Mayor, page 38 Mr. F. A. Jones, and the Chairman of the Hobson County Council, did the chief honours of the place, but everywhere there was a rush to greet the commercial missionaries and to show them the goodness and the beauty of the land.

The sight of that Northern Wairoa day (1st November), that will remain longest in the travellers’ memories was the kauri forest of Trounson Park, where nearly a thousand acres of precious timber land, mostly kauri, have been preserved as a national treasure, through the generosity of the late Mr. James Trounson and Government purchases. A train from Dargaville took the party up the Kaihu Valley line to Te Aranga a run of 22 miles, and from there it was a wonderful bush walk among the kauri, many of them huge trees, the last of the primeval forest of the North. The visitors lunched in the stately bush, an interlude of delight. Returning down the Kaihu Valley the train pulled up at quaintly named Babylon — a name-relic of the days when the Maori had a craze for Biblical nomenclature—and saw A. C. McArthur's Ltd. new industry for the extraction of kauri gum from timber in operation. The plant deals with kauri swamp timber, pulverising it and subjecting the shredded materials to the action of alcohol and other solvents. Finally the dissolved gum is separated by reagents and produced in a commercial form. The first shipment of the company's product was recently sent overseas for varnish manufacturing purposes.