“REAL” ROTORUA

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 306, 20 September 1921, Page 7

“REAL” ROTORUA

A TRIP INTO THE HINTERLAND WHY THE TOWN LOSES INTEREST THE MAORIS AND THE FOX-TROT (By F.E..8.) This Is a tale of Real Rotorua—and it needs no other Introduction, Suffice it to say that Rotorua the Recognised pales Into Insignificance besldo the wooded valley 56 miles west and south, Hnd hides its jealousy in ornate bath-houses and sunsets over the lake. It has reason to be jealous. , Coming down the steep incline from Mamaku, which is at the top of a sevenmilo hill-grade, up which the locomotive pants and hisses sorrowfully, one travels at a good spaed between cuttings, and of a sudden, the gorgeous vista of the sun sotting beyqud Lake Rotorua is seen —if you travel in the summer. If you travel in the winter, you will read a book by gaslight until you find you are at the Rotorua station. But summer is our joyful time. I made a trip in summer, and I must tell you of the summer. Hound the incline at the foot of the descent, where the railway line sweeps in a wide curve to Ngongotaha and to the town, the -first steam shows itself. To the left, away over where the Petting sun vanishes below the jagged hills on the other side of the lake, where the 'tall rushes stand out sharply in the keen air, end the lake is tinted with red, yellow, and pink, the steam rises slowly You are out of the commonplace until you. got to Rotorua. At first, when you get out at the station you wonder what kind of a place you have come to. You look lor Maoris —vou see none; you look for geysers, and all vou see are hordes of uniformed hotel attendants, who mob the most inoffensive looking passenger, and calmly take him and his jay-bag away with them. That is the first impression, kou don't get any more untd next day. Thi-s is "Rotorua. Steam, plenty of it; a traditional smell of sulphur, that does not exist; frogs,, all varieties that croak all night long in the marsh s and in the flax and reeds near the edge of the lake; boardinghouses, that seem to have been influenced by Baedeker, Cook’s tours, and the high cost of living; Maoris occasionally, the' women in Stetson hats and eerie-looking red ana blue shawls, the men in European castoffs aid tan boots, the children with Ivare feet and dirty noses; pumice streets that hurt the eyes terribly after a few days; a good drainage system, excellent footpaths, tea-rooms picture theatres with bands on the balconies, jazzing saloons, hotels, many drunkards, policemen, motor-cars, a newspaper and several city dailies, a courthouse, motor launches on'the lake; and, withal, a social set nnd system equal to. Sarabayo, and a general air of unreality.

Like I Coney Island. The reason is that Rotorua, which might have been kept a charming, weird, and wonderful resort, has been utterly demoralised and degenerated by influences brought by private concerns, own. arshin, and Americanism. It is really little" better than Coney Island, only as yet "hot dog” frankfurter sandwiches have not found their way to Rotorua, although Colonel Phil. lory and myself went to 'supper at a pa one night, with the chief of the Ohinemutu clans, and were asked whether we’d have steair and onion, or "feesh." We had "feesh, and were served by an elaborately-dressed waitress with Louis heels. At the dance held in the Ohinemutu meeting-house, the Maori men all wore American-cut suits and tan boots. They danced nothing but tho "d’Alberts” and tho "onestep” and "fox-trot." At Whakarowarewa it is just the same. I made the same mistake the stranger to San Francisco—especially the English stranger—makes when first he goes to Chinatown; that is, in asking for any \ article ho wants in pidgin English. It is not nice to be answered in perfect English by a yellow man to whom you have said, "First chop I want him bag belonga me." Also, it is not nice to nay, "Kapai te wahino” to a Maori woman, and be told that she did not appreciate j’our advances, with a query added whether you were in the habit of speaking to your women thus. Of course, yon were not. . . . The geysers and the steam arc still at Whaka. But there ' are telephones in tho whares and electric lights up the narrow paths to tho hill to the Model l Pa—there are modern appliances everywhere. You venture into a where, with the owner's permission, and you find European furniture, pictures, everything. You see an untidy woman nursing a baby on tho steps of a broken-down tin hut—and you find she was educated at Queen Victoria College, Auckland. All of which may be quite all right for the man who believes in educating tho Natives; but tr.a Natives, with all their ancient love of the beautiful, are mimics, and have ruined their own natural beauties.

