EASTERN AUCKLAND.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 13355, 8 December 1906, Page 4

EASTERN AUCKLAND.

v a. WILD -HILL. DISTRICT- -.. BUSH TRACKS. ■ " « J ■ THE MAUNGATAWHIRI' "VALLEY. " 'AN IDEAL TROUT STREAM. No. 111. '\'-: : - ■:'■'",:.'*?.■'".. ''■' '•'■:' ' ■.'■"■'. / | [BY OUH : SPECIAL COMMISSIONER.] i . > ~,' ■ :■-. • •-■■'.■..■■.': Eastward ox the Wairoa lies a region of bush-covered hills, barely 50 miles from the City of Auckland, and reachable in a ■ short day's journey, yet wild in some respects as the heart of the King Country, and trackless ■ for the most part as the \ : centre of ; tho Urewera. - ' The northern part of this region slopes down to the Waiheke and Pouui channel, and it is bounded on the east by the Frith of Thames. Its peaks are not high, the most elevated barely reaching 2000 ft,.' nor are they, particularly rugged, being by no means so steep as those of the Motu, which are now being rushed by eager settlers.. ~ High or not, this hill region is an important watershed. It gives birth to numerous rivers and streams, amongst ■which are the Wairoa, the Maungatawhiri, ' and the Maungatangi. The Wairoa flows ' ' south for some miles, then curves suddenly round, and alter tumbling in a sheer fall of nearly 100 ft. over a curious volcanic wall reaches tho Hauraki Gulf. The Maungata- - whin and the Maungatangi have their courses .'i nearly-due south, and empty into the ' Waikato River. A few years ago this district was a haunt for wild cattle and pigs, IS* and even to-day the hunter after big game , need not go very far after quarry, and the scattered settlers enrich their larders . fre-1 - ; quently .with the gun. • Curiously enough, too, some of the rivers have in rather a mys- j terious way become heavily stocked with | magnificent rainbow trout. - j .. THE NESS VALLEY. j The" main . entrance to this little known j part, of Eastern Auckland is by* road from - 'Clevedbn, via the Ness Valley. ■ The Ness i\ is * tributary of the Wairoa and for some distance after leaving Clevedon the road follows this stream, and is comparatively level; passing through fairly well settled "." country. ; I had my rod with me, expect- ' ing to get Saturday evening's fishing on' the Maungatawhiri, 1 and as I rode past one ijii : settler's bouse : he invited me to try the Ness v. stream. There had been lots of talk, he said; as to whether there were any fish . in the stream, but no one had ever caught one.. I put the rod together and though the day was; hot and bright, I rose a very nice fish after a few casts, and landed him. 0:5 It. weighed a shade over' l£lb, and was in - -beautiful. condition. : The settler informed ", me'.that it was the first trout ever taken . ... -out of the NeSs, but it won't bo the last, - for the Nos.s is a very pretty fishing' ' stream, easy of access, and has recently ' had . fry phiioed ' in it, and should', receive' m more. '.<(; Unfortnnjiitely for, th o; Ness Valley , the greater pari:, of its upper lands are held in • large blocki:; by absentees, and j the black- - berry is a -rampant. curse on the flats and . the lower slopes' of the hills. B| TONY'S HILL. Wf- We climbed by slow degrees out of the P*r Ness, by spur f and ridge; and saddle," until ■ we reached ' the ■•shoulder of ■~ Tony's Hill. Tony's HiE is named after one of the early ; settlers, Tony , Murray, "., I, believe, who pitched 'bis camp on its summit, and lived there for, some years., r'|v? ■'•>'•• -"'•'.-;--" "•-■ Tying bur iliorses to a tree by the side of the track, we scrambled in a few minutes i ;% fcovtbe top of a grassy knoll, which forms --'the crest rif Tony's Hill, and seated ourselves on the fallen timbers of Tony's old home, .1509 ft. above sea level; What a magnificent view he had. this solitary . pioneer—Hauraki - : Gulf and Manukau Har- - hour, and that wonderful coast line of the 2Jorta ' Auckland' Peninsula, the Coromandel Ranges' and the Frith of Thames, and, >*>. just below i the ; cool grass-green valleys of the Wairoa, the" Ness, and Hunua! > t. We saw; the marvellous panorama in the eoft beauty of early summer.. The islands of the gulf shimmered in ; an azure sea, the •Ma&ukau ; was burnished "silver,* the hill (forests to title east olive green, under pure white cirrus clouds. """;- :' A lovely scene! A touch of tropical < magic in the shining stretches of-gleaming water, in the carved shore lines ; a promise of peace amid plenty ; in the fair valleys, . and mystet'y in the broken bush lands. I "wonder : if; Tony / ever realised the full beauty of this ? view? A • man struggling •with the bush has .not much 'time for scenery, and -he must have looked often. #;£ from the .doorway of his hut when winter gales shrieked over, the roof; - and from the igulf, swept;.savage squalls, and the long waving lines of : falling : rain hid all the i valleys. To Tony, packing his provisions up in June with his horse girth-deep in -. mud, the track would seem different than • it seemed to us. in the warmth of Novem«;*er*.-- '■■.•- . . , ■•„. ~. .A BACK BLOCKS TRACK. "And it's bitter cold on this road sometimes," remarked"- my companion. "I've ~;,■ packed over it when, snow and sleet (.hilled mo to I ho bone. I've been so numbed that I-couldn't strike a match to light my .pipe/' ,*: Yes, I pack over it once a week, take butter down and stores up. It's usually dark long before I get home. The horses can't travel fast through deep mud, and some of the -Iwles are real dangerous. I usually jamb a stick in the bad places, but .' when it's, dark you can't see 'em, and you've got no flounder through as best you - can.'-' My companion has a 260-acre section in the Otau Block, and the Minister for Lands and varied (i members of Parliament who have view:* on the land question should see , the slough of despond which this man and H his fellow- settlers must use to get to their M holdings. It is bad in places even now. ;>f What, it is. "like in wet weather can be seen by the-wave-like ridges of mud baked'hard on. .the sunny slopes, treacherously soft still in the shady places. A towTt'iman or a town horse may not know whuft those little ridges mean, but ask a hack-block Auckland settler, ask a «aek>lrtock Auckland horse.,,-'... ! . THE BLACKBERRY CURSE. - Between the Ness and the boundary of *he Otau Block we had ridden for some miles through a large estate on which absolutely no work seemed to have been done, , and over which the noxious weeds inspector. jgg- should take a ride, in order to get a proper impression of blackberries. In the lower part of tho Ness Valley are „ numbers if l settlers working to keep their farms in neat order. On the/upper tribu? faries of the Ness.is land rapidly becoming wjvftf utterly*useless through blackberries, and every flood must spread this pest over the valley : flats, -and J every' wandering cow or horse and every seed-eating bird must do - nrhat the floods do. ■ • THE MAUNGATAWHIRL The country on the hilltops beyond Tony's '. Hill is wonderfully level. There are big '.' areas easily ploughable, "'and that it will cany very fair grass is,easy to see whereover the bush has been burnt and seed sown. We rode some distance along a narrow forest track, shut in by dense undergrowth, then came to my companion's section, pass-' ed through the slip rails,, and almost at' . once into open country and sunlight. There i below us was the Maungatawhiri' Valley, a ! veritable - oasis in tho wilderness of bush. ; Rich, grassy flats bordered a swift, clear ~. stream, 'atad rich grass showed on the lower slopes . of the hills. , .; " The track: down into the valley was too steep for | riding J \ so \ we; drove': our. horses before us., arid in a few minutes came to a hush settler's home—a split-paling hut, U roofed with shingles. It was 20ft -long by J2lt widti, a little , smaller than, many an

