FINDING NEW ZEALAND

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19416, 26 August 1926, Page 11

FINDING NEW ZEALAND

AN AUSTRALIAN'S VISIT. WELLINGTON IMPRESSIONS. CHANGING ASPECTS OF THE HILLS BY ETHEL TCRNER. No. IV. " You will be disappointed in Wellington," said, on deck, The-Man-Who-Ha'd-Been-There. " Nice enough city, but a bit dull and heavy. And yon won't think anything of the harbour as you say you know Sydney. And the wind. Windy Wellington it is called, you know." It did not seem likely that any totally new country could be all disappointment. One hoped for the best. For two days a thick white mist had encompassed the ship, sky line, ocean, all was obliterated as is the outlook if you breathe heavily on your window. For two days the sirens had shrilled almost continuously and from time to time, so blind were our gropings, the engines were stopped, and wo lay rocking on a white patch for hours at a time. Personally, I think it was all a device of the captain's who had probably a highly developed artistic sense. When dawn of the last day of the crossing came, the mist was suddenly rolled aside like a theatre curtain and there, against a 6ky of rose and pearl, was piled a mountain washed with amethyst. *

First Sight o! Wellington. Soon it swam nearer, and the fraii blue loveliness of the morning slipped away from its shoulders, and it showed sheer and harsh,- a coast of iron. Then wo were through tho headlands and the harbour lay like a great blue land-locked pool circled round with steep brown and green hills. Bays dented tho hills, bays fringed with quiet grey beache3; houses—redroofed always red-roofed—clustered around the grey, then climbed tho sombre hills and hung poriiously from tho heights in the way they hang around some of the Italian harbours and tho Swiss lakes. Those warm, queer wrinkly hills—furrowed, ridged, dented, dappled now with deep chocolate, now with raw sienna! When I came to know well this aspect of the Wellington girdle I could imagine living in the place for years, going into exile for years, then coming back and beiifg moved to quick tears by the sightof those wrinkled hill sides, sparsoly patched with gorse. No smooth , green, lotus, island~pai;adiso of tho South Seas, this Wellington, but a, strong uncompromising harbour citadel, built stone by stone by strong men in the face of immense difficulties. And yet a city with a nameless charm, the kind of charm that one finds when a rugged face is played over from time to time by a smile of rare sweetness.

The City Fathers' Task. Practically right round I'fee harbour basin's edge runs a fine motor road (for lack of which Sydney often gnashes its teeth). Gigantic difficulties preseuted themselves in tho way of making it; hero a mountain stood, its straight, unbudgirig flank.right in the sea; there was an inlet fretting deep up into the land. Bit by bit the Wellington fathers persevered, now reclaiming large tracts from the harbour itself, now cutting deeply into the steep hills. Once in a way the wounded hills retaliate and slip great slices down on to a tramline or threaten to engulf a cur, but soon it all is shovelled up and dumped behind a breakwater; and the city has another foot or so mo!,\s of foreshore. Ships front all the world come into the great basin; the greatest of them can come right up to their berthage at the deep-water wharves that have been built on land reclaimed from tho sea, and that is almost in' the heart of the city. Doubtless when next I conui to Wellir.g* ton there will be motors parking where now the waters wash about the work- ■ convulsed wharves. For time Was—and not so long since—when the ships car lie to Lambton Quay, and if you ask for that, quay now you are pointed oiit a bustling street. , Where roars tho street cuico rolled the, sta. 0 town, what changes hast thou eeenl Men dodge the cars and trams betwaeu Where once wovea lapped at Lo.mbtou Quay. And not only have the narrow foreshores taxed the powers of tho city fathers but the encompassing girdle of hills has had to be tunnelled, bridged, terraced and zig-zagged to give foothold for the fast-increasing suburban homes with their red roofs, their close-cropped macrocarpa hedges and bosky gardens. Modem Architecture. One by one the old-fashioned ciity buildings are going the way of all oldfashioned city buildings. Brick after brick, . section after section of, weather- , board, comesT down and up rises the finelyplanned modern architecture. Perhaps it is a little heavy, a, little dour, but it subtly suits the place. ' Parliament- House is an almost noble: building; when the second half of its plan is finished the "almost'' will be superfluous. Of pale grey stone and marble, approached by the wide flights of steps that remind one of Italian building, it stands on a low hill of close shorn emerald, sward. Stone walls do not a prison make, sang the poet v but I. have a fancy that men could not walk up fine flights of steps and make mean laws, nor sit within marbia balls, and not be touched with nobility themselves.

From Wadestovra heights, where many red-roofed and retired and beautiful homes cling to a steep hillside, the view of tho lake-like harbour and surrounding country is very like parts of Lake Lucerne. Far across the waters rise the mountains named Orongorongo (I like to say that name), in their season white with snow. At their base lie the the thick foliage, the beaches of Day's Bay and Rona Bay. On the water lies the peaceful (seeming) island of quarantine with its 'fine plantings.' At night all the hills and the harbour waters and the narrow flats of the city scintillate with lights as if magicians had tossed shining necklaces from headland to headland and shore to shore. ' At night Wellington and Naples wear their jewels with a like gracious recklessness. 1 remember passing through Bologna and one of our party solemnly noting that we saw no sausage though the two leaning towers wei'fl assuredly there. Similarly in "windy" Wellington, I can personally most faithfully aver that I felt no wind. Day after day came along of clear, crisp, joyous sunlight, hardly ruffled hv a breeze; the air had the magic, wine-like quality that Sydney has in its Junes iind Mays "and Septembers, and the Blue Mountains in their Aprils and- Octobers. 1 could begin a poem with "By the wiuosweet ways of Wellington," but. as it might be misunderstood and as 11 greatly admire the "milky ways - ' of Wellington, the incomparably fine milky ways of Wellington, I refrain,