HAWKES BAY PIONEERS

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33917, 9 August 1975, Page 10

HAWKES BAY PIONEERS

Pioneer Trails of Hawkes Bay. By Miriam Macgregor. A. H. and A. W. Reed. 89 pp. Bibliography and index. N.Z. price $3.50.

The title page of this Reed paperback publication gives an oldfashioned equivalent of the dust jacket blurb. It reads, “Being an historic guide to the pioneer routes, trails and trading paths of the Hawkes BayDistrict in the colony of New Zealand, together with a multitude of illustrations of the early settlers and the routes they traversed, the whole forming a most fascinating, useful and instructive account of the foundation and growth of that well-favoured area. Wholesome reading for the whole family.” Much of this grandiose claim is true. There is a multitude of illustrations, portraits, paintings, old and recent photographs; scarce!}' a page is without some illustration and most have three or four. Any-one who knows any part of Hawkes Bay is sure to recognise some building or landscape featured here, and a delightful hour can be spent flicking

over the pages of well-reproduced and well-chosen pictures. The text which accompanies them is not without merit too.

With this book added to “Petticoat Pioneers” and “Early Stations of Hawkes Bay,” Miriam Macgregor must be starting to rival J. G. Wilson as the most prolific local historian of the province. She writes plainly but adequately, beginning in the south of the province and working north, giving brief accounts of the different routes by which the pioneers pushed inland. She includes short histories of most of the settlements’ early days and of some of the major sheep stations.

A full history of the province has not been attempted here; the book merely offers a short, popular, readable and often amusing version of early white settlement in this “wellfavoured area,” It does, indeed, provide “wholesome reading for the whole family” though at a price which seems rather excessive for a paperback publication.