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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 7, Issue 2 (June 1, 1932)

[section]

That “goodly land,” the beautiful and wealth-producing province of Hawke's Bay is the subject of this running survey of the great district and its chief town, whose people are making so heroic an effort to restore conditions to normal after the ravages of last year's earthquake. Hawke's Bay, so rich a land of farms and towns to-day, is the youngest of all of the provinces of New Zealand.

There is a Maori geographical term which happily describes the East Coast of New Zealand, and particularly that sector from the East Cape southward to the Wellington province. “Te Tai Rawhiti,” by which all this long shoreline is known, means “The Sunshine Sea,” or “The Sea Where the Sun Rises,” otherwise the coast of sunshine. Nowhere does one appreciate such a description more than in Hawke's Bay, where the sun seems to shine more consistently and ardently than in most other parts of the Island. The vast even spread of plains, tilted very gently seaward, with a far-extending lofty mountain wall as its rampart against the blustering west winds, seems to invite and gather the sunshine. The Hawke's Bay coast sees the sun from the moment he lifts above the “Orient wave.” The difference in climate is often marked as one travels into Hawke's Bay from the western coast. The Manawatu Gorge, by which dramatic entry is made, is an elbowed gateway admitting the traveller to a land suffused in the heat and colour of the strongly shining sun.

Not that there is lack of warmth on the western side of the dividing range, so considerately slashed through by Nature, but there is a distinct feel of a more sheltered, genial countryside when one emerges on the wide-expanding Ruataniwha Plain and speeds smoothly northward through a land of rich grass and fat flocks and many orchards. The blue Ruahine Mountains, snow-tipped in winter, source of many a river, have the province in its keeping; and from their rolling foothills, where forest has given place to grass, there is a broad leisurely countryside revelling in the glorious sun, the perfection of quiet pastoral scenery, with many a comfortable-looking town and township and many a beautiful homestead half-hidden in the tree-groves.

Once wholly a land of sheep, this broad province is a land of a pleasing variety of industries. The dairy-farmer and the or-chardist find here a most favoured country.

It is becoming more closely settled as farmers discover that much of the land once devoted to mutton and wool can be used profitably in comparatively small areas for dairying. But it is still in large degree the domain of the sheep-man, and the existence of these stations and runs of generous size, with their mansion-like homes and their great woolsheds and village-like establishments, give the province a distinctive character, and one that is truly and typically colonial. It follows, too, that these broad acres are a land of good horses, and this is a characteristic of Hawke's Bay that particularly pleases the country-bred man and woman from other parts. The horse, fortunately, can never be displaced altogether by mechanical contrivances in New Zealand, and the Hunt Clubs help to foster the liking for an animal combining weight-carrying and endurance with speed.