A NEW PROVINCE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18347, 13 March 1923, Page 9

A NEW PROVINCE.

NATIONAL NEGLECT.

EXPENDITURE ELSEWHERE. ENGLISH SETTLERS. I No. V. [Br ODR SPECIAL oommiss.oneu.l c There is a ten-mile stretch of unoccupied * and unimproved country between Wainui ( and Taupo township. Like the rest of r this great Upper Waikato Valley, it is mostly level or gently undulating, though the isolated peak of Tauhara occupies a certain portion of it. I had ridden through « its thickets of manuka and manoa scrub y not long ago, and there was no inducement for me to make the journey a second v time, so I crossed the river at the Maori ; village of Te Toki and struck the main 0 road once more. Before leaving this por- v tion of tho potential new province I have <i been describing, I should like to deal with i it as a whole and compare its conditions n and its resources with some other part of New Zealand, for comparisons are a sometimes illuminating. If one take as \- the centre of this district the road or the jproposed railway between Rotorua and s Taupo and allow" a distance of, say, fifteen i miles on each side, it would include an a arc of over fifteen hundred square miles, the bulk of which is easily ploughablo B and capable of being made into useful ; farming country and this would bo with- ) out including the vast area that would T be tapped by making a fringe of fifteen g miles availablo round the shores of Lake Taupo. At a low estimate I would put ~ the area of practically level land at over j 500,000 acres, for it, takes in the Kainga- t roa Plains, the extensive Waikato and t i Waiotapu Valleys, the iargo amount of { arable country at the base of the Paeroa f Ranges and that great extent of promising J. country between Waiotapu and Rotorua. j It is capable of making over 2000 farms. r which would carry a rural population of 10,000 people and a corresponding increase r of city and urban population of 11,000, t and of raising farm produce for export to j. the value of over £1,000,000 a year, even c under primitive conditions of farming. This does not include purely pastoral j country or timber country, both of which % would carry a largo number of people and yield large revenues yearly. This is a 8 portion of the new province-to-be which the Government has been frequently asked to open up by means of a railway about j 50 miles in length which the Government j has persistently refused, though the Crown s owns over 700.000 acres which the railway would make available for settlement and ( greatly increase in value. c Comparison with Central Otago. For comparison with this vast area of arable country between Rotorua and ' Taupo let us take a similar tract of coun- T try in Central Otago, say, between Ran- ' furly and Clyde, which is 58 miles in length. A railway nearly as long as the j Auckland-Rotorua" line has been built to •' connect this section of Central Otago with Dunedin, and a very expensive railway ' runs from Ranfurly to Clyde. The bulk \ of this portion of Otago consists of steep ; broken high mountains which at their ' very best will never be peopled, and ' which can only be made to carry sheep * at something like three acres per sheep. 1 There are, however, on the rout* of this 57 miles of railway 295.900 acres of more ' or less level and arable land. Unfortunately, however, the rainfall is restricted to somewhere- about nine inches per year, and artificial irrigation is needed to enable the land to grow regular crops. In a Government report prepared by very ] capable Government officials, Messrs. Bruce and Dobson, the full extent of land available for irrigation on this. 57 miles of railway is 142,000 acres, and to make 1 this area oven reasonably productive the i State has already spent some hundreds of ] thousands of pounds and is committed to 1 the expenditure of a great deal more money in order to make this part of the country possible for general farming, j Now in very hot countries where the tem- j perature of the soil and the air is high ] throughout the year and valuable fruit < crops can be raised, irrigation may be , profitable, but in Central Otago where the < soil temperature is only moderately hij:h , for three or four months in the year, onlv hardy crops can be grown which will , flourish in most other parts of New Zea- ; land without irrigation. When 1 was in , Central Otago recently I found that in some districts the charges for water alone supplied though the irrigation channels was 30s per year, and the lowest charges , I heard proposed were 20s per year, which ' is equal to £20 or £30 capital value added to the value of the land which in favoured places was quoted at £60 an acre, making a total of from £80 to £110 an acre for land and irrigation water, and in addition there is tho extra cultivation and general work entailed where irrigation is applied. It is . not suggested that even when all the vast , sums of money have been spent on irrigation works in Central Otago it will j enable the settlers to grow anything more profitable than fruit or lucerne, or that any other industry will be possible beside sheep-farming, fruit-farming or dairying. I know comparisons are odious to some ! people, but are those who support cxten- . sion of railways and expensive irrigation ' works to benefit a quarter of a million ' acres in Central Otago doing justice to ' New Zealand when they absolutely refuse ! to consider building a railway of 50 odd i' miles in the Auckland Province which j' would greatly increase the value of I' 700.000 acres of Crown lands, make 500,000 ! acres available for close settlement; open 11 to the markets of the country millions of ' feet of valuable timber and greatly increase ' ' tho stream of tourists and visitors to I' health resorts and angling resorts of the ! ' thermal region. I have heard prominent'< Government officials talk pessimistically of , ] the difficulties of water supply on the' Kaingaroa Plains, where there is a rainfall '' of over 45in. and the magnificent Waikato ; •' River ( on one side and the Ranga- , < taiki on the other, with abun- i dant springs and almost certainly j unlimited supplies obtainable by cheap i < bores. I have heard members of Parlia- i ment debate on the rigours 'of winter in ' l the Taupo district, but none of them seem : to think it needful to criticise expendi- , ture on irrigation for Central Otago or of 1 building railways to open up country where in winter time the temperature < goes down below zero. Attracting English Settlers. I ' Purely business-like Lands Depart- ' J ment officials may consider, and do consider that this upper Waikato . district is too remote for successful settlement without a railway; but ! they do not realise what an appeal it would make to sportloving Englishmen, many of whom \ would be glad to buy blocks of this cheap , land, and. grass it, and plant it with ;' belts of timber trees; they could afford j ' to improve the land by degrees, and to J depend upon the grazing of sheep and | cattle for a few years. A railway is |' bound to come through this part of tho i ; new province sooner or later, and their ' regard would come in the shape of in- ' creased values and improved facilities. ' Deerstalking and wild pig hunting, and ; the miles of unrivalled fishing waters, ' would count enormously with such men, ; and if they could afford to wait a few i years for monetary returns, what better ; investment could they find in the country? The land would not cost them £1 an ' acre; for £5 an acre they could turn it into useful pasture, and by judicious farming they could so improve the soil, that it would become valuable dairying and fattening country. It must be remembered, too, that the Government is settling the Urewera, on the very borders of the Kaingaroa Plains, on a largo scale, and that it is purely pastoral country; there is not enough level land in one place in all that recently-acquired territory to make one. good fattening farm, except in the Whirinaki Valley. The wintering of stock or the fattening of stock cannot be carried out on the high lands of the Urewera; that sort of work will have to be done on tho easily ploughable lands of the plains, or those great flats in tho Upper Waikato Valley, and this will play an important part in their development. No one will deny that these pumacious soils will grow root crops wonderfully cheaply and well, and anyone who knows anything about farming this class of soil will realise that roots are the basis of successful pasture And in- ' creased production and fertility.