The Trips. ' The trip to Waimangu is well known. You go in n conch or a motor-car —the coach is seven shillings cheaper—and you reach a place where yon have ten before walking to tho shores of Rotomahana. You must have tea everywhere you go in Rotorua. It is an expensive essential. . . • Waimangu crater lake is blue, and there are two geysers in, it. Rotomahana Lake is green, and has been described by better men than I. Mount Tarawcra is high, and was once a volcano I If you have road bo far you will, if you love beauty and the good things of God, and are not fat in soul and in body as are the boardinghouse-keepers In Rotorua, you will Bee my point. In 1830, when there was no Rotorua, merely e. Ohinemutu, things were different. To-day, Rotorua is a tourist resort, and people would rather put on whites nnd play tennis on the excellent grasscourts near the Bath House. As you know, people make, a great show of bathing in Rotorua. Perhaps it is well that they should, even on their annual holiday. Tennis is easier than appreciating Nature, but — “Nature cares not Although her loveliness ne’er be seen By human eyes nor praised by human tongues. The cataract exults among the hills And wears its crown of rainbows all alone. Libel tho ocean on its *nwny sands, Write verses in its praise—the unmoved sea, Erases both alike. . . .** Alexander Smith spoke truly. And J am going to speak? truly, when I tel I of the REAL Rotorua . . . which is fiftysix miles away from the burlesque of an inland watering place with a swelled head! On the Road. Rahi, a brown, cheery Native, who confessed that he never possessed a Maori mat, drove us to Wairakei. He told us that few people wont along tho main road these days. They preferred to motor in comfort along tho new Atiamuri deviation, or to go by Main Trunk train, regardless of discomfort, to Waimarino, and travel by motor-bus to Tokaauu, thence across the lako to Taupo, rod six miles along to our destination. Ho chatted in. that vein as wo skirted. Whakarowarewa. along tho Taupo road, and porehed on dangerous cliff edges.

climbed into the hill country that bounds Waimangu and Tarawera. Strange to tell, tho ridge of hills behind Whaka seems to stop the steam-holes and geysers and mudpools. Behind them, the hillocks are over-grown with pines, planted by prisoners, and tawny fields, ou Which good grass does not grow.' You will find the road as uninteresting as fho one that goes to Petono until you pass the signpost that says "To Waimangu," and then the great adventure will begin. The sign-posts that one finds at intervals along tho road to Waiotapu, the first stage, are tho only things to mat a most enjoyable trip. A few miles beyond the sign-post one sees Rainbow Mountain, a wonderful hill, with a crater that seems to end nowhere, according to those who have climbed the mountain, and walls made of rock of all colours. This peacock-hued sandstone is taken into civilisation at tho psoudo-Rotorua, ami squashed into bottlofuls and glass jienfuls of coloured sand. Out of the wall of the mountain, a thousand feeb up, and spurting straight out, is a jet of steam, demonstrating that wo are still in tho region belonging to Nature herself. A mile further on there are two lakes below the road—one of blue water, on tho left; ono of greon, on the right. They aro merely ponds, but most interesting, as ono often finds different shades of water in close proximity. On and on tho roads wind, and tho dust gathers, but no ono minds the dust, because with every yard, there is something new te look at.

There is virtually no traffic on the road —it is many miles before one secs farms —and there is nothing in the way of a picture show or an o'ver-dressed Maori to irritate one. Rahi was the only overdressed person, but he was so delightfully interesting that we forgave him. Round a curvo we went at thirty miles an hour, and Rahi yelled out: "You listen —big teller volcano." From the side of the road; ever growing louder, cams n splutter, grunt-splutter, kerflop, as if a tribe of pigs were having dinner on cows’ milk. A sign flashed by, "Mud Volcano,” but we con'd not stop to walk the few hundred yawls unto the dry titres bushes to see the lonely little fellow, so wo went on, his caterwauling dying down to « dull splutter as we left him far behind. Later, on, we saw steam rising from several places at the side of the road, but we had over forty miles to do that day, and time was too nrecions to pay any of the entrances to Hades a visit. 'To be continued.)