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The Witchery of Waikaremoana
Where Loveliness is Unspoiled.

(By O. N. Gillespie ).

(Railway Publicity photos.)

Nowhere in the world can there be on show, as it were, two sharper contrasts in the conception of beauty than are provided by the modern majesty of the Mohaka Viaduct and the laughing loveliness of Lake Waikaremoana.

With all their differences they are closely connected, for Mohaka will act directly in bringing Waikaremoana to the knowledge and appreciation she has long lacked. Later in this article, the threads of cause and effect are fully unravelled.

The Mohaka Viaduct is an immense and complex tracery of steel and concrete, an intricate and mighty meccano work. From great concrete pylons, those giant but slender trestles of interlocking steel climb to the road-line from the riverbed. The roof of Parliament Buildings would reach less than halfway up the first cruciform trestle, and of these there are six. The height is 315 feet, rather more than three times as high as the tallest building in Auckland or Wellington. The length of the span is 911 feet. Nearly two thousand tons of steel have gone into its construction, and it is very easily the largest viaduct on the New Zealand Railway system, already famous the world over for the number and immensity of this type of structure.

It is all very well to be rightly proud that in New Zealand there is compressed a universe in miniature, but it entails gigantic difficulties for our engineers. However, where tasks are stupendous, mighty men arise to overcome them, and the Mohaka Viaduct is a case for self-congratulation for New Zealanders. Perhaps, there will some day come a time when the men who succeed in such a feat as this will receive public plaudits as hearty as those given for the folks selected to play against the Springboks.

There is a type of mind, turning perpetually to the poetic tradition of the misty past, which refuses to sec beauty in these vast creations of metal and stone. I suspect that the feelings of many of these are derived from the prosaic fact that such a structure as a viaduct is useful, and possesses workaday values.

Yet usefulness is integral in beauty; beauty is one facet of usefulness. Emerson, the great American visionary, said this: “It is a rule of largest application, true in a plant, true in a loaf of bread, that in the construction of any fabric or organism, any real increase of fitness to its end is an increase of beauty.”

The Greeks taught that all beauty must be organic—that outside embellishment was the deformity.

The Mohaka Viaduct fulfils all the laws of beauty. It is pleasing to the eye in its very grace of form; its massive symmetry fires the imagination; it is awe-inspiring as the work of fellow human beings; it is the very apotheosis of efficiency; but, perhaps, best of all, it is of its own essence, a swift road to further beauty.

It is forever a truth of our history that making the railways made New Zealand, and it will soon appear that the making of the railway to Wairoa will make Wairoa and its splendid hinterland.

I have been to a carnival week in this delectable centre, and like so many of the smaller towns of New Zealand, it has developed a personality that is all its own. With the spirit so characteristic of New Zealand provincial communities, the citizens realised early the aesthetic possibilities of the banks of their broad river, and they have been converted into panoramas of sloping green, of velvet turf, and of smooth lawns ornamented with shrubs and gay flowers. A thousand views of picturesque sweetness can be got of the neat town buildings from across the shining waters of the Wairoa. It is a noble stream, and it is fitting that the work of men should adorn it, and so increase its natural charm.

But Wairoa, pleasing as it is, is but a stopping place on the way to a scenic fairyland which even in our country of Elysium after Elysium, is wholly unique.

Lake Waikaremoana is the most unspoiled Eden in all New Zealand. Let us, however hear the flat facts first. In the cheerful but unpoetic prose of the geological surveys: “Lake Waikaremoana is the deepest lake in the North Island. It is 848 feet deep, but its surface is 2,015 feet above sea level.”

This is where this great lake differs from her southern sisters, for the beds of Wakatipu and Manapouri, for instance, are hundreds of feet below sea level.

The lake is 12 miles long, and 6¼ miles in breadth at its widest part.

However, facts about a land of enchantment are dull articles. I make the plain and sturdy statement that in all our bevy of lake maidens, in all our Pantheon of lake goddesses, in all our beauty chorus of ferny tarns and our galaxy of shining meres, Waikaremoana is the red-haired girl of them all.

There is no difficulty in going to see Waikaremoana once you have reached Wairoa. The road is a good one and the distance about forty miles. The first part of the journey is through the fertile reaches of the Upper Wairoa Valley, following the Waiau River to the lake, where the Waikaretaheke goes roaring down to join the main river. In these utilitarian days, the first thought that comes to everyone is the unique situation of this mass of water for the generation of hydroelectric power. Dammed up two thousand feet above sea level, and pouring a furious, huge, swift stream through sub-tunnels, it is a thing of joy for electrical engineers.

