HOLIDAY ON THE MORNING COAST

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 36, 12 February 1936, Page 6

HOLIDAY ON THE MORNING COAST

SCENES OF GRANDEUR AND DESOLATION

(Written for "The Tost.")

On a sullen and overcast afternoon we turned north for Akitio. Our automobile guide told us we could reach it through Eketahuna. This route has little to recommend it. The view is shut off by irritating small hills and the lichen-bearded fences bear eloquent testimony to the general dankness of the climate. We were very thankful when we had at last covered the 40 monotonous miles to Pongaroa and found a welcome yellow finger-post pointing , the way to Akitio. At the thought of the sea only 22 miles away our spirits revived. There is, however, a much better route to . Pongaroa—from Pahiatua through the picturesque Makuri Gorgej where there is good trout fishing to be had. Unfortunately, we did not know that the Eketahuna route was so dreai'y, and no one in that town seemed to know much about the roads to the coast, even as far as Pongaroa. From Pongaroa the appearance of the country improves rapidly. We had come now to squatters' country, and viewed with interest the beautiful old homesteads surrounded with sheltej pines, set above the high chalky banks of the Aohanga River and overlooking deep-shadowed pools. The country became more dignified and serene as the sea grew nearer and groups of karaka trees dotted the landscape. The Aohanga River is named after the flax flower. There is a rough road to its mouth, where there is a homestead and a Maori pa. The road to Akitio turns north and leaves the river behind. About C o'clock we emerged on to the coast on the hills above Akitio. Southward we could see the Castlepoint lighthouse and the long sweep of the coast towards it—bare of habitation and with only a few dark karaka groves to serve as landmarks along that long vista of foamy beaches. DESOLATE GRANDEUR. Seen in the failing light the scene was one of desolate grandeur. Red clouds were massed above the hill and brooded over the sea; a cold wind was combing the land. To the northward, at the bottom of the descent, lay the cottages of Akitio straggled along the beach. The township—if you could call it such, for it does not boast a single store—stretched from the wool sheds and the'landing stage on the point below the road to the pine-planted hill and the bridge across the dark green, swift-flowing Akitio River.' There the road turned inland and ran up the river valley past the magnificent Armstrong homestead. North of the river the uriroaded coast swept out to the white-faced bluff of Cape Turnagain. Here and there along the coast enorm-' ous sand-slides descend-the hills to the sea and crests of cabbage trees top: the ranges. Behind the ■ hill lay Herbertville, 12 miles away by coast. The high white shape of Cape Turnagain completely, dominate the landscape. As we drove down the hill we thought we had never seen a beach so thickly strewn with driftwood. All the flotsam of the Pacific, bleached white as bones/seemed to have drifted to rest here. Huge, fat, sullen-logs. were piled, like crates of furniture, '■ along the side's of-the road. Akitio is beautiful, but ;it is a mournful beauty.., The place broods, as it were Upon "old forgotten, far-off things," and-"wresrs an air of essential tragedy. Sjucti. sombre and melancholy beauty is mot io?everyone;s taste, but if you do like it the place exercises a strange fascination over you, and you will want to ; return, and when you are; there will be content to do nothing except be there. : We found charming accommodation in a cottage with a gay garden of geraniums, mignonette, and orange irises, and went to bed by candlelight in a room overlooking the sea. Through, the night the white shape of Turnagain loomed large in our windows, and in the morning the persis-.-tent early sunlight of the "morning coast" ferretted us from our beds soon after 6 o'clock ,and set us to bathe in the magnificent Akitio surf before breakfast. Akitio offers the tourist little in the way of amusements ■-'.■■qiv sightseeing.' There is 'excellent bathing to be had,' both in the'siirf arid in the river, and there is a certain amount of shooting. Beyond that the visitor must content himself with lying in the sun and studying the ever-changing prospect of hill and sea. He may take walks along the coast, as we did that morning, and watched the strange iridescent colours of the pebbles on the beach, but there are few objectives more definite than a grove of karaka trees to be reached, unless the visitor is energetic enough to cover the twelve miles Aorth to Herbertville or south to,Aohanga. Akitio can, of course, be used as a base for, short motor trips to these two points and back into the hinterland.

