THE FASCINATING FAR NORTH

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32460, 21 November 1970, Page 12

THE FASCINATING FAR NORTH

Tony Yelatch, the last of the professional kauri-gum diggers, ambled out of the scrub like a friendly brown bear, his whiskery, weather-beaten face crinkling in broad smiles as he greeted the visitors, and told them in Dalmatian-accented English of the brave, hard days when 2000 men worked the field. Alan Matthews, a soft-spoken but vigorous 75* year-old, a descendant of a missionary who settled at Kaitaia in 1833, spoke of the hardships of the pioneers, and of the rich Maori and pakeha history of New Zealand’s Far North.

A Maori dairy-farmer leaned on his new American car and told us of his sou, away at university studying agricultural science, and at Te Kao, a tiny settlement near Cape Reinga, a Maori truck-driver pointed with pride at flats the tribal committee is building for elderly Maoris, so that they can be near the doctor on his weekly visits.

beauty, the scene of the Boyd massacre in 1809, and the cradle of Christianity in New Zealand, with its Wesleyan mission opened in 1822. In a district as a whole comparatively undamaged by careless exploitation, Whangaroa Harbour provides one glaring example a ghastly-looking licensed fishing lodge that started from a harbour defence barracks and has grown into a cruelty to its surroundings. The Far North abounds in brand-new motels, pleasant camping grounds and hotels that range from the ultramodern to the more (much more, in some cases) informal country pubs, such as that at Mangonui, or Houhora, New Zealand’s northernmost. There is in excess of 800 tourist beds in the district The Ahipara gum-field, an hour’s drive from Kaitaia, is on a 1000-foot plateau, which could have been moved direct from Stockton or Millerton a windswept barren place of stunted scrub, scarred by

These were some of the people a party of Canterbury tourist agency representatives met last week in a sampling of the attractions of the Far North on a trip arranged by the Far North Tourist Promotion Society and the National Airways Corporation to let South Islanders know what they are missing in this fascinating district

Too many people, the society says, think that Northland ends at Whangarei or the Bay of Islands and do not realise the delights that lie above the line running from the southern end of Ninety Mile Beach to Whangaroa Harbour, with Kaitaia. about 100 miles from Whangarei, as its centre. Fine beaches The visitors dropped into a relaxed way of life in scenery and climate strikingly similar to that in parts of the South Island’s West Coast, but saw what are unquestionably New Zealand’s finest beaches, the country’s biggest concentration of land development schemes, and enough of the unusual to give distinction. Kaitaia is « long way from Christchurch, with 854 miles of car driving by the shortest main routes State Highway No. 1 ends at Awanui, just north of Kaitaia. Without overdoing the driving, it would take tour days to get there. But Kaitaia’s war-time white elephant of a strip put down to take heavy bombers, and never used, today serves as an airport for the N.A.C. Friendship service with Auckland, and the fare from Christchurch is $39.60. With an hour’s delay for change of aircraft at Auckland, the trip from Christchurch takes from three to four hours. The flight from Auckland is a scenic adventure, with a short stop at Whangarei. Cars can be hired at Kaitaia. but excellent bus tours to all points of interest may be preferable. The 150mile round trip to Cape Reinga via extremely rough road and Ninety Mile Beach (it is only 60 miles long, really) can only be done by special buses, and four-wheel drive is needed to get to the Ahipara gum-field. Big game fishing The golden beaches of Doubtless Bay on the east coast are handy to Kaitaia, with Mangonui, dreaming away in gorgeous tranquillity, at their centre. The 'locals” deprecate a move to call this the Gold Coast, saying it smacks of the commercialism they win try to avoid even if they catch the tourist tiger by the tail. From Whangaroa, there are launch trips on the fiordlike harbour and big-game fishing only an hour away. This ia a pjace of great

sluice-channels for kauri-gum extraction and pitted by gum-holes and sluice-head ponds. Here in a collection of corrugated iron sheds, lives Tony Yelatch, who has

worked this field for 43 years, the last seven alone. He now sluices for the gum that was overlooked, and showed us a heap of chips worth $lOOO.

The best gum is worth about $1 a pound, and is still in demand, although the advent of synthetics and the difficulties of extraction killed the industry in the Second World War.

Tony, with no car (he rides a horse), telephone or electricity, grows his own tobacco and, unbelievably under the conditions, has about an acre in grape vines and a bounteous orchard. He became vague when asked what he did with the wine.

Kaitaia is a bustling town of about 3800 people, where an average of 50 new houses a year has been built of recent years. The modernity of the place hides its long history and shows the prosperity of the farmers who make the town.

This is nearly all dairying country, lush green grass, modem buildings, good fences and the latest in cars. A big proportion of the farmers are Maoris, or the descendants of the Dalma-

tians who worked the gumfields.

These men, we were told, hold to the gum-fields tradition of doing without until they can pay in cash, and they do not like mortgages and development loans.

Near kaitaia is a cooperative dairy factory, its 450 suppliers giving an annual production worth more than s3m from 4500 tons of butter, 3000 tons of skim milk powder and 500 tons of butter-milk powder. There is a quickening trend away to sheep and run cattle farming. Land development Everywhere, there is evidence of private and public money being poured back into improving pasture, and in creating grass out of scrub and fem and the mess left by gum-diggings. The New Zealand Forest Service has started the taming of the 86,000-acre Aupouri block of sand dune country inland from Ninety Mile Beach to create a new pine forest. Scores of thousands of acres are being graded up by the Lands and Survey Department to make eight eweequivalent land, and the biggest of these blocks is 26,000 acres of the old 42,000-acre Te Paki Station on the northern tip of the North Island. This unique scheme is being developed as a national park and farm, where some Eyre family tombs Did Charlotte Bronte borrow the name of her heroine, Jane Eyre, from the Eyre tombs in Hathersage church? She spent a holiday in that Derbyshire village in 1845 with a school friend whose brother was vicar there. The present vicar believes she made notes of the district and that in her novel one can recognise various parts of the parish and countryside, and many of the houses, among them Northleighs Halt Mr Rochester’s home.

The vicar spoke about Hathersage in the 8.8. C. World Service programme “The Face of England” when it visited the beautiful Derbyshire peak district which draws visitors from far afield, many from across the Atlantic.

The Eyre family tombs are one of the interests in his church, and famous for their brass memorial plates, among the finest in England. While he was speaking, a Canadian woman was in the church making rubbings of them, and he recalled that in the previous summer an American couple made a special journey from Los Angeles to rub the Eyre brasses. The earliest is to the fifteenth century Robert and Joan Eyre and their 14 children.

land is being turned into pasture (they already run Perendale sheep and beef cattle), with the rest left for forestry and the public’s enjoyment

Already, the department has cut a road to the hard, white sand of Tapotaputa beach near Cape Reinga and created a discreet camping ground. Other beaches wifi be opened up, some only by walking tracks, and no private building will be allowed. In a district that abounds in the out-of-the-ordinary, there is the Houhora Heads museum, built and equipped at a cost of more than $lOO,OOO by Mr W. E. Wagener, an Auckland building contractor, on land that has been in his family since

the 1860’s. He restored and period-furnished the Subritzky homestead and put up the 5000 sq. ft. museum on the lines of a blockhouse.

This is reputed to be the finest private museum in New Zealand. Its displays range from pre-Maori Moa Hunter artifacts to old washing machines and radios. Since it opened last Easter, there have been 9000 visitors, yet the place is miles from anywhere on the way to Cape Reinga. The Canterbury party spent four crowded days in the Far North with but a skimming of impressions. They left with the conviction that this would be a great place to satisfy all tastes with leisure to explore.