A Cluster of Jewels
The Towns of South Taranaki.

(By O. N. Gillespie.)

If there is anyone in Mars with a telescope large enough he should turn it towards the Earth when the North Island of New Zealand shows clear in the Southern Hemisphere.

He would find on the jutting eastern shoulder of the island, a tall gleaming white-coned pyramid surrounded by luminous green. If his lens were good enough he would be able to dissect the green, for it is made up of two qualities; a spreading and endless green velvet turf, and an intricate tracery of dark road ribbons with emerald hedgerows. If South Taranaki wants a distinctive and original emblem, I think it should be the shining red berry of the box thorn. The roads throughout the district are winding paved avenues bordered by these cool and orderly green walls. In one place I saw a lofty hedge of holly, but in the main it is mile upon mile of tall thorn. Our observer could also see that in amazingly short intervals, almost wherever there is a knot of roads, there is a little town; not so much a town, however, as a city in miniature. These South Taranaki centres from Hawera to Kaponga rejoice in a standard of amenities and facilities for enjoyment which would make envious many large cities of the Old World.

I have repeated so often that I must be approaching monotony that life in a small New Zealand town is the pleasantest form of living available on the variegated surface of the whole earth. It is comparatively simple to prove this fact when dealing with provincial capitals, but I wanted to enlarge on this development so individual to New Zealand. I wanted to tell the story of the places still smaller from a population point of view, and I selected the cluster of South Taranaki towns. I have made arbitrary boundaries, Stratford on the North and Patea on the South, although outside these two ends, as it were, there are the pleasant places of Inglewood and Waverley.

In the area thus defined, there are four boroughs, Hawera, Stratford, Eltham and Patea, and four Town

(Rly. Publicity photo.)
Broadway—Stratford's fine thoroughfare.

Districts, Opunake, Manaia, Kaponga and Normanby. Five of these occur on a direct road line of less than forty miles and the other three are within ten miles of each other. Their populations grade by almost regular steps from five thousand down to five hundred. More than merely lavish richness of soil and climatic largess have gone to this amazing and delightful achievement of men.

Taranaki is steeped in history. In many places are garden enclosures with the dreaming decorative air of ancient sunlit Southern France; but the whole province was a battleground for many long weary years. The shapes of old redoubts, of fortified pas of pre-pakeha architecture, of historic fighting posts, haunt hillside and valley in every direction. The whole province was aforetime clothed in rich forest, but the subjugation of the wall trees by the alien grasses was swift and efficient, and in most of the broad area there is little sign that the farm lands were page 28 page 29

(Rly. Publicity photo.)
Picturesque parking area in Hawera.

ever clothed in anything but smiling verdure. I am eternally grateful, however, for the thought of so many pioneers who have preserved picturesque bits of native bush and have also planted lovely plantations of English trees which already wear the air of feeling at home in their adopted country.

We print a picture taken from York Hill on the road between Hawera and Manaia which shows a panorama of ordered beauty, the dainty chessboard of light and dark green, with dotted homestead groves and regular lines of hedgerows that might be a country scene in Surrey or Kent.

And everywhere, dominating the scene with friendly majesty, is the towering symmetry of Mount Egmont. In the few days that we were there, he showed clear from foot to summit and only occasionally threw a small scarf of cloud about his shoulders. I was therefore nearly driven crazy by my friend of the camera who wanted him for a background for every picture, even of the Renco factory at Eltham, or the main street of Kaponga. It was not so difficult either. Those folks of the early days were poets, unconsciously, and they seemed to have striven to make every main road look towards their mountain and every town scene finds its focussing point in the view of his white crown. We had one grey day after a row of fine ones, and that was Mount Egmont's finest showing. The massive sides melted from slate colour to purple as evening fell, and the white cone remained chilly pure. The whole effect was spectral, but there seemed somewhere a kindly fleeting smile. I would like to have been able to fly to Dawson's Falls to find the secret spring of this grave and ghostly humour. It may be there in the comfortable Mountain House.

On my journey I entered at the gateway of Taranaki which was historically correct. Patea was the place where Turi landed. Here it was this ancient Polynesian navigator put ashore after his mighty voyage across the Pacific from Hawaiki. This was “the land with the sweet smelling soil where the river flows towards the setting sun.” The countless legends that tell the story of the explorer of the Long Ago who found that Patea answered to this description are full of the poetic imagery of those ancient storytellers who, as a reverend writer has said, wrought in “a language which was probably old when David composed and sang the Twenty-third Psalm.”

One of the show places of Patea is the fine figure-filled replica of the Canoe of Turi, which stands on lofty pillars outside the entrance to the handsome municipal buildings and theatre—the latter, by the way, being well worthy of any city. It gives a picturesque touch to the pretty main street with its good business premises and its neat triangle relief, where the Central Hotel faces South. This good country hostel is enlarging extensively, a sign of the general prosperity of the town.

