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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 5, Issue 2 (June 2, 1930)

Mokau Memories

Mokau Memories.

Where the Main Trunk line crosses the Mokau River, about midway between Te Kuiti and the Poro-o-Tarao, that stream is an insignificant one, narrow and winding slowly between fern banks from its birthplace near the Rangitoto Ranges. Lower down it becomes a navigable river, for canoes and motor launches at any rate. It was a famous waterway in olden days.

It was the only road into the interior in that part of the country, so rugged and forest-covered. The early missionaries used it; there was a station of the Lutheran Church people away up at Motu-karamu, near Totoro, nearly ninety years ago. Percy Smith and Wilson Hursthouse, the pioneer surveyors, came up this way from Taranaki seventy-two years ago—then adventurous youths; they crossed the present route of the Main Trunk somewhere near Mangapeehi station on their way to Lake Taupo. Little did Hursthouse foresee in those rough times that he would be one of the planners of the railway through this heart of the King Country.

Even at this time of day the beauties of the Mokau are little known, because of the snags and rapids which impede navigation above the old coal mines. There is a place where the present writer once camped, on a canoeing expedition, on a little island between rapids, at the Panirau bend, where the forest-clad ranges, almost as steep as a wall, make a magnificent canyon. The ranges here run up to a thousand feet and more above the river.

One of the Chief Sources of New Zealand's Wealth. Southdowns at Mr. Dysart's farm, Marlborough Province, South Island.

One of the Chief Sources of New Zealand's Wealth.
Southdowns at Mr. Dysart's farm, Marlborough Province, South Island.