NORTH AUCKLAND.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVIII, Issue 17828, 8 July 1921, Page 9

NORTH AUCKLAND.

THE KAIKOHE DISTRICT. FINE VOLCANIC COUNTRY. No. V. f*T OUR .SPECIAL COMMISSIONER.] A fe* miles southward of Kawakawa, "n tii? WTungarei Bay of Islands railwav, there us a branch line. 17 miles m length, i-ivinj connection with Kaikohe and a. P Ol " 1 '" 1 ' °f t!!fi North Auckland Main Trunk n 1-ich is being constructed toward the hf ~.!>< a.tor of Urn Hokianga Harbour. • vaikuhe :r the natural centre for a verv -»r u e <uca of good iaud, and is destined, 1 think, to bfs-ome one of the most im r-t i'' ant. in!.in J tonus in the North Auckland dial net. Generally speaking, the * .■» of most towns in New Zealand is T < by the quality and area of the iva'ed farm lands around them, and rn m-,st settled districts one could, by a vftry s.mpie calculation, tell either "the * rf " °' fcll « productive lands by the sue of -he towns or the size of the towns ry the area of productive lands. So well d'\:.,cd is this lad, that one need not r."W a prophet in asserting that Kaik'hr wid Income a town of importance. J? sct-.'i's on:y a little while ago when I 1 A ' s part of the North. I drove in Horn Kaw.ikaua over abominable wi-iter r'Mtls, ai d found a store, a pub, aid a saddler s snop. I hero were only a ten acre;' of J.unpoanowried hind in th* V. d:.-:rici ai.d practically no settlement- 1 left Kaikohe on horseback, and made down t:.e Ansroa and Majigakaliia t hen roadless. To-day one can journey bv motorcar where 1 had to ford dijtii'r r-"u* rhere and pick my way by ill defined bridle tracks. The 'store and the pub, and the saddler's shop at Kaikohe have grown into a town containing nearly 600 people, including Mrio'i resident* ; thero are three banks several agencies of slock and produce houses, two picture shows, a local newspaper, two b.iliard saloons, a school, but I regret to say no church. The town is v. ell built the residences being of a better class tiian is general in the North, and there are plenty of signs that the town is still expanding The best indicaiions of growth and promise of growth are to be Found in the ruial lands. I saw more bush being felled, more land being ploughed, more grass and crops being sown, in the Kaikohe district than in 40-odd mik« between Whangarei audi Opua. Areas of Eieh Land,

I have heard people acknowledge in a 'disparaging way thai there are a few patches of good land in the North, but they are very small. I think it would be much more true to say that there are patches of bad lar;d in this district, but j none of them are large. The trouble with I the North is not the absence of good land, j but the absence of men able and willing j to work it. One could take a radius of 1 10 or even 20 miles from Kaikohe and find in it a lajger proportion of good land than iu most other parts of New Zealand. The great sweep of undulating red volcanic soil about the railhead, verdant all the year, and parklike with noble puriri trees, could not be excelled anywhere for productiveness, but it is still in a lowstate of cultivation; the warm loams in that warm climate will not yield their best under grass. As soon as the railway is completed it is probabte that they •will be devoted to the growing of crops. Kaikohe may rival Pukekohe in raising early potatoes for the Southern markets and even if dairying is to be the mainstay of the place it will not be through pasture alone, but through maize and lucerne, millets, and sorghums that the greatest yields of butterfat will be obtained, and the same applies through the surrounding districts —Okaihau, Ohaeawai, | Waimate North, Pakaraka. It is time that the people, of New Zealand awoke to the possibilities of North Auckland, and realised the fact that it offers an enormous field for enterprise, that it is capable of carrying -nearly fifty times its present population, and yielding fifty times its present wealth. I could not stay long in Kaikohe without finding that it was suffering under serious disabilities. The European settlers who have land and not enough money to work it; the Maoris who have land and are unable to sell it or use it; the inevitable speculator who holds land but has no intention of improving it, bat every intention of making someone else pay for the right to use it. _ These disabilities apply not only to the Kaikohe district but to every part of North Auckland. Thsy could be swept away almost in a moment if the people of 1m ew Zealand recognised their duty to the State and were willing to work unitedly for the benefit of the whole of the Dominion.

