Round the N.Z. coast

Press, 8 April 1978, Page 15

Round the N.Z. coast

Pride in Their Ports. By John O’C. Ross. Dunmore Press. 205 pp. $11.50. (Reviewed by John Leslie) Students of New Zealand history, with the emphasis on maritime history, will find this comprehensive book on New Zealand’s earlier small ports to be most rewarding reading. It is also an interesting story of the maritime setting from which much of our nationhood was developed. It is not surprising that this copiously, illustrated, readable book should be remarkably accurate in its facts when one notes that the author is none other than Rear-Admiral John O’C. Ross, whose birthplace was Port Chalmers. This is his fourth book on naval and coastal history. The narrative skates past New Zealand’s major ports such as Whangarei, Auckland. Tauranga, and so on, and gives details of many smaller ports in between. Many of these are today stagnant, their bar harbours silted up, but some are still navigable. The author takes us from Parengarenga Harbour, nestling under North Cape, down to Riverton, breasting chilly Foveaux Strait. How many New Zealanders appreciate that Kaipara Harbour on the North Island’s West Coast, is the biggest natural harbour in New Zealand? For a quarter of a century, Kaipara was one of this country’s busiest export ports. Timber was its main business. One day last century,

14 deep sea ships were seen leaving port on one tide. Dargaville at the northern extremity of Kaipara Harbour was the centre of a vast timber milling industry. The kauri was ruthlessly slaughtered. Rear-Admiral Ross takes us down both coasts of the North Island to the former small ports of the Marlborough Sounds and Nelson. He gives us a brief look at both coasts of the South Island,thence to Foveaux Strait. In the North Island we look in at nowdefunct meat anchorage ports such as Hicks Bay, Waikikopu and Tokomaru Bay. Overseas vessels loaded in the roadsteads of these small ports once. Thence down to Kaikoura which, at one time, had designs on becoming an overseas export port using vessels at anchor. Who, for example would know that Temuka in the Canterbury Bight, once rivalled Timaru as a site for a major port? , . , There would hardly be a nook, inlet or cranny on the New Zealand coastline which the author has not brought to light. In doing so, he tells of the impact made by whalers, American, British and French. He tells also of the struggle for survival of midget harbour boards in tiny ports. Just as roading, railways and air services killed by small ship trade of New Zealand, so has this progress, plus the Cook Strait rail ferry (“iron bridge”) service, annihilated many small ports. Rear-Admiral Ross writes of a romantic period of this country's development.