A TRAGIC COAST.

This is an ill-fated, coast. On the reef between the Post Office and the ■landing there is caught fast the wreck of an old tea clipper, which came to grief there many years ago, and, of recent years, the "morning coast" has known other tragedies of the seas, the Ripple, which carried the coastal trade to Akitio, foundered near Flat Point, and was seen by the Akitio postmaster to be in difficulties one stormy night ten or so years ago. . . . Then, again, you will remember the launch from Napier that disappeared along this coast a few years ago. She was never seen again, nor were any bodies ever washed up from her.

We passed the last day of the old year in sombre Akitio, peacefully and uneventfully. Akitio had captured us, and we were very deeply aware of her atmosphere—not the adventurous romanticism of Castlepoint with its rock and lighthouse and South Sea Island lagoon. Here would be no storybook landing of Long John, no buried treasure, but rather the place had the .essential tragedy of the sea. Conrad would have appreciated it, or Thomas Hardy.

In the morning we walked and bathed and sat in the gay little sittingroom that looked out on the drift-wood strew beach. And in the afternoon we saw the bullock team—magnificent beasts—straining at their heavy wooden yokes, while the bullocky called to them individually, in terms presumably of endearment. The wool bales from as far inland as Branscombe were piled up in the sheds at the Akitio Landing and. on New Year's Day everything was ready and everyone in a state of expectation, awaiting the steamer that was to round Cape Turnagain to- take the bales to England. The wool is loaded from the bullock teams —which go out up to their necks in the surf—to surfboats and from them to the little steamer. A SQUATTER'S MANSION. On New Year's Eve we walked in a queer green twilight the two miles to the bridge across the dark Akitio River. It is, we were told, rich in petroleum. Beyond the bridge stands the beautiful old homestead of the, Armstrong family, set, like some magic castle K Rhenish legend, above.a dark,

We spent a lazy day in the sun and surf of Porangahau Beach. Turnagain was out of sight to the south and we had to scramble for half an hour or so over the rocks at the end of the beach before we caught a glimpse of it. To the northwards the prospect had completely changed. Gone was the exciting coastline which had so strangely fascinated us for the past week. Low green hills rolled lazily in the sunlight behind the sandy shore and the vista of coast ended in the low green headland which bears the inappropriate name of Blackhead.

In the evening we motored over this rolling country to Waipukurau and so emerged on to the main highway again, sixty-eight miles north of where we. left it. There are roads to the coast at Pourere and Te Apiti from Waipawa and Otane, but as the country had lost its picturesqueness we did not follow them. Instead we ran up to Havelock North and from that base finished our trip by exploring that idea seaside resort —Waimarama —with its splendid beach, old trees, and little bare whita island on the seascape, and by visiting the world-famous gannet rookeries on Cape Kidnappers.

i ; swift river, and half lost to view in - a forest of old, dark pines. Its gari dens and tennis courts, however, its electrical plant, stables, men's quarters, and cookhouse sacrifice nothing of up-to-dateness and efficiency to the sacred cause of romance. It is a squatter's mansion of the most spacious and gracious kind. We walked with a lady who had lived on that strange coast for twentyfive years and had ridden there by pack-pony over the ranges, which was the only way inland a generation ago, before the road was made. She told us an amazing number of stories connected with that.little stretch of coast that the pen of ah Emily Bronte alone could have done justice to. There was the middle-aged servant girl who, in desperation, hanged herself from a hook in her bedroom wardrobe; there was the English remittance-man, many years ago, whose remittance suddenly ceased. He climbed the pine-planted cliff11 above the river and there shot himself so that his body rolled down into the water below. One of the early settlers was drowned while driving sheep across the flooded river-mouth, and his grandson found an unknown grave in the snowdrifts of the Ruahines, when his aeroplane crashed there. And there was the man who kept the Akitio Landing. He gradually became so blind that he could hardly tell night from day, and used to tap his way along to the landing-sheds. Hi went to England to consult a specialist, who gave him back- his sight as a result of a successful operation. A week later he was dead, from some disease quite unconnected with his blindness. Akitio has a taste for the macabre in its personal histories. We saw the New Year in that night. At midnight the holiday-makers from Pongaroa lit a chain of bonfires from the white driftwood on the beach and whirled burning brands, like Catherine wheels around their heads. The sight was magnificent. TO HERBEKTVILLE. About noon on New Year's Day we regretfully drove' our car across the bridge and turned our backs on Akitio. Akitio, by the way, is the name of a small shell-fish that is found on the beach at the mouth of the river, and the local inhabitants very much resent the fact that many people, including radio announcers, insist on calling the place A-kit-io. The correct pronunciation is Ak-i-ti-O: The Hawke's Bay provincial boundary reaches the sea just north of the river. We bore north and inland on the circuitous route to Herbertville It is seventeen miles across hilly country to Ti Tree Point. The Hawke's Bay Automobile Association does not see fit to mark every corner with the same care and accuracy as is done in Wellington. It is a case of guessing and bearing to the right. From Ti Tree, when we finally dropped down upon it, it'is an easy run along the backbone of the peninsula which runs out to Gape Turnagain until at Wimbleton , a -wide, valley is reached leading- down ■;•■ to the little township of Herbertville. The settlement is about a mile from the sea, but like Whakataki, it 'is within sight of it. Herbertville : has not the fascination of Akitio, although, in ta; stormy twilight it has a wildness all.its own. Its enormouslji- wide'.he^ch is"supposed to be the best on the .Hawkers Bay coast, but it is'packed by-low sandhills and the flat Herbertville Valley,, and so ;loses..jmuch ofsits .attractiveness.' After the Hawke's Bay ..boundary-the nature of. the 'country changes. The high hills' which flanked; the narrow Castlepoint and Akitio beaches give, place to typical rolling sheep country ana much of interest is lost. With Cape Turnagain the attractive stretch of coast is really over. ...... In the township we found the usual small country hotel where' we spent the night. Very few people visit Herbertville now, except'-from the immediately surrounding country. On New Year's Day the beach was practically deserted and the fact that we had come all the way fr,6m Wellington evoked quite unconcealed surprise. In the old days weekend shooting parties used to go down there, but those happy days are passed. CAPE TURNAGAIN. At the beach Cape Turnagain ■ still dominates the view to the north. Captain Cook describes it as a "high bluff head with yellowish cliffs," and turned his ship's, course back from there because he saw no prospect of meeting with a harbour "and the country manifestly altering for the worse." We spent the' afternoon walking along the hard sand towards it. The distance is deceptively long, quite four or five miles, but we had the satisfaction of climbing up on to its grassy plateau and sand-slides. So we could say that we had been on Castlepoint, Turnagain, and Kidnappers—the three points that Cook marked on this long stretch of coast. In the evening, when what the inhabitants describe as "a dry southerly" was banking the storm clouds along the coast, we drove out along the desolate road to the Herrick homestead under the cape. Early on the Thursday morning we left for Porangahau. It is is an easy twenty miles' run, even although the road does cross a hill with the colossal name ■> of Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauatanenuiarangikitanetahu. One rendering of this montrosity is: "The ridge where Tane, great husband of Heaven, caused plaintive music from his flute to ascend to his beloved." A tidy little mouthful! Porangahau township itself is prettily situated under high hills, but the land opens out before it reaches the Porangahau Beach, two miles away. This beach is across the estuary of the wide Porangahau River and at the holiday season it is very popular with picknickers and batchers.. We felt we had really returned to civilisation when we saw a charabanc labelled "The Maranui Surf Club on Tour."