Auckland drawingroom, and yet it served to house man and wife, six children, and a guest., : - '". ; v : ". *■' *" ' ' /It was a perfect summer evening in the valley, :so peaceful and bright that one .might .well rest after a long, tiring ride; but I heard there were trout in the river, and sport called me; so I put my rod together and went down to the Maungatawhiri. ■•.: .'■■!' : ; ' : '- - /• '""'.

It' is a perfect angling stream. I question if there; is one other to surpass it in New Zealand. „ It is not unlike the Hororata in places* but it has twice the rapids of the Hororata at its best. The Temuka comes near it, but the Temuka does not provide the same sport. The Waiwera and Mimiha in Otago. the Aparinja in Southland, the Upper Selwyn in Canterbury, are its rivals; but none of them have exactly the same advantages*, the same charm. The bed of the Maungatawhiri is of clean shingle, but trefoil makes soft walking over" the stones, and the higher banks are carpeted with luxuriant grass. . ■ I made my first cast with the fly where a rapid shot into a deep pool. At the second cast I rose and hooked a powerful fish. My friendly guide, who had seen the fine tackle I was using, had assured me that I would never land a fish with it, but I landed that one, and it scaled four pounds, and I landed one over five pounds with the same tackle later on. But who wants fishing yarns? All I wish to show is that the Maungatawhiri is a grand trout stream, .wonderfully well stocked, and that its fish are as. finely flavoured as any in the world and as game as the best. r

AN IDEAL FISHING STREAM. How the rainbow came into this part of the : Maungatawhiri is something of a mystery. There is a stretch of about eight miles of fishing water, then the river enters a precipitous ''gorge, through which, I. believe, not more than one or two:men have ever forced their way. In the gorge there are innumerable rapids and falls, but evidently the falls are not high enough to prevent the trout making their way through the gorge, and it is evident that* the trout placed in the lower reaches of the stream have found an abiding place in the upper valley. The Maungatawhiri is such a perfect angling stream that it should be reserved entirely for the fly. , It is,desecration. to use a minnow on it, and the trout are so unsophisticated that they will accept the simplest form of offering. I spent the evening with Mr. Fred. Manning, the owner of something over five hundred acres in the —principally river flats. He goes in almost entirely for fattening cattle, and reckons that the flats will carry a bullock' to the acre, and the hill land from one and a-half to two sheep per —not bad for an almost unknown district, and for a district which has to be contented with boggy bridle tracks for roads. . «