DINEDIN TO GORE.

Otago Witness, Issue 2596, 16 December 1903, Page 69

DINEDIN TO GORE.

Br Sybil Douglas.

"What a feeling of delight there is in the first move of tho train! At last we have shaken the dust and mud of the city from off our shoes and skirts, and are bound for the open country, where the wind whistles fres through the tussocks and clears the cobwebs from our brains.

Dunedin is a beautiful town, seen from the railway line. A hill, crossed by precipitous streets, covered in some parts with houses, in others with bush and waste ground, forms the background, while church spires and the stones ot the Southern Cemetry shine in the morning sun. Even the dingy precincts of the station itself are not left without a touch of brightness. There are rows of that tiny pink flower wrongly called the shamrock, and when the sun slimes these blaze into j, glorious mass of colour.

Caversham is a squalid suburb from the tram, and an. exceedingly pretty one from the train. The sea sparkles in the distance, and Kew, with its houses and pretty gardens, and Cavershain Hill itself, with its gum trees and the closely-built houses in the foreground, make a charming picture. No sooner is the station left behind than the train plunges into a tunnel, and out again on the Green Island side. A glimpse of misty blue in the distance is our last sight of the sea as we hurry past the pretty township of Abbotsford into another tunnel. The entrance to this tunnel is viA and beautiful. The hills narrow until they form a steep glen, up the sides of which grow bush, tussock, and llax, while great boulders burst forth even-where. Somehow, whenever I go through it I think of the meeting between Fitzjames and Roderick Dim. At this time of the year its ruggedness is brightened by clumps" of yellow broom, which shine on the gloomy slopes like lighted candles on an altar. People speak often of the "Go'den Age" as some happy time of long ago, which will never come again, but every spring and early summer is truly and literally a golden age. The buttercups spread a golden carpet for our feet, the laburnums drop gold upon our heads, and mile upon mile ot country blazes with it, as the broom and gorse come into bloom. It is promised that the desert shall blossom as the rose, but even new, for a few weeks at least, the waste places ore filled with a splendour which even the rose cannot surpass. The train hastens along under the Chain Hills, Saddle Hill, glowing like an em'eiald in its greenness, till we pass Mosgiel, and are on our way through the lovely Taieri Plains. Far away are hills, some clad with bush, some bare, others partly cultivated. The morning I saw them a faint mist covered, but did not hide, them, while clouds, soft as the very breath of Spring, rested on their summits. Now the mist lifted, now fell lightly again, now one patch of colour shone and faded, then another, in all the hues of ihe rainbow, but softened, like lovely faces seen through a veil. Between the line and the hills stretch rich fertile plains, green with springing oats and crimsoned with fields of sorrel. Long, straight roads 'cad away into the heart of the country, and are bordered by luxuriant hedges of gcrse and hawthorn. Here and there are paddocks like old English meadows, daisy-sprinkled and shaded by spreading trees, under which herds of peaceful cattle graze. The marshy places are filled with buttercups, and as the train flashes past the unexpected sight of their brilliance gives one a thrill of joy. The line is .bordered in places by osiers and silver poplars, which often hide the view, but which are beautiful in themselves, as the wind bends and tosses them and the sun shines on their glossy leaves. These give place +o rows of poplars, whose rijyid bearing allows the country to be seen like a garden through a. paling fence.

The plain, lovely in all eke, is spoilt by its river. Where Nature meant us to see water blue as the sky and crystal clear, >^c see a muddy, turgid stream, only redeemed from ugliness by the willows on its banks. Most of our New Zealand rivers have been ro ruined, and to the artist the gold found in them hardly balances the loss of beauty entailed in the getting of it.

The Ira in closely follows the shore of Lake Waihola, with its fringe of bulrushes. The lake is a sti iking example of the way in which sluicing and dredging spoils the landscape. Sometimes on a blight day the waters are tinged with blue, but u«ua'ly they are yellow and muddy. Across the lake are hills, mostly cultivated, some of them so gresn and round that Nature might have smoothed them in to pillows for herself to rest on. Now and again the colouring is varied by groups of dark fir trees, which contrast with the lighter green of the fields. All through the country stand clumps of gum trees killed by last winter's frosts. It is a melancholy sight to see these exiles from a warmer land seared and dead amid the fresh verdure and growth of spring.

