The Summit Road

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22337, 26 February 1938, Page 16

The Summit Road

The official opening to-day of the paved section of the Summit road, from the Sign of the Kiwi to Evans Pass, is an event such as Canterbury has rarely had the opportunity to welcome. The reasons for building and paving the road are not primarily or even largely those of profit; the road is there for the singular beauty of the view it opens over hills, plain, city, harbour, and sea, and the reason is abundantly good. Those citizens whose heart was steadily with Mr H. G. Ell in his Summit road ambitions, even if not always their consent to his methods and expedients, will feel the keenest pleasure in the completion of at least a part of his plan; they will be the ones, also, to feel no slight sadness in an occasion which, if he had lived to see it, would have given him the greatest joy, a quite impersonal pride, and encouragement enough to fight for another quarter of a century. For although Mr Ell was never alone in seeing and foreseeing the extent and value of the city's possession in the Port Hills, his was the energy that never ceased to plead and scheme and struggle for its development; and the planning of all that has been done and the achievement itself—paths, roads, plantations, tea-houses—may without wronging his helpers be ascribed to him. He had, over a long period of years, many helpers; the history of his endless work on the hills is a history, too, of the generosity and patience of others. It would be a very partial account of H. G. Elland his labours which left out his impetuosity, his daring, his opportunism. His faith would jump difficulties, doubts, and all the prudential considerations of ways and means; and this made him no easy man to co-operate with. He was an incurable individualist; he would provoke his most loyal helpers to protest and reduce them sometimes to despair. The active support of some he lost in this way; but he lost, probably, the sympathy of none. And, checks and disappointments notwithstanding, he saw his purpose being fulfilled. It is advanced now by a stage in which its importance is recognised as national; and for this recognition the Government is to be thanked and praised. The Minister for Public Works, who will open the road, will not think it graceless to add to thanks the hope that he will consider the extraordinary scenic value of the complete project. But if that is for the Government to weigh, the people of Christchurch have their own responsibility on the hills. The care and development of their own finest park and recreation area should not be allowed to slacken; and it will be regrettable if the completion of a fine task by the Government does not stimulate fresh thought and effort in tasks that must remain local.

A striking example of the latest style of British freighter now being turned out by yards in Great Britain is the motor-ship Teesbank, which arrived in Auckland recently with sugar from San Domingo. Raked stem and graceful lines are in marked contrast to the bluff old-type freighter. The Teesbank is one of the fleet of Andrew Weir and Company.

An indication of the damage couch grass can cause to potato crops was given by four potatoes which were dug from a paddock near Silverstream, on the Taieri Plain. Powerful, sharp-pointed shoots of the weed had penetrated each potato, with the result that the quartet was firmly linked by the fibrous roots of couch. Other potatoes were similarly linked, but four was the largest number joined together by a single root of the grass. The new house which is being built at the Ngaruawahia Maori pa for King Koroki is now almost completed, and will be ready for a ceremonial opening on March 18. More than 5000 Maoris from all parts of the. country are expected to be at Ngaruawahia during the celebrations, and it is hoped that the GovernorGeneral, Lord Galway, will be present. With most of the exterior carvings in position, and painted with the traditional red ochre, the house already is an impressive sight, in which the Maori and European styles of architecture are harmoniously blended. The interior is also almost completed, the bedrooms being furnished in European fashion, while the official rooms of the house preserve many of the aspects of early Maori The launching of an old-time canoe, which has been repaired and fitted with new carvings, will be an interesting feature of the ceremony. The canoe was sunk at the Waikato heads during the Maori wars, but was recently brought to the Ngaruawahia pa.