LITTLE CARGOES.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 282, 29 November 1927, Page 8

LITTLE CARGOES.

WHERE SCOWS UNLOAD.

ON WESTERN WATERFRONT.

(By A.W.)

Long ago, when Auckland was a little port of little ships, all sorts of odd craft lay at the long wooden wharf with its right-angled tees which, in those days, finished off the end of Queen Street. There one could catch "the sheen of the far-surrounding seas and islands that were the Hesperides" in the never-to-be-forgotten commingling of smells of copra, tar, oranges, bananas and fish which every breeze wafted about the lower reaches of the city. Those were the days when the sun was hot enough to reduce the tarred coating on the wooden blocks which floored the wharf to a semi-liquid substance that stuck delightfully to small boot heels, and when the passing of a heavily-loaded horse wagon caused the wooden structure to give a good imitation of the effects of an earthquake. Even then there was a tradition of still better days when plaited flax kits of large luscious peaches were brought in by Maori boats to be sold on the waterfront for a shilling. With the coming of straight ferro-concrcte wharves, modern goodsheds and large important oceangoing liners, that atmosphere has been replaced by the "Romance brought up the 9.15" variety, which seems prosaic enough to us, but about which, perhaps, thirty years hence, the next generation will wax restrospective and sentimental.

A walk westward along those streets which have been raised from the floor of the harbour far seaward of where the ducks once swam in Freeman's Bay, will show that the little drudges of the sea have not altogether vanished; they have only been sent to use the "tradesmen's entrance" of the port, leaving the front door for more important visitors. There is a tiny haven just westward of the City Markets where the small fishing boats unload, and where, leaning over the festoons of brown fishing nets that drape every rail, one can see waterfront characters tyiat might have stepped straight out of the pages of W. Jacobs. No electric cranes swing importantly above these little craft, their fish cargoes are unloaded by hand into baskets which are hauled laboriously by a man at the end of a rope on to the wharf above.

The Forlorn Dock Site. The old dock site, as forlorn and unwanted as the Civic Square, marks the old waterfront line where once the smaller ships were hauled up for repair. Streets and streets of wooden houses in Auckland have come to port across the threshold of Customs Street We3t, where great tracts of forest have entered from the sea, being thrown into the jaws of whirring monsters, and emerged As sawn planks. The resultant sawdust must have been sufficient to play an important part in the neighbouring reclamation. At the back of the timber mills scows still discharge the logs with which they have laboriously wallowed from some distant bay. The Moa, swinging placidly on the tide, reminds one how ephemeral is fame; there is no outward sign about the little scow to recall her short fierce hour of notoriety, when Von Luekner's exploit gave her a place in the world conflict, and brought her on to the front pages of the newspapers. On the Way to Northcote. That stretch of reclamation edged by Gaunt Street has been thrust so far seaward as to make one wonder why there should be so much fuss about building a bridge across to Northcote, when in such a short space of time a large tract of city has been carried so far on the way thither. - Along the eastern side of the street scows are discharging on to the roadway shingle and sand which will soon be metamorphosed into eightstorey concrete skyscrapers, but modernity has not touched the manner of their unloading. A stolid old horse harnessed to a rope plods forward the width of the street, swinging into view a basket of shingle; that emptied, he backs the distance to lower the basket for refilling. His look says that any newfangled motor-driven contraption can have his job. A fussy little steam tug is amost hidden from sight by the two broad-beamed shingle barges she has just brought to port. Across the end of the street and along the right-angled jetty lie work-stained colliers, the Cinderellas of the sea, discharging coal for the adjacent gas works. Here also come the steam trawlers to discharge their shining heaps of sea silver into the big concrete depot where the different varieties of fish are sorted out, distributed by motor lorry to retail depots, or packed for transport south/ Bight up to the green hill, which is a reserve of the Roman Catholic convent in New Street, the raw, manmade slab of city runs; the tide deflector flanks it to the west and beyond are the picturesque, green-clad cliffs of Ponsonby.