RIVER CONQUEST

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 75, 29 March 1930, Page 10

RIVER CONQUEST

HONOUR THE BRIDGER !

THE GAMBLE OF THE FORD

pioneering romance

Laden with the breath cf the romance peculiar to the old pioneering is an article in the March issue of the "New Zealand Hallways Magazine by Mr. James Cowan. Mr. Cowan writes:—

In this land of rivers and streams, gulches, and gullies, we owe an infinite deal to the skilful engineers who spanned with steel such, canyons as the Makatote and the Makohine and who laboriously built, long bridges across the fierce snow torrents that come roaring down from the Southern Alps. Every now and again wo hear of such and such a river having been bridged at last, the Mokau or tiie Motu, or the Waiapu. It marks a stage in the country's advancement; the ford or the punt giving place to the reliable way for wheels.

Soon in the North Island every important stream will have been spanned. It is rather different in some parts of the South Island, particularly far down in South Westland, where you may ride a hundred miles, fording a snow river every few miles —one of them is half a mile wide at its mouth —a :d never a sign of a bridge, until you come to that high, rickety affair strung over che narrow canyon o p the Wills Hiver, near the Haast Pass.

The bridge is one of the first tokens of man's march in such a country as New Zealand. It was just the same in early Britain. The country troubled little about bridges until the Romans came, and then bridge builders gave the country arched stonework that lasted fur centuries. Here the Maoris of the era of violent contact between white and brown looked with suspicion on the bridge; the deep river that could not be forded or that could only be crossed with difficult- was a means of defence. The shrewd "Kingmaker," Wiremu Tamehann, strongly opposed road making in the South Auckland country in the early 'sixties; even before the Waikato War began be perceived that a road and a bridge were the forerunners of conquest. AN HONEST USi FOR BARRELS. The primitive emergency bridge of the old campaigning days in New Zealand was a bridge of barrels. On such a bridge horse, foot, and artillery crossed the Whangamarino in the advance into the Waikato. Bridges laid on floating barrels were, too, the first means by which Cameron and Chute crossed their troops over the Waitotara and Patea Rivers in the West Coast wars of 1863----66. The bridge builders who accompanied ihe army in the invasion of the Waikato laid permanent bridges over the small streams, but the Waikato and the Waipa had to remain unspanned for many a year. There was a time not so long ago but what many of us can recall it, when only four bridges crossed the Waikato on its whole length of two hundred miles —one at 'he head at Taupo, one at Atiamuri, and the others at Cambridge and JNTgaruawahir. It was .an exasperatingly slow job crossing in the oldstyie punts on wire ropes at such places as Hamilton, Huntly, and Tuakau. The building of the railway bridge which spans the high-banked Waikato at Hamilton will be remembered by oldtimers as a particularly difficult task, because of the unreliable nature of the quicksand-like river bottom. The engineers who sank the piers thought they would1 never reach sound footing for their lofty bridge. THE RANGITAIKI FORDS. Curious little byways of pioneering memory are explored by the lightning Hashes of memory as one travels the country and rolls smoothly in a.railway carriage or a motor-car over aomo long white bridge. Such a river as tho Rangitaiki was at once useful .for military purposes on its lower reaches, by reason of its navigable character, and obstacle on its swift upper course. In later times when out had* to cross it on the long ride from Rotorua to the Urewera Country, it was a river to be dealt with circumspectly. Strong and deep and fairly wide, it was not at every place that it oould be forded. I have a shivery recollection of getting out of my d^pth, or rather my horse's depth, at the ford jpposite William Bird's place, some mile's below the present bridge at Murupara, and drifting down stream towards some rapids. It would not have mattered had the Bangitaiki been low, but she was running rather high, and I was not sure of the right ford. By good luck, horse and rider both got out some distance below where wo entered the river, and the next try took us sarely over. Since then I have forded tho rivrer at one or two places above Murupara, but on these occasions took care to keep in company with Maoris who knew tail the crossing places. Higher up'there were once frail bridges of a log or two thrown over narrow canyons only a few yards wide. It is perfectly easy to get into trouble at an unfamiliar ford, no matter how much one may have crossed back blocks rivers on horseback. I ( know places in the King Country where the ford is just above a waterfall; there is a shallow, slippery papa rock ledge at such crossings on which your horse must contrive to keep his footing or go over with you, i Those are the places where you would : say. your prayers to tho first man who ; built a bridge. ( - IN THE SNOW RIVER COUNTRY. , There are far worse rivers, however — j the icy torrents of South Westland. The < Waiau, which rises in the terminal face i of tho Franz Josef Glacier, was a night- '. mare to far-south travellers. It has i been bridged during the last two or c three years—a blessing to all whose oc- ( easioiis take them south" of the Waiau. i Getting wet in one of our northern ( rivers is a trifle, but it is a serious busi- c ness in one of those snow rivers if you have a long ride to follow, and have not time to Jiaw out and dry your clothes immediately on getting out of £ the chilling bath. But the worst risk 1 is that of getting rolled over and over o in the torrent should your horae lose his '•> footing—one of those rock-bedded ' glacial watercourses where you never v can see the nature of the bottom be- o cause of the discoloured water. r

