In Search of Sunshine

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 94, 14 January 1939, Page 7 (Supplement)

In Search of Sunshine

f]ERE I am again, Leaguers! And yes, thank you, I had a lovely holiday. You’ll never guess what I did. I went gathering sunshine—little gleams here and a ray or two there, and sometimes a big, dazzling piece—specially for Summer Page, which is just two weeks away. . . . Two weeks for you also to go gathering, my Leaguers, so that the special page will gleam right through till next summer!

And where did I go gathering? Many, many places, some you know, and others tucked away behind the curve of a country road or down the bend of a river. I went by that mountainous trio, Ruapehu, 1 ongariro, and Ngauruhoc, just as the sun was rising and staining the rocky crags and snowcapped spurs a dull, dusky pink. Away, miles and aides across the island, Egmont stood aloof and alone, her white-t'ipped conical peak rising clear-cut against the blue

morning sky. I gathered those rosy sunbeams, and whisked azvay to Auckland, where the Waitemata sparkled in the sunshine and Rancjitoto was ablaze with pohutukazva. Then off again, past the long, low, rambling buildings of mine-workings, zvhere the hills zvere scarred and seams of yellozv quartz gleamed dully. (But though the earth gleams, it is but “fool's gold," and the real treasure is only to be found after machinery has sifted it from tons of rock.) On, by highways and byways, to Tauranga, zvhere The Mount rises out of the sea like a giant roughhewn slab of rock; it basks in sunshine, so thither 1 zvent, and in the high, creaming rollers that whizzed my surfboard high up the beach, and on the golden yellozv sands, I gathered more sunlight. L stopped, long enough to welcome 1939, and on the first day of the nezv year set off again on my sunshine search.

To Rotorua, next I travelled, and by bubbling mud pools and steaming crevices, in an atmosphere heavy zvith sulphurous fumes, I gathered more beams—from the gleaming smiles of the Maoris, this time, as they stood by raupo-woven whares, or hakaed and. dived for pennies. ■ At Taupo the lake zvas silvered over with sunlight, as far as eye could, see, and I gathered gold, too, from the broom flowering by the lakeside. Then tip tozvard the sun itself I climbed, azvay over the high hills, past countryside silted over from floods and scarred by hundreds of slips. Dusk came mercifully here, so that scarred hillsides and parched land zvere veiled over, and the soft summer darkness zvas upon Napier as I arrived. But, even then, 1 gathered sparkling gleams, from the multi-colour lights festooning the pines on the gay parade; from the rainbow hues in the fountain as it shot skyward and cascaded dozvn again; and from the -motley of gipsy colours at the sideshozvs on the sea edge. A last helter-skelter rush through central Hawke’s Bay, past the home-towns of so many of you, and back to the League office I came, zvith my precious freight. Till Summer Page it is stored away, but in the meantime William Weatherman has . promised lots of sunshine for each of you! J*