SOUTHERN ROADS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 57, 8 March 1934, Page 6

SOUTHERN ROADS.

There is an increasing tendency in the South Island to press tlio Government for costly motoring roads. The partly-made route from Tc Anau through the mountains towards Milford Sound, roughly parallel with the foot track over McKinnon's Pass, has cost a very large sum already, and no one knows what it will cost to finish it—if it. ever is finished — for there is a mile-long tunnel necessary before it- can touch Milford, a tunnel through a granite mountain. This is, of course, purely a tourist road, for which Otago and Southland interests have been agitating in order to open up the shores of Fiordland to motor traffic. Not content with this, the pleasureroad advocates are urging the linking up of Milford Sound with South Westland by a motor route through the most formidable wilderness in New Zealand, so that tourists to the Westland glaciers may be able to go straight on down the coast to the liords. Also, the construction of a motor road over the llaast Pass, to connect Westlaiul and Western Otago, is one of tho items 011 the programme. The Public Works Department has so far entered into the scheme as to engage in a preliminary aerial survey of the country towards Milford.

The Government attitude in this matter of extravagant roacling notions is curiously complainant towards any wildcat scheme. No Minister seems to have the courage to tell deputations at once that the country cannot afford to consider luxury roads at present, and that such a proposal as a road round Fiordland from Westlaiul is a preposterously expensive work which is quite out of the question. Mr. Hamilton said he wished to discover whether the intervening country was capable of agricultural development. Anyone with an elementary knowledge of New Zealand geography could answer that question for him. South Island's topography and soil character'arc quite well-known, and as for the country immediately north of Milford, a study of the maps is sufficient. It is a fearful jumble of alps and gorges with an impassably precipitous' coast.

The Haast Pass road is in a different category. That route is the natural way for traffic to and from South Westland. There is already a horse track from the Westland road at the mouth of the Haast up the valley of that river and over the pass to the head of Lake Wanaka, a distance of about fiftyfivo miles. But the many wild torrential rivers are the obstacle to wheel-traffic raiding in the South Westland country. There is considerably over a hundred miles of horse track without a bridge; the largest river, the Haast, is nearly a mile wide where one fords it near the mouth, and it is given to changing the course of its numerous channels. The Haast Pass is tile lowest in the Southern Alps range, and road making would be a fairly simple matter were it not for those intractable snowfed rivers. When the country can finance the bridge-building problem the motorist will he I able to continue the journey from the Franz : Josef and Fox glaciers southward and east- j ward,,and the development of Westland will j be advanced greatly by the outlet to the Otago | side of the range. But the linking up direct of Westland and , Milford Sound, which makes so pretty a road | scheme 011 paper, may be dismissed at once I from the range of practical things. The only j possibility in that particular direction is aerial tiaiEc. —J.C. j