CHOKED BY SAND

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIV, Issue 281, 25 October 1934, Page 4

CHOKED BY SAND

THE WAIKATO ESTUARY. RICH IN HISTORY. Those who knew well the vicinity of the mouth of the Waikato River will recall the hundred and one islands, some of fair size, which cluster in the big estuary, but it is only from an aeroplane at fair height that a comprehensive idea may be gained of the many tortuous waterways through which the greatest of all New Zealand rivers flows before merging again in a single stream to force a way through the entrance to the sea, states the Auckland Star.

It lias been computed that the river each year carries millions of tons of sand to the sea, a happening which lias caused a perpetual navigation difficulty. Although the entrance is barbound, vessels of fairly large size can berth at Port Waikato, near the left bank entrance. In the higher reaches the river is only accessible to light draught craft. There is geological proof that the estuary was once an arm of the sea, produced by the lowering of a great block of land by great fractures. Evidence lias been left in a wide urea of the surrounding country. There is further geological proof that the delta has been building for untold years, to make the many islands through which the river follows its course. The banks of the Waikato, near its mouth, have many historical and legendary associations. At Port Waikato there are the remains of one of . the early missionary stations. In that little village in the year 1838-39 was established a mission station by Rev. R. Alaunsell, later archdeacon. The site lie chose for his new mission was the slope of a hill above a small stream that ran out across the sands of Alaraetai Bay, just inside the mouth of the Waikato River. Well and with foresight did this pioneer choose, for was not his site at the mouth of the greatest waterway in the North Island, which in those days, when the Waikato was a tangle of bush and swamp, gave the easiest mode of access to the interior of the country? Sir John Gorst, in his book ‘.‘The Alaori King,” gives a vivid picture of the Waikato as it was even in -the ’sixties, and the mission had been founded 21 years before. At that little mission house, a touch of civilisation in a savage land, was the first Bishop of Auckland, Bishop Selwyn, glad to rest and talk, while on his memorable journey through the North Island, in the early ’forties.

In the early ’fifties the station was shifted further up the river to Kolian-

I ga ; and the original buildings were allowed to fall into disrepair. Gradually they fell into the limbo of things forgotten whose usefulness is passed ; and to-day nothing remains but a broken brick chimney and a fruit tree or two, which respond to the spring whether they grow in a garden or a ruin. THE LAST PHASE.

And so for a space the estuary of the Waikato rested in peace. Then came the times of which Sir John Gorst wrote. In 18G3 the Waikato AVar broke out, and a military and naval depot was established at the port—Putataka, it was called. In July of that year the armoured paddle steamer Avon crossed the bar at the river mouth to carry a war that was not wholly just into the territory of tlie Maori King, and to leave behind in after years suspicion of the white man and bitterness that takes long to die. After the war the estuary was again left to solitude. And now again it is populated ; and again by a camp. But this time it is a camp filled with the laughter of happy children. It is called Kahukura. The estuary lias known much history. Perhaps'it will he most renowned for this, its latest phase.