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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 5, Issue 4 (August 1, 1930)

The Toheroa Beach

The Toheroa Beach.

Good luck to the Maoris, who are putting up a strong protest against the proposal to make the Ninety-Mile Beach, in the Far North, a racing ground for the motor speed maniacs. The speedsters’ idea is to make the long beach a great gathering place for the motor racers, and the hope is to have “thousands of cars” assembling there to watch the scorchers tear up the sands. The Maoris have very sound grounds for their objections to the notion. The beach is the principal place where the valuable toheroa bivalve is found, and the tinning of it has become an important industry in the North. The disturbance of the sand and the soaking in of the page 43 poisonous petrol will surely kill the toheroa, especially if the motorists use the place at low water, as they propose.

The Ninety-Mile Beach (by the way it is in reality not more than sixty miles) is a capital highway for visitors to the Furthest North, but the ordinary traffic is not great. The speedsters, whose ambition it is to rival the record of the late Sir Henry Segrave, are however, not concerned with scenery or anything but the mad joy of whizzing like a comet, regardless of all else. The Maoris have definite rights to the undisturbed possession of their fisheries and food preserves, and they will be perfectly justified in putting up a barrage on the beach, so far as the racers are concerned.