Bicycle Tours Of N.Z. 50 Years Ago Not Easy

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28767, 12 December 1958, Page 18

Bicycle Tours Of N.Z. 50 Years Ago Not Easy

“The Press" Special Service

WELLINGTON. December 12. The smooth ribbons of bitumen carrying today’s sightseers from North Cape to the Bluff cause Mr Harold White, of Wellington, to shake his head and say: “Things weren’t like that in my day.” Mr White should know something .about old-time roads, for half a century ago he toured most of the country on a bicycle. Mr White’s greatest joy, as a student in his teens and early twenties, was to straddle a homemade “White Special” bicycle and with a friend take off on a journey to far places. During each journey he kept a careful note of times, places and people and he still has these diaries, filled with faded writing, maps and pictures.

During the Christmas holidays in 1904, Mr White and a friend, George Brialey, set off on a tour, headed, in .the .logbook, “Wellington to Auckland via Napier and the hot lakes.” The diary entries give a good description of the hazards of sheep-track roads, and “rough as river-bed” routes. Of their experiences at Napier, Mr White wrote: “From the general appearance of the place where we slept it must have been once used as a stable, the walls were worm eaten—so much that I put my fist clean through one side. To hide the hole we stuffed a calendar into it.” The road to Tarawera was full of hazards. The steep, bare pumice land and sharp grades necessitated pushing the bicycles a good deal of the way and George nearly ended up over an 800 ft cliff when his bicycle hit a log hidden in the pumice. .< Between Eskdale and Taupo the road was metalled only in one place, at Titiokura, “where the Government put down limestone blocks 30 years ago—they’re still there. One can’t blame the Government, there is absolutely no metal in these parts. Bringing it from Napier .would cost £l4 a ton. The only ‘metal’ in this forsaken place -consists of scrub,laid across the cart ruts and pumice dust thrown on top.” From Tarawera the boys rode to Taupo, thence to Wairakei, with frequent stops to take in the countryside, the Huka Falls and the Aratiatia rapids. At Rotorua for a day, they took in as much of the “steam holes, porridge pots, mud holes, geysers and smelly sulphur” as they could before leaving for Auckland. Rain, thick mud and solid tramping marked the next eight hours to Okoroire —“32 miles in eight hours—26 of which took seven solid hours. We were in mud to our boot tops!” On learning that the roads further on were no better, the cyclists entrained for Auckland, where they spent Christmas and Boxing Day. The next day they returned by train to Taumarunui, and a river boat took them down the Wanganui river to Pipiriki and then on to Wanganui. They rode back to Wellington, arriving on January 2. “Those were the d'ays, and that was the way to do things.” chuckled Mr White, as he turned over the well-thumbed pages. He has cycled as far north as Cape Maria van Diemen and to the far south of the South Island and for each journey he has kept a similar log. “Do yotl know, I once left Wellington, travelled to Picton, through to Nelson, down to the West Coast and the Franz Josef Glacier, across to Christchurch, and back to Picton—and it cost me seven guineas,” he said. Punctures were few. “I had more punctures later in life when I took to riding motor-cycles.” he said. Today 74-year-old Mr White still has the travel urge, but his adventurous spirit is slightly tempered—he rides in a car now.