Unoccupied and Unused Lands. Is there anyone ignorant enough to suppose that the existence of 2,330,092 acres of unused and 'Unproductive land in North Auckland does not hamper and injure everv industrious settler in the district; does" not accentuate the difficulties of building roads and railways; does not handicap the development of dairying and meat-raising and fruit-growing industries; and is it not worse fclian absurd for our statesmen to publicly state in Great Britain and elsewhere that we have no land to offer immigrants ? No land when only onethird of North Auckland is even crudely utilised and there are over a score million acres elsewhere lying idle. In the latest statistics issued regarding the_ tenure of laud occupied in New Zealand it is shown that out of the total area of 3.743,360 acres in North'' Auckland, 2,303,504 are freehold. 82.674 .acres leased from Maoris, 112.544 leased from the Crown, various other areas leased from private individuals, public bodies and held under other tenures, making a total of 2,998,755 acres occupied or held in some way or other, and out of this 1,492,541 acres are unimproved. If one deducts from this 38-1.795 acres, which are still in virgin bush, it still leaves over a million acres owned or ,ipied, but not used. Can the nation afford to allow a mere handful of people to hold in one district over a million acres out of productive use? In a table which wat-. prepared for me not long ago a man specially qualified to know giving the quantity of lands in different North Auckland counties owned by the Maoris, the total is shown as 610,000 acres. It can be assumed that some of the 82,674 acres of Ma/ori lands leased to Europeans rs improved, hut by no means all of it, while it is safe to say that the remainder is absolutely unproductive, and we hay© over half a million acres held by Maoris, nearly a million and a-half held by Europeans unused and unproductive. Are the Maoris benefited by owning lands whif h they oannot- use, arid is the State benefited bv individuals who own land and cannot, or will not, use it? This is a pregnant question, but I am afraid few New Zealanders are not interested enough in national matters to consider it. About Omapere. A little to the north of Kaikohe lies Lake Omapere, the larsrest lake in North Auckland, not particularly beautiful, but forming the natural centre for one erf the Toveliest districts in the whole of New Zealand. Look at its surroundings, Kaikohe, Ohaeawai, Waimate, Waihou, Okaihan ; go further arield and you have to the eastward the inland arms of tho Bay of Islands, to the westward are the riverlike inlets of Hokianga. There is no other part of the Dominion so rich in history, in romance, and l;gend, m soils, and climate. e New Zealanders do not appreciate its possibilities. It has the warm sun and mild winters of the Mediterranean, and we use it as if it were a bit of North Scotland, not so well, in fact. It is a bit of Greece or Southern Italy, and might be clad with vineyards and olive groves, or a hundred other things which only exceptional climates can produce. It raises beef and mutton and butterfat for the English markets, and it is n °t used to anything like its fullest advantage even for these. But it is only natural, I suppose, that a people who, for many centuries, have had to farm under cloudy skies and bittor winters will require time to enable them to adopt their methods

to eemi-tropical conditions. It will be done, however. one c f these days. The same race, under much more difficult circumstances, are transforming similar counry iu Australia into farms and orchards of exceptional productiveness, and scon, n ° doubt, our Agricultural Department [ to show what can be dono Under intensive cultivation to make this part of New Zea»land one of the most productive, as it is one of the most beautif' districts in the whole Dominion. 1 j?, is * Portion of the North Auckland Main Trunk line practically constructed to Okaihau, about eight miles northward of Kaikahe, and earthworks are under way beyond Okaihau in the VVatlju Valley, which runs down to the "okianga Harbour. In another year probably there will be railway communication all the way from Auckland to both tho Lay of Islands and Hokiangu. Belore this comes about, I would advise fanners who are on the look out for land, especially young men with capital and energy, to visit these parts I am describing. There are great opportunities there, not only to secure good land, but cheap land. About Omapere and further north, there are extensive tracts of light, easily «orked gum land, which T am sure, under proper methods oould be worked into very farms. But the whole district practically from coast to coast, is so promising that it cannot fail to go ahead rapidly when once railway communication .s established. It is not a district fur the large holding, although unfortunately speculators and syndicates na\e acquired some large tracts; it. is essentially the place for the small farm and intensive cultivation, and there is ample room for both. In another month or two, the new freezing works at Moerewa, near Kawakawa, will be in operation, so that thero will be a good market, for fat lambs, and these could be produced to perfection, and at a low cost. At the same time, these works will be turning out fertilisers, which will help to solve the prob'em of utilising the cheap cum lands. Dairying is already well established in this district, there is a butter factory at Ohaeawai, and talk of others being erected elsewhere, so that those who trust to the cow have e\ery chance of success. Where else in New Zealand or in any other country, have farmers the same opportunity for carrying so many cows on so small an area of "land or producing so touch butter-fat per acre as up in the warm North. llie best results, as I have said before, will not be obtained from pastures of English grasses but there are grasses specially adopted for the North, which will give greater carrying capacity than any English grasses are capable of and fodder crops which make two cows to the acre quite a reasonable Stan3ari.