HARBOUR BEAUTY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 93, 20 April 1932, Page 6

HARBOUR BEAUTY.

An English traveller who reached Wellington by way of Australia the other day told an interviewer that Wellington Harbour was the loveliest port he had ever entered; in comparison with it, Sydney Harbour was "not worth thinking about." The traveller had not then seen Auckland; possibly by this time he is willing to revise his first enthusiastic opinion. But the two harbours, Port Nicholson and the Waitemata, are so different that it would be rash to assert the superiority of one or the other in point of beauty. Some visitors have likened Wellington's harbour to a great Highland loch, with a suggestion of Italian lake scenery in its steep, terraced hillsides and its home-crowned heights. A steamer passenger entering Wellington Heads is likely to be impressed most by the bold mountainous landscape. The blue horizon on the east and north rises in ranges that have quite an alpine face in winter. The beauty of the ranges is greatest on some morning of calm, when the mists swathe the mountains and give them added height. There is an abruptness, an angularity of outline, in Wellington's hills, in contrast to the softly-rounded old volcanic cones of Auckland. The two Mount Victorias, or Flagstaff Hills, display this difference. Wellington's signal station, with the tall masts of the 2YA radio station alongside it, crowns a pointed height that goes up like an arrow head. Aueklanders visiting Wellington for the first time have been disposed to remark on the harshness of its contour, the unfinished raw-clay appearance of much of the harbour frame. But this asperity of outline has been softened down greatly in the last two decades. Tree planting and the making of pretty homes have redeemed much of the rugged rim of high land. One notable feature of the beautifying process is the extent to which native trees are now being used. Many thousands of pohutukawa in particular have been planted in the city reserves and on such conspicuous hillsides as the Tinakori Range. Originally the pohutukawa was unknown on the Wellington shores; it remained for enthusiastic civic gardeners and other tree lovers to introduce it, with the result that a young forest of Christmas trees is beginning to adorn once naked hillslants. —J-'C-