The primary school is imposing, standing in ornamental grounds of over six acres, with a neat swimming bath and a splendid Memorial Avenue in memory of a former headmaster, Lieutenant G. A. Robbie.

Patea is a port of importance and is in actual fact the leading cheese exporting centre of the whole Dominion. I stayed at the seaside resort of Carlyle with its plentiful “baches,” coloured tents, and a sprinkling of permanent homes. There is a riverside beach, a small surf frontage sheltered by one mole and the noble sweep of the open coastal beach ringed by a semi-circle of perpendicular cliffs. On a windless night we watched the little steamers making their way through the moles, assisted by a fascinating coloured lights display. I was assisting at a picnic meal of sausages and sand beloved of youngsters, but the sheer sweetness of the scene made up for it. Across the river from us stood the winking harbour beacon exactly on the spot where Turi built his first fort. It is fine when the industrial activity

(Rly. Publicity photo.)
Ngaere Gardens, near Stratford.

page 30 page 31

(Rly. Publicity photo.)
remains of the fortrees pa of turuturu mokai, constructed by the maoris 400 years ago.

of large freezing works and shipping wharves can be veiled in beauty in Patea's fashion.

I got a still better peep at the real life of South Taranaki at the “Nicht wi Burns” at Patea. I am a constant attender at celebrations for the greatest of Scottish poets, but this was the best I had witnessed, the most complete. To the scroll programmes, pipes and snuff, neat Scotch thistles, candles in bottles, a haggis that was perfection, and the modestly named “Scottish drink,” accompanied by excellent speechmaking, there was added the cheery arrival of the Mayor and his guests from Hawera and New Plymouth. It was a cheery night of culture, indeed, and I believe would have really pleased Robbie himself. I suspect that many of the solemn tributes he gets on some occasions would have the reverse effect.

From Patea to Hawera is the bare score of miles. My first arrival there was in the evening and the coloured Neon sign on the lofty water tower was visible early. Here is a beacon worthy of its builders. It can be seen by aviators far out at sea and from the front doors of farm-houses for many and many a mile. It typifies the realised ideals of the company of British folk who made this lovely place.

The town of Hawera is compact, covering, in fact, little more than a square mile in its official area. Its streets are bright and busy, its buildings of all types are modern and handsome, and it possesses in common with so many other Dominion towns, an extraordinarily high standard of civic comfort. Its very neatness of design, its orderly layout of cross streets, its steady growth and history of abounding prosperity, give it an air of permanence and solidity. It is not all prosaic commercial soundness, however. It was a military outpost in 1870, and its environs are full of memories.

I found its very practical mayor engaged in the earnest fulfilment of a splendid dream. He desires to preserve for all time the mighty fortress pa of Turuturu Mokai, and re-erect it exactly as it stood four hundred years ago. We show the photographs of the massive earthworks designed of course, before the need of countering the effect of firearms. It was, in fact, impregnable and was only taken by a form of strategy, of which there is little boasting by the descendants of the victors. Over against it is the outpost pa of Te Umu a Tongahake. The task is one of enormous difficulty, but it is of tremendous national and cultural importance and I believe that it will be carried through. Students of history and tourists from all over the world would be interested in this authentic scene of that great military science that the Maoris had evolved.

However, if I were asked to name the distinctive feature of Hawera

Station Gardens—Hawera.
(Rly. Publicity photo.)

I would instance its parks. Naumai is an example of intelligent beauty worship, the salient points of this terrain have been utilised with skill, and the pavilions of native whare design on the high slopes about the little lake, harmonize exactly with the landscape.

King Edward Park is, of course, well-known from begonia house to exquisite flower beds. Indeed, Hawera is a flower town. Even in the neat blue-tinted tea room where we lunched, there were bowls of floating blossoms in profusion.

The home gardens are dreamlands of every kind. One feature that is unique is that, in both parks, and in many home gardens, the roadways and paths are of velvet turf. One treads with a feeling of uncanny softness on these emerald carpets in place of gravel or paved paths.

I ran out to Ohawe Beach and saw its remarkable swimming pool, a deep still circle of clear water surrounded by ferny cliffs.

However, we had to leave Hawera, with its air of competence and certainty of progress. All the way out we caught sight of little many-petalled Edens behind the hedges, and the civic authorities of Hawera have placed in every remote spare corner small formal triangles and squares of gaily tinted annuals. I suspect the authors of this to be the same enthusiasts who transformed a stockyard siding into the exquisite Hawera Railway Station gardens, known to passengers from far and near.

As we went along the neat Taranaki road we noticed again at odd corners of the intersecting sideroads, more flower bed gardens and thus we reached Eltham, the “sunspot of Taranaki.” In our picture of a residential street

(Continued on page 35).