Queer bridges some of us have crossed —sometimes ':terally straddled —in the back country. Often just a tree felled across a stream and its branches roughly lopped off. I remember in particular one which it was a ticklish trial to tackle; slippery smooth pbove a deep, dark creek; but a Maori woman with a big kit of potatoes strapped on her back took it with so little concern that sho paused when half-way over the log to light her pipe. The lady, however, was barefooted, which accounted for her confidence.

LIMESTONE BRIDGE OP OTOTOHU.

Perhaps the most curious bridge of all is one at Ototohu, near Mahoemii, quite clo: to the main road between To Kuiti and the Mokau. When somo of us roamed about .those parts of the limestone country, we walked up a smoothbedded little creek from Mr. John Old 's farmhouse, until wo came to the aatural bridge, which spanned the miniature canyon, fifty or sixty feet above our heads. It was a perfect bridge of rock, beneath which its white-walled stream had worn its way ages ago. Useful, too,- as well as wonderful, for it enabled the settler to cross his cattle from one side to the other j>£ the deep

gulch. Long ago tlie Maori found it of strategic defensive value; there were ancient entrenchments in the bush and fern at each bridgehead. The natural difficulties on the Eoto* rua line surmounted by the skilful engineers who constructed the great viaducts, concrete-bedded and stell-trussed and latticed, on the North Island Main Trunk railway, make that era of public works construction a quite ' splendid chapter in the story of our pioneering development. Elsewhere on our railway construction works there were incidents in which Tangata Maori took a 4 obstructive hand. ON THE SOTORUA LINE. The late Daniel Fallon, one of tl i good old generation of Irish contractor^ who bossed the pick and shovel mea and the axo and saw brigade on many a big railway job, once told me of the "divil's own row" he had in putting up a bridge over a stream on a seetioa of the railway to EotoTua. It was up in the hill country after you leave the Matamata Plains. The local Maoris, over some question of title, disputed the right of way, and while some of the most stalwart wahines, as was tho pleasant custom of the old days, grappled the nearest workmen, their husbands and brothers threw the timbers into the creek. Others tackled the supports below with axe Tempers waxed hot, and a big Irishman on the halfbuilt bridge, seeing a black head below in the gully, tugged away at a heavy; timber that would drop beautifully oil to John Maori's skull. Dan Fallon saw it just in time to prevent murder being done. "Leave that alone!-" he yelled. "If you drop it I'll knock you into the ereekl" His angry countryman reluctantly obeyed. Had that Maori's skull been cracked, Dan's contract certainly would have" come to grief, to say nothing of other complications. There were some trying times in our pioneer bridge building, as in surveying and road making, but wise old lads like Dan Fallon found it paid to go easy with Maori obstructionists, and to keep their tempers in spite of provocation. It may bo that is why the men from his part of tho Green Isle make such good policemen.