"CHAIN GANG."

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 93, 19 April 1940, Page 6

"CHAIN GANG."

EARLY SURVEYORS.

MARKING OUT OF TOWNS. THEY PLATED THEIR PART. A* .1 liincJv centennial year reflection, the part played by surveyors in Uie life of Now Zealand from the earliest days of settlement ir; recalled in a leading artk-le in the "New Zealand Surveyor/' which clainvs for the profession no special merit, lint an equality of ac-liicvenieni with other professions.

"Our roots £o down pretty deep and run cleanly through any cross section of our national life from the day when New Zealand, as we now have it. wne no more than .a pleasant prospect in the minds of sonic colonizing Englishmen," states the "Surveyor." "The ship Tory, which left England in lS.'{f>, brinjriiijr the advance piiar<J of the Xew Zealand Company's venture, had on board an important oflieer of the company, Mr. diaries Heaphy, a surveyor who later took up arms in the Maori waiv and won a \.C. now dep<ksiled in the Auckland Art Gallery. When the Aurora arrived with actual settlers in 1840. as we may read in an old story, they landed on Petone l>cach by mean* of a small jetty run out by the surveyors. who subsequently arranged. locations for temporary and tenls on .'ae jirejsent silo of lVlone. before proceeding to cut out farms in the Hutt Valley. Right South to Dunedin. '"When the Plymouth Company »a.< formed in IS4O. its chief surveyor. Mr. F. A. Carrington, was left u> select the site of the 11.000 acres bought from the Xew Zealand Company. He looked over I D'Urvillo Island and Queen Charlotte Sound, by the way. before deciding on the present site of New Plymouth. The Nelson settlement wae formed in IS4I. Barnicoat, Rudpe and otiiers hein? the surveyors responsible for work carried out 'with preat enerjry and rapidity.' In 1843 a frerOi settlement was proposed for an association of lay members <>f the Free Church of Scotland. Mr. Frederick Tuckett. a surveyor then in Nelson, was deputed to select a eiiitable Mle in the South Inland. He made a job of it. and was mouths jroinjr down the ca-t c<ia>t and looking , at all likely spots, and incidentally turning down the present site of Christchurch. Finallv he Dnnediu, but. not until he had gone on foot over many mileri of the Oiajro hinterland. So with all the settlement*; they were selected and laid out by surveyors. And so •with all subsequent development of all the land in the country."

"Mniiy of the earlit-r surveyors worked and explored under conditions that shortened their lives; several 10-t them altogether. As Ion? Api ns 1>4«".. Heaplry aiul Hriinn"er went from Nelson rinht down the west coast to the mouth of the Arahura. Later Brunner made extensive trij>s in West land, finally poine up tlie liullcr and back to Nelson after .V>o days away from civilisation. having lived the whole time on native panic and vegetation. Howitt, with all his parly save one, was drowned in •Lake Brunner, Townshend was drowned on the tJrey bar, Charles Wbitcombe in the Teremakaii. Cameron died in an open Imat on the way from Preservation Inlet to the Bluff, after an accidental gunshot. OldfieWs jrrave is in the bush behind Kltham. Joshua Morgan's in the Tancarakau Oorpe, and Twld was shot by Nuku Whenua in his tent, at the foot of Pirongia. Charles Wcl>er, who worked on the trans-continental railway from New York, and has a town, a river and a mountain named after him in America, has likewise a township and county in HawkeV Bay bearing his name and commemorating his work. His skeleton was discovered by bushfellers three years after he had disappeared when exploring in the. Forty Mile Bush between Palliatua and' Eketahuna. . . . Dozens and dozens of | surveyors who survived those earlv times endured conditions that nowsound incredible." Achievement and Toil. "Thinps were done lonjr ayo which now appear to have been mistakes; rojids have (o he deviated and boundaries amended. No doubt, the authors often knew it would be so: much of their work was done to meet the hasty needs of early settlement, or under the exipenoies of a political situation they could not control. In any ca*e, the wonder is not that some errors have to be corrected and imps filled in: an understanding mind realises that the real slips were extraordinarily few. W hat can the motor-horne critic, roarin? across four counties in as many half-hours. Mirniotiiuiiip two or throe ranjres and crossing rivers and jrorges with the same easy certainty. know%>f the toil and sweat, the mouldy biscuit and skinny pork, the chopping and swagjrrnjr. the. weary climbs and the cold, wet traverses in the winter •nillies that made up the Ion?, arduous travail leading to his modern road? Whnt, indeed! The. North Island M.mii Trunk railway, through the centre ..; the wild hush country of the North Island, is nowhere more than an easy walk from the line selected lonjr a;o l.v .Tamc« Koch fort.*"