Gradually, as ihe Taieri is left behind, the country changes and becomes more desolate. The line no longer passes through luxuriant trees and rich meadows, but tus-sock-covered hills and bleak wind-swept plains take their place. There is another lake on the way. that of Kaitangata, with deep Vue waters bordeivd by a wild marsh, where the black swans make their nesK At the foot of the hills across the lake the township of Kaitangata is to be seen.

Balclutha, "a miserable, cold, prohibition place,'' as a fellow-passenger described it, is a pretty township built on both bunk* of the river. The Molyneux River must have been beautiful in the days -when it knew nothing of dredges. Even now, on a fine day, as it glints between its i\ illows, one can get an idea of -nhat the lust for gold has destroyed. The countiy from Bdlclutha to Clinton is of the kind usually known as, uninteresting, that is to say, it possesses no very striking features.

There are people who look with interest »*< 4 countxi full of volcanoes and precl-

pices, and who would find Niagara worth seeing, but who pass an ordinary landscape with indiiference. (For such the journey from Dunedin has nothing special in it. All the way .hills are to be seen, and they alone, with their varying form and colour, are worth coming for. Paddocks lie close on cither side, some "pasture land with sheep feeding and cattle sheltering under the stocks, others sown with oats and other crops. There is no bush, but every farm house has its plantation of firs. Some of them have orchards and beautiful English trees. The country is splendidly watered, lines of flax showing where the creeks wind in and out among the paddocks. Everywhere is strewn, sometimes in single bushes, sometimes in mile-long stretches, the shining glocy of the gorse and broom. The line winds through small glens with tussock-grown slopes and grey rocks projecting from the sides. It is a lovely right to watch the wind sweep up a bank of tussocks, and see them undulate in wave after wave of smooth gleaming yellow. The wind blowing through a large tract gives a sense of vastness and freedom like the rolling of the sea. New Zealand will never be the home of slaves as long as there are children brought up among the brown hills of the south.

One thing which must strike the traveller is that this is not a rich man's country. There are no stately mansions and lordly park c — only farmhouses — and many of them poer and dilapidated. Thero are. however, no signs of real poverty. How could there be in a country of such fertility? The people are. however, very independent, and most of them own their farms and work them themselves.

Clinton is a cold, bleak township with a bush-covered hill overlooking the station. There is a good temperance hotel here, where a nice dinner may be obtained, ready to sit down to as .soon as the train arrives. At most of these countiy stations the inhabitants seem to "do" the platform in the same manner as the city people "do" the block.

From Clinton to Gore the country, keeps its quiet beauty without much variation, save that the Blue Mountains come into view. At Waipahi there is a branch line to Tapanui, a drowsy place away in the hills, which may have had a past, but which will never have a future unless the order of the universe is reversed. There is a lovely little stream at Waipahi which has so far escaped the hand 1 of the spoiler. It winds in and out in a perfect labyrinth of curves, and for a mile or so one catches glimpses of it from the train, always with a delightful sense of surprise, -as if a child had suddenly opened a pair of bright blue eyes. At Pukerau the up-train passes us. Some one once said to me that Pukerau was the most de.-olate-looking place they had ever seen. It never .struck me that way. The houses have all gardens, and it looks rather a pretty little place. The church certainly is bare. It stands on a hillside without a vestige of a ties near it. I doubt if Matthew Arnold's "Little Grey Church on the Windy Hill " would be quite as breezy on a "blowy" day. After Pukerau. welcome to the Waikaka, once one of the piettiest little rivers in Southland, but now nothing but a muddy ditch. Then the Hokonui Hills come into sight. First only a glimpse, then the full lange, dark and mysterious in the distance. The last time I saw them from the train they were gloomy and lowering, and other hills might have looked forbidding, but somehow those we have known from childhood never do. They remind me of Tennyson's lines : That bright and fierce and fick'e is the routli, And dark and true and tender is the north. only with the j>°ints of the compass reversed.

Another glen, a bridge, and a muddy river, and we are at the "City of the Plains," otherwise known as Goie. to which no pen of mine can ever do justice.