The underground water tunnels often take care of the whole outfall and the surface outflow stream bed runs dry.

At the power house at Tuai, a peep back at the Wairoa plain is worthwhile. A power house is a prosaic article and it seems a desecration to find it here. But, what new worlds of comfort and gracious amenities are granted to those fortunate dwellers in that wide reach of verdure, through the fact of the existence of that stolid building.

Now there is a steep climb through splendid bush until the Rotorua road junction is met and the Lake Hostel comes into view. It looks like a large and comfortable station homestead and lives up to its appearance. It is right in every respect for Lake Waikaremoana, and the greatest artistry will have to be used, when, as is inevitable now, it is rebuilt.

Now we are in the heart of fairyland. The hostel is situated on a headland covered with dense forest and below is a lovely little white beach with small huts, a toy pier, and the inevitable launches and row-boats.

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My first glimpse of the lake waters made “mine eyes dazzle.”

Here was the first veritable liquid turquoise I had seen.

“Blue” is often carelessly applied to the waters of both oceans and inland seas. Waikaremoana's azure is the deep of a summer sky towards evening; it is often an eggshell blue; it shades to indigo, reddens here and there to purple; with a tiny riffle of wind in the sun it shimmers into “lapis lazuli”; in dead calms it softens to sapphire.

However often she changes her gowns, every new fabric is emblazoned with the true cerulean hue. If the present lovely name did not exist, she might well be called Lake Forgetme-not.

How sharp the contrast is between the scenes that ring this star-shaped sheet of water and the great lakes of the South! There are no minarets of snow in the distance. The forest is lacy, and the trees have a softer and more diversified green. Panekiri Bluff is almost as awe-inspiring as Mitre Peak. It rises in a sheer wall from the great water-mirror for two thousand feet. On its huge scarred face, game little shrubs, and gnarled valiant small trees cling, like alpinists making an ascent.

In some mystic fashion, however, it has a friendly look, and behind it are mountain tablehands with dense bush which again repeats in smoky blue the tone colouring we have learned to love.

The map of the lake resembles a starfish which joined the rebels and lost an arm or two.

There are dozens of minor inlets all decorated with tiny beaches, and islets that cluster like a constellation of gems. They seem to rest on the waters like floating Dorian tree groves. Each should have upon it a small secret temple. These islets stand at the entrances to little coves, or off the shore of miniature beaches, and dot the whole surface in the most irresponsible fashion. Some idea of the intricacy of tiny fiords and sounds, mysterious little bays and secret gulfs which enmesh the whole contour of the lake, can be got from the fact that the shore line is over 121 miles in length.

A journey from anywhere to anywhere gives one the joy of being an explorer without taking risks. The launch pulls in, stops, and, most times, you can say with reasonable betting certainty that yours is the first booted foot that has ever been placed on that particular spot. The islets have no names so you can show your esoteric knowledge of epithet and title by contriving appellations that suit the shape or distinctive beauty of each island gem. The last name bestowed is the “Isle of Capri” from one of the loveliest Mediterranean pleasure islands, which I am afraid is mostly known to New Zealanders through a musicianly and tuneful jazz song.

The foreshore changes as the boat meanders along. It takes fantastic shapes, drop scenes come and go, little harbours open and close, and beaches gleam and disappear.

A narrow passage between two jutting peninsulas admits to the wide arm known as Wairau Moana where beauty is heaped upon beauty with profligate profusion. This strait has the lovely name of Te Kaunga-o-Manaia… . “The Place of Manaia's Swimming.”

The isles here are if anything thicker and closer and in the far blue distance are the untamed eerie Ureweras. Again there are dozens of small sandy beaches, scores of tiny jutting headlands bushclad and verdant with changing greens. The tree varieties are bewildering, and the experienced tree lover from the South will be at a loss to name half of them.

North of Wairau Moana is another great arm called Whanganui a Parua. Down to its winding shores again appear to roll mighty breakers of green foliage.

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The stately forest rollers are relieved by the intermittent white of limestone cliffs and the shimmering silver of the sands.

