HISTORIC GREAT SOUTH ROAD.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 155, 5 July 1933, Page 16

HISTORIC GREAT SOUTH ROAD.

(Sent in by Hae Watts, 1, Lroa Avenue, Mount Albert.) Roads south of Auckland, at any rate the principal highways, were originally in many eases military routes, made for strategic reasons, like General Wade's famous road through the Highlands of Scotland. The Great South Road, by which we motored to the Waikato, on our way through, was built for such a purpose, and sixty odd years ago it was a British warpath, the way by which General Cameron pushed his army and its supplies southward against the Maoris; hence it lias for us to-day associations of adventure and battle which one does not meet in the South Island of New Zealand.

Old camp grounds, old forts, bulletscarred churches and other buildings, old skirmish sites, which are now peaceful farms, are pointed out along this main artery of traffic to South Auckland.

The motor routes cut thriugh the centre of famous Rangiriri, the entrenchments vainly assaulted 'by sailors and soldiers, with heavy loss, in 1803.

At Ngaruawahia, where the slow Waipa joins waters with the Waikato, there is a particularly interesting Maori settlement, the model village of Te Puia Herangi. a progressive chieftainess of the Waikato tribes.

Hamilton, a little further south, on the high bauks of the Waikato, is the largest town in South Auckland, drawing its business and wealth from the dairy industry. Hamilton is named after a gallant captain of the Royal Navy, who fell while leading his men to the assault on the Gate Pa at Tauranga in 1804.