DREAMY NELSON.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 137, 11 June 1932, Page 1 (Supplement)

DREAMY NELSON.

BEAUTY AND CHARM

THE NEW CATHEDRAL. (By PETRONELLE.) Blue foauiins sea, green circling hills And dreaming garden squares between. So sang the poet. Nelson, oldest and perhaps loveliest of the cities of New Zealand, is still the eamc jewel set between sea and hills. Her people have not been affected to nearly the same extent with the general world depression —perhaps because of the isolation of Kelson. What other settlement numbering eleven thousand would aspire to such a cathedral as she is building— building of grey, unpolished marble from Takaka, oxer the bay. The squat, old wooden cathedral rises in red-painted dignity above the city to the south, but the people of Nelson are full of pride in their province, and must express that pride in marble.

You walk down the main street southwards, and at tiic end of it rises a (light of wide steps leading up, aspiring, to the old wooden cathedral, which suggests those pioneers who founded Hie settlement. They thought of things beyond their immediate welfare, and left a lasting token with their children. Gradually the new building of .marble encroaches on the old; it is growing behind it, and tho old is taken away piece by piece, dying as the pioneers died, still working and satisfied. This "dream in stone," this inspired vision of Mr. Peck, its architect, who did not live to see his dream come true, will be the only pure Gothic cathedral in Australasia. Indeed, it will be difficult to find anywhere another like it, for those old churches of England and Europe have evolved through centuries of different styles.

Tobacco and Fruit. The city itself is old and warm and sleepy. Every type of architecture is to be seen, from one-roomed co.ttages, all aslant with age, to the finest modern dwellings on the hills. A good example of the older homes is the house presented to the Cawthroil Institute, a place where research into New Zealand's insect pests is carried on indefatigably. Here trade's loud wheels but slowly turn, Here men may pause and joy In live, And take Hie seasons as they chance Willi nil they have to give. So says the same poet, but despite its ancient air and the semi-tropical luxuriance of its gardens, Nelson does not dream unprolitably of the past. Out of its disappointments in the mining iield (for its minerals, though great in

variety, are small in quantity) a determination arose to do well with the province in other directions. The- tobacco industry is a very flourishing one. The province is weli settled in small farms, whose very various activities appear to flourish greatly. At least, there is very little evidence of the discontent and grumbling so widespread in the cities. If a man is going through bad times he puts his back to the wall and wins through as did his forefathers. No one helped them. There is a glad spirit of hope rising phoenix-like from the ashes of past failures, as the new cathedral is growing from the old. Even the apple growers, who a few years ago abandoned their orchards because of the fall in the price of fruit, are now doing well. To the visitor, even the hated blackberry, growing in rich profusion in every ditch and gully, is a keen delight. Its wild sweetness has a tang on the palate that no "civilised" fruit can give.

Good Schools. In the past the prosperity of Nelson was largely due to the gold rush of ISoO-OO up the Motueka River and West Coast. At a time when other provinces groaned under a heavy weight of debt, Nelson had many thousands in her coffers to expend on road construction and good schools. These same schools have become famous throughout New Zealand. It has been noticed in one of the University Colleges that the students from Nelson College are of a particularly fine type, while Nelson Girls' College has laid the foundation of learning for several famous New Zealand women, among them Constance Barnicoat, journalist, who later took her degree at Canterbury College under Professor Macmillan Brown. The Boys' College is now a State secondary school, though it retains to a great extent its original characteristics of a first-class private school. Lord Rutherford is its most famous old boy.