Waikaremoana inevitably leads to the quotation of poetry…, One of the best selections from Keats was made by James Cowan, and here it is:

It doth seem

A mossy place, a Merlin's Hall, a dream You know the clear lake and the little Isles

The mountains blue.

I do not know what Waikaremoana would have meant to Keats, but I do wonder if its ineffable beauty will ever give us a poet to do it justice in verbal music.

Everywhere there are waterfalls and to use Tennyson this is:

A land of streams—some like a downward smoke

Slow dropping veils of thinnest lawn did go

And some through wavering lights and shadows broke

Rolling a slumbrous sheet of foam below.

The Mokau Falls are famous. A great tumbling swirling mass of waters crashes over a cliff of a hundred feet, strikes like thunder against a huge out-jutting rock curve which fans the wide cascade into an immense boiling cloud of snowy spray.

The Aniwanawa Falls form a double fountain of superb beauty with the appearance of planned classic form. They are made by the stream that winds and plunges down from Waikareite. There are no words for this little lake—this secret treasure which if it were not so richly invested with its aeons of Maori tradition would do for a resting place for “Grey-haired Saturn quiet as a stone.” It would be the perfect green Valhalla for the dying sylvan gods of the long ago. I think that Keats would have felt supreme ecstasy in Waikareite. Line after line of his suits this mysterious lakelet so well:

Forest on forest hung about his head Like cloud on cloud … no stir of air was there

But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest.

Waikareite means “The Little Lake of the Rippling Waters” and is only two miles each way in measurement, nevertheless bearing on its glassy surface seven little isles.

It is six hundred feet higher than its older sister and is reached by a narrow track. The feeling here is of remote antiquity. The silence is absolute. I saw it when the rata was in blossom, and their crimson reflections were like water colours on glass. The forest trees are gnarled and ancient giants, taking the queerest contortionist shapes, and are draped with lichen and feathery mosses.

Waikareite seems to brood in rapt contemplation of the sentinel troops of tall trees. Here again are small replicas of the odd inlets, miniature sounds, headlands and beaches, replete with fern, shrub and native flora.

It is no wonder that the Maoris believed that Waikareite lay under a “tapu” spell. The pakeha who does not feel its weird and inexplicable power of mystery is without imagination.

Withal, it is compact of sheer loveliness. I would like everyone in New Zealand to visit this wonderland, but it will be a sad day when a motor launch exhaust disturbs the placid sleep of this, the loveliest piece of jewelled water in all New Zealand.

I should have mentioned that one feature of the ever-changing colour panorama of Waikaremoana's Falls is the red hue of the mosses on the water strewn rocks.

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To me, at any rate, Waikaremoana is the first scenic region that has given me the sense of an age old heritage of ancient pagan lore and the rites that go with the worship of nature.

Now I have been in danger of being too poetic and I hasten to state for the benefit of the lethal-minded that Waikaremoana teems with fish and game and is a sportsman's paradise.

I find it passing strange that more is not heard of this fascinating resort. In comparison with many of our other lovely places, it has inspired little literature.

This takes us definitely back to the residual fact that it is situated on a road without reasonable railway access.

When Wairoa is on the Iron Trail and a day's journey in comfort can be made from Auckland or Wellington, I expect to see Waikaremoana come into her deserved position of leadership.

She will make poets from the most prosaic money-makers. She will make nature worshippers out of engineers, or mathematicians. She will lift the eyes of bridge and chess players to the glories of tall tree, ferny dell and winding waters.

In any case, if our history has a meaning, we can look forward to the flowering anew of the whole East Coast as a result of the railroad.

It will bring a new life force to that whole vast fertile area from Napier to the East Cape, a distance, let it be remembered approximately equal to that between Wellington and New Plymouth.

The commercial and economic benefits so derived are important, obvious, and logically certain for the advance of both this district and the Dominion as a whole. But the new railroad will confer a community boon which will have a value almost infinite. Scenic wonder is an asset in human happiness. It is not the exclusive possession of any part of New Zealand, and this region, newly to be opened to modern transport methods can claim parity in this regard with any other part of New Zealand.

Thermal springs, delightful seaside resorts, sporting paradises, wonders of canyon, river, mountain and lake, and all the other varied heritage of New Zealand's Nature-given treasures, are here in rich profusion.

Tens of thousands of New Zealanders and overseas visitors will come to know them, and when they do, they will with one voice join in the praise of the flawless beauty of that jewel in our diadem of lakes—Waikaremoana.

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