Evening Post. SATURDAY, JANUARY 20, 1940. AURORA TO AOTEAROA

Evening Post, Volume CXXIX, Issue 17, 20 January 1940, Page 10

Evening Post. SATURDAY, JANUARY 20, 1940. AURORA TO AOTEAROA

Almost on the eve of Wellington's hundredth birthday, the arrival from Australia of the flying-boat Aotearoa in Evans Bay may be taken as symbolical of a century's progress, for in the main it is the development of transport that has counted most in the history of New Zealand. "First the Maori canoe," .says Sir James Elliott in his historical romance, "The Hundred Years," "then the sailing ship, then the fast steamer, now the aeroplane and wireless— what next?" What next, who knows; it is more filing on Anniversary Day to look back to the past than forward- to the future, back to the arrival of the first emigrant ship, the Aurora, in Port Nicholson on January 22, 1840. No ship could have been more appropriately named, for Aurora means dawn, and that day marked the dawn of civilisation in this part of New Zealand, and its anniversary has been kept ever since as Wellington's birthday. To commemorate the centenary of the day, a worthy monument has been erected on Petone beach, where the first settlers landed, and Monday, Anniversary Day, will be the focal centre of Wellington's Centennial celebrations, with Petone the scene of the ceremony. The Aurora, with her company of brave adventurers voyaging into the unknown, left Gravesend on September 18, 1839, and though the voyage was described as "most beautiful" by one*passenger, quoted by Mr. Alan Mulgan in his Centennial history of Wellington, "The City of the Straits," it would have been, to our thinking, unconscionably long. Sixty years later, the fast steamer reduced the voyage from' months to weeks, and now, after a hundred years, the aeroplane brings it down to days. Thus the progress of New Zealand may be well summed up in the phrase,* "Aurora to Aotearoa." From the very beginning isolation was the chief obstacle to progress in New Zealand, not only the isolation of these islands from the rest of the world, but the isolation of one settlement from another in the islands themselves. Wellington suffered as much as any place, .It was not until the barrier of hills between Wellington and the hinterland of the province was penetrated by road and rail, and the handling of transport by sea was systematised by the formation of a harbour board, that Wellington really started to go ahead. Half a century had passed before even the framework of transport was completed, and it is only in recent years, within the memory of us all, that more and better roads, the motor-car, and the wireless have banished the isolation of the backblocks. Forty years ago, for instance, an inland centre like Rangiwahia was so isolated by poor communications that it took a day to travel by tracks to Feilding, under forty miles away, and a day to get back. Now it is possible to make the journey there and back by car in an afternoon. This is only one instance of thousands all over New Zealand, and the clogging of the channels of production and civilisation everywhere beyond the towns can easily be imagined. There is no truer saying than "Evil communications corrupt good manners," if "good manners" be interpreted in the sense of the rich and full life. It is a tribute to the toughness of fibre and the virility and vitality of the old pioneers of these provincial settlements off the beaten track that they bore their isolation cheerfully and struggled gallantly to overcome the barriers about them until finally they succeeded. Today there is hardly any part of New Zealand that cannot be reached from Wellington at least within twenty-four hours. Where motor-car and railway train fail to accomplish the task or sea communication is slow, the aeroplane takes up the running and makes short work .of distance. In no other country of the world, unless, perhaps, it is Australia or South America, is the aeroplane of such practical use in transport as it is in New Zealand. And so, in a most difficult country to engineer with avenues of communication, by various ways communities have been linked up not only by facilities for personal visits, but by the telephone and radio, so that isolation is no more. From this .standpoint, New Zealand can be regarded as an epitome of the whole British Empire, and nothing could be more significant of the wise appreciation of the basic problem of the Empire than the concentration in the British Pavilion at! the Centennial Exhibition on the single aspect of the progress of transport and communication. There the progress of the century may be seen in the various panoramas of transport and the living map of the

world. showing the ships, the trains, and aeroplanes, linking the different parts of the far-flung Empire, with the moving carriers of man, mail, and material like the nerves, the veins, and arteries of the human body. The heart of this circulatory system is Britain, and in peace and war the circulation must continue if the Empire and its Motherland are to live. Most of all is this true in such times as we are now passing through. Our enemies know well our strength and weakness, and concentrate on cutting off Britain from the rest of the world and enforcing an isolation such as New Zealand suffered a hundred years ago. It must be the effort of every part of the Empire to prevent such a catastrophe. Transport and communication must be maintained at all costs, and the vast system, built up by the skill and energy of hundreds of men known to history and the millions of the humble unknown, preserved for posterity. In this sense the memorial at Petone is a monument not only to the known, but to the unknown warrior, to the pioneers of Wellington and its province, who carved the way and made easy the paths for those to follow, down to this day.