GALATEA TRANSPORT

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 17, 21 January 1931, Page 8

GALATEA TRANSPORT

Purchase of the Galatea station by 1 the Government affects the whole ( transport question of the Bay of f Plenty hinterland, and perhaps of the f Kaingaroa Plains. The pumice belt J is drained by the Waikatb to the i west coast, by the Waihou to the ; Firth of Thames, by the Rangitaiki ! to the Bay of Plenty. The last-men- 3 tioned river has come increasingly into the notice of transport-planners during the last decade, because its 1 valley is considered to provide a ] graded and direct outlet from the hin- ' terland to the Bay of Plenty railway j and ports. Galatea, according to 1 Government figures, 34 miles from < the Bay of Plenty (East Coast) rail- | way at Edgecumbe, and about 50 . miles from Rotorua. Mr. Ransom . does not state how far Galatea would ' be from the nearest point on llie \ Rotorua-Taupo railway if lhat rail- \ way were constructed as proposed i

;by the Government's predecessors. ■ According to the Government's advisers :— Tho natural outlet from Galntea is along the route of the Bangitaiki Val- ■ ley to Edgecumbe, as the natural community of interest to the whole district in this area is with the Bay of Plenty, via To Teko and Edgecumbe. Along 1 this route, too, eventually must bo . transported the vast quantities of indigenous timber which the route taps, as well as the prospective production from large areas of exotic timber. As between a Rangitaiki valley to Bay of Plenty transport system, and a Rotorua-Waiotapu-Taupo railway, there is evidently some danger of overlapping, if the above holds good. The problem is important not only to farming and native timber interests in the Rangitaiki basin, but to the tree-planting interests (including Governmental) on the pumice plateau. • ■