THE SIXMILE

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 226, 24 September 1938, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE SIXMILE

" T AST, loneliest, loveliest, exLi quisite, apart 1" exclaimed Mr. Kipling once upon a time. He was speaking of Auckland, but 1 have always thought that he ought to have reserved most of those adjectives for the backblocks of Southland.

The quotation might be applied with

particular aptness to certain coastal

country in the extreme south, the farming and sawmilling districts of Hal lane and Slope Point, which are usually lumped together and spoken of locally as "the Sixmile.*

Bounded on the north by the heavy green of bush-covered hills and on the south by the pale, flashing, changing green of the Pacific, the Sixmile haa been last and loneliest for a long time. The farming possibilities of the district were first recognised about 60 years ago by a young Irishman who came prospecting for gold along Black Kock Creek. He began with 46 acres, and, having sold his gold claim to a dredging company, married the daughter of a. Waikawa pioneer and settled down determinedly to make a living on th>? land. Sixteen years later the Government placed a number of settlers on State farms at Slope Point, built a school and began to construct roads, on which the settlers themselves were employed at the wage of 5/ a day.

The cost of roading the district was estimated at £045 and was charged against' the farms, but it proved too heavy a burden, for the farmers eventually deserted their holdings and refused to return \intil the charges were wiped off. The Sixmile was thus regarded officially as a financial loss, but another road was commenced around the coast from Haldane to Waikawa. and here again some of the early settlers found employment. «^

"Last And Loneliest"

By - - Katherine O'Brien

That was 40 years ago. I think it was about 1932 that tMs stretch of road, about eight miles, was completed. Even now there is a cautionary footnote added to the Southland Motor Association s sprightly yellow signboard—dry weather road only! A road connecting with the township of Tokanui has been metalled all the way during the last few years, however, so residents i»t the far end of Slope Point are no longer obliged to regard their cars as for summertime use only.

Conditions have changed considerably since the pioneer wives of half a century ago first set up house in tents and fern-tree huts. The bush grew right down to the seas edge then, with rata burning red above the blue water at Christmas time, while the pukeko stalked with his, fellows among the Maori-heads in swampy places, and kakas screeched and fought over the flax flowers, and wild duck in hundreds haunted the little lagQon beside the Haldane estuary. There are smoothploughed paddocks sloping to the sea now and prosperous homesteads flourishing on the sites of the first old shacks, while as time goes by the output- of dairy produce, wool and mutton is steadily increasing as more and more Tough paddocks are cleared and burn 3d off. The timber industry has become important, too. A couple of sawmills support quite a big percentage of the population, and since the hills that wall off the rest of the world are heavily 'clothed in bush, Haldane is likely to know the tang of fresh-eut rimu and the whine of saws for a good many years to come.

The road that climbs and -winds through these hills to Tokanni provides a scenic drive that has been declared by many to rival the bush roads of the West Coast—for the Sixmile has recently been discovered by the motoring public, who have set upon it the peal of their approval. Every summer now scores of holidaymakers erect their canvas villages on the banks of the Haldane cstuarv and among the sheltering fV.x at Curio Bay. overlooking a firm, clean beach that offers bathinjr and surfing not to be bettered in Southland. Petrified Forests This portion of the coast lies a little to the east of the Haldane river mouth, and to a scientific mind is one of the most interesting spots in New Zealand. I heard a story the other dav about a man who wanted to know if it were really true about the "putrified" for°st at Curio Bay. Fortunately, it isn't, hut the remains of petrified stumps and tree trunks tell a fascinatinc tale or. I should say, withhold it, for in spite

mf many theories It eeeme impossible to decide just what forces of Nature were employed and for how long ia transforming all this timber into atone. There may have been once a gigantic landslide that precipitated an entire forest over the cliffs into the sea, or perhaps the sea itself crept up gradually and destroyed the forest, but it is interesting to note that pieces of petrified wood may be picked up almost anywhere ia Haldane and Slope Point, and a number of excellent specimens have been obtained on the top of a hill 560 ft above sea level and several miles from Curio Bay. Some of these pieces are undoubtedly broadleaf chips that were hacked out by a bushman's axe, and this fact is worthy of consideration before one accepts the theory that wood must be exposed to the elements iat centuries before it becomes atone.

The average visitor, however, doe* act concern himself with scientific research. He spends his time wading about ia the estuary spearing or netting flounders, or casting a line for groper and blue cod from the rocky plateau below the cliffs at the spot where Slope Point achieves distinction by jutting southward just a little further than any other point in the South Island. From this place of vantage the fisherman commands an extensive view. Over the broad expanse of ocean spread out before him the little white boats of Waikawa's fishing fleet make their dancing way, and occasionally a steamer passes, pursuing its course from Port Chalmers to Bluff. Dog Island smudges the sea with a deeper blue, and the misty shape of Stewart Island lies pale against the sky behind Ruapuke, its mountain? va<ruer and more distant, smacking more of romance and mystery and allurement than the solid dark bulk of Bluff Hill looming on the right.' A silver ribbon that is the Mat«ura River joins the blue and green of the sea at Fortrose, and, nearer still, a lighthouse gleams out yhite and sharp on Waipapa Point. This is the grim headland that was responsible for one of the most tragic chapters in Xew Zealand's coastal history. At low tide the boiler of the old Tararua is still to be seen on the reef and there is a forgotteft cemetery in a lonely place back among the sandhill*.

Wa-ipapa Beach sweeps in a dean yellow curve to Slope Point, and until fairly recently was the settler.-' principal means of egress. In the day# of the buggy and jvair it was pleasnnter to spin merrily along the firm Sflnd at. the water's edge than to flounder through the mud that often lay feet deep in the badly-formed ropdways. Remembering those narrow, rutted lanes of a decade ago. the Sixmile remains unperturbed when northern visitors complain of the present state of the road-: and having struggled along for a go >d many years without anyone taking anr notice of it at all. it 'blithely refuses now to dcrelop an inferiority complex, but goes ahead with the day's work, proud of its past and %erenely confident of its future.