OLD RAIN-TOWN.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 21, 26 January 1939, Page 10

OLD RAIN-TOWN.

WAIPUKURAU'S RECORD. (By J.C.) All record* in Waipukarau were broken by the rainfall, for 1938, said a recent telegram. The year's fall was 40.21 in. But the record* ohly go back to 1022. It i« not quite clear whether Waipukurau is proud or otherwise of its name for wetness, but it is tolerably certain that our neighbours' across the Tasman, roasted in the heat and smoked blind by the bush lire*, would gladly exchange a lot of Atrstralia for a little bit of this comfortably damp bit of New Zealand. It is not the only place. however, where the youngsters are born and bred in oilskins. A man who went to Taranaki for his holiday tells me that he had 20 wet days out of 24. That beats Waipukurau's 17 rainy days for the month of December. But Taranaki's mighty mountain, eloud-oollector, cloud-breaker, gives the province a loiki start in the humidity race. Realiv Waipukiirau's well watered record goes far back beyond the official date. 1922.- It can claim a pre-pakelia origin. The story is in the meaning of the Maori name, which is a meteorological record in itself. Waipukurau is a mis-spelling of Waipukerau, which means "Many Floods." Literally "Waipuke" is "water heaped up,"' and "ran"' is a hundred or many. The configuration of its place, in the southern part of Hawke's Bay, quickly causes overflow of the low banked rivers, and the Maori long ago fittingly named it. a fitness which is lost in the wrongly spelled word. The little "e" makes all the difference.