HARNESSING A TITAN.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 24 November 1925, Page 7

HARNESSING A TITAN.

PROGRESS AT ARAPUNI. GULLIVER STORY REPEATED. THE GREAT RIVER TUNNEL. Looking down into the Aiapuni Gorge to-day, one is reminded of something that happened to Lemuel Gulliver in Lilliput (says the Auckland Herald). As he lay upon the ground asleep, the little people in their hundreds tied him down with packthread ropes to toothpick stakes, and he waked to find that he could move neither hand nor foot. That is what puny man is doing to Father Waikato. Tuttle by little, his strength is being put into bonds. Tu a year or two lie will be a slave, working dav and night for human masters. To a' spectator on the gorge-rim at Arapuni, with the waters roaring distantly in his ears, the men below seem little bigger than insects. There are not many of them, strange to say. One swings a pick, another works some chattering pneumatic tool, a little group is busy with a theodolite and a length of tape. The work is going steadily on. according to plan. Miniature motor-trucks run to and fro along the service-road, tiny whizzing fans drive air into tunnels, three or four little figures are fixing something atop a slender tower of latticed steel. HOW THE GULLIVER STORY FITS. The Gulliver story fits even closer. The river's packthread bonds are everywhere. The first cable of a suspension bridge spans the gorge. Higher up two sets of cableways, supported on towers, do likewise. Another cable bears an ordinary cage, in which workmen b\ the half-dozen windlass themselves across from cliff to cliff. Threadlike water and compressed air pipes take devious courses down the rock walls. Over the rolling lid’s near by comes the nine-mile-long ropeway which is to bring stone for the dam in its ;JGo litt’e buckets. From the other direction run high-tension lines, with power from Horahora —ironical that man should use a river’s own strength for its further subjection. Yet on nearer view all the things thatseemed small are K ma’l no longer. V hat the visitor notices first is a great vertical saw-cut running into the heart of each cliff, its walls held apart by scores of timber struts. These cuts are for tlie long wing-walls of the dam. They are not- fu’ly excavated yet. for reasons of safety. The “country” forming the cliff’s is mixed and treacherous —a thick layer of fissured rhyolite with softer material below. It is intended to fill up part of each cut with concrete before excavating the rest A PLACE OF WONDER. Not so noticeable from outside, but a still greater work, is the diversiontunnel which will presently carry the river’s full flow past the dam site, leaving the bed dry for excavation. Within, the tunnel is a place of wonder. Electric lamps festooned along the wall and floodlights scattered here and there over the floor light up an immense arch rising nearly 0 30ft. overhead. It is like a hall of the gnomes. Busy figures, silhouetted against the- lights, fix moulds for concrete and carry boards about. Every few minutes there is a deafening roar, as sand, cement and gravel is "forced along a steel pipe l) V compressed air at 100 lb to the square inch, and delivered in a fierce liquid stream to form part of the tunnel floor. . The great arch curves away to the right, and following it one comes to

it maze of timbering. The inlet end is in bitd “country,” a sort of slimy c-litv which must be held up till the concrete lining is ready. Once about 80 tons of the stuff fell bodily from the roof, but by good luck no one Wits working beneath. TWO GREAT STEEL GATES. At one spot amid the timber baulks there is a patch of faint daylight, marking the bottom of the valve shaft. Here there are to be the two great steel gates, one on each side of a concrete island. They will be worked by windlasses more than a hundred feet above. When finished, the tunnel will be 24 feet in diameter, with a lining of 2ft. of concrete, put in place entirely by compressed air In order to divert the river into it. 'a most ingenious clam is to be built just below the entrance, l'his dam will' be a steel and concrete bridge, from the top of which steel “needles” or joists will be thrust down into the water, blocking its flow little bv little until the barrage is complete * Sheet steel and concrete will be used to make the dam watertight. Before this is done the ridge of soft rock now protecting the tunnel mouth will be artfully blown up. When the waters are flowing through the tunnel, a second dam will be built just above the outlet, to stop back-wash. In the dry space between the two dams the main dam will be built. \lmost everv contingency lias liecii provided against. If a great flood should come, surplus water which the tunnel cannot take will simply flow over the site. It may cause some damage, but nothing serious is likely to happen Everywhere else the work is being pushed on in the quiet, steady way which seems natural with Armstrong. Whitworth, and Co.