South Westland Highway

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27374, 12 June 1954, Page 6

South Westland Highway

The Government’s decision to make

a start on the Paringa-Haast river highway this year is good news for South Westland, and for the Westland Progress League, which has been untiring in its advocacy of this work. Completion of the road will help to maintain the community of interest between the far south of Westland and the rest of the province, which has been‘preserved for many years in spite of inadequate communications. The project is of more than local importance, however. Coupled with the bridging of the Haast river and the building of the road over the Haast Pass, it will provide a most valuable tourist link. Travellers visiting Mount Cook, the southern lakes, and Milford Sound will be able to return northwards by way of the West Coast, with its unexcelled mountain, lake, forest, and beach scepery, and its unique glaciers, without much additional mileage. The ParingaHaast river section itself will run through some of the most beautiful and unusual country in New Zealand. Ultimately the road will have more practical uses. It will open up some fine stands of timber, and much potentially rich farming country with great opportunities for enterprising young men. In the

meantime completion of the ParingaHaast river section will remove the great handicaps of isolation under which settlors south of the Haast river have been suffering for many ydftrs, their only links with the rest of Westland being by aircraft or occasional shipping. This will probably make it possible for them to increase their production. The highway work will not be easy because’ there is rough country to penetrate, and numerous bridges, including a big one across the Haast, to build. It will take some years to finish; but the people of South Westland will soon have the encouragement of seeing it begun. Although the Haast Pass road to Otago may be finished first, this would hardly meet the needs of the people of South Westland as well as their road to the north. All their interests lie in Westland and Canterbury, and it is from the north, rather than the mountainous east, that they will expect the amenities of civilisation to spread to this pioneering district.