IN THE WAIKATO.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19542, 22 January 1927, Page 1 (Supplement)

IN THE WAIKATO.

BY ELSIE K. MORTON.

BEAUTY AND BUTTER-FAT.

It is a great pity, but there is something dreadfully prosaic and soul-deaden-ing about butter-fat. The bare mention of it seems to kill romance; it stifles all the lofty aspirations of poesy and clips the wings of soaring imagination. All of which, of course, is manifestly unfair toward the financial backbone of the country, for we all know that if butterfat fails the country staggers, the bargain sales don't go properly, and Queen Street itself turns pale.

But still, you can't get away from it—-butter-fat is butter-fat, and Waikato is the home of it, and when I found myself rushing dizzily through its flat farm lands, past Motumaoho and Waharoa to Matamata, I looked out on the grazing herds and wide leagues of pastured plains and murmured, " Butter-fat! Just butterfat !" Which showed that I knew no more about it than the rest of you, for I found in those plains and groves and far blue hills a wealth ot unsuspected beauty and interest. Of Matamata itself, there is a sweet memory of roses and wisteria, cosy homesteads tucked neatly away in groves of trees and long, long roads leading far across the plains to Hamilton. Mountain Pictures. To Te Aioha runs a long grey road, twenty-one miles in length, with never a hill nor valley to break the green level of the pasture-lands. The entire lands to the east is dominated by the rugged heights of the great mountain range on the eastern bank of the Waihou River. One never tires of their beauty. At dawn and sunset they are mistily soft, appealing, with golden lights stealing up the mighty spurs, deep blue shadows in the ravines. Then the storm-clouds gather; all light and brightness is fled, and the ranges are a vast black wall, frowning their dark menace over the world beneath. One of the features of the road to Te Aroha is the beautiful glimpse it gives of the distant Wairere Falls, a glittering silver veil spun across a rock-wall oyer 400 ft. in height, set at the head of one of the deepest aijd wildest gorges of the ranges.

Always I come to Te Aroha with a freshly-wakened sense of wonder at the unique, almost overpowering beauty of the setting of this quiet little towu. It seems to have been pushed right to the farthest limit of the plains and forced to climb the grey, grim shoulder of Te Aroha mountain, towering 3000 ft. above the township. The wild ravines and lofty heights are crowned with magnificent bush; on the lower levels are pines and poplars, with here and there the friendly glint of a roof, the twist and turn of a mountain path, and beneath it- all, the shining silver of the Waihou River threading its way through the town. The Hot Springs.

Close beside the upper reaches of the Waihou, about four miles from Matamata, is a remarkable group of hot springs. They extend over an area of many acres, but the principal are the Opal and Crystal Springs, on opposite sides of the river. Ihese springs have been known to the Maoris foi ages for their healing qualities, and over 50 years ago that great pioneer of Matamata, the late Mr. J. C. Firth, threw the Opal Spring open to all those who wished to avail themselves of its healing waters. Still one may bathe in this wonderful spring from the original concrete bath-house, with its Gothic doorway and ancient dressing boxes, moss-grown, green with age. The banks are covered with drooping ferns, and an old grape vine, doubtless planted by the first owner, trails its green tendrils overhead. The spring is wellnamed, for the water, limpid, effervescing, wells up through sands that are faintly blue and green, and the effect of the pellucid water bubbling up from its opaltinted bed is strangely fascinating. On the opposite side of the swift-run-ning Waihou is the great open-air swimming pool of the Crystal Springs. The bath is 120 ft long, 40ft. wide. Its waters are just the right temperature for swimming, deliriously warm, but not hot enough to enervate. The banks are planted with climbing roses, azalea, arum lilies and wisteria, which have transformed the setting of this unique bathing pool into a veritable bower of beauty. The swimming pool and another fern-girt bath near by are set in a little valley beside the Waihou, the banks of which have been planted with poplars, chestnut, and oak trees, also ponga ferns and native shrubs. An Old Watch-tower.

A few miieS from the springs, near Matamata, is one of the most interesting and unique features of this little Waikato township, the concrete tower erected by Mr. Firth over half a century ago as a place of refuge in the event of an attack by Maori rebels. In ancient times, and in the troublous days of the Waikato wars, great bodies of warriors traversed the old road across the plains, and many a battle was fought near the site of the tower. It is a loopholed, solid structure with walls of concrete almost 2ft. thick, formerly surmounted by a circular watch-tower, now overgrown with ivy, a lasting reminder of early days when life was hard and filled with danger for all those pioneers of the Waikato. J Happily the tower was never required for I purposes of refuge or defence, but it is an interesting and picturesque relic of j pioneering days, and no visitor to Mai a- j mata should miss seeing it. The old ; homestead, set in an old-time garden, draped completely, when I saw it, with curtains of flowering wisteria, has a wistful, dreaming beauty of blossom, sunshine and the bumming of bees, the beauty that one finds only' in old gardens, and houses that hold haunting memories of well-loved homes. A Modern Butter Factory. And then, of course, there was the butter-fat, and a very np-to-date factory that takes in (carefully now!) 12,000 gallons of cream a day and turns out 16 tons of choice butter, nearly 100 tons a week. Here were great vats and pomps and shafts and engines and churns, and I was told all about the grading and heating, and the ammonia expansion coolers with their frosty white pipes and frigid insides that bring milk down from j 200 degrees to 38 in the space of a few j hectic moments. Enormous class-enamel j vats, holding over 3000 gallons of milk, j I saw, and vast golden chlmks o? butter j as big as the foundation ytone of n ca'he- j oral. And my outstanding impression of j it all is an ear-splitting crash of milk- j fans on concrete that seemed {a split the j heaven® with its din. and a man sitrinc ] inside a huge chum as Wr »« the taller• of a locomotive, carefully scraping the -s butter off its sides with a sriece of wood, j . . . Aijd that